Our plans change again !!!

Our plans have changed again.......... 

I have to have rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder before we can leave on our trip.  I have been having problems with my shoulder for a very long time, but now it is much worse and after having an MRI and seeing the doctor, we have decided that I need to have the surgery now.

Three years ago, I had rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder, so went back to the same doctor, Dr Pratley, on April 14th. He referred me to a surgeon in Orange County. We saw him on Monday the 18th, and scheduled the surgery for Tuesday April 26th.

The physical therapy is about two and a half to three months, so we are now hoping to leave by the first part of July.  We are still planning to be attending the FMCA Rally in Madison Wisconsin in August.  I will not be writing in the blog as much for a while, but will catch as soon as I can.

Dinner and the fountain

When we arrived here in December, our plan was to leave around the beginning of March, well that did not work out, it is still bad weather up North, in fact there is snow along the Interstate 5 toward Northern California, so now we are hoping to leave in April sometime.  Like we always say," our plans are subject to change" that is our new motto now, because we are always changing our plans.  Sometimes because of repairs, or things we decide to do at the last minute, but this time it is the weather.

Joe has been playing golf at least once a week now, since we are here and he is having a great time, and his game is improving too. We are planing to go down to Oceanside to visit our friends Chuck and Cruz, and for a fundraser dinner for the Disabled Veterans. Some of our friends are getting together for dinner at Tim and Marcia's in a couple of days. That should be lots of fun, we always have a good time when we meet up with these friends. 

Tim, Ron, Sherman, Tom, Joe and Kelly

 



Scipia, Carol, Sue, Marcia, Bev and ShawnMarie



We had a great time at dinner, had steaks, baked beans, and salads, and lots of desserts.  The guys played Wii golf and the gals all sat in the dining room and talked and laughed.  The guys are all going to meet up on the following Saturday and work on Tim's fountain in the front yard.  

Hey, it look great, the guys did a good job so now they can sit down and have an ice cold beer (or 2) !!!

Friends from Canada

Our friends from Canada, Nancy and Gordon, sent us an email saying they would be in the Southern California area for a week or so.  We are so excited to see them, had a great time with them, Joe and Gord played golf several times.  They were staying at the Elks Lodge campground in Ontario CA so we went up there just about every day and spent time with them.  We always have a good time with them and we sure did enjoy their visit.

They were heading North, and they did not seem to be worried about the snow and cold weather up North.  They have family in Washington state and in Vancouver and were planning on being up there by the end of March.  We are not so brave, we are checking the weather reports every day, and trying to decide when we can leave and head up North.

We will see them again in September at the Mandalay Rally and in October at the Thor Diesel Club Rally, both in Indiana.

Super Bowl and Dolphin's Cove in Anaheim

When we are here in this area we love going to Henderson NV for Super Bowl weekend. We have friends who live there, Ed and JoAnn, they have a beautiful home in Henderson and they host a huge party.  A lot of  our friends drive from Southern California and meet up with them and more friends who live locally too.  We all spend 4 or 5 nights in the area and meet up for dinner, golf, gambling, and even breakfast and shopping a few times during the stay.  We always stay at Harrah's, and some people stay at other hotels in the area.  It is always lots of fun and on Super Bowl Sunday everyone meets up at Ed and Joann's for the party, lots of food, football and laughs. We missed this fun time last year because we stayed in Florida for the winter, so we made up for lost time this year and had lots of fun. 

Our motorhome had to have a few repairs done, so we left it at J&L Repair for the week we were gone, when we left Vegas, we went to Anaheim CA for 4 nights in our timeshare there, Dolphin's Cove.  It is about 4 or 5 blocks from Disneyland and a very nice place, we enjoyed our stay there too.  It was nice to relax and enjoy the resort, we went to a movie, and met up with our friend's Vince and Pam for lunch one day.  Joe checked out the local golf course and I did a little shopping. 

We checked out on our last day there, and went to Fontana to pick up our motorhome.  It was late when we arrived there, so we stayed ontside the shop for the night and met up with Charles and Jacob for breakfast the next morning before we went down to Thousand Trails in Menifee. 

Southern CA and our friends

We are having a great time here in SoCal. We are visiting with our friends, Joe is playing golf a lot and we have been pretty lucky to be able to stay at March ARB FamCamp and at Thousand Trails in Menifee (about 25 miles away from the base). It has been 2 years since we left here, so it is nice to be back.  We have even driven past our old house in Ontario and it looks real good.  The neighborhood looks about the same too.

Our friends Tim and Marcia invited us over to their house for Christmas, that was great. They had a lot of good food and great desserts, we had a lot of fun. It was so nice not to spend Christmas day alone in our coach, like last year.

Tim and Joe play golf almost every Monday when the weather is nice, but, we are getting a lot of rain here. One night soon after we arrived here, A group of us got together for dinner at Joe's Italian Restaurant, a favorite place near the base here. It was the two of us, Tim and Marcia, Ron and Bev, Tom and Sue, it was so good to see everyone.

We have seen Charles (Joe's son) and his boy Jacob a few times and have enjoyed being with Jacob. He is 5 years old now and we have not seen him in 3 years, so he is growing up and is so cute. We will get to see them a lot more while we are here.

We went down to our friends Chuck and Cruz in Oceanside for New Years Eve, we stayed there at their house for a couple of nights and had a lot of fun every day. We always enjoy ourselves with them. We are sure busy here, and having a great time too.

Kevin and boys in Vegas

When we arrived in Vegas and got parked at Thousand Trails and all set up. We will be spending a few days here and visiting with my Son Kevin and our 2 Grandsons who live here in Henderson.

We went over to Kevin's and both Christian and Kevin were working, so we took Cory out to dinner. Most of the time everyone is talking and laughing, and since Cory is the quiet one, he does not get to say much, so it was very nice to get to spend some time with just him alone.

Everyone is working all different shifts, so it was hard to get everyone together, but did manage to meet up for breakfast one day, Sam's Town always advertises their buffet's so I decided to take them there for the Breakfast Buffet. It was not very good at all, but we all talked and laughed and had fun anyhow, so not all was lost.

The next day was a football game on TV, so since the guys all wanted to watch football, I decided to cook my homemade chili. It was very good and I fixed rice and macaroni, and we had cheese, crackers and chopped onions too. Everyone ate a lot and watched football, it was a lot of fun. We took them home later, but everyone was full and happy. We even had leftovers to send home with them for lunch the next day.

Since everyone was working the next day, we decided to head out to Nellis AFB and check out the BX and of course the golf course. So, spent most of the day shopping at the BX (Joe was at the golf course) and then we went over to the commissary and did some grocery shopping too.

We only had one more day in Vegas, so we went over are picked up Kevin and the boys, lucky for us, nobody had to work until later that day. We took them over to Harrah's for Brunch, we know the food there is the best, so wanted to go to a good place after the other breakfast we had. We spent about two hours talking and laughing and eating, had a great time too.

That was the end of our visit in Las Vegas, we loved our visit here, we actually got to spend more time with Kevin than we usually do and that was so nice. We will be leaving the tomorrow to Southern California for the winter. On the way to CA, we stopped at state line to fill both vehicles up with fuel. The prices in California are always much higher, so we wanted to start out with full tanks.

Phoenix AZ and then Laughlin NV

We stopped at Cummins in Phoenix Arizona and got the oil pan leak repaired. They found that the oil pan, which was installed at Springfield MO in October of 2009 and then reinstalled in November 2009 (only 2 weeks and 300 miles later) at Memphis TN, needed to be replaced again. Due to bad workmanship at both of the other locations, this was all paid for under warranty by Cummins. The Phoenix Cummins dealer was outstanding, very good and conscientious too, they called us two times after the service to check on how things were going. We are very impressed.

We called Gina Minkin, the wife of our Air Force friend, Kyle Minkin, who passed away a few years back. We decided to meet with her for lunch while they were working on our coach. We had a good time catching up with everything going on with her and her family. She updated us on how Kyle's girls, Falen and Kayleen, and their children are doing. We picked up the motor home later that afternoon, and took it to a truck wash nearby to get it all cleaned up and the oil residue on the back cap all washed off. It looked great, then we settled in for the night at the Flying J just up the road. We stayed there for the night and Gina came over the next morning and met us for breakfast before we headed out.

Our next stop is Laughlin Nevada, we have decided to make reservations at Harrahs for the 5 nights that we are staying in town. We arrived late that afternoon, and got checked into the hotel for the night. The next morning we called our friends Frank and Regina Parker, to let them know we were in town and anxious to see them. We met up with them and went over to Avi Casino to play for a little while and have dinner. Had a great time, and of course Joe and Frank made arrangements to play golf the next day. They played a couple of times while we were there, and of course had a great time.

Harrah's has a nice and secure parking lot up on the hill from the hotel, to park the coach while we are staying at the hotel, so that was very convenient for us. It was pretty nice to stay at the hotel and take long showers in that great big bathroom. They gave us a wonderful suite, so we were very comfortable during our stay there.

We are heading for Las Vegas to see Kevin (Carol's son) and his two boys, Cory and Christain, they live in Henderson Nevada. We will be staying at the Thousand Trails RV Park on Boulder Highway in Las Vegas. Of course we have not been there for a couple of years, so it will be nice to see them again.