11. November 2008 by Paul.

Well, this was our first weekend to stay at home in quite some time. And already we are looking forward to Spring so we can go camping again. This was a working weekend. Last winter our front outside faucet froze and broke because I forgot to take the hose off so it wouldn’t drain. I worked on fixing that. I’m close but still have a leak. I also spent some time working on the confirmation videos from last March for our church. Shame on me for taking so long. And when those are done I have wedding videos to work on. Now that we are not going camping I think they will get done a lot quicker. Beth worked around the house all weekend cleaning up. We really get behind on the work when we are gone every weekend but we have all winter to catch up. The house is already looking better.  She also went with April to the Cathedral Basilica and the St. Louis Art Museum. April had to go for a class so Beth went along.The weather was very chilly. That was the only thing that made it OK that we were not camping.  

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4. November 2008 by Paul.

Thursday night, October 30, we went to a dinner for our church. We are kicking off a big fund raiser to add on to the church and to pay off the existing mortgage. It was good food.

Friday we went back down to the campground for the last camping of the year. It was great weather. In the seventies and sunny both Saturday and Sunday. We went to a new owner’s meeting on Saturday morning. It was interesting and we got some of our questions answered. At 1:00 we went to the costume contest. There were about 6 different classes for the costumes. The 6 and under were the cutest. At 3:00 they started trick or treating. We had about 125 kids. In the older section of the campground they actually close off the roads to traffic. We heard that people there had about 300 kids. It was really a lot of fun seeing all the clever costumes. Ate dinner at the cafe Saturday evening.

Sunday morning we cleaned all the stuff out of the camper that we needed to take home, took out the batteries, etc. This year we are letting the campground do the winterization for us. Had dinner at the Texas Road House Sunday evening. Some friends were celebrating their 41st anniversay. We had not eaten there before. It is really good food.

The next time we will go down to the campground is for Thanksgiving. We are going to stay in one of the condos. Looking forward to it.

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27. October 2008 by Paul.

Took an extra 1 1/2 days of vacation to make a long weekend. My sister, Linda, and her husband, Tom, came out to MO from IN to visit. They went to the campground with us. We reserved a condo for them. Got to the campground while it was still light out and were able to show them around a bit. Had dinner at the camper.

On Friday we went to St. James winery and then to Hermann and visited two wineries. The weather was overcast and cool. Ate lunch at the Stone Hill winery in Hermann. Ate dinner at the camper. After dinner I was able to connect to a web site that had old TV theme songs on it. I would play the song and the others would try to guess what show it was from. Beth was the winner of that trivia contest. We’ve been married almost 36 years and I had no idea how good she is at trivia - or at least TV theme song trivia.

Saturday morning Tom and I played three holes of golf. (The campground has a three hole golf course.) Then the four of us played two rounds of frisbee golf. After dinner Tom and I just relaxed a bit and Linda and Beth went into Hermann again to shop. Saturday evening we ate at the Creekside Cafe at the campground. Sat aroud the campfire with friends. Had a great fire. We needed it because it was cold.

Tom and Linda left a little before noon on Sunday. We closed up, ate lunch at the Creekside and headed home. We stopped at the office on the way out to ask a question. Before we could get an answer my phone rang. It was the daughter of some of the people we were camping with. Her water broke and she was on the way to the hospital. She wanted to know if her mom and dad were still in the campground. They were so we went back and told them the good news. She would have called them direct except they have Verizon and they have almost no signal. Next weekend is the last weekend of camping for the year. Bummer.

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20. October 2008 by Paul.

Went down to the campground again on Friday night. Saw a lot of deer crossing the road or along the side of the road on the way down. No wonder so many get hit.

We have been having the campground set up the camper for us. They level it and set the jacks, hook up the water, electric and sewer. They don’t turn on the water or electric. Takes us five minutes to finish when we get there. All we have to do is run out the slide out, carry in food, and turn on the water and electric. Sure is nice.

We decided to go fishing from a boat on Saturday but there was too much wind and no anchor in the boat so it made it difficult. We ended up just trolling all the way around the lake. Should have taken the camper ’cause it sure looked pretty.

Tried to build a fire on Saturday night but the wood was green and we could not get it going. Last time I buy wood there.

Had the campground come out and look at the water heater again. They replaced the heating element last Sunday but it still didn’t work. Turns out there is a 12 vdc - 120 vac relay that is bad. They didn’t have one of those so I’ll have to get one and replace it. In the meantime we will have to continue to use gas for hot water.

We did get a small fire going Sunday using kindling. It wasn’t a big fire but at least we had one. We just left the wood there. Friends of ours are camping on that spot next week and we’ll see if it is still there when we get down next Thursday.

Tom and Linda are going to be down to the campground next weekend. We have reserved a condo for them. We are dooking forward to it. Sure hope they have a good time.

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13. October 2008 by Paul.

Not a whole lot to write about this time. We didn’t do a whole lot. Just relaxed, read, had a campfire and took it easy. Great weekend. Beth did see a fox running across the road on the way down to the camper. The trees are just starting to change. I think they will be peak in about two weeks or less.

We did try something new this time though. The campground will, for $6, set up the camper. They will level it, put down the jacks, hook up the water, electric and sewer. The water and electric is not turned on but that takes - oh, about 10 seconds. It doesn’t sound like a great deal but saved us a bunch of time since it is dark when we get there.

