Wow, I can't believe a whole month and then some has gone by already. And yes, we are still at my mom's house. We were planning on heading south yesterday, but alas we still do not have our 5er back from Guaranty RV in Junction City. We dropped it off on September 19th for some warranty work and of course, we are playing the "sent the wrong part, waiting for the new part" game. It is very frustrating and it's a good thing that we have a nice place to stay while we are waiting.
What have we been up to the last month, well let's see. Rich got my mom's deck power washed and stained, it looks very pretty.
My mom and I helped out my brother Jeremy with a little project that turned out to be a pretty messy project. My brother was having "septic" issues at his house and had the septic tank scheduled to be pumped out after he returned from a trip to Hawaii. He got a call that the company could come early, on the morning that he was leaving, so he called my mom and asked if she'd mind running up to his house and overseeing the "job". No problem my mom says. So we, head up to my brothers house and we wait and we wait, no septic company. Finally I call them and find out they had gotten lost but were still headed our way. Well about 2 hours later they show up. The guy opens the septic lid and says, hmmmmm not looking so good, the drainline appears to be blocked. He proceeds to pump the tank dry and then asks us to test the line, so we run some water in the basement sink, nothing is coming into the tank, so we go upstairs and empty a bathtub of water.....big mistake, now the basement drain is backing up and we have water everywhere but in the septic tank. It appears the drainline between the house and the tank is where the blockage is. Yuck....the septic man was very nice and helped us get the water all sucked up and then suggests that we need to call a drain company to come unclog the drain. Did I mention that it is Friday afternoon by this time? So we call the drain company and lucky for us, they had someone they could send out. Whew, that's a relief. So all ends well, just hours and hours later than planned. I think my brother owes us on that favor don't you?
My mom left for her trip and I proceeded to get sick, so I pretty much spent the time she was gone under the weather. Speaking of weather, we were here for the monsoon deluge, wow that was a lot of rain we had. Definitely made us anxious for some nice warm sunshine.
Rich made a trip to Bend to run some errands, he stopped in at ODOT and said hello to some of our fellow co-workers. Rich and I also made a day trip to Bend to attend a funeral from one of his previous pastors and he got to see some old friends. We had dinner with Bruce Raikes and his lovely wife and our friend Judy. It was good to see them and catch up, it had been a while. We had Sandy and Steve Parnell stop by my mom's for a quick visit, it was good to see them and catch up on some news. I cooked a spaghetti dinner one weekend for my brothers and their families. We've gone to a different local church each weekend. We've visited with one of my mom's neighbors and her little boy. We went to my niece's 20th birthday party.
We've also worked....we've made quite a dent on my mom's "to do" list. We've moved shrubs, planted flowers, trimmed shrubs, cleared brush and trees from along the driveway, burned the brush. Rich has repaired her wood chipper and chain saw. We've repaired a fence, cleaned gutters, repaired and replaced faucets. Rich removed the pump and pressure tank from her spring house (which will be rebuilt next spring, the tank was about to fall into the water which is why we removed it now). Rich did a little deer hunting on my mom's place, but didn't see anything legal he could shoot at. He did see a black bear down by my mom's walking trail, we've been keeping an eye out for it's return, but hopefully it has meandered along to greener pastures.
And my fun thing has been riding the four wheeler of my dad's. The four wheeler has a trailer which has come in handy for hauling brush and tools but we've also taken some fun rides around the property with it. I haven't been to the back side of the property in years, so Rich and I took the four wheeler and took a tour. I even took my mom for a ride around the place which was a lot of fun. I did manage to get the four wheeler stuck on that trip and we had some good laughs while I got it unstuck.
These are some of our highlights over the past month and unfortunately we've not taken any before or after pictures of our projects, so no pictures for this entry.
Hopefully we will have our 5er back before too long and I will be back to more regular entries of our travel adventures. Until then, be safe and God Bless you all.
