12.31.18 Reflections on God’s Blessings 2018

Monday, December 31,2018 – This year’s Reflections on God’s Blessings is a bit different. We did not travel any in 2018 so there is nothing to share in that aspect of our lives. My brain no longer has the ability to do all the things I use to in creating this post. Regardless of that I hope to cover all I can since we’ve had some fun, interesting and a couple of life changing events in 2018.  This year this summary is mostly just a way to help me remember the past year but you are welcome to check it out!.

In January of 2018 we had six inches of snow at our home in Amite, Louisiana.

In February 2018 we discovered that the plumbing pipe from the house to the septic tank was not the quality we asked for when the house was being built.  That has caused problems for our renters in the past so Roy dug up all of the old not good quality pipe and put down some high quality pipe. This photo shows both pipes.

We planted several vegetable plants along the fence line. Pretty much none of them did anything.  We learned a lot of lessons and decided to plant a real garden later in the year  

We went to Hammond’s Mardi Gras parade.  It was beautiful and lots of fun!

Chip and I chaperoned Madisyn’s school field trip to Liuzza Farm and enjoyed picking strawberries.

In March 2018 Madisyn had her 9th birthday party and Kallie had her 17th birthday party!

Chip’s family attended the Metairie Saint Patrick’s Day parade with us. Madisyn was loaded down with all the loot she caught!

This is all the food we caught! Yes you catch food in our St. Patrick’s day parade. Carrots, cabbage, lemons, potatoes, bananas, onions and garlic!

I made homemade Easter candies for our grandchildren. I didn’t make the Peeps but everything else I made!

In April 2018 I found a new style of rock painting and really love doing these!

Roy’s cataract surgery done last year did not turn out right and his vision is worse.  We got second opinions from two different doctors to determine what is wrong,  It was determined that Roy needs to get a good pair of glasses to see if that will correct what is off.  The original doctor gave us the additional money we paid to have a multi focal lens put in.  Roy would not go get glasses but after the first of the year I think he just might!!

Roy, Madisyn, Misty and myself went to see Kaylon Willoughby in Ponchatoula High School’s production of Steel Magnolias.

We went to our youngest grandchild’s house for her birthday and loved playing with the little ones.

Madisyn and her best bud Olivia came to visit for a couple of days.

The beginnings of my rock village.  Lots more were added to it after this!

In May 2018 we enjoyed going to our church’s Family Day picnic!

Roy and I worked many days and weeks putting together this Dora Instruction Manual to help our renters when they are on the road. 

We went to our oldest son’s two oldest daughters dance recital.

We also went to our only grandson’s baseball game and end of season event.

A big life changing decision was made in May 2018. The last year of travel was 2017.  It got very difficult for me to make the plans of what to see and where to stay. I had several meltdowns because of that and around April and May we decided we weren’t going to travel any longer.  We also decided we wanted to move into the house we were renting.

The Fleur de Lis in our floor inside the front door.

All the furniture in our motor home is built in so we basically had no furniture and very little else to move into the house when we moved out of the motor home. Chip and Misty let us use some of their used furniture until we could slowly purchase new and used furniture, etc. throughout the year.

 

In June 2018 I started painting a medium size rock for each of our renters to help them remember their adventure with Dora.  They all loved them!

I love spreading God’s word and His love through my painted rocks.  I’ve started taking medium sized ones and writing a scripture on them and hiding them!

Roy and I became Louisiana citizens again and got our Louisiana Drivers License here.  Dora and Boots also became Louisiana residents and got new Louisiana license plates. We were able to register to vote in Louisiana while we were here! South Dakota was good to us but Louisiana is home!

Our church had it’s first Senior Adults luncheon which we attended.  It was wonderful and there was a lot of us!We learned that many people rent out their RVs.  We had never heard of that. After moving everything out of Dora we outfitted her with lots of goodies to make it easier for those who we hoped might rent her!

