A Quiet Day

Just a quick post before I go off to bed. I spent a quiet day at home today. Since it was also a dry day, no rain and lots of sunshine, Gerry went on his bike club ride. He hadn't ridden all week because of the rain. He didn't mention where they went, however he did say he rode 60 miles or so. He was home by 2 pm or a little after.

Wendi, his daughter who lives in So. California is flying into town tomorrow. Jenni is going to pick her up at the airport. Gerry thought it would be nice to let Wendi drive his van while she is here. She is bringing granddaughter Katie with her. Katie's mom is Joyce, Jenni's twin. Katie is 4 years old. So he went outside to do a couple of things on the van. He came in and said he was starved. I had not eaten lunch yet and since it was almost 3 pm, I decided to go ahead and start dinner. If we had eaten lunch, we wouldn't have wanted to eat dinner. I had taken some hamburger meat out on Wednesday and it didn't get cooked that night nor last night. I needed to fix it before it went bad.

I fixed what has been my favorite meal since I was a little girl. It's hamburger and mushroom soup. I know, it probably doesn't sound very exciting. It is kind of a take on chipped beef that was served to the servicemen during the war. It was called SOS, I won't tell you what my ex told me it meant, it's not very nice. Anyway, I brown the meat, add half of a chopped onion, Lawry's seasoned salt, pepper and some garlic powder. When the meat is no longer pink, I add a can of mushroom soup with about 3/4 of a can of water, mix it all together and let it simmer for about 30 minutes or so. I serve it over hot rice and add a vegetable. Gerry puts hot sauce all over it. We enjoy it.

It was 4 pm or so when we ate. Well, then about 6:30 pm, Gerry starts talking about wanting some Soy Dream ice cream. That got me thinking about dessert. By this time it was 7:45 pm. We ended up getting in the car and driving down to Raley's. He got some Soy Dream and I got a Dutch Apple Pie and some muffins for breakfast. I fixed me some hot chocolate and we sat at the breakfast bar eating our dessert. Like we really needed that!! Well, it satisfied the cravings we had.

Gerry got our car insurance renewal today so I think he is going to check on what the insurance will be before we proceed any further with buying another vehicle.

Well, he's gone to bed so I better head that way too. We'll have a busy weekend, I'll write about it later.

Good night for now!

The Car Search Continues

Along with going to bible study on Thursdays, we also pick up our grandson Andy from school. He is in kindergarten and gets out at 12:20 pm. So as soon as I get home, I have time enough to go potty and then it's a mad dash across Madison Avenue (east) to Orangevale. Today Melody, Andy's older sister, had a minimum day so we picked her up too.

We've been taking Andy to McDonald's for lunch and have tried to get him to agree to go get pizza instead. Well, Melody wanted to get pizza. When we mentioned it to Andy, he tried to get his sister to say McDonald's instead. He was suppose to be whispering but I heard him. So I told him let's do something different today and we could always go to McDonald's another day. (That is not our "favorite" place to go). He agreed so we went to Round Table. We got personal size pizzas for them, Andy wanted cheese and Melody wanted pepperoni. Gerry and I got the buffet. They ended up taking the rest of their pizzas to Auntie Elizabeth's.

Their mom is Jenni, the older of Gerry's twin girls. Gerry's oldest daughter Elizabeth babysits them until their mom gets off of work. The reason we pick Andy up on Thursdays is because one of Elizabeth's girls has a class at their charter school on Thursday mornings.

After we dropped them off we drove over to Roseville to look at a Hyundai Entourage van. We didn't take it for a ride but did like it. From there we drove over to the auto mall to the Toyota dealership. We looked at some used Sienna vans and Highlanders which is a crossover. We then decided to look at new Siennas. They had a 2008 which was the last 2008 Sienna on the lot and it was marked down quite a bit. We ended up taking it for a drive. We liked it, however, it had a feature that I did not like. When the car is put into park from drive, all the doors unlock. From a safety standpoint, that was a big red flag for me. When I am by myself, I do not want all the doors unlocked at the same time. I would be so vulnerable for perhaps someone getting in the vehicle and harming me. The salesman told me he thought that was a programable issue and it could be fixed. Well, what he told us it was either like that or programed so that you would have to manually unlock the door to exit the vehicle. He of course wanted us to buy the car. We told him several times, we were looking, had other vehicles we wanted to look at before we made a decision. Well, then he got another salesman and the sales manager to talk to us. By then, I was completely turned off. I do not like "high pressure" sales and will walk out when that occurs. One of the guys actually followed us to our car.

We then went over to the Nissan dealership. We looked at a used Honda Odyssey and a used Nissan Quest. They can also show cars on the Ford dealership lot next to them so we went over there to see what they had. We liked the Honda but it had too many miles on it for a 2008, over 60 thousand. We then looked at a brand new, loaded Nissan Quest. I liked every thing about it, Gerry had some issues with the third seat and how it went down. We didn't drive it, by then it was after 5, the sun had gone down, the clouds were rolling in and it was getting cold. We didn't have jackets with us because it was beautiful when we left home earlier to go get the kids.

