ICE!!!!

The day after Christmas we decided to go to town and check out all the " after Christmas sales". Since we still have to park the explorer over at the neighbors, we had to walk through their field of "frost/ice". Chuck had to scrape the ice off of the explorer. Wasn't bad though....we laughed about it. In about an hour, it was all gone and it had turned into a pretty day. We sure hit all the stores and got lots of bargains. We went to both towns, Decatur and Moulton. ....the explorer was full! The bad thing is....we have to carry everything in the explorer about 1/4 mile to the TT from the neighbors. That part "isn't fun". We even left a few bags in the explorer until the next day. Poor Chuck, sure is getting his daily exercise up here with having to carry things back and forth to the neighbors. Gallon water jugs full of water aren't light. ...but someday that will end also. The walk behind trencher is being delivered today and hopefully, Chuck can get the water pipes buried and we can at least have water . Chuck says he can hook the water up to the TT and the only thing we won't be able to use will be the toilet. That doesn't come until the septic tanks are put in. ...and those don't come until the water and the gravel is in the drive ways. ......."rain, rain go away, come again (next summer) some other day. " The weather report this morning says the rain is coming again on Wed, Thurs and Friday. Even some snow maybe. ( that I can handle) YUCK! more MUD!

Lights for Christmas!

Yes, we had power for Christmas! Three days before Christmas, Chuck was able to flip the circuit breakers that evening and we went from room to room turning on the lights. You would think we had never had electricity before in our lives...lol. We ewwwed and ahhhhed and laughed. We didn't try turning the stove and oven on until the next day. Not sure what was going to happen with them.....either them working, not working or catching on fire. Happy to say, they both work. We are only using three of the four burners on the stove because the one looks " iffy". Not taking any chances of it catching the TT on fire. We ended up having a really nice Christmas. We missed our kids but they each had sent presents for us. We got up and Chuck made us pancakes for breakfast and then we opened our presents. We called and talked to the kids and that completed our Christmas. We didn't have our traditional turkey and oyster dressing and cranberry jello for dinner but we made do with what we had. There will always be " next year" for a good ole Christmas dinner. We spent Christmas night watching movies on the TV. Yep! we can watch TV as long as we want instead of having to recharge the TV every two hours. Life sure is different when you have power. Next.......WATER!!!!!

POWER to the PEOPLE!!!!!!!

After 6 1/2 weeks of darkness, dampness and cold.....2 feet of mud, a 4 foot ditch and miles of pipe and wires......we will turning the lights on in the TT tonight!!!!The Christmas tree gets to shine for at least four nights of it's life. There still has to be a couple things done before we will see if the oven, stove and hot water heater even works but at least we will have light to cook by, read by and oh yeah......the TV will work for more than two hours without recharging it. PLUS.... the microwave will work ( I hope.....Bud gave it to me a couple of years ago and we never did plug it in to see if it worked...lol) The next big thing happening is Jason and Chuck digging ( again....but only 18 inches deep....with a walk behind trencher) to put the water pipes in. I'm dreaming of that first shower in the TT ....BUT....it will be awhile for that dream to come true....have to have two septic tanks put in first. Boy! it sure does take a long time for my dreams to come true. My word for 2010 will be " Patience" ...again.

Book Signing

Last week, we had gone out for lunch at a local restaurant and while Chuck was paying the bill, he noticed a sign about a book signing being done at the Out Post on the edge of the forest. The " book" was " our "Alabama Canyons" book that we have used over and over and have been hiking in all the areas that the pictures showed in the book. We LOVE this book. It has the most beautiful pictures of the forest in it. The author is Jim Felder and the photographer is Charles Seifried I told Chuck we couldn't be late because if there were a lot of people there, I was hoping we would get to talk to the author/photo for a few minutes. Wellllllll, in the three hours that they were there, we ended up talking to them for two hours of it. lol. Only four people came for the signing. We became " best friends" and they told us all kinds of places to go in the forest and the best ways to get there. Come to find out....the more we talked, Chuck and Jim knew a bunch of the same people from back in the 1990's from the computer trade shows in California that they both went to for work. Charles and I spent most of the two hours talking. He went out and got his camera out of the car to show me. It's one heavy camera to lug around in the forest. The girl that writes for the "free " local paper up here, took our picture with Jim and Charles ...so who knows...we just might be in the paper. Charles has been a photographer his whole life and has been around the world twice with his work. What fun, interesting men to talk too. They treated us like they had known us forever ( just like everyone else does up here) and wanted us to keep in touch with them. ...said they would love to have us go kayaking with them. What a fun Sunday, Chuck and I ended up having.

Sunday morning in the forest

We got up early ....(well, we always get up early up here ) on Sunday morning and headed out to the forest. We wanted to check out some of the easy waterfalls that we can get too without hiking a couple of hours into the forest. We wanted to see how much water would be going over them since it had rained so much. They were " awesome!" We laughed about going kayaking and was trying to figure out how we could get over the falls. Think we will stick to kayaking in the spring and summer. We still can't believe that we have this beautiful place to come and play ...just minutes from our land. After spending the morning in the forest, we headed to the Out Post at the edge of the forest for a book signing. That was just as much fun as playing in the forest.

Marmalade

Marmalade hasn't been coming out of the bedroom very much but in the last couple of days, he has come out more. Maybe after being in the TT for almost two months now, he is finally getting used to it. Annabelle acts like she has lived here forever. I have to admit that Marmalade has done much better with the move than I had expected. With him being an outdoor kitty in Florida, he is handling being an indoor one pretty darn good. I know he will be much happier once we are in the house, but that is so far down the road, I don't even want to think about it.

Birds and the kitties

I just love watching the little "Chick-a-dees"come to all of our feeders. We have so many different birds up here than what is in Florida. Usually the Titmice share the feeder with the chick-a-dees so there is always some kind of bird on the feeder at all times when they are feeding. The kitties just love it.