Four + Days And Counting

Time here is getting short. I have four full days and what’s left of today here in Spokane. There is a lot to be done and a lot of people to say goodbye to, so I’m not sure if I will get another post done before I leave. I will try my hardest to keep up with comments on your blogs, but if I miss a few days, please forgive me.

I thought would give you an update on the state of my vaccination journey since people always seem to be fairly interested in how it goes for everyone else. As you all know, I got my second Pfizer shot on Monday at 10:00 AM. I didn’t notice anything until the evening when my arm started getting a bit sore. By the time I went to bed I was having to pick up that arm with my other hand just to move it! Ouch! During the night I had body aches, fever, chills, headache and a very sore arm. By the time I got out of bed Tuesday morning at 6:30, I was much better and by noon I was  pretty much back to normal.  Larry and Nita got their vaccinations one hour after I did and had almost exactly the same side effects that I did. They were both fine by yesterday afternoon too!  Today, I would never know I had been vaccinated. I’m completely fine. I have to admit it was a pretty miserable 12 hours or so, but what is 12 hours if it protects you from getting Covid and protects other people at the same time? I would do it again 1000 times if I had to.  I am so grateful to the Lord for providing the intelligence to the people who developed these vaccines. What would we do without these brilliant minds? Thank you Lord.🙏

In other news, our local Basketball team, Gonzaga has moved on to the Final Four in March Madness! We went over to Larry and Nita’s house last night to watch the game with them and have pizza. They are undefeated so far this year. If they make it to, and win the championship, it will be the first undefeated team since 1976! There is one more game to play on Saturday afternoon and then I believe the championship game is on Monday. It is so exciting! Spokane really gets behind the Gonzaga Bulldogs every year. It’s all anyone is talking about. People have been so sad because no one has been able to attend any games this year. The girls team made it to the Sweet 16 this year too. Both teams are exceptional.

I have a few small projects to show you.  I started making a baby hat just a few minutes ago.

I also started a pair of socks a few days ago but haven’t worked on them since I cast them on. I was just doing a plain vanilla sock, but after seeing Vera‘s post at “The Threaded Lane” this morning, I think I’m going to rip them back to the cuff and do the same pattern she is. It’s a Knit 6, Purl 2 around and I think it would look great with this yarn.

And just to cheer you all up to on this fine spring day, I thought I would share a picture of Miss Piper at the Henry Doorley Zoo a couple of weeks ago. Omaha has one of the finest zoos in the world and I can’t wait to visit again. It has been many years since we were there. They have what’s called a grandparents pass and I believe we will be purchasing that fairly soon.  As you can see, she took one of her babies along and is a wonderful little mother. The baby is covered up with one of the little blankets that I made for her. She loves her babies, and of course she’s wearing her College World Series hat. Until just a few years ago, the College World Series was held every year right across the street from the zoo at Rosenblatt Stadium.  It has now moved a few miles north of here to the downtown area of Omaha.  I remember volunteering to work the concessions at the CWS for several years when I was in high school along with our church youth group. It was so much fun.

I also finished the second “Which Way Filet” baby blanket and they have been packed away in storage. I guess you could call them the “seed blankets” for the charity knitting I plan to do in Omaha. 💜💕💜

I hope you are all having a wonderful Wednesday. We have brilliant blue skies and it’s supposed to get into the 50s today. Hallelujah! I took our vaccination cards to Staples this morning and they laminated them for free. This way we don’t have to worry about anything happening to them. I really don’t know what we are supposed to do with them, so I guess we will keep them with our passports.

Blessings and love, 

Betsy

Second Vaccination Done!

It’s Monday and I got my second Pfizer vaccination about five hours ago! I am so happy. I’m hoping it goes as well as Dennis’s did and I don’t have any side effects. With the first one I just had a little bit of a headache and a sore arm for a day, so I’m hoping for a repeat. 

We have a busy week coming up. Everyone in our small group Bible study except one person has now been vaccinated. They have asked if we can have a potluck together on Thursday night, since it will be my last week here. Then, on  Saturday, we’re going out to dinner with Neal and Jenny. It will be my first time in a restaurant since last summer. I’m told the Pfizer vaccine is fully effective after seven days and the Moderna is fully effective after 14 days so I should be good. Our restaurants are still open at only 50% capacity.  Then, on Sunday we are having Easter dinner with Alicia and Jeremy and the boys. This is the busiest my social life has been in over a year! Monday morning, if all goes as planned, bright and early, I will leave on my 24 hour drive to Nebraska. It was snowing hard in Montana this morning and I’m hoping it’s not like that next week.

I have a lot to still accomplish this week so I’m really hoping I can keep plugging along and the vaccine doesn’t affect me in any big way.

Along with Larry and Nita we watched Gonzaga play Creighton yesterday in the March Madness basketball. It was hard to know who to cheer on! Gonzaga is our Spokane team and Creighton is the Omaha team! I solved that dilemma by just cheering for both teams whenever they scored. :-) Nita did not like that because they are huge Gonzaga fans. 😂 Gonzaga won and is going on to the elite eight. They have been there before and we’re hoping for a big win this year.

I did finish one baby blanket this weekend and I started another. I love this color.

Matchey, matchey. 💜  I bought two one pound skeins of yarn so there will be easily be enough for two blankets out of these two skeins.

