Assemble, building and painting

Gainesville, FL


I have been really busy and exhausted at the end of the day.  Enjoying sunshine is an exhausting experience :)
  
I was upstairs and the kids were outside playing .. The little girl in the pink loves to wave (she was waving at a bird here) and as any little kid, they were curious what was going on up above them. 

One class go back inside and another comes out.  See the 2 little kids standing at the fence trying to see what was going on?  Snicker

 
the railing upstairs is in bad shape and in need of some repair.   See how the post are kicked loose?

So digging through the scrap lumber and ripping boards to make new ones to replace the really bad ones and then making new railing to keep the post in place and so they can’t be kicked out.  I’m doing the painting.  Have i mentioned how i am not a painter?  I usually end up with more paint on me then on the boards .. snicker

see how much better it looks?  Much more sturdy and nothing like a child can get through these now.
  
This church needs so much work done .. see how they have these metal braces holding up the roof?
 
A new toy arrived that was donated and needed put together

It took lots of patience as normal some of the holes were not completely drilled through and luckily we had the needed tools to get the job done. 

so that task was tackled and finished .. the next day we say the new toy was a hit and it was loaded with kids.  In fact you couldn’t of squeezed another child on it .. i didn’t have my camera with me.
  
Several of the railing had to be completely removed and new ones built.  I got in trouble when i was helping rip some boards, hubby yelled at me as i got my hand to close to the saw blade when reaching to pull a board through.  I have been told to not get near the saw!  Imagine that!  Hubby said he loves my hands all in one piece just like they are now.  Like he has room to talk, he cut the tip of his thumb off using a saw.  It’s horrible to get old and have health problems. (shhh.. don’t tell him i post this picture of him) :))

I haven’t gotten this one painted yet.  Wednesday was a day off as exhausted had set in and  I just didn’t feel well.  Plus i did not hardly sleep Tuesday night.  I’ve have learned to listen to my body and when it says .. time to rest that is what happens.  When you are doing volunteer work you get to work at your own pace and if you do not feel good you get to take time off till you do.  Needless to say it’s been to bed early at night and some nights i am not sleeping because my body is screaming after what I've done all day but I'm enjoying being able to help others.  Sometimes we just have to fight through and do things .. because laying around all the time is not good either.

More Sunshine and Repairs

Gainesville, FL



We woke up to another beautiful warm day.  My flowers are doing well being out in this warm and sunny weather.  One of my rose bushes has a bloom and several buds that will be blooming before long.  Several of the leaves that fell off when we back in Illinois during a cold spell are coming back.
 
After i got my dishes done and picked up some it was time to head outside and enjoy the great outdoors.  I have another job to do .. see these boards they need to be painted so I’m doing that today.  I used both my outdoor tables as a work bench.  I put bags on my good table to prevent it from getting messed up.  My other table is going to have to have a new paint job as i got stain all over it.  I believe these are being prepared for a hand railing.

I forgot to get a finished picture.  The boards were painted white on all 4 sides and i put 2 coats on.  These steps are falling down and needed braced up.  See the jack temporarily holding up the braces to hold up the steps.

While the steps were being braced up the bottom step fell apart.   
  
2 new boards and the steps are back together. 

Finished progress

Can you see where we are parked at cross the street?  This is really a nice big area and it’s free!  Mooch docking isn’t a bad deal.
 
I enjoy seeing the palm trees.  This area in Florida has most tree with the Spanish moss hanging from them and i think they are neat looking as well.  Gainesville seems to be a really wooded area and it gives you the rustic feeling and not like your actually in town.
   
Here is a picture of last weeks work, see how the new legs look .. not bad if i say so myself.  The stain color wasn’t a perfect match but it’s what they had and when you are on a tight budget you make do of what you have.

It’s been another beautiful day and we are really enjoying our winter.   Being able to be outside and enjoy the warmth of the sunshine is wonderful as well as it’s great for aching bodies.

Multi-cultural church service

Gainesville, FL
 
We didn’t have to get up early for church today and their church service doesn’t start until 11.45 AM.  So that meant we could sleep in and still not be late for church. 

This is an old church and we’ve been told that it originally was a Baptist church and then it was taken over by a Spanish group and now it’s an Assembly of God.  This church is a multi-cultural church and it’s thriving with a congregation. 

This church has lots of young people.  We wasn’t the oldest in church. 
 
They have lots of buildings here, this is a huge place that needs lots of work.  It’s just unfortunate that since they have mostly college students there is a struggle with the financial aspect. 


They have a day care center and that helps bring money in.
 
They have a ministry school that is for those who graduate from college and it’s more of a hands on and learning School.
 
