Girlfriends, Markets & Curves

Back in the groove at Table Tennis

Aunty Dympna's first circuit at Curves

Jen & Leonie on new Laptops

Trish, Ret & Jen setting up the Marquee

Our stall all ready to go...

Ret's Fairy Angel Dolls

Jen's Christmas Cards

Leonie's Pastels

Caren's Fascinators and Wedding Horseshoes

Yippee - a sale at last

Now I am getting scared. I thought I only did up the blog last week, but when I checked tonight, it is almost 2 weeks since my last entry. I can officially validate the saying that 'time flies when you are having fun'. Everyday seems to be full of pleasant activities: laughing at an email my brother wrote from a houseboat as he was cruising down the Murray River here in Australia, speaking to my sons, sisters & brothers on the phone, skyping with my daughter in Copenhagen, attending Mass, knitting for my nephew's expected baby, reading about the visitations of Our Lady at Medjugorje, learning new computer techniques and doing craft things with my sister and girlfriends (that I have had since I was 17 years old), having friends come to stay, watering the garden and checking out the growth of all the plants, having morning tea (or lunch or dinner) with my aunt, editing my brother's novel, holding a market stall or attending a gym. Phew. And they are just the things I can actually remember. I have also had 2 new people who are interested in motorhoming around USA contact me - We have already given some tips to 4 other couples, so it will be a pleasant task to help another two out. We enjoy sharing what we have learnt about RVing around America, and trust it makes the adventure appealing to others.

After several days of heavy rain, we were worried that the day my sister & girlfriends had planned to hold a craft market stall would be washed out. But no, the day dawned bright and sunny, and we had our marquee set up in no time (thanks Col & Ally). The four of us excitedly displayed our wares, and sat back waiting for the hordes to snap up our bargains...we waited, and we waited and we waited. Come on folks, we had beautiful homemade Christmas Cards all done up in cellophane wrapping - only $2.50 each. We had impressive hand-drawn pastel drawings, unique fairy angels, beaded bracelets and earrings going for a song, and absolutely stunning hand-made fascinators (all ready for our Melbourne Cup racing season) waiting to adorn some fetching outfit. If it wasn't for a box of used novels that we were selling for 50 cents each, I doubt if anyone would have stopped at our stall at all. Well, we sold 2 cards, a few jewellery items and about 20 books - and that was that. Although our sales figures were disappointing, we all thoroughly enjoyed our day chatting & laughing in the spring sunshine together.

For those of you who know me well, you would know that I am not particularly partial to exercise. I enjoy doing a brisk walk with a sister or a friend, as it is a good time for a chat, but even that simple activity has been absent off my calendar for more than 5 months. My aunt gave up golf some years ago, and has had to give up yoga due to an unknitted broken bone in her upper arm, and although she stills plays croquet, she wanted to add a bit more aerobic exercise and weight-bearing exercises to her life. So, after much research and deliberation, we decided that we would both join a Curves gym for women. My Ballina sister is out of town at the moment, but we are hoping she will join us on her return. So far my aunt & I have attended 2 sessions, and we are very pleased with our decision. We have agreed we will plan to do 3 sessions a week. Our weekly table tennis game fits in just before one of our Curves session, so we flit from one activity to the next. Ah, the life of a retiree....That reminds me, I still have to go and register for my volunteer work...have to have a balance there somewhere.

Another busy but fun-filled week coming up next week. But more on that in the next instalment....

Back In Ballina

Trish & Benn in LAX
The new Veggie Garden

Family times - brother-in-law, nephew & wife, aunt & sister join us.

Gemma, Bill, Carolyn & Matthew at Shelly Beach Cafe

It is hard to believe it was two weeks Thursday since we arrived back home in Australia. Our last few hours in the USA were made more memorable by being joined by my eldest son Benn at Los Angeles airport. He was one of the pilots of a Qantas flight heading to New Zealand, and attended the same briefing as the pilots for our Qantas flight to Brisbane. He obviously got them to take good care of us, as two of the crew came to say hello during the flight, which was nice. No, we didn’t get upgraded to first class. I must talk to him about that…obviously an oversight!! Ha ha.

My younger sister was at the airport to meet us for the 4th year in a row. We had a pleasant hour’s drive down to the Gold Coast catching up on the family news and then we enjoyed a cup of tea with our 93 year old mum before walking across the road to my brother’s house to pick up our own car. Yes folks, time to get back into the swing of driving on the left hand side of the road, and walking up the left side of escalators. Not to mention looking to the right as you cross the street, not the left as we do in America.

We couldn’t wait to walk in the front door of our own home – it is the first time we have been able to do that following our RV trips as we have stayed at a B&B for the past 2 years. My eldest sister and her husband had our house all cleaned and aired. A vase of beautiful, bright, spring flowers was on the table and a casserole dinner and a fresh loaf of bread were in the kitchen ready for our consumption. Talk about spoilt. No sooner had we dumped our suitcases in the bedroom than we walked outside to check out the back garden. All the plants looked healthy, and we even have 21 tiny lemons on our tree hoping to grow into adults! We were keen to unpack our suitcases and stow them away for another 6 months. By 8.30pm my sister, husband and aunt had finished up at their church meeting and arrived to share a chilled bottle of white wine to toast our safe return. By the time they left and we went to bed, it had been 48 hours since we left our hotel in Kansas City, got to LAX and closed our eyes here at our final destination. Apart from me getting about 3 hours sleep on the plane, we hadn’t slept in all that time. For the first few days we found we woke around 5am but were too excited to stay in bed, so by 3pm I was flagging, and by 8pm I was ready for bed. Good old jet lag had really kicked in this time.

On the day we arrived home we called into the nearest Apple store, and I purchased a new Mac book Pro. I had never had a Mac in my life, although I enjoyed the attributes of the iPhone, another Apple product. After our guests left and before we went to bed around midnight on the first night, I finally got to take the new laptop out of the box and plug it in. The next day I was too busy unpacking to have any time to check it out, but it was sitting there tugging me with invisible vibes, and I finally got to sit down with it again later in the day. However, it seemed that every application I opened caused the machine to shut down. I finally gave in and rang Apple who conceded I had got a dud, but assured me they would give me a brand new machine. True to their word they set me up with this new machine, and it works very well. Now I just have to familiarise myself with the different operating system and how to navigate around the various applications etc. Fun.

The new laptop and the transferring of our documents & photos from the old to the new laptop has kept me occupied while Murray has busied himself preparing and planting our first vegetable garden in this new house. He only had the seedlings in a day or so and lovely spring rain began to fall, and fall, and fall. After 4 days of intermittent rain we were back to full sunny days and our plants are looking very healthy. His other big job has been to collate all the data for our taxes. As we sold our house in this tax year, amongst other data, he has to unearth the documentation from the purchase (10 years ago) so our capital gains can be determined. Luckily he maintains a pretty tight ship as far as records go.

Our RV travels seem so long ago already, but it is too soon to forget that in the four months from 23 May – 23 September we travelled 7,500 miles, ventured into 17 US states, and had a fantastic time. When I get a minute I will read back through the blog to re-live our adventures.