Christmas Letter 2017
As I left you last year we were in a rush, mostly to see after GS #1, #2 and #3, and we had dumped an ran for Oklahoma to rest up. That didn’t last long and then it was time to decide if we kept the Oklahoma house or sold it or? Since we had built the OK house as our retirement house we had put a lot of extra money in and found there was no way it would bring that if we sold it. Our process was that we didn’t have to sell it but it was going to be a big drain as we got to spending way more time in Colorado than OK. We offered it up for rent and had an agent showing it but the first two people that looked to rent this house turned out to be questionable renters so we were back to “get our stuff out and probably sell in summer”. I guess we should have bought a smaller house in Colorado, more like this one?
But since we didn’t and the drain on holding both was big we needed to do something, to that end I first rented a U-Haul trailers and hauled small loads back to Colorado of important stuff, hauled off some stuff, and just plain got rid or more stuff… Amazing how much “STUFF” we collect over the years. After two trips like that I figured out that if I bought an enclosed trailer it would be more than paid for by the time I was done so I found one and bought it… nice mid-sized enclosed trailer, easy to tow, and would fit in the garage in Colorado. That was great but first trip back to Oklahoma with it empty I hadn’t learned anything from my own writing and it got flipped in the high winds of western Kansas. My own writing is here:
That was in January in Colorado but in March in Kansas we got really excited:
We and the trailer survived and I even got it fixed reasonable. So by April we were back to moving stuff trying to get the house in OK cleared out by end of May.
It was amazing that we made a couple trips in March and got in and out between the snow storms… we had several large ones in March: 2017-03-24
But they didn’t last long and I had some other nice days but I sure got tired of shoveling the snow… we are a bit more prepared for that this year, we hope?
We had also been making trips a bit more often so Sherrie could see her Mom. She had been going downhill at a rapid pace so we spent as much time as we could visiting here, making the trips with “STUFF” and back and forth well in early April Charlene passed and left another big hole in the family. As we get older we lose more and more of our family members so I guess that being more focused on the younger ones is needed and that is what we were doing.
By the end of April we had had a lot of nice days and I could enjoy the back deck and have a cold one but hey up in the higher country never forget it ain’t done till it’s done and even then it will sneak back up on you..:
But hey in Middle May??? One day your doing this….
Then…That is when we got the biggest snow of the year… but at least it melts reasonably fast by then…
maybe?
By the end of May I was making decent progress in getting most of the “STUFF” moved and about ready to list the house and take a loss but then toward the end of May our Nephew who had originally, last year, talked about wanting to rent it came back and wanted to rent this year as his wife had finally gotten on at OSU and he was in search of hospital work in the area so “sure” that sound great that he could rent the house , we could keep the shop and storage for the motor home, live in it when we came down to visit, keep attending the FB and BB games and such and generally hang on with both places…
The summer went reasonably fast but we are still making trips to OK to see Sherries Dad, check on the farms and the new windmills on one of her farms and other things…
In October we watched the big Eclipse… no we didn’t make a run up to Wyoming to see the 100% we stayed in our own front yard and saw the 91%… plenty for me…
In September, Sherrie lost another one. Her Uncle LE passed on to be with most of the rest of his family so we made it back for that memorial as well… but finally in early October Sherries Dad made a trip out to visit us…
GS#2 and #3 enjoyed it and I think Elmore did too… although he is never one to stay anywhere very long except at home… he seems to be doing pretty well for 92 and