The salesman who was showing us around was so pleasant, not at all pushy. His supervisor came out to meet us and came over when we were getting ready to leave and also was very pleasant. It certainly was a different experience than what we had at the Toyota dealership. So we still need to drive the Hyundai and the Nissan. Gerry did call Jason while we were at the Nissan dealership and he seemed to be okay with what we had looked at so far. I know Gerry likes the price of the Toyota over the Nissan so I have no idea what he will decide on. I'm hoping for the Nissan. :) Will have to see.

To be continued....

Thursday Morning Bible Study

In December of last year I started attending a bible study put on by Community Bible Study. They have groups all over the nation. It is a non-denominational bible study so there are women from different denominations and churches. The study I am going to also has a program for children from preschool to 6th grade and a nursery for infants. They also sponsor groups for couples, men, teens and college age. My granddaughter, Rebekah-Elizabeth, goes to a teen group in the town they live in.

My group meets on Thursday mornings from 9 am to 11 am. We are just about done with a study on Daniel, a book in the Old Testament of the Bible. It talks about prophesy, spiritual warfare and most of all centers around God's sovereignty. Despite all the doom and gloom we hear about in our world today, we can be confident that God is still in control. It has been exciting, intriguing and confusing. I decided to do this so I could have some interaction with other women and to do more indepth bible study. So far I am enjoying it immensely.

We will finish out the year with studying Colossians. The year starts in September and ends in May.

Bike Hikers Club Meeting

I think I've mentioned over on my Elegant Reflections blog that Gerry, my husband belongs to a bike club, called the Sacramento Bike Hikers. He's been riding with them for more than 5 years. On the first Wednesday of the month they have their club meeting. Gerry asked me to go with him last night. A couple that are members of the club did a cross country bike trip last year and they were going to talk about their trip at the meeting.

They flew to the Washington, DC area, rented a car and drove down to Virginia. They started their trip in May in Yorktown, VA by dipping the rear wheels of their bicycles in the Atlantic and started riding west. The reason they rode east to west is because the blazing morning sun would not be in their faces while they rode. They took the Trans Am bike route which was created, I believe, after the nation's bicentennial celebration in 1976. The husband, Jerry, carried 80 plus pounds on his bike and the wife, Peggy, carried 60 something pounds on her bike. They camped out and stayed in hotels, B&B's, motels, and people's homes along the way. They only cooked their meals 2 times during the whole trip. The rest of the time they ate in restaurants, stopped at several coffee shops, bakeries, etc.

The pictures they shared were fantastic. They traveled through Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, the southern portion of Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and into Oregon. They went through the Ozarks, Blue Ridge Parkway, the Rockies and crossed the Continental Divide in several places. The most beautiful scenery was seeing the Tetons. Their trip ended in August in Florence, OR where they dipped their front wheels in the Pacific Ocean. Evidently they have taken other long bike trips. They had a small laptop with them and blogged during their trip.

It was very interesting. Gerry has talked about doing some long rides through different areas of the country. However, I'm not too terribly excited about him doing that sort of thing.

Car Shopping

Yesterday afternoon we stopped at the Future Ford dealership across the freeway to look at a Taurus X which is called a crossover. We had looked at one on the Internet and wanted to see what it looked like in person. We also looked at a Taurus sedan, a used Freestyle which came before the Taurus X and a used Escape. Although we didn't take the "X" out for a drive, we both liked the looks of it and all the features it had. The salesman tried really hard to get us to make a decision on buying the car. He even called us after we got home to see if he could get the payments down lower, would we come back over. Gerry told him no, that he would get back to him. Gerry told me the saleman called this morning but Gerry didn't take his call.

We are going on a cross country road trip in May and we need to do something about our vehicle. The options are buy another vehicle, used or new or put some money into our 2001 Ford Taurus wagon which has over 100,000 miles on it.

There are some "have to have" features on whatever vehicle we do end up getting. Such as: power drivers seat, ease of me getting into the vehicle on the driver's side (due to short legs, etc.), and a power tail gate (if possible). Gerry wants something with a third row of seats, ease in putting the seats down and room to put a bicycle in the back.

After we got home, Gerry called Jason, his youngest son who is an auto tech and family auto expert/advisor, to see what he thought of the vehicles we had looked at. He said no to all of them mainly because they have Mazda motors. When we first started talking about getting another vehicle, I shared with Gerry that I wanted a Saturn Vue. Jason vetoed that too. Some of the vehicles Jason suggested were Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai.

We have an older model Plymouth van that Gerry uses when he needs to transport his bikes and recently took to Idaho on the yearly ski trip with his kids. He has put quite a bit of money into it fixing it up so we will keep it until it literally falls apart. And of course the wagon is used as our everyday vehicle. Gerry's van is the second one we've had so going back to a sedan is not an option. We have gotten use to having lots of room in the back when we go on trips so we are looking at vans.

So the search continues......

A New Blog

I created my blog Elegant Reflections to mainly showcase my handmade cards and wanted to keep it for just my cards. Non-card related posts have appeared on it so I decided to create another blog to post other happenings. And too, in May we are going on an extended road trip to Alabama. I like to journal trips we take and so instead of writing it out, I can post each day on this blog and include photos of what we see along the way.

I really don't like to write and yet I enjoy journaling. That doesn't make any sense, does it. I know, Gerry said to me "I thought you don't like to write".

So, it will be interesting to see what I have to say on this blog. Stay tuned!!