The crazy thing is how slowly things change and transform while time is shooting past. In the months since we took the leap to leave Alabama and the life we built there, we have been building new lives.

We made it Covid free to Oregon and connected with family and found a house despite travel restrictions and campground closures. We’ve been working on the house, working on the house, working on the house. This week we unpacked art and hung a few things, whoo-hoooo!

Working on the house has meant gutting a bathroom and putting in everything from the walls to the towels. Our son, Morgan worked with Barb to make a dream bathroom out of fragmented strangeness. They worked so hard! Our granddaughters-in-love helped with demo and everyone had a hand in building the new space. There are still some things to finish and it will all happen in time (so I tell myself).

There are many ‘bests” about living here. Top of my list is being near our grandchildren. Helping with transporting children to different sports and dance recitals occupied us for a whole Saturday. It’s amazing to be her and clap for our dancer sharing her triumph, cheer our baseball player to his home runs and to whistle and clap for the coach-pitch/T-ball player even when the bat swings him around! Kickboxing doesn’t have an exhibition yet but we’re sure we’ll be in the audience for our strong girl when they do. Heart filling.

Another set of bests concerns being back in the Pacific Northwest. The trees, flowers – Spring!, hiking, waterways, mountains and so much to explore. Spring is gorgeous, the weather mild and sunny (most days) and people are out walking everywhere.

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Meantime, Barb and I put together, produced and performed in an all day virtual Basic RV Maintenance workshop for RVWs big Virtual Rally 2020. Wow, was that a challenge to get in front of ‘viewers’. Huge learning curve for me what with organizing the flow of topics, learning a new camera, editing, and all the complications of uploading to the rally master. Barb (Jordy) had to develop her vid-star persona, not to speak of writing the presentation and gathering all the tools she demonastrated. Signing up to do another workshop must indicate that we enjoyed the challenge and fun, because we’re at it again this week.

In August/September we Wagon Master for Adventure Caravans’ “Grand Circle” tour.. We’ll share the wonders of the National Parks and Heritage Sites in the Four Corner states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Last time we did the tour (pre-pandemic) at every turn were marvelous vistas and incredible formations. So I’m looking forward to sharing that with you.

Breathe.