Our first rental booking happened almost immediately.  Unfortunately it resulted in Dora being involved in an accident. What a great way to start out  This is part of the big scratch that went down the passenger side, along with the awning being torn off.

From June to December 2018 we had a total of 10 rentals from the longest of 16 days to the shortest of 3 days.  A few LSU and racing tailgating rentals. One rental went all the way up the east coast to Maine and back to Louisiana by way of Texas.  Another went to the northwest and back.  A few to the central part of our beautiful country.

Dora made four trips to Dixie RV between rentals to have the accident damage repaired.

During that same time period we made our first attempt in years at growing a garden. Roy dug all of the grass up where the garden would go in the back yard and where we would transplant our 8 blueberry bushes to next to the house.  He replanted the grass in an area that didn’t have much grass.  This along was a huge project.

I started all of the vegetables from seed a couple of weeks before the garden was ready.  The only vegetable bought as a plant was our Big Boy tomatoes.

Roy then created the frame for my vegetable garden. We added mulch, fertilizer and moss and tilled all that into the soil. We grew radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, okra, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and brussell sprouts,

We had freezing weather early in the year so a lot of the garden’s crops were picked early.  Good thing because the cucumbers, tomatoes and okra were pitiful looking after the freeze.The photo below was the cucumber vines a week before the freeze.

This is the cucumber vine after the freeze.

The vegetables we picked early included a lot of cucumbers which I pickled.  Yes I pickled something! They are really tasty!

In July of 2018  The work to repair Dora’s damage to the exterior wall  from the first rental’s accident was completed!I had partial knee replacement surgery done by Dr. Peter Blessey.  The surgery went great and the recovery was smooth.

In August 2018 the specific drone that Roy wanted to buy, DJI Mavic Pro 2, finally was available to purchase.  Roy ordered his right away and here it is below.    

Zelda, the drone flying in the sky.

Roy can take photos and videos from Zelda and he watches what she sees when she travels from this iPad

We planted two grape vines that crawled up and over this lattice arbor.  Didn’t make grapes this year but we’re hopeful for next year!

One of our favorite things to do since we moved into the house was watching the hummingbirds play while we drank our morning coffee on the front porch.

In September of 2018 both our son’s families took me out for my birthday.  We ate at our always favorite La Caretta with our oldest son’s family. With Chip’s family we ate at a new restaurant in Amite, Boot Hill. Both meals were amazing!

We were invited to Madisyn’s new school’s family dance.

In October 2018 we attended the Hammond Northshore Regional Airshow

The ladies at our church, plus my daughter in law Misty, got together to paint crosses and angels on canvas.  Lots of fun!

In November 2018 my son Chip bought me 63 pounds of river rocks for painting.  I got to pick out all of the rocks myself.

We had Thanksgiving with our sons and their family at our house. So much to be thankful for this year!

In December 2018

Christmas dinner with our sons and their family was at Chip and Misty’s home. What a blessing it is to be able to be with all of our immediate family at Christmas time!

Madisyn came home with us and spent a couple of days.  We made homemade apple pie and something new called Christmas crack!

These were some of my Christmas rocks with Santa on the front and on the back a message about Jesus Christ.

The accident on the first rental followed by many mechanical problems everything seemed to snowball.  Because of that, the stress of negotiating, explaining and general communicating with potential renters (at least 50 potential renters) before, during and after the rental, the huge amounts of money we had to put out to fix things while the renters were on the road, all the deep cleaning of Dora after every rental, Roy constantly fixing things on Dora, washing sheets, towels became too much.  We made the decision to stop renting before we got more in debt fixing things.  Our last rental was in mid December to a great group from state of Washington who flew here to travel along the coast.

 

We are spending New Years Eve at home snuggled up watching a movie.  Can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year.  We’ll be asleep before midnight and will sleep as late as we want on the first day of the new year.  We can do that as retired old folks and we love it!!

Links to our Reflections on God’s Blessings for 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012 are below.

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

Happy New Year everyone from Roy and Rosalyn Chauvin!
We are looking forward to all that God has in store for us in 2018!