I forgot to take photos of the lapghans that I delivered to the veterans home this morning on my way to the vaccine clinic. Yesterday I dropped off a big bag of baby hats and blankets to the hospital. I also packed all of the mittens that I’ve made so far into a drawer in one of our dressers that is in storage. Little by little we’re winding up our life here in Spokane. Dennis is having a meeting today to let all of the people who work for him know of our plans. He will continue to work from home after the move and will fly back to Spokane when he needs to for meetings.  He will still be here for a few months.

Next, I have the last of the photos of the new house for you to see. The first two are of our bedroom. Look at the beautiful solid maple set that they left for us. Mandy says that it’s very high-quality furniture. The dresser that you see the edge of on the right has a big mirror attached to it.

A bit of a different view. They even left the TV on the wall for us.  It’s not a big room, but it will work fine for us. We do have our own mattresses that we are bringing next month, but they told us this was a brand new mattress and only slept on a couple of times by their mom.  It seems strange to think of sleeping on someone else’s bed, but I guess it’s no different than staying in a hotel is it?  I want to get new blinds and curtains for these windows because we like it really dark when we sleep.

Here is Miss Piper showing off the family room. They left another TV on the wall here but we’re going to take this one down. It’s in an odd spot and we don’t have to want to have to crane our necks up so high. Jim, who passed away several years ago was an avid Harley Davidson collector. Every year they would go to the Sturgis motorcycle rally. They would pull their motorcycle in a trailer behind the truck and then ride it around South Dakota. The ceiling fan in the photo below is a Harley Davidson ceiling fan. That will definitely be replaced. They used this room as a rec room. They had a bar in the corner and Harley Davidson memorabilia all over the room. Carpeting down here is in very good shape with just one stain in the corner. Our nephew Russ, who is a carpet layer is going to replace that little patch for us with some carpeting that was left behind. He says we won’t even be able to see the patch. We are so grateful for everyone who has been helping us so much with the house. I don’t know how we would have done any of this without them.

This is the other end of the same room. This is what I hope to make it into my crafting and yarn storage area. The door goes out to the backyard.  You will notice that they had ceiling fans all over the house. I think they are very necessary in the Midwest where the summers can be very hot and humid.

Remember what I told you about Harley Davidson? Obviously the door on the shed will get a paint job too! They do have the yard nicely landscaped. I’m thinking of trying some container gardening in that mulched spot in the corner.  We have been told that it is red rubber mulch! I have never heard of such a thing.

 And one more view of the backyard.   There is a little retaining wall with some rocks in the shade next to it. The yards are not very big here and that’s fine with me. We haven’t seen chain-link fences like this since we left Nebraska. The yards here in Spokane are mostly surrounded with 6 foot tall privacy fences. For some reason the chain-link seems much more neighborly to me. 😍

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We had a severe wind storm last night with gusts of over 70 mph. It’s still blowing today but not nearly as strong. The RV did very well. It did shake a bit at the strongest gusts, but Dennis has it resting on several extra jacks to stabilize it.

I’m praying that you all stay strong and healthy. I hope that everyone is able to get the vaccine very soon.

Blessings and love, 

Betsy

Still Packing

It’s Friday! Not much has changed since I last posted. The pile on the sofa has changed a bit. Some things have been added to the car and others have taken their place on the sofa. I’m still hoping it will all fit!

I did start a baby blanket yesterday morning and I’ve been picking it up off and on to add a few rows and give me a chance to sit down. I made a couple of cabled baby hats that I have already given to Nita. I’m sorry I forgot to take a picture of them first.  She is keeping them all at her house and on Monday I will make one final delivery to the hospital here. I think there are seven baby blankets and 47 hats in the bag to be donated.

I have a few more pictures of the house for you. The first two will be Dennis’s office as he will be working from home at least for awhile.  They left the desk and lamp in this photo.  We are hoping the desk will be big enough for the two big monitors he needs.

They also left this bookcase and the Hoover vacuum cleaner! In the closet downstairs there is also a carpet cleaner!

This will be our guest room, or as it will be called, “Piper‘s room.”  We are planning on lots of overnight stays here at Papa and Grandma‘s house. 👏💜👏  Just a reminder that everything you’re seeing in all of these photos was left for us. Weren’t they generous?

I like the little details like the scallops over the closet doors. We are planning to take the vertical blinds down from the living room windows and put blinds like these up on those windows too.

That’s about it. It’s been a fairly quiet week. Dennis had his Second vaccine on Monday afternoon with absolutely no side effects at all. His arm wasn’t even very sore. I hope I have the same experience when I get mine on Monday morning.  

Yesterday I had Sophie all day long while Larry and Nita took a short road trip. They dropped her off about 8:30 in the morning and picked her up about 4:30. It was so nice to have a dog here again. I’m certainly going to miss her. She’s such a little sweetheart.  Nita is worried about what she’s going to do when they can start cruising again as I have always been the one to keep Sophie for them. I told them they would just have to cruise out of Florida and stop in Nebraska on the way and drop Sophie off! It is really going to be hard to leave them behind. I’m trying not to think too much of what we’re leaving behind and focus on what we’re going to. You can’t live somewhere for almost 30 years and not leave part of your heart behind when you move.

The painter was supposed to call me this morning but I haven’t heard anything from him yet. All of the painting was supposed to be done by the time I arrived and the time is getting short.  

I hope you are all doing well and are looking forward to the weekend.

Blessings and love, 

Betsy