We've gone our separate ways - Denisa's Girls' Trip

After 4.5 years of traveling all over the United States together, we've decided to go our separate ways. Mark is heading north, and Denisa is heading south. Actually, our sons invited Mark on a boys' trip to the mountains, so the girls decided to head together to the lake. This is our view of Grand Lake in Oklahoma where the Denisa and the girls spent the weekend.

We were treated to a trip around the lake on a neighbor's boat. We all enjoyed the views from the water--except our granddaughter, Carter. She didn't care for that required life jacket that her other grandmother put on her for the boat ride.

Carter loves the water, so she did like kicking in the pool that overlooks the lake. She's here with the younger members of the girls' trip cast. That's our two daughter-in-laws and a dear friend that made the trip with us.

This younger group is also teaching us about the art of hammocking. These portable hammocks fold up into a tiny bag that would fit into our space in the motor home. It looks like we need one of these for our travel arsenal.

We were hosted at the lake house by our daughter-in-law's parents. They have a beautiful vacation home that they graciously shared with our group.

We had a day of rain, so we had a good excuse to stay inside and play games until midnight. The next day we had great weather for a walk around the neighborhood that overlooks the lake.

Of course the star of our girl trip was the youngest female in our group. With both grandmothers there to spoil her, we think that Miss Carter enjoyed her girls' trip.

After all that time with the girls, Denisa is really missing Mark.  We have a special guest blog-writer in the next edition, as Mark writes his first blog ever to describe his time with the men on the boys' trip. Stay tuned!

Our New Exercise Program

After four days at low speed with our Mothers, the next stop on our family road trip takes a 6.5 hour drive to Kansas City to visit our oldest son's family. Just as we had honored our mothers the day before, our son prepared a steak dinner to honor his wife and his Mother. After dinner, we snapped this picture at the fire pit in their back yard.

We arrived in time to do some baby-sitting with our granddaughter. Our daughter-in-law is working part-time now, and we snapped this picture on one of her working days. They both looked so cute even early in the morning!

Both parents have a day off on Wednesday, so we got some good exercise together. We took a family walk at one of the many parks near their home in Lenexa, Kansas. It was just a three mile drive to get to Black Hoof Park. We love these city parks that make us feel like we are far away from the city. We took pictures of the water views of Lenexa Lake and the forest that surrounds it.

One side of the lake has a paved trail with a more manicured feeling.

The dam provides another nice piece of infrastructure. This dam and park is another part of the "Lenexa Vision 2020" plan that was hatched in 1997.

It looks like they have been successful in meeting their goal of projects for this community that provide a "superior quality of life and respect for the natural environment." Besides the manufactured playground equipment, we really liked this section of all-natural balance beams and stepping logs in the shade. We got a little exercise here too.

Not stopping with Vision 2020, we found that Lenexa has plans for 2030 and 2040 already in the works. It will be fun to watch the continuing changes in store for this city. On the other side of the dam, the paved trail turns into a dirt path through the forest. Once again, we feel very far from the city that makes this park available to all of us for free.

But we aren't here just for taking walks in the park. We are working! Did we mention we are baby-sitting our granddaughter? That would give us an excuse to insert another picture of her. Since her recent birthday, she has a new trick. She will lift her index finger and smile in response to Gram's enthusiastic question, "Carter, how old are you?"

As part of our rigorous baby-sitting duties, we take Carter for a walk each morning. We're at Craig Crossing Park, just a half-mile stroller ride from their front door. 

This day's walk also included a snake sighting. Mark spotted this slimy guy crawling down a tree right beside the trail. His head is at the bottom of the picture as he makes two 90 degree turns down the tree bark on his way to the ground.

This day we would make a four-mile loop on city park trails. These trails have some good elevation changes, as we are now looking down on the bridge we used to cross the creek.

We got other forms of exercise during our stay. We used their rowing machine and lifted weights. They have a nice gym in their basement, but Mark preferred lifting weights like this.

We also got good aerobic exercise when Carter showed delight when Denisa danced to the songs playing on her new birthday toys. Then we found she was even more delighted when we held her and danced to the songs. Now that's some good exercise! We found we would do anything to make her smile!

It probably can't be counted as exercise, but we sure giggled when we made a tent on the couch for Miss Carter to crawl under. Those curly locks were standing straight out from the static electricity. What fun!

We are here to spend time with our kids, and it's nice that we're also getting some good exercise too. But now we have two more road trips planned as Mark and Denisa are about to go their separate ways . . .

