Home Remodeling and a VERY belated Merry Christmas

When we bought our house two years ago, we planned to do some updating. But when we moved from a motorhome and had no furniture, we had plenty of things to buy and plenty of decisions to make without worrying about the walls and floors. But it was finally time to update both of those things. After looking at the eleven-foot ceilings rising even higher over the basement staircase, and some interestingly difficult ceilings in our bathroom, we decided we needed professional help. So we hired painters instead of trying to do it ourselves (and then needing professional medical or psychiatric help). We didn't realize how thoroughly professional painters wrap everything in the house. Who knew they would shrink wrap EVERYTHING!?!?

We planned to stay at home during the painting, but then we found out that all of the floors and furniture were wrapped up. We decided to live in our unfinished basement to stay out of their way, but we hadn't packed bedding or clothes or food or . . . anything! We literally had to go buy underwear and toothbrushes because we couldn't get to anything in our drawers. Our kitchen was out of commission for the entire time. So we ate out for six days, trying all those new-to-us restaurants that we had been driving by for the last two years. 

We just survived the painting project, when the new flooring arrived. While we had hardwood floors in some areas of the house, we decided to change out the carpeting in the living room for oak floors as well

That meant that ALL of the hardwood in the house had to be sanded down so they could lace the new wood pieces into the existing floors to make a seamless surface. Since they were sanding everything down, we could also pick a new color of stain for the floor. They gave us several choices of stain.

But then we saw the natural wood, and we had second thoughts about that dark stain. We thought the natural color lightened up the room and was so lovely that we changed our minds. At the last moment, we decided to go with the lighter natural color. Denisa was living in the basement again during this project, but Mark was taking care of his Mother 400 miles away. We had to make some long distance calls to work up the courage to go with the newer natural color. This was before they applied the finish. What do you think?

After surviving another six days with our home in complete chaos and the holidays quickly approaching, we didn't have much time or energy to do much Christmas decorating. But we still went to two different Christmas light displays.

We celebrated Christmas early in Tulsa with our youngest son and his wife. The grinch also made an appearance.

Then we had the traditional Christmas Eve fondue meal at our oldest son's house in Kansas City. We've been blessed to share this holiday with our daughter-in-law's family for many years.

They have another tradition of hiking to a high spot to sing "Go Tell It On the Mountain." We had a lovely Christmas afternoon for a hike near Kansas City. We wish you a VERY belated Merry Christmas as we all hum along to "Go tell it on the mountain . . . that Jesus Christ is born."

Autumn Camping--and other family activities

We got home from our two-month RV trip right after Labor Day, but we still had plenty of warm autumn weather to do some fun family activities. That would include a camping trip with some of our favorite people to celebrate our grandson's fifth birthday.

We left the RV at home this time, because we were staying at a tent-only campground at Chickasaw National Recreation Area near Sulphur, Oklahoma. Their web site said that the camp sites were too small for RVs, but we found several that we could have fit into comfortably with our little trailer.

We can't express enough  how much we missed our trailer during that two-night camping trip. We might be too old to sleep in a tent. We also found that our borrowed tent had a little leak during a deluge one afternoon.

We left that campground for the six-hour drive to Houston. We have made it an autumn tradition to watch our favorite band members perform in the Texas regional competition. We visited our nephew and his family in The Woodlands in October to watch the band sew up another first place finish.

The large Texas high schools have impressive bands that march hundreds of talented musicians. It's some of our favorite entertainment enjoyed with another group of our favorite people.

We had to rush home to go trick-or-treating with our son's family.

You can tell that we are cool grandparents because we recognize that Carter is dressed up as Rumi, one of the lead characters in the animated hit movie "The Huntrix." That braided purple hair was a work of art that her mother got up extra-early to blend with her natural hair before school that morning.

Our son and grandson were also characters from another famous kid movie--Space Jam.

Autumn Major league baseball was in full swing, and we were home for some games at the Kansas City Royals field.

We were also home in time for the beginning of football season, where our son took our granddaughter to her first University of Oklahoma football game.

