House Sitting, Dog Sitting and Just Hanging Out in Seattle

I realized it's been a over a week since I last posted. A lot has happened since then.

Currently, Dan and I are "home alone" with three dogs. Erin's mom came and took her home and Rodney, Gretchen and Lucy have gone to Florida for Rodney's brother's 40th birthday. So it's just us and Murphy, Jack and Kasey. Gretchen adopted Murphy not too long after she moved to Seattle. He is a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix and is about 10 years old. He had been abused and Gretchen spent a lot of time and effort to rehab him. Murphy and Lucy get along really well. She climbs all over him and loves to take him for walks. He is a big dog, but never pulls on the leash with Lucy and if she stops, he does too.

Not sure what breed Jack is, but Rodney adopted him shortly after starting college. Jack is about sixteen years old and is in failing health. He has a large growth on his side, is deaf and partially blind and has mobility issues. He has lost his peripheral vision and doesn't like being surprised from the side. But he has been trotting out to see me when I come into the back yard. Gretchen and Rodney have taught Lucy not to bother Jack and she really does leave him alone.

And of course, Kasey is in the middle of everything. He is four years old and would like to play, but the senior citizen dogs would rather just take it easy.

So we're caring for the dogs, sitting out in the yard (when it's not raining - it's rained quite a bit the past few days, but was sunny today), watching the Olympics, picking zucchini, playing with the dogs, watching the Olympics, ....... You get the picture.
So, what were we doing before everyone left? Stephanie arrived on Wednesday, August 13th. Erin was really glad to see her mom. They both left this Wednesday. Erin's first day of school as a sixth grader was today. We really enjoyed having her with us this summer. And we all enjoyed our time with Stephanie and Erin this past week. They stayed in the motorhome with us, and enjoyed having breakfast with Lucy every day and just hanging out with family. We did go to Pike's Market one day and Stephanie and Dan did a four-hour hike up Mount Si another day.

And Stephanie made a wonderful blackberry cobbler with blackberries picked from the blackberry patch just across the street. Blackberries grow wild all over Seattle and most people don't even pick them. You can see by the pictures just how difficult it is to pick them. And the big ones are always just out of reach. :)


But just see the results of all that hard work. And they picked enough to freeze some too.

As I mentioned earlier, the O'Byrne's are in Florida. They'll be back Sunday morning. We took them to the airport Tuesday evening and they flew nonstop from Seattle to Miami, arriving in Miami about 3:00am. Then Wednesday morning, at 6:15, we took Erin and her mom to the airport. And we will pick up some friends of Gretchen's on Friday morning when they return from vacation. (Gail took them to the airport on Monday last week). We could probably drive to the airport blindfolded. :)

Yesterday, Dan and I drove to Everett, north of Seattle, and visited the Boeing assembly plant. We weren't allowed to take any pictures, but we did see the most recent plane in production, the 787, Dreamliner. Dan always enjoys visiting any airplane facility. He spent four years in the Air Force, but had nothing to do with planes.

And today we attended the fall RV show at Qwest Center in Seattle. It's always fun to check out the newest RV's and see the changes. We have no plans to trade our motorhome. We are very happy with it even though we do have some issues to be addressed this fall with the manufacturer. But our Mandalay came with a three year warranty and the manufacturer has honored that warranty as we've had some things fixed. And they allowed us to get most of the work done in Springfield, IL at a local RV dealer before we started fulltiming. However, we wanted to take it back to the manufacturer before the warranty expires in November for a couple of issues and some minor things which we've found since we began fulltiming in June. So we'll be in Elkhart, IN toward the end of October. We may have to leave the motorhome there for several days since some part of the work may not allow for us to stay in it while they work on it. If so, we may just stay in Monticello with the Beever's (Erin's family). Sure don't need to decide that now.

So, we are enjoying a little down time as we house sit and take care of the dogs. And we've started thinking about where to head to when we leave here next week. We know we'll be going east, but haven't settled on anything else. We've talked about stopping off in Carbondale, CO to visit Tim, Karen, Elijah and Isaac for a few days. We sure do want to see those boys again.

We'll head east on I-90 about next Wednesday and see where we end up. It's sure great to have so many choices in this lifestyle, and to know that the only big decision we have to make is where we'll park for the night. There may be a few others, but I can't think of them right now.

More later.......