This pink building is going to be for International  house of Prayer (IHOP) They are also reaching out to the homeless.  This church is an amazing experience and the church service was awesome and the presences of the Holy Spirit was definitely felt.

I would say there were over 200 in church service this morning and it’s neat how they mix their cultural together.  The worship service was a combination of English and Spanish.  The song would be started in English and then Spanish and each verse would be done this way.  It was really neat and we enjoyed it so much.
  
Here is what the inside of the chapel looks like.  I love the colors and it’s really huge.
    
The balcony is pretty good size too and very high …
 
here is looking down from the balcony
 
Here is the entrance .. even though this church is older and needs some work it has a warmth that you can feel the minute you enter the doors.  It was amazing to see how so many different ethnic backgrounds have come together as one.
 
We didn’t get out of church until around 2 PM and so i was in no mood to cook so we ran down the street to Taco Bell for a couple of taco’s for lunch.  The rest of the afternoon was spent outside relaxing and enjoy another beautiful day here in sunny and warm Florida.

Relaxing in the warmth of the sun

Gainesville, FL


It’s been another beautiful day here in Florida.  Temps were in the mid 70’s.  It was a lazy morning for us as neither of us were moving to good.  It was mid morning before either of us got dressed.  A trip to Wal-mart was decided as i need to exchange something i got the other day.  After our trip to Wal-mart we stopped by the fresh produce store again.  Wow it was packed, no place for us to park with our beast.  So we went back to the laundry mat and parked in their lot and walked across.  The place was crazy and getting a cart around was almost impossible.  We have decided Saturday is not the day to go.  Apparently they must put out all their fresh produce then because it was going like crazy.  We purchased some Florida Oranges 12 for 2.99 and Grapefruits 3 for a 1.00 .. the oranges are wonderful as we had a couple when we got home.  I also got some celery for .89 cents and hubby got some more .39 cents per lb bananas.

On our way home we drove around just looking the town over and found several more stores i like to visit.  We didn’t stop today as i wasn’t in a walking mood.  I’m still exhausted from our busy few days.  We came home and emptied our 6 gal water jug into our fresh water tank as it was reading empty even though water was coming out.  We put 18 gallons of water in it and that should last us a little bit.  We are using our water tank for dishes and flushing only. 
 
After that task was done we decided to head across the street to get our showers.  Since we are not on a water hookup we are using the showers in an empty apartment across the street.  I also took a picture of the parking lot in the back where we were told to park, as you can see there are 2 broken down buses and there is no way we could get our rig in that parking lot.  We would of had to back in on the blind side and there is not enough street nor drive way, the top picture shows the concrete dividers in the street and the drive way has a tree, building and trash dumpster in the way.  I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside soaking up this wonderful warm sunshine. 

Mooch docking

Gainesville, FL

We survived the cool spell that came through Florida.  The past couple of days temps have once again been my kind of weather .. Yep .. T-shirt and short pants.  My flowers are back outside and enjoying the sun shine.
 
We are really enjoying our solitude of being surrounded by these old trees.  The added benefit is Save A-lot, Lowe’s, Dollar Tree and Wal-mart are not very far away.  The street in front of us is a busy street, but were far enough back from it that we do not notice any traffic noise. 

I took a picture of the electric setup were using to get by here while mooch docking. 
   
These are 2 separate cords that are plugged in the outlets outside and the extension cords are running through our slide outs and inside our camper.  YES … i have these 2 huge cords running on my floors inside.  Oh well they are working and our electrical needs are being met.

Several of the pews in the church have a sign of them that says ( Caution do not sit on)  they have missing pew legs and are unsafe to sit on.  So yesterday took a trip to Lowe’s and then set up shop.  Wanted to make a few test legs and see if the design would work.
 
Purchased a couple of boards and then came back and took one of the pew legs off to get a temp plate made.  These legs are much beefier and will not come apart like the old ones. 
 
The old leg, this is actually a good one.

This is what I’ve been doing the past couple of days ..cutting, building, sanding and staining.  I didn’t get a picture of the finished look yet.  I am using my little table and lawn chair for doing the sanding and staining. Of course my poor table will need a new paint job afterwards as I've gotten stain all over it :)  The weather has been beautiful to be working outside.  Enjoying the sunshine and warm temps here in sunny Florida. 

Dinner tonight was turkey and noodles.  I had some turkey and broth in the freezer that needed used up and so i threw some noodles together and rolled them out this morning.  While i worked outside they dried and all i had to do was throw them in the crock pot and dinner was served.  Making noodles is really simple and really doesn’t require much work.  Compared to paying over $3 at the store for frozen prepared.  All is takes is 2 eggs,4- 6 Tbsp of milk and 2 C. Flour and 1 tsp of salt, mix up and roll out and cut them with a pizza cutter .. put on a cookie sheet to dry and their done.  Sometimes i will make a double batch and freeze the other half for a later use but i didn’t today.

