Stormy Weather

Surprise! We did go camping after all. Dennis unhooked the lights from the "topper" or "canopy," whatever you call it where you live, from the truck battery and jump-started it with the car. Zoom! It started right up. No problems all week. So this morning he's back at the shop with it, and hopefully they will wire it right this time. I'll have to get a photo of it for the next post for you. It looks really nice and was so much easier to camp with. Especially during the storms we had. We had much more room to just throw things in to get them out of the weather.

On Tuesday morning severe storms were predicted around noon. Whoo-boy! They were some major storms! Five inches of rain fell both at the campground 25 minutes from home and at the condo too in less than an hour. Major flooding all over Omaha and the surrounding areas. The difference? We had no hail at the campground. The condo got 2 1/2 inch hail. If we had stayed home, Dennis' truck would have been destroyed. It ruined many, many roofs, and even broke off pieces of the hardy plank siding of Mandy and Brad's house and broke their neighbors windows. I guess it was good we were in the camper! We had no leaks and the winds didn't move us at all. It did break some trees off in the campground. These were the same storms that spawned tornadoes that killed five people in Iowa. My heart goes out to them.

We were there from Monday about noon until yesterday, Thursday. It was so nice and quiet all week and then on Wednesday night lots of campers started filling up the spots with campers, vans and tents for the long holiday weekend. And dogs. Lots and lots of BIG barking dogs. We were glad to come home. You know we love dogs. All kinds of dogs. But not dogs that people allow to bark constantly for hours at a time.

The drawback though? I had no internet to comment on your posts with. Normally my hotspot on my phone will work and I can use the laptop to comment, but it didn't work this time. My phone won't let me comment at all. I did read all of your posts, just couldn't comment. I've tried to touch base with all of you this morning. Since we have no other camping adventures planned until we leave for Spokane late next month, I should be able to keep in touch now.

Susan q. asked what the pattern was on my last post for the donation blanket. It was the "Every Which-way Blanket" which is free on Ravelry and I added a few rows at the top and bottom to make it a little longer for the wheelchair.  I also do a lot of granny squares for the donation blankets. There are so many options when you make grannies.

Moving on to last night when we woke up at 1:30 a.m. with the tornado sirens going off. Five simitaneous tornado warnings were up for the Omaha area. One was right over where we were camping yesterday. We were fine here in the condo, but the two biggest storms went about 1 mile north of us and approximately 2 miles south before moving into Iowa.  What in the tarnation is happening this year? It's been pretty quiet since we move back to the midwest three years ago until now. THIS is the reason I agreed to move west when Dennis was offered his job by a headhunter 31 years ago! We had spent most of the spring/early summer in the tornado shelter. Last night we had straightline winds of 94 mph in our immediate neighborhood! It was crazy. Lots and lots of rain again. We've had more rain in the last 3 weeks than in the past two years combined!

But...we're home. Safe and sound so far and no more storms predicted until Sunday. Whoo-hoo!

More news! This happened yesterday! Piper graduated from Elementary to Middle School. Just how did this happen?

How did she go from this...

to this in just a few short days?   Ha! It does seem like just a few days doesn't it?

Papa is on his way right now to pick her and sweet Lizzie up to spend the day with us and this ruffian below. Zoey, not Papa is the ruffian! :-) Zoey is a great camper. She loves to watch out the windows and play in her pen that we have for her. She just watched the world go by and uses us for her personal ladders when needed. Please ignore Papa's unbuttoned shirt. This was just before the storms rolled in Tuesday and it was getting pretty hot. Look at that deceptive blue sky. That sure didn't last long!

I did start this during the storms on Tuesday. It will be another wheelchair blanket. I like the colors. The different creams, grays and pinkish squares are from the same skein of yarn. The lavender is a solid skein. I'll get the ball bands and give you the names next time when it's finished.

And I better finish this off before our girls arrive. They'll keep me busy all day long. I pray that you'll have a peaceful and safe holiday weekend. No storms either. Pray for the peace of the middle east. My heart breaks for them.

Blessings and love,

Betsy

Oh well🤷‍♀️

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭28‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I’m holding on to this verse today for various reasons. The one I can share with you is this one….

so much for our camping trip today through Thursday. The topper for Dennis’s truck finally came in and was installed on Friday.  We had waited four months for it to arrive. We were so excited to go camping today after church because we would finally have room in the back of the truck and things would be protected. We could put our chairs, the grill, etc., back there with no more worries about them getting wet or blowing out. We got everything packed up last night and ran by the storage lot on the way home from church today and turned the refrigerator on in the trailer. We came home and carried everything down twenty stairs to the garage, got the meat from the freezer and put it in the cooler with some ice until the refrigerator got cold enough. 