Honoring our Mothers

With the motor home settled into a parking place in central Oklahoma, we're taking another car trip to visit family members elsewhere. Our first stop is the panhandle of Oklahoma, where both of our Mothers still live. So we're visiting them for Mother's Day! At 89- and 91-years-old, our two mothers have a life-time of "stuff." So we thought the best gift we could give them is our time. We used some of that time to work on projects at their houses. That included pulling weeds and cleaning up a yard that has been neglected while Denisa's Mother spent the winter in south Texas. We raked up piles of grass and weeds in the front and back yards to haul away.

After trimming trees and pulling weeds, we had an entire pick-up load of debris.

We didn't take many pictures during the four days we spent visiting our Mothers. So Denisa is happy to include shots of some Oklahoma wildflowers.

After weeks of enjoying the Texas hill country bluebonnets, we can say that the dry Oklahoma panhandle puts on a more subtle show.

We're not seeing hills covered with a blanket of flowers. But it is fun to see dainty floral creations among the buffalo grass on a walk in the pasture.

There is a natural beauty when we include our red clay soil with a yellow bloom framed with that blue cloudy sky.

This tiny barrel cactus was also strutting its best spring bloom. It looks like we are wandering God's wonders again today.

The horizons are flat here, and the blue skies filled with puffy white clouds make a pretty picture.

We're not getting as much exercise as we like, so the two of us decided to walk the two miles back to the house. That slow pace allowed us to see the tiny beauties at our feet that we would have usually missed.

We're glad that our schedule now allows us to stop and see the flowers.

While sitting with Mark's Mother, we were doing some bird watching on her new bird feeder.

Since we've loaded this blog with lots of boring flower pictures, we might as well end it with lots of boring bird pictures taken from our perch on the porch.

From that perch we also got front row seats to two birds making strange moves in the grass. We couldn't tell if they were fighting or courting. Isn't it interesting that some times it's hard to tell the difference?

So on this Mother's Day weekend, we enjoyed some lazy spring weather with our Mothers. We gave them the gift that most aged parents appreciate the most--time with their children.

We were glad for a break from the rain and stormy weather, so we have to include another picture of the beautiful sky on this special weekend when we honored our Mothers.

Motor Home Upgrade and Guests

While we are camping in Edmond, Oklahoma to visit family, we have more time on our hands than usual. Denisa did some sewing, and also hemmed up some pants. Perhaps that is why Mark got inspired to do a craft project too. When we first bought our used motor home five years ago, we weren't thrilled with the light colored upholstery on the dining room chairs.

We found that two of the chairs were missing, so our dealer sent us replacements. But they were upholstered in a different fabric, that was also very light.

The third and fourth chairs are usually stored under our bed, but we decided a couple years ago that we wanted matching fabric on the four chairs. We also wanted a darker fabric that would blend with the busy black and tan upholstery found elsewhere in the motor home. So we bought some fabric two years ago, and it has been patiently waiting for a rainy day when we had nothing better to do but re-upholster furniture. Today is the day! We would start by taking out the 50 staples that held the outer layer of each chair cushion.

Removing that layer would uncover more than 100 more staples that had to be removed to get the old upholstery fabric off.

Then it was time to cut the new fabric and start stapling it in place. Mark says he pities the poor fool that has to take out all the staples we put in. Denisa just hopes that "poor fool" isn't us.

The finished project was successful. We now have a matched set of chairs with a darker and less-busy covering. It was a good project for a rainy day!

We're now ready for company!

So we invited Denisa's sister and brother-in-law over for breakfast one day, and our son's family over another morning. They were on their way home to Kansas City after the first birthday party weekend.

While their guests ate, Gram and Granddad were busy feeding Carter her breakfast. She ate three plates full of strawberries, grapes, and bananas.

We loved having sit-on-the-floor company as the whole family joined Denisa for play time.

They also joined us for a walk around our campground loop, where we could share our peaceful home.

That sunshine turned to rain, and we were faced with another string of rainy days and severe weather warnings. Sheesh!

Instead of staying up all night to listen for tornado warnings, we left the motor home sitting here, and we spent the night at Denisa's sister's house. Like most houses in Oklahoma, they have an underground storm shelter. Luckily, we didn't have to use it. When we returned to check on the motor home the next morning, we saw that Lake Arcadia was merging into the camp site across the road from us. We had purposefully picked an elevated site, and we watched as one of our neighbors was evacuated from their lower site.

That same afternoon, we moved the motor home to its new storage spot for the next couple weeks. We're ready for another car road trip, so the motor home is staying high and dry at our relatives' house until we continue our quest to the north.