All the news that's fit to print! LOL

Hello dear friends and family,
This has been a busy, but very good week, so now I'll bring you up to speed, so to speak.  Monday we had a service here to shampoo the carpets, and clean our upholstered chair.  It looks like a new chair.  In fact, when our friend Mary arrived on Tuesday, she thought we had new carpet put in here!  WOW!  It cost more than we wanted it to, but we are very happy with the results.

Tuesday I made a beef stew dinner in our Ninja cooker for Almita & Rueben.  She brought a delicious salad and I had baked a spice cake for dessert.  We played Mexican train, and had a grand time with these wonderful friends.

Wednesday Jim had an appointment with the eye doctor at the VA.  His left eye now has 20/20 vision.  YAY!  And that WAS the worst of the two eyes, so we are hoping for the results on the right eye to be wonderful too.  He had his pre-op EKG done and picked up the eye drops for the right eye for before and after surgery, which will be done on November 17th.  

Thursday, our friends Carol & Ray came to visit us here.  I made spaghetti with meatballs & sausage, and a salad.  Jim baked home made Italian bread.  I can't remember how long it has been since we have seen them, but it was toooo long. 
Carol brought us these beautiful lilies, so I got a chance to use my flat, plastic flower vase.  When it's not in use, it is flat, but when you add water, the bottom widens out to form a nice little vase.
 Ray & Carol are wonderful people, but they keep busy and it's not easy getting together sometimes.  They went to the Albuquerque, NM Hot Air Balloon Fiesta last month with their FMCA group.  That stands for Family Motor Coach Association.  This is one of many clubs RVers can belong to.  We are members of FMCA, the Good Sam Club, and Escapees.  Each hosts rallies and get togethers that we like to attend.  Ray told us about a new product he is using that we looked up online and will be ordering very soon.  It is a probiotic product for cleaning out the gray water and black water tanks.  It sounds very good, so I will report on it for the benefit of other RVers once we try it.

Friday I got an email that our new Kitchen Aid mixer and the ice cream maker attachment had come in at J C Penney's, so we drove down to Temecula to pick them up.  Also, our new spin dryer had arrived here at the park, so we picked that up too.  Since we don't enjoy hauling our dirty clothes to the laundromat, and sometimes waiting for machines to be available, I was very excited about the possibility of doing small loads here, at our convenience. 

 This is the cute new washer.  It can wash about 4 1/2 pounds of clothes at a time.  It sits in the shower, and I fill it using the shower head.  The wash cycle can be set between 3 and 15 minutes, but I found about 6 to 9 minutes was enough.  Then you drain the water out, and refill for the rinse cycle, which I ran for about 3 to 5 minutes.  It has a spin cycle, but it will only handle about 2.2 pounds, and it doesn't spin things as dry as we would want. 

This is the spin dryer we got from Wal-Mart.  It sits on the bathroom counter and drains into the sink.  What we found works quite well is to wash the load, then divide it in half, putting half in the spin dryer, and set it for 3-5 minutes.  We put the rest of the load into the spin basket of the washer, and spin those for 3-5 minutes.  Then we hang up the clothes from the dryer, and run the clothes from the washer through the spin dryer for a few more minutes.  Then we can hang them up too.  This may seem like a big bother, but in less than 25 minutes I have a small load of clothes washed and hung up to dry, and I can do a second load.  In a couple hours of hanging, everything was ready to put away, and we didn't have to leave the house.  The little spin dryer is small enough to store in my closet when not in use.  The washer stores in the shower, but is lightweight enough to just lift out when we take showers.  It might not suit everyone, but I am delighted with it, and I can't thank Diane & Steve enough for sharing this idea with us.  We will still have to go to the laundromat to wash big blankets, and such, but this will be such a blessing much of the time.  I washed & dried three small loads in under two hours yesterday, while watching TV and emailing friends!!!!  I LOVE it!

The freezer bowl of the Kitchen Aid had to be frozen for at least 15 hours before making ice cream, so Jim put it in the outside freezer yesterday afternoon.  This morning we went down to the park for a VERY successful day of sales.  I sold the red Kitchen Aid mixer, our extra Himalayan Salt Lamp and many of the magnetic bracelets and necklaces.  We didn't offer the Cuisinart Ice cream maker for sale yet, as we want to see if we like using the mixer attachment for making ice cream before we sell the one we KNOW works well.  After candy bar bingo.....and we each won four candy bars today!!!  we came back here and Jim set up the mixer and made a batch of peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter chips in it.  It's in the freezer now getting firmer, but I think this is a winner too.  YAY.  If the results are good, we will offer the Cuisinart for sale next week.  One less thing to carry around.  
Here's one more picture of something we saw in the park today.  Back when we had our house, Jim had some birds.  We had a Yellow Nape Amazon Parrot and a Blue and Gold Macaw.  Both were a joy to have..........but, birds can be messy, and we really couldn't imagine traveling with their bird cages and the mess in a motorhome.  We sold them to the man who owned the Arrow Bird Farm, and he found them good homes.  This is not the same Blue and Gold, but it brought back fond memories to see this lady walking around with him on her shoulder.  She also was walking a full size white poodle!  All in all, it has been a nice day.

That's all the news for today, so I will close for now.  I wish you all a wonderful, warm weekend.  Don't forget to turn your clocks back before you go to bed tonight, unless you live in a state that doesn't "spring forward and fall back".  Please pray that the election next Tuesday goes well, and peacefully.  May God bless us, and America.  Please remember those less fortunate than yourselves and do whatever you can for them.  Next Friday is Veteran's Day.  Please pray for our military men and women that they will return home safely, and remember to thank a veteran for their sacrifices.