I’ve been in bed early the past few nights, i haven’t adjusted to the time change plus all this work has exhausted me and tonight is going to be another early to bed.  I want to do some site seeing tomorrow but it may have to be a day of rest.  Will have to see what tomorrow holds.

Laundry and Shopping

Gainesville, FL

Oh me O my we woke up to a very cold morning 28 degrees!  We survived a cold night and we stayed nice and warm thanks to a electric heater and our furnace.  Since we are mooch docking and only have minimum electric hookup i can not use our washer/dryer.  So we got online and found a laundry mat near by so we loaded up our dirty clothes to get this dreaded task done.  After getting these bones and aching back to moving we needed to get our laundry done.

Here is where our home is parked for a few weeks while we do some mooch docking :) It’s a beautiful setting for us .. we are surround by trees and hidden from the streets around us.  We almost feel like we are parked in the woods, secluded and not actually in town.
 
After getting the laundry done we seen a produce store while we were doing laundry so while the clothes were drying we snuck over to check it out.  Wow .. great prices!  We got 12 Florida tangerines for $2.99, lettuce .89 cents, cabbage was 3 lbs for a $1.00, bananas .29 cents a lb.  They had some good prices on meat but i need to use up what i have in the freezer before we buy more. 

After laundry was done it was time to head to Save A-lot for some needed groceries.  $20 later we headed to Wal-mart to get some needed supplies .. ughhh we spent $60 there!  Although things we got were mostly big item things.  On our way home we found a Kangaroo fuel station and so we filled up with diesel.  Diesel was $3.84 a gal and $80 we now have a full tank of fuel.  Finally it was time to head home and get things put away. 

We got home and it’s turned into a nice afternoon.  The sun is out and temps have warmed up to 56 degrees.  Much warmer then it was this AM.  We are parked on at least an acre here, these pictures are of our yard where were parked.  It’s a great parking place if we had 50 amps, water and sewer i wouldn’t want to leave it :))  Although we have found this is also the local dog walking park and yes dog poop area!  No one picks up either so we’ve learned fast to watch where we step.   We are still cleaning up after our dogs even though no one else seems to. 

Dinner was left over again for me .. hubby had a couple of pot pies.  He hasn’t had any for awhile and was having withdrawals ..hehe  Church services started at 6 PM they start their services with an hour and half of prayer, singing and worshiping but we didn’t go over until a little after 7.30 PM, we got in on the tail in of the worship and then stayed for the word.  We didn’t get home until almost 9 PM and let me tell you my back was screaming at me.  We enjoyed Oscar who is in the process of relocating here from the International House of Prayer (IHOP) to begin a new ministry with the youth here at Ignite Center.  They are doing a 21 day fast and will be having services M-F .. i will not be attending church every night as my body just can not take it.  I came home and got a good back rub, took some good drugs and went straight to bed.

Rolling on down the road and mooch docking

oh it’s a frightful morning.  The alarm clock woke me up at 6.30 AM!!!  YES .. I agree I’m RETIRED, i don’t get up to those anymore .. well I'm not suppose to!  Oh Man, it’s one cold morning.   Temperature is 35 degrees!  Mr. Winter has definitely found me :(

I have everything but the computers ready to roll .. I’m dressed and hubby is struggling to get himself outside to finish his job.  We’d wait it out another day but their calling for low 20’s tonight!  360 miles ahead of us .. Yep one very long drive so we have to get moving as we still have to dump the tanks .. well hubby does :)  I will be staying in the truck. 

As you can see I didn’t stay inside the truck, instead i went potty and took a couple pictures .. yes hubby is doing the dirty deed on the other side .. snicker

Were sad to be saying goodbye to Fort Pickens as we’ve really enjoyed our stay here.    
Me O My .. leaving at 8 AM has us in rush hour traffic … Yikes!

Once we got onto I-110 the traffic let up
 
More bridges to pass and Oh My the wind is horrible and blowing our rig all over the place.  This is the first time the wind has ever been a factor in this rig.  The Motor home was horrible and if the wind blew much we had to stay sitting still but this is our first experience with wind being a factor. 
I-10 traffic wasn’t bad at all we had a pretty smooth ride.  Of we had to stop at several rest areas for me to potty and stretch.

several hills .. as we just kept going up

the police were out in full force as we tend to see them quite often

It was a beautiful day for a drive.  The sun was out even though temps were only in he high 40’s ..Inside the truck we were nice and comfy .. getting out to go potty was another story. 