Our son is a proud alumni of OU with his B.S. and M.D. degrees. He took Carter on a campus tour that included one of his favorite places--the library. He's doing some early recruiting to sway her to consider the University of Oklahoma as her college ten years from now.

Before we had to winterize the RV, we wanted to go on one more camping trip. We made the trip to Missouri's Weston Bend State Park, where that big golden tree made our little trailer look even smaller.

Our special guest for this camping trip was our grandson, Eli. He and Grandude did some tree-climbing . . 

and we all hiked through the golden forest.

Grandude is known for his dare-devil hiking, and Gram was happy to have help to keep him from getting too close to that steep edge. A careless misstep on this trail could result in a bad tumble all the way down into the Missouri River.

Maybe Grandude was a bad influence on Eli, as he seemed to climb a lot of trees during our trip.

When we weren't hiking, we were hanging out at the playground, fighting dinosaurs, or competing at an exciting game of "splat" at our campsite.

When the sun went down, we cooked hot dogs for dinner with a hearty dessert of smores.

During fall break, we had some beautiful weather for a family trip to Tulsa. We spent a day with Mark's brother and sister-in-law at their home in the country.

They have go-carts for their grandchildren, and we had a great time driving them too.

A good time was had by the little kids and the big kids too!

Tulsa was a great place to visit because our youngest son and his wife live there.

Besides go-carts, we used their kayaks for a spin around their pond.

They also have three horses, and these three cowgirls took a ride around the pasture.

Carter loved the big and little farm animals during this trip.

Thanksgiving brought more family time, where we all made the trip to the Oklahoma panhandle to spend the holiday with our mothers--and many of our younger relatives.

Again, the horses and pony at this ranch were a favorite form of transportation.

While we are no longer traveling full-time in our RV, this autumn found us traveling 370 miles to Chickasaw National Recreation Area, 352 miles to Houston, and 690 miles to get home for Halloween before driving 227 miles to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 269 miles back home for a camping trip at Weston State Park. Then it was 392 miles to the Oklahoma Panhandle for Thanksgiving, and another 392 miles to get back to our house. While we are no longer traveling full-time in our RV, that total of 2,692 proves that we are still traveling many miles!

Feeling Welcomed Back Home

We left our camping spot in Nebraska early in the morning, and crossed the Missouri River (again) to find ourselves in Iowa (again). This river and these two states do a do-si-do along Interstate 29.

We were heading straight south through farm country. We loved seeing the harvest colors of the fields of grain through this flat section of the midwest. 

Staying on Interstate 29, we entered our 15th state as we drove through the northwest corner of Missouri. But we didn't make any stops in this state because we were on a mission to get home.

We crossed back into Kansas not long before we got to our house. 

This two-month journey had taken us 8,345 miles from the central plains to the Pacific Northwest and now back home. We had 27 different camping sites, and Mark made the 2025 map that shows the location of each. The green line is this trip, while the blue line shows some of our earlier camping spots closer to home. We had a great time, and we gained a daughter-in-law in the middle of our adventures!

Back at home, we had a lot of unloading and cleaning to do. But we had good help waiting for us. There was a "welcome home" banner on our front door . . .

and our refrigerator was stocked with milk and eggs and meat and all our favorites fruits and vegetables. 

Our granddaughter helped shop for all those goodies and drew our welcome home banner. It was so good to see her sweet little face, and catch up on the latest visits that the tooth fairy had made to their house on her behalf.

Our four-year-old grandson couldn't wait to come visit, and he was a big helper. He helped wash all the grime off our bikes . . . 

helped Grandude with the tools . . .

and vacuumed out two months of grime from the pickup. What a cute helper he was!

We don't get to see our granddaughter as much, since she is in school all day. But we were glad to be home so we could go to events like her school fun-run.

When she comes to our house, she teaches us new math skills that she learned in school. Since she's in a Spanish-immersion class, we are struggling to learn new math in Spanish.

Returning in September left lots of warm weather to spend time at the park, and we enjoyed this last fall with Eli since he will start school next year. We felt welcomed and loved, and glad to be back at home!