Settling In At Jonathan Dickinson

Monday January 6- Today I got busy early, doing laundry and cleaning up inside the rig. We took Ruby for a walk and when we got back the new volunteer coordinator showed up. We talked a bit with her. Then we decided to make a trip to town. Jeff wanted to go to Best Buy, looking for a waffle iron. He has some credit to apply to it. He found one he thought he would like. While he was there I walked over to the container store. I love that store. They give you so many ideas. When you live in a 5th Wheel you really need to be organized. So when I walk through this store I am overwhelmed with all the ideas that are around. I don't always purchase all those neat ideas but it helps. I purchased a white eraser calendar. I had one before but it broke. I couldn't wait to get me another. Then we went over to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Jeff had the white chicken chili, me I had the pizza and salad. One thing I can say about this restaurant, they give you a lot of food. We both took home half for our lunch tomorrow. After eating and getting a piece of cheesecake to go we went over to look at some of the shops. I found a couple Christmas tea towels, they were 70% off. That is always fun. Then we made our way back home. For supper we had the homemade noodles I made yesterday. It was a good dinner. Tomorrow we start back to work, this time a full shift.


Tuesday January 7- Back to work today. This will be our first full week of work. Our first day was rough trying to find everything and trying to remember our routine. So going in to work today we have everything filled and in it's place. So instead of running around looking for things we can get back into our routine. The weather was a bit cool but it warmed up nice. The day went really fast. It felt a whole lot better. When I finished I came home and made chocolate chip cookies. We are having a get together with Jeffrey and Maren. They are bringing the kabobs, we are making rice and bread. Oh and the cookies. Everything was really good. While we were outside before dinner I received a call from my niece in California. She is taking care of her Mom, my sister at her house. She is bed ridden with dementia. She has a lot going on but she is taking really good care of her.

Wednesday January 8- Back to work again and it went very smooth today, almost back to normal. We finished up in good time. I ran to town after work. Did leftovers for supper. We don't always do a lot on our work days. People seem to think it's a vacation we are living, that's not true. We do have lovely weather but we are just living life in a different way.


Thursday January 9- Our last day of work for the week. We went down to the shop at 7:30 to get our cart like we always do and Kirrin the new volunteer coordinator was there she wanted to go with us to see what we do. That slowed us down a little because instead of just doing the task we had to explain what we use to clean it and how often it gets done. She wanted to help us too. Well after we cleaned the first 2 shower houses she went back to her office. I think we passed. The wind today was extremely crazy. It just wouldn't quit. All the campers were timely about leaving. Our last camper left at 12:30. We hung around here the rest of the day. It is still so windy you can't hardly sit outside.


Friday January 10- The wind didn't stop last night, not for a minute. I got a walk in with Ruby this morning. Then I thought since the wind is crazy I figured I might as well get started sewing blocks together on my new quilt project. Before starting that I went in to town to pick up my prescriptions. While I was there I made a few stops since Jeff was at home. He's not much on shopping. When I got home I thought maybe I should give Belle her hair cut. I figured if I had my back to the wind it would blow away from me. That really didn't happen. The hair just blew everywhere. I at least got that task completed. She looks so much better.

Saturday January 11- Guess what....still windy. Not only is it windy, it is gray and rainy.I took Ruby for a walk and we got caught in the rain. When I got back I made breakfast. Then finally I decided to get the sewing machine out and get to sewing. It is so hard to get started on a new project. Once I get it going it's fine. So I got everything set out and started on a block.

























I am making a log cabin block this time. Haven't done one of these for awhile. I got a couple blocks made. We have been watching the weather today fairly close because we had planned on going to an outdoor concert tonight. Thankfully the weather cooperated. Jeffrey and Maren came and picked us up at 5:30. Jeff has seen they are having a food truck from Leftovers. He wanted to eat there. We also figured it would be super busy, and it was. We found the the Abacoa Ampitheater and the parking garage. It was just a short walk to the theater. The show started at 7:30. We got there around 6 and there were already lots of chairs there. We found a nice place to sit and then went to get us some supper. Jeff got the sweet potato encrusted mahi on a bed of greens, me I got chicken tenders with fries. It was really good and the prices were too. We sat and watched as more and more people show up. It was packed. At 7:30 out comes The Long Run, a Eagles tribute band. We have seen them before and they are great. We had a fun night. The weather was perfect, the wind even dies down and we even had a full moon behind us. What a night.

Waiting for the show to start

enjoying the show

Sunday January 12- The wind is done I think. I took Ruby for a walk, thinking we would catch Jeffrey and Maren before they left. Well, we didn't do that. They already left. Oh well, they will be back in a couple weeks. We went to church and then stopped at the store on the way home. Then after our brunch the rain started. Not a lot but it was just on and off all afternoon. I decided to sit back down at the sewing machine and put together some more blocks....I have 5 made now. I only need about 50 more. It is going to be a long process but this quilt is for our grand daughter so it's worth it.

