Monday, February 24 "The Build"

Today was the day! We were up and down in the kitchen by 6:30 am. I think the smell of the bacon that Grant was frying brought most of us downstairs. Beth made scrambled eggs and we had juice, toast and cereal to go with them. It took us about 35 minutes to get to the work site. There was a cement slab and all of the lumber stacked beside it. After a prayer by Jim and a silent one by me not to nail my foot to the floor. We finished up around 4 and came back for showers and dinner. I'm going to load some pictures of our progress and head down to see whats on the menu.

At 6 the church next door must have mass as the bells were ringing. On the hour though, the carillon chimes play and remind me of our bell choir. Today at 6 it played How Great Though Art. Below you can see the bell tower as I see it from my room. So glad I am here.

Sunday, February 23 -Mobile, Alabama

We left Athens, Alabama at 7:30 this morning and after driving through some heavy rains we arrived in Mobile around 2 o'clock. We drove to see the USS Alabama on the Mobile Bay. The park also had many different aircraft and a submarine, the USS Drum. I really enjoyed our visit, especially talking to a veteran who was signing copies of a book he had written about his time in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. Unfortunately, the rains made it very foggy and the visibility was quite poor but I managed a few good photos.

USS Alabama

 

We ate at a very popular BBQ restaurant called Dreamland BBQ. Very good!  The Seton Center where we are staying is a former convent and although it is quite old, we are very comfortable. Tomorrow we build!

Saturday, February 22-Habitat Trip-

Today I left for my Habitat for Humanity mission trip. Sharon and I met with the rest of the team and left from the Hilliard United Methodist Church at 8:30 am. We had lunch near Louisville, Ky at the Kingfish. The food was great and we were entertained by a rowdy woman cheering for the Louisville basketball team as they were playing Cincinnati. After lunch we stopped to see Churchill Downs.

It was pretty late when we finally arrived at the Super8 just inside the state line of Alabama. We will be up early to make the final leg to Mobile tomorrow.

Saturday, February 15 ~Valentine Visit~

Despite the snow from last night that had several counties under a level 1 snow emergency, I decided to make the trip to Cincinnati to deliver Evelyn's Valentine gift. The roads weren't too bad until I got off the interstate. We went to the Krohns Conservatory where we enjoyed the beautiful plants, fountains and warm temperatures. The Conservatory was in a very pretty part of Cincinnati which was even prettier in the snow.

I liked this photo in the desert room looking out into the snow

glass chimes floating in the water

For lunch we had a Hawaiian pizza and harvest salad at Dewey's Pizza followed by ice cream at Aglamesis. By this time we were all stuffed and ready for a nap, except for Evie!!

Mamaw and Evie love their ice cream!

Evie scratching her head and thinking, "how is Mamaw ever going to build a real house??"

Andy and I celebrated our Valentines day yesterday with lunch at York Steak House topped off with Jay's cherries jubilee.

Wednesday, February 5 ~Wintry Snow~

Last night, starting at around 8 pm, we got a total of about 7 inches of snow.  South of us, Sara and Matt had more rain and ice than snow.  It was a very heavy snow and a lot harder to push with our UTV.  I did as much as I could and Mr. B finished the job with his Kuboto tractor.  At least it isn't as cold as it has been for the last few weeks.

 And, for once this winter, the bad weather didn't come on a Tuesday morning.  I had planned to work a region after I finished preparing the bird diets in the bear kitchen yesterday and I did stay for an hour, but when no visitors had appeared by 11 am, I decided I would go to the grocery and then head home.  I did pass 3 hardy souls on my way out.  Two young girls were visiting from North Dakota and the other, a stroller-mom with her little bundle securely wrapped and strapped into the stroller.

The longer winter hangs on the more ready I am to head to Mobile, Ala for our Habitat for Humanity trip.  Sharon and I have been finalizing our itinerary for our supposed unplanned trip.  (We decided that neither of us is very good at traveling by the "seat of our pants"!) We still need to practice setting up our new tent that I purchased with my PNC points.  It is a 16 x 7 Coleman Montana 8 and should be the "cats meow" if we can get it set up.  We are hoping for a 15-20 minute set up time and no doubt with practice and our competitive spirit we will set a new world's record.  If there were an Olympic medal involved, we would be going for GOLD!!  Stay warm and keep safe on the roads.

Sunday, January 26-Brrrrrrrrr!

Checking in this afternoon at a balmy 19* and will be cooling fast as the sun, brief as it was, will be setting soon. This last polar blast has not been kind to our old pipes. Thursday night I was doing some dishes before bed and the water just slowly ran out until there was nothing but air. I hurriedly put my boots on, bundled up and grabbed a flashlight and headed out to the pump house. As I uncovered the box surrounding the pump I immediately noticed that the plastic around the pressure switch had melted from the heat lamp. I assumed that was the problem, thinking easy fix, just replace the switch. But äs we all know it is seldom as easy as we would like. The plumber arrived Friday around 2 at which time we noticed 2 broken pipes that were frozen solid. I swear I had not noticed those the night before. We had to break out the heaters and start thawing. The plumber came back around 5 and within 2 hours he had the pipes replaced and the water on. Just in time for Matt, Sara and Evie's arrival. Poor Evie seemed to have a touch of the flu all day Saturday and slept most of the day. And then, after two loads of laundry, I realized that the drain was frozen in the utility room and was running under the carpet and into the crawl space. The good thing is that as long as I don't do any laundry the problem doesn't appear to get worse.
This afternoon as it warmed up, funny how 25 can be seen as warming up, we went outside to play in the snow.

Friday, January 17

If you are reading this then you obviously survived the cold spell that greeted us as we entered the year of 2014!  We were quite fortunate as we never lost power and thanks to the heat lamps in our pump house, none of our pipes froze.  We did have the pump go out on our hot tub right before New Years Day, but our hot tub guy got out and wisely drained the tub while the pump was getting fixed.  Had he not done that I have no doubts that we would be buying a new hot tub now.

Retired Teachers Luncheon at Bennans Loft in London

It seems a little quite around here now that everyone is back home after the holidays.  Sara, Matt and Evelyn have been up for the weekends while Matt is building a dining room table.  We have enjoyed those visits and they are keeping Mr. Bichler busy.  We purchased a carport before Christmas so we would have a little more room to store some of our yard equipment that will not fit into the barn.  We finally got 5 tons of gravel last week and have been busy leveling it out and preparing it for the building.  They called yesterday and will be out next Friday to put it up.  I hope the weather cooperates and everything goes as planned.

The male of a pair of Flicker woodpeckers that have been frequenting my feeder

My most recent painting, "Whale Watch"

Sharon and I have decided to go with the Hilliard UMC Habitat for Humanity group to Mobile, Alabama at the end of February.  This is the same group that we worked with on our trip to Dubois, Pennsylvania.  We decided that it might be fun to build something as opposed to tearing things up.  I just hope that our building skills are up to par or perhaps someone will be tearing out what we build.  When we first discussed going down we talked about staying an extra week and driving to Florida for some added sunshine.  I mentioned that I would like to go west and perhaps visit New Orleans and the gulf coast along Texas.  The birding in that area is supposed to be wonderful this time of the year.  Well, before you could say "ROAD TRIP", Sharon had sent me a make-shift itinerary taking us to 4 National Parks, the Oklahoma City Memorial and visits to at least 4 states that we have never been to.  As a side note she added that it might actually take closer to two weeks to complete this add on trip.  So we are now in "planning mode" which is great for me as I love preparing for a trip.  I think that I enjoy the preparation almost as much as the trip itself.  We initially told ourselves that we were going to be a little less structured and not really make any reservations.  Kind of "fly by the seat of our pants" so to speak, but that is proving a little more difficult than we thought.  We just realized that the day we are going to be in New Orleans is just 2 days before Mardi Gras and they evidently start celebrating 3 weeks in advance.  Even the campgrounds are booked for the weekend of March 1,2.

Stay tuned for more trip blogs.  We will try to post pictures of our week in Mobile as well as our tour through Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennesee and Kentucky!