We stopped in Marianna to get diesel we pulled into a station that advertised diesel for $3.55 if you paid cash so we went over to it .. ugh i go inside to pay and am told they don’t have diesel .. grrrr i asked why they had the sign on advertising it then?  So we fought the traffic across the street and went to a TA where we got it for $3.58 with cash.

Finally we were getting close to our destination .. less then an hour to go and i was glad because we’ve lost an hour already.  Yep .. we’ve gone from Central to Eastern time therefore we’ve lost an hour.

Once we got on I-75 the traffic increased big time .. just thankful were not on the other side as it was almost bumper to bumper.

Our exit is getting closer … Yeppie

I love this sign

Once we turned off of I-75 and onto 441 the traffic wasn’t too bad
 
Once we got into town it started picking up as it was 3.30 PM and school is out but once we got through town the traffic let up and we enjoyed the scenery of the open

We finally arrived at our destination and i tried to call Eric to let him know we were here .. no answer and there is no way we can get into the parking lot behind the building where we were told we could park at.  Oh NO!!  We have the street blocked as there was no way we could go forward any farther nor could we turn around, we couldn’t continue to go down there street.  The only way out is to go backwards the same way we came in .. Ughh .. hubby put the flashers on and i stood on the street directing traffic around us.  Hubby went to find someone or to see if he could find where the hookups and parking was. 
  
Hubby returned saying there was no way we were getting into the parking lot.  A gentleman stopped and helped me direct traffic and directed hubby on backing up into the road.  We had to back onto a busy street and then we had to jump a curb and fight a tree to get into the grass parking lot.  The gentleman said that is where he thought the campers parked at when visiting. 

Once we got pulled in off the street hubby went looking for hookups, while he was doing that Eric called me back and said we were in the wrong place we were to park behind the building.  I explained there was no way and I wasn’t even sure how we were going to get out of where we were now.  Eric came over and when he saw our rig he realized our dilemma .. he took hubby around the back of the building where he thought we could park to see if there was any possible way but once they got to looking, the sewer is one side of the building, the water hook up is on the other side and there was no electrical hookup at all for us behind the building.  Hubby went over where he saw a light and found 4-15 amps plug ins .. at least we’d have electric if they worked.  He got out his electric drill and plugged it in and checked all 4 outlets .. yep they worked .. great we back onto the huge concrete slab and hubby dug until he found 2 of his heavy duty cords and went to work on making them fit through the hole on our slide out.  We got setup and unhooked from the truck, out came the walls and so we are now using one outlet to run a electric heater, another has a 3 way plug plugged into and i am running the computers and freezer off it and then hubby dug out the plugs to go from 50 amps to 30 amps and then to 15 amps and our camper is plugged in.  We are running all LP appliances off LP and we will be using a electric heater and our furnace to stay warm tonight with as they are predicting temps to drop down to 25!  It’s good that we are prepared for those just in case.  If all else failed we could of dug out our generator and used it for electric for the night. 
 
The downside is we only filled our fresh water tank yesterday to 1/3 full as we thought we’d have water hookups, a good side i did fill all of our water jugs up for that just in case day.  We emptied our tanks before leaving this morning so for now we will have to find a way to get water.   We can take showers across the street in the building if we need to .. although I'm spoiled and enjoy using my own shower.  For tonight we are parked and tomorrow we research our options and decide what we will do. 

When you are mooch docking I guess you really can’t be picky and have to appreciate what ever little bit you get.  We had planned to be here a couple weeks as of now we are not sure what will happen.  Guess that is why we are so flexible in this lifestyle.  We are content with a nice level parking spot on concrete, we do have electric (cords running in the inside .. snicker ) and are finally nice and warm inside the comforts of home.  We are in a well lighted area and our parking spot is in a really neat place .. (the dogs have a wonderful place to play and potty) i will take pictures tomorrow (it was getting dark by the time we got finished working) we have several TV channels with the local TV (we never even attempted to setup our satellite) and our phones and internet work great .. we are thankful to be parked for the night after a long exhausting day .. we are grateful for the free place to park and will adjust I'm sure.  We know Eric feels bad as he was missed inform on the hookups but it’s okay Eric, we can manage and we plan to still have a great time and are looking forward to church services tomorrow night .. i will save that for another post.  Good night all .. I'm going to get a really quick and I MEAN QUICK shower .. i was so looking forward to a nice long hot shower tonight :(( and then it’s off to bed for me as the long exhausting day and the cold weather is getting the best of this back.  NO heating pad tonight .. ughh something may have to go if this back doesn’t let up once i get a quick hot shower.  Night all!!