Then…. Dennis went to pull the truck over in front of the garage so we could load everything in it and it won’t start. The battery is completely dead. He said that when he got into the truck Friday afternoon to pick it up from the shop, everything was in metric.  Kilometers, liters, etc. He reset it all but when he tried to start it just now it was all back to metric. Apparently when they installed the topper they crossed some wires somewhere and of course they’re not open today. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow and call AAA. If they can come jumpstart the truck, he will take it over to the shop and see if they can figure out what happened. If all goes well, we may still get to go camping tomorrow, but who knows? I think we’re doomed. Every single trip we’ve planned this year has had something go wrong. 

Mandy is relieved since severe weather is predicted for this afternoon and tonight in the area we would be camping. I just watched the weather forecast and it was predicting severe storms tonight, Monday and Tuesday. Maybe this is the reason we weren’t able to go. 🤷‍♀️ I don’t know, but it’s sure a lot of work to get things packed up. Then we needed to haul everything back up the 20 stairs! 🥵

I do have a couple of things to show you since Wednesday when I last posted. I finished the wheelchair blanket I had just started. All with stash yarn. I just finished it last night, so it has not been washed and blocked. I also had my toes done with my sister and niece yesterday. Do you see them peeking up there at the bottom of the picture? I have only gotten red nail polish once before in my life. I guess I’m not a very daring person. I decided to be bold for a change! 😂

I am also starting the toe decreases on another sock. The cuff is a 2 x 2 ribbing and I always use the Eye of Partridge heel. Otherwise it’s a plain vanilla sock  using Kroy Socks in the “Seventies Stripes” colorway.

I guess it’s been just another day in the life of the queens! You never know what’s going to happen at our house. On a positive note we have no responsibilities for the next three days if we do end up staying home. Of course we will be checking up on Mom, but other than that we have no appointments scheduled.

Take care everyone and stay safe if you’re in the path of the storms the weather guy is talking about. I’ll be back soon. Keep watch and pray because the Day of the Lord is drawing near.

Blessings and love,

Betsy 

Catching up!

Good Morning everyone! Can you believe that it's the middle of May already? We have had such a busy month. Last week we were camping with Curt & Barb and Jeff & Angie. It poured virtually the entire time. Both of their campers leaked. Guess where the leaks were? Right over their beds of course. It ended up that our camper was the place to be! We had our meals and hung out there and we all had a wonderful time anyway. It cleared up enough the first night, (while the wood was dry), to have a campfire for about an hour and make s'mores.

We got home and barely unpacked things before our houseguests arrived much earlier than expected. I was still in the shower! They just left yesterday and now life will return to it's normal pace, at least I hope so. 

If I missed your posts I apologize. I haven't been online at all until yesterday and then I tried to catch up with everyone.

On Sunday Dennis and I are going camping by ourselves for four nights. We're just going to Mahoney State Park, about 20 minutes from home so we can get back for Mom if need be. She's doing really well right now and I sure hope that continues. We both have projects in the trailer we want to do, so it will be nice to have time there by ourselves. I have some storage things to try out and a few decorating things to do. He has more mundane issues like child locks on a few drawers that keep opening as we drive and some maintenance issues. Of course the forecast is for rain the entire time, but we don't care as long as it slows to sprinkles for set-up and tear-down of the campsite.

Now for the fun stuff! I did finish these socks finally. When I only knit on them while in the car or in Sunday School they take awhile. However, it was 3 1/2 hours each way to our camping spot last week so they were finished lickety-split. These were made with Opal yarn in the "Blue" colorway. I have no idea why they look green here. Just imagine shades of blue where the green is.

This is a stack of three dishcloths folded up ready to pop in a bag as a gift. It's "I Love This Cotton" from Hobby Lobby in the Gray colorway and the pattern is the moss stitch. I'm giving these to Angie who we camped with last week. After arriving home on Wednesday from camping, her Dad passed away on Friday night. She's had a rough week and she had told me how much she loves knitted dishcloths, so I thought I would make her a few. Her kitchen is charcoal gray and white so these should match well.

I also finished another wheelchair blanket for the Memory Care unit.  This one is made using scraps I had in my stash plus a skein of variegated Big Twist in gray, pink and purple. I love how it turned out and may just have to make one for myself someday. Mine would need to be a bigger blanket to snuggle in while watching TV. Purple is my all time favorite color and I like how the other colors blend too. I still have to wash and block this one since the inside squares look a bit wonky.

Last night I started another wheelchair blanket in more manly colors in the "Every Which-Way" pattern. It's truly using all scraps that I've had for a long, long time in my stash. Some I've had for at least 20 years! I like how it's turning out though.