Also had them replace the element in our water heater. We had been operating on gas since the element had gone out but decided to try them out and see how they did. I was going to replace it myself and then found out it takes a special socket to do it. They did a good job - although it did take them a bit longer to do then they expected because it is hard to get at the element. Only three more weekends to go.

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6. October 2008 by Paul.

Took a while to get to the campground although we did find a faster route but we got started a bit later than we wanted and ate at McDonalds. Normally we would have ate on the road but with Kayden along we decided to eat at the McDonalds.

Got set up fairly quickly. Beth painted with Kayden for a while and then put him to bed. He went to bed without any problems and slept until 8:30 am Saturday morning. I was sitting in the chair and he woke up and smiled at me and was in a good mood ‘most’ of the day. After breakfast Beth took him for a walk and then I took him for a walk while Beth did the dishes. We took him down to the petting zoo and then for a ‘pony’ ride. It was a big pony. He wanted to go again. 

After lunch we went up and he got into the kiddy pool for a while. Had a bit of trouble getting him to leave. He went down for about a 2 hour nap.

Ate supper and then took him down to the playground. Had a whole lot of trouble getting him to leave the playground. Sat around the fire for a while. One of our friends was cooking hotdogs and Kayden wanted to help. Then he wanted to do it all by himself. He did a fairly good job although he didn’t want to pull it out of the fire. It was a bit overdone. Not sure what happened to it. He didn’t want to eat it - just cook it. At one point he got a little to close and I had to have a stern talk with him but that was really the only problem we had all weekend. Again, he went to bed without problems.

Sunday morning we had breakfast and sat around with friends. Kayden painted rocks. Left about 1:00 pm. I think he had a great time and I know that Gobby and Pawpa did.

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2. October 2008 by Paul.

Kayden is going to go camping with us this weekend. April and Brian both have to work on Saturday and they asked if we would watch Kayden but with only a few more weekends to go we didn’t want to give up a weekend that is supposed to be this nice. So we offered to take him along. I think it is going to be rough on April to be away from him for two days. I don’t think that has ever happened before - even for 1 day. Hope Kayden doesn’t get homesick.

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28. September 2008 by Paul.

We went camping again this weekend. This was a bit different for us though since the folks that we normally camp with are all relatives to each other and they had a wedding this weekend. So it was just Beth and me. We got down there late (about 8:00 p.m.) on Friday night. We got set up in short order. Watched a little TV and went to bed. Saturday morning we went to the Adult Lounge so we could get on the interent to set up Beth’s new iPod Touch. Didn’t take all that long other then to sync all the songs from her laptop to the iPod. She likes it.

After lunch we played some frisbee golf. The course is laid out through a bunch of trees and that makes it difficult. It was fun though. We fished a bit at one spot but since the fish were not biting there we moved to a new spot. Got about three small fish (more like minnows.) After supper we went to the Wilderness pavilion. They had a group of American Indian dancers there. It was quite interesting. When we got back to the camper we started a fire and sat around the fire for about an hour or so. It was really different since this was the first time that just Beth and I had gone camping without other campers in quite a while.

Sunday we went to the annual meeting of the campground. After the problems at the old campground we didn’t want to get caught off guard at the new one. Seems like there is no problem. They are careful with the dollars but seems like they have plenty to operate on. When we got home we went to Pizza Street and now it is time to just relax. Hope your weekend was as good as ours. The whole weekend was beautiful. Highs of about 82 and not a cloud in the sky the whole weekend. We are thinking about getting a telescope. We can see the milky way from the campground because it is out in the country away from all the city lights. Not sure where we would keep it in the camper though.

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22. September 2008 by Paul.

We went camping this weekend. We have moved to a new campground. This was our second weekend at the new campgournd. The one were at is in deep financial problems. They have been losing members and not making any sales to new members. I got on the board last year to try to help but there wasn’t much to be done. And now the campground manager is leaving and that is really going to hurt. We saw the handwriting on the wall so we bought a membership at a campground about 30 miles from the old one and about the same distance from home.  We drove to the old one on Saturday for a board meeting. I ended up resigning from the board at the meeting. I was going to wait until the October meeting since a friend of ours is the board president and I was going to stay for him but it got so ugly both at the open discussion portion of the board meeting and at the “executive session” that I said “No more - I’m out of here.” A second board member did the same thing about 10 minutes later. It was rough.

We had lunch with the campground manager and his wife and three other couples from the campground and then drove back to the new campground. That evening we went to a murder mystery dinner at the new campground. Had a great time. Had salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffed pork chops and steamed vegtable medley (I didn’t take any of those). For desert we had pineapple upside down cake.  Sat around the campfire until about 11:00 and then went to bed.

On Sunday we stayed at the campground long enough to welcome another couple from the old campground who also came over to the new campground. (That makes the third couple.) Then drove home and celebrated Jamie’s third birthday. Kelly had driven into town on Saturday. Jamie and Kelsey sure are growning fast.

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17. September 2008 by Paul.

After a lot of rain starting Saturday evening and then being very overcast Sunday and Monday, we finally got some nice weather on Tuesday. I got home from work and mowed the grass and then trimmed the front yard. It got dark before I could mow the back. Couldn’t ask for nicer weather though. Hope to cut some more of the tree tonight since the weather today id great also.

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