Monday January 13- I started the day off early. I got my laundry done and then did some cleaning inside. It was pretty nice outside. I noticed the sign on the door that I made looks like it needs to be touched up. So I found the paint and got busy on that. That helped quite a bit.

Since arriving at the park we haven't even made a trip down to the river area. Today we decided to do just that. We walked around a little looking around. Then we came back to the campsite and decided to start removing the decals on the kitchen slide. The ones that have either really faded or are cracked. This is going to be super tough. First they don't want to come off, then the glue stays behind and it certainly doesn't want to leave. This is going to take us a while.

Tuesday January 14- Back to work with us. When we got up it wasn't raining but before we went to work at the shop it started pouring rain. We tried to wait it out at the shop but it just wouldn't quit. It finally slowed down and so we headed off to the shower house. We didn't get very far before the rain started, and it poured along with lots of wind. We pulled under the roof to keep everything dry. We got the first shower house cleaned. Went to move to the second one but guess what....as soon as we jumped in the cart the sky's opened up and poured again. It took us a while to get things done because that seemed to happen every time we jumped in the cart....rain. We were happy when this day was over, we were tired of being wet.

Wednesday January 15- Off to work but at least the rain was gone. We got everything done and when we got finished I sat outside. Jeff saw online that Blue Point has a 4 course dinner from 5-6 for $15.00. We didn't have anything sat out for supper so we decided to go there. They had live music and a happy hour going on when we arrived. When we arrived it wasn't that busy but it got busy fairly quick. Our waiter must have been new. He was pretty slow and messed up a few times.  Jeff ordered his supper, the special. The portion size was small. We are not big eaters but this was really small portions. The meat part was good the rest was ok. I ordered my usual the chicken tenders which were delicious. The music was really country, not our favorite.

Thursday January 16- We had decent weather today. It is our last day of working this week. We had a couple extra jobs to get done today. It wasn't that good of a day. Everything went wrong that could have. We sure were happy when we finished up. It was almost like a Friday the 13th...


Friday January 17- It's a busy day today. We don't have to work but I have plenty to get done. We were off and running early getting stuff done. Jeff is still trying to find something that will take off the glue from those decals. Then we needed to get Belle's prescription dog food. We had to wash the car. Next Jeff needed coffee for his nespresso. Then our final stop was at the store. We needed to get stuff for tonight. We are having a volunteer pot luck. When we got home I got busy making deviled eggs and cupcakes. Our pot luck was at 6:30. We went up a little early to get the lights and electric turned on. It is super windy tonight. We had a really good turn out. It was nice to see everyone.

Saturday January 18- The day started off really busy with laundry and cleaning. Then we decided to take a road trip and check out a few things. First we checked out a RV park, It was really small and it was so crowded....not for us. Next we drove over to Le Mesa RV. We like to look at whats new. We checked out a few 5th wheels that we liked. We also met a couple there that we had a nice time visiting with. Then a bonus...they have free lunch there. So we had a hotdog before moving on. Our next stop was Jensen Beach. First we looked at another RV park. We had looked there before. It is really nice with lots on extras. We had planned on staying in Jensen Beach for a bit because we wanted to got to get supper and live music. We still had time to kill so we walked around downtown checking out the area. Jeff found a coffee house, called The Bunk House. It was a cute little place. He said the coffee was really good too.

Then we walked to the Tako Tiki. It is a new place for us. The music there tonight was The String Assassins. We also heard the food was really good. We were excited to give it a try.

We got there early and it was a good thing we did. We walked in and found a table. First we just had a drink with chips and salsa. Then Jeff ordered 2 blackened snapper tacos, I had a beef taco. I wanted to make sure I liked them before ordering another. Well it was great so I did get a second one. The food was really good and the prices very reasonable. The place got packed then the music started and it got even busier. We had a nice evening for sure. We ended up sharing our table with 5 others. The String Assassins were really good too.

We left around 8. We figured the dogs had been home alone long enough. It didn't take that long to get home. We had a really good day.

Sunday January 19- Church day, we got ready to go to the first service. We got to meet the new youth pastor. He seems like a really good guy. Before making our way to the campground we stopped at the store. Our small group is having a dinner today. I was going to make coleslaw. So I got busy when I got home. We needed to be there at 1 so no time to mess around. I couldn't remember the last time I made coleslaw. At  our small group we had a taco dinner. The food was good. We had a smaller than usual turn out. Still was nice. Then we came on home and relaxed the rest of the day outside enjoying the weather. We also waited to hear from our kids. Hailey has a gymnastic meet today. They always keep us up on her scores. She did pretty good.

Our favorite gymnast....

That's all for this time....