I saw this photo on Facebook. It's a town in Italy but I don't remember the name. Isn't it amazing? How would you like to walk out your back door in one of these houses? It is a real photo, not AI from what the article says. The views must be amazing, but I must admit, it gives me a bit of anxiety just looking at the photo. I don't do very well with heights. 

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the spring here in the northern hemisphere and fall down under. This is my favorite time of year when the earth wakes up and all of nature seems to celebrate. 

My prayers are with the people all over the world who are experiencing violence.  From Burma and the Ukraine to the innocent civilians in Israel and Gaza. There are many other wars happening that we never hear about. I pray for the innocent people and for the terrorists to be awakened to what they're doing to their own people. I fear what's coming to the U.S. if we don't wake up and realize that it can happen here too. 

On that rather depressing note I'll close. I pray for each one of you and I hope you know how much you mean to me and to our God too.

Blessings and love,
Betsy

I’m back, for a few days!

Hello Everyone! We had a great time camping this week with Curt and Barb. Look at that blue sky. We had a thunderstorm Wednesday night and early morning with gentle, rolling thunder and light rain on the roof. I love that when we're camping. No more severe weather here all week, which has been a relief for those working at cleanup from the tornadoes. No fatalities here in the Omaha/Elkhorn area although there were some serious injuries. Minden Iowa is about 45 miles from here and the same tornado destroyed completely over half of the town. It's all so sad.

Back to camping. I made a big crockpot of chili one night that we shared with Curt and Barb. One night they had a baked potato bar with lots of toppings and fresh strawberries too. We heated up the leftover chili for whoever wanted that on their potato too. It's fun to share meals throughout the days. It gives great new ideas for ourselves when we're camping alone.

This was our view from the trailer. Isn't it pretty? Everything was very muddy when we arrived but by the next afternoon was dried out quite a bit. 

There were these two geese around the lake all week. One sat on a nest most of the time and then one day we saw them swimming the other direction with five little goslings between them. This was them coming back WITHOUT the babies! I wonder where they left them?

This is Curt & Barb's little A-frame camper. They just got it when we moved here. They've always tent camped, but have decided it's time to get off of the ground. They have a little kitchen, a table and a bed. It has heat and running water which is nice, but no bathroom. They're planning a trip to the Grand Canyon later this month. We were supposed to be going with them but they got the last camping spot in the campground. Next week we're heading to north-central Iowa by Webster City. I think it's a newer campground. We'll be with Curt & Barb again and also our minister Jeff and his wife, Angie. That's sure to be a good time since the guys all have the same sense of humor.

As you can see, Zoey loves it all. We went to the storage lot this morning to take the clean towels, etc. to the camper. We took Zoey along and she ran right over to the door, up the steps and jumped up on the sofa. She was ready to go camping again. :-)

A closer up view of under our awning. This is where we hung out a lot of the week. It was shady and gave "some" protection from ticks falling from trees. I had to take one out of Dennis's head the last night we were there. It had obviously just attached because it didn't have any blood and was still small. I picked two off of me, on my neck and arm. I am NOT used to ticks anymore. We rarely dealt with them in Spokane. But here, I remember always having them as a kid when we were camping. Yuck!
Our camper was the gathering place for the week, which was nice.

I bought some museum putty and put it under a few things on the counter and put rubber shelf liner under the Keurig so I wouldn't have to pack them up every time. They stayed put on the drive home so I think it's going to work! Fingers crossed. :-)

I finished this blanket while we were camping. Just a baby blanket in the "Whichway Crochet" blanket pattern. It looks grey but it is really baby blue using Bernat Softee Baby. About a skein and a half.

I finished this shawl last week but forgot to take a photo of it. I think it will be donated to Mom's place.

Mandy texted today and asked if I could come sit with Piper. She's been throwing up and running a fever so no school for her. Mandy has to work and this way I can take care of Piper for her. Apparently it's been going around school. It's always something when you have kids. Brad's parents 50th Anniversary party is tomorrow night. Mandy and their other daughter-in-law have been planning it for months. Now this. Dennis and I will probably stay home from the party with Piper as there is no way she should be going with the fever she has today. Right now it's 102.9 so she's still not well at all.

I hope you're all well. This morning I made some reservations for our camping trip to Spokane in June. We're stopping several places along the way there and then going to the Oregon Coast for four nights before heading back home. I have no reservations for coming home as we're just going to play it by ear and stop when we find a place and feel like it. By then it will be mid-late July and I'm sure it will be pretty hot otherwise we would head south and go to the Grand Canyon on the way home. We'll probaby stay fairly far north instead.

I hope you're all well and I'll be trying to catch up on blogs now that I'm home for a few days.

Blessings and hugs,
Betsy