Cows and chickens

Since we were on the farm for almost a week, and since we were often walking from the house to the container and back, Carl got lots of pictures of the cows and chickens...

The cows would come up from the pasture behind the house each day...

 

Get water from the waterer...

Check out what was going on in the chicken pen ("Chicken TV")...

and lay down behind the house near the fence to chew their cud.

Meanwhile, the chickens were about as entertained by the cows as they were entertaining *to* the cows!

"I've got my eye on you!"

"Some privacy, please!"

Always curious!

It is enjoyable to see the animals as they go about their days (as we were going about our days!).

Moving the container contents to Arizona - part 1

When Dwayne and I first were going fulltime in the motorhome, Dwayne was not quite as gung-ho on the idea as I was. He had a wonderful woodshop setup in our garage in Coppell, and it was hard to give that up. I promised him that he could keep those components and, one day, when we got off the road, we'd have a house where he could have his woodshop again. Unfortunately, cancer interrupted that plan and Dwayne did not have the opportunity to have his woodshop here on earth again (I'm convinced God has a better woodshop in heaven!).

At the time we were giving up our house, my brother graciously offered us the use of a container on his farm for us to store the woodshop components, as well as other things that we thought we might want at a future time when we would return to living in a house without wheels. I thought that the "stuff" would only be stored for a few years, but it has been there for 12 years.

When Carl and I married, he had a few items that had been stored at his son's home that we brought to the container. We also had things from each of our motorhomes that got moved out when we were combining our lives, and those were placed in the container. Each year when we'd visit Virginia, we had access to our "stuff" and would sometimes exchange things that were in Gracie for things in the container, or offload more things out of Gracie and store them in the container.

With the purchase of the new-to-us house without wheels, with a garage, we decided that it was time to get the things we wanted from the container and allow my brother to have the use of his container after 12 long years. So, a week or so ago, we flew to Virginia to start the process of sorting through the contents of the container.

Opening the container door...

...wow, that's a lot of stuff!

Sorting through some of the boxes...

We placed the things we wanted to take to Arizona on a flat bed trailer that Jimmy would put under cover each night to protect the contents from the heavy dew.

Cleaning a rug that had been stored for 12 years

Everything that had been stored was very dusty and dirty, but most things appeared to be in decent shape. We decided that some things were no longer needed in our lives, and they could be taken to a thrift store, or later sold at Jimmy and Regina's church's white elephant sale.

We are so grateful to my brother, Jimmy, for allowing us to use the container for so many years, for Jimmy and Regina putting us up in their home while we sorted through the contents of the container, for Jimmy coming up with the plan to use the trailer for the things we wanted to take, volunteering to take care of (dispose of) contents that we did not want to take, and doing the job of packing of the contents into the moving truck for us. We are overwhelmed with gratitude to them both.

Dueling Pianos

At our new community, we got tickets for an event, "Dueling Pianos"...

The two guys did a good show (https://www.cactuskeysentertainment.com/cactus-keys-dueling-piano-show/)...

It was interactive with the audience suggesting songs for them to play.

We were able to sit with two couples whom we had previously met at the Tuesday Coffee time. It is nice to start knowing a few people in our new community!

Living room furniture

While we had gotten bedroom furniture, dining room furniture, and a kitchen table and chairs from our friends' estate sale...

... we were rather lacking in living room furniture. We'd gotten the light brown leather recliner from another estate sale, and the rug from Costco, but we were looking for a sofa and loveseat to replace the very uncomfortable folding chairs.

There is an online community bulletin board in Sunland Springs Village and someone had posted that they had a leather furniture set that they were selling - sofa (with two recliners), loveseat (with two recliners), a separate rocker recliner, and two end tables. We called, went to see it, decided to get it, rented a truck from Home Depot for 75 minutes, picked all the pieces up, and got them back to our garage. After returning the truck to Home Depot, it was time to get the furniture into the living room...

... thankfully the backs came off the recliners and the center of the sofa came out to make it more manageable.

Final reattachment of the center of the sofa (you can see the dining room furniture behind me).

All in place!

We still want to get an entertainment center and possibly a larger TV.

We are doing well on furniture for our new place at this point!

Picking up fruit

I blogged about needing to learn about the systems and features at our new house...

One of the things we're working to understand is how to care for the plantings around our house.

There are three citrus trees, including this navel orange tree...

Unfortunately, it is dropping fruit (and leaves) -- we pick up 5-10 oranges per day! Most of them have holes in them and there are fruit flies feeding on them. We've heard that we need to pick them up because they attract roof rats.

There is also a grapefruit tree (seen to the right of the orange tree in the second picture) and a lemon (or lime?) tree in the front by the garage.

So much to learn! 

Lots of things to do

I haven't gotten pictures of everything Carl has been doing at our new house (he is a dynamo!), but here are a couple...

This is actually a picture he took -- of the garage door opener. We are trying to figure out all the components that this house has, get them programmed for our use. He was capturing the information about what the brand and model were of the garage door opener so we'll be able to reprogram the remote opener keypad for our own use.

The ceiling fan in the living room had very bright "cool" white lights. To change those to warm white lights, you'd think it would just require changing the bulbs, but, incredibly, it didn't have replaceable bulbs. So, Carl figured out that we had to replace the whole light kit. This picture was taken after he had put the new light kit up and he was putting the glass shades in place.

So many things to learn about!

Miss Kitty's doings

Miss Kitty is adapting well to her new housing situation -- even though it means that she has about 3 times the amount of space to have to supervise, and her food dish and litter pan are now about 5 times further away from each other!

It was time for her annual vet appointment, so we took her to the Banfield at the local PetSmart for a checkup. She continues to lose weight, and her bloodwork shows that her kidney disease is continuing to progress, but they were impressed with her agility and general wellbeing.

She likes looking out the window that is in front of our computer desks...

"Who? Me?"

She isn't very photogenic, but she sure is sweet!