December 1, 2002 - Warm Beach - 4
Note on 4/6/03: I lost the pictures for this page because of a mistake I made. Sorry. The same is true for all the pages from 9/2/02 through 10/5/02, and again from 11/15/02 through all of 12/28/02. If I'm able to retrieve them, I'll replace them eventually. Again, I'm very sorry.
What a busy time we're having! And such fun besides. But it's not all work and no play, as you'll see shortly. First I want to share some special websites with you. Friend John has been reworking his, and using that fancy camera he has, is making me lust after a better camera myself. Anyway, his site is www.rvspirit.net. He has had some trouble (a major understatement) with his motorhome, a Monaco Knight, and while his experiences aren't universal with the Monaco product, you might want to carefully consider what he has to say if you're considering a Monaco.
The next site I want to draw your attention to is the upgrade and changes my son has made to his. If you even have a passing interest in hot-rods or beautiful cars, you'll want to check the site out. It's pretty heavy on the graphics and there's even some music, so give it time to load. www.dougjenkinscustomhotrods.com. And please let us know what you think, OK?
The camp has an excellent website as well, www.warmbeach.com, and if you want "real" pictures of what we're building here, click on "Lights Of Christmas" when you get there.
It's Thanksgiving day, and we're enjoying the company of Patrick and Brenda...and of course, Heidi, their Yorkshire Terrier. The calmest Yorki I've ever been around. And Patrick with our meat, a pork roast. YUM! And that's Brenda who managed to turn her head quickly. We'd agreed that we have turkey pretty often here at the camp, and that a change would be in order. None of us is particularly hung up on tradition, so having Patrick do the meat was fine with all of us. They shared the kitchen, even if it is only slightly larger than ours. They live in a park model, and it's really nice.
Brenda didn't duck that shot, even if she did give us a silly grin. Great time had by all. And there are some of the volunteers that Barb was working with this weekend. Have no idea what happened to the date and time on this picture, but I can assure you it's not Thanksgiving day at 10:43 at night! (It's actually the day after, Dolly with granddaughter Briana making Christmas decorations for the Victoria Inn.)
The camp has a "working weekend" after Thanksgiving each year, and invites people to come help get ready for the Lights Of Christmas. Cost is something like $15 for a cabin (bring your own linens), 3 meals on Friday, Saturday, and two on Sunday. Great family outing, and the camp gets a lot of work taken care of. Those of us with a little experience are assigned an area manager, and we're team leaders. In my case, I got to work with a family who had 5 of their 6 kids helping, 4 teenagers, and some other teens that just wanted to hang out with their buddies. The teens were anxious to get the work done so they could go hang out, and were real good workers and fast too. In the picture above on the right is Brian, Marty, Greg, and me in back, and Tyler and Austin in front. Tyler is 10, and Austin is "almost 7." My job was to keep those kids busy. I'd give them a job I thought they could handle, and they'd get with it and come back looking for more. It was obvious that Greg and Marty had them work with them on stuff around the house. Brian's kids came to visit, but they had jobs of their own someplace else. Our job was to handle the decorations for "Tinhorn Town"; the Maple Lodge is its usual name. Hung garland until I thought my fingers would fall off, but like the old saying, "Many hands make quick work," and we got done with time to spare.
Tyler and Austin leaning on a fence they helped build, and the horses that Tyler drove most the supporting stakes for. Good workers. And then the animals Barb had helped paint. Well, at least a few of them. She's been on the paint crew working on all kinds of things. Many of these animals are mechanical, and do different things.
Lunch in the overflow room. Both Patrick (in the red shirt) and I wear 2 hearing aids, and the noise of several hundred happy diners makes it tough for us to carry on any kind of a conversation. We're usually dawdling around waiting for the main dining room to reach capacity so we can get in here. And then the Nutcracker Cabin. This is one of the many guest cabins on site, and there were nutcrackers all over the place. We'd come here because Patrick had hooked me up with Brian who had a Nikon Coolpix 5700 digital camera that I wanted to look at. Both Barb and I could tell the difference in the quality of pictures between my almost 5 yr old Kodak and the newer technology. Makes me want to think about buying a lottery ticket!
Now, this is the saddest/funniest picture
Barb has taken in quite a while. Can you guess what it is? That's my
Birkenstock sandal.....with mold growing in it--major, fuzzy mold! Now I ask you, have we
been in the Pacific Northwest long enough or what? Not only am I loosing
my tan lines, but my sandals are rotting! Good grief! One more month
to go, and we'll be going south. Good thing we love doing what we're doing
with people we love, or we'd be outta here in a New York minute~!