Week is Gone, Time Moving Quick Lately

It has been a busy week.  The caregiver for Arny’s mom needed to take a week off, so I filled in on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday in assisting Arny in moving her around a few times each day until my sister gets home from work.  Good news is that the doctors are going to do a procedure next Tuesday to help fix her back so she will have less to no pain, and hopefully be able to start walking with a walker and assistance again.

Got a few things ready for our Alaska trip.  Put the new intake and exhaust Variable Valve Timing Solenoid on the HHR with the assistance of Arny, and now the HHR is running like a dream car with 110k miles on it.  No more check engine light, no more rough idles, and now I know how to do it if they need to be replaced again.

    

On Monday we take the motorhome back to McColloch’s RV repair and storage so that our slide floor can be replaced.  I mentioned back in February that we were going to do this, and a few weeks ago I took the motorhome by for them to look at, and we set May 11th as the date for repairs to begin.  “IF” we are lucky, we will only be without it for three days, and we will be out around $3,500, but we will have a new sturdy floor.  We have not extended the slide the entire trip (outside of letting them look it over at McColloch’s).  It will be nice to pick up that extra room again, that’s for sure.  In the meantime, I have gotten all the bugs off the front of the motorhome, checked fluids, and we have the tire pressure system in hand, but I am waiting until we get the motorhome back to install it.

One thing we always enjoy while we are here are the many family gathering, normally for dinner.  Today we had a seafood medley, with Arny grilling different type of shrimps, some lobster, and Marcia and I cooking some more shrimp and some scallops using her lemon butter shrimp recipe.  On Sunday we had some brats that Arny cooked, and Marcia did her super sauerkraut along with cheesecake from the local grocery store.  Well, Patti went up to Reno early this week and came back with the BEST Cheesecake I have ever had from the Atlantis Casino, were they have a New York Style Deli inside.  Tomorrow Marcia is making her special Sausage-Egg-Grits-Cheese dish, and for Mother’s Day we are all getting together for a Pork Tenderloin dinner with lots of trimmings.

Of course, Sunday is Mother’s Day, and I cherish the times I get to spend mother’s day with mom.  From when I was 16 through 31 years of age, I was pretty much working in a restaurant and Mother’s Day was ALWAYS a work day because it was the busiest day of the year.  Then I moved away from California, and frankly most of my Mother’s Days were spent away from mom…except these past few years when we have been fortunate to be in California.  I feel very lucky.

As work is done on our slide, I do hope to get a few pictures to show the progress…but I don’t want to do anything to slow down the process.  Once we get it back, we still have a graduation to attend, a few more family gatherings, and it looks like we will head north on Memorial Day since most folks will be headed south.  If all goes well, we will be entering Canada on either May 27th or May 28th, at which time we will slow it up a bit and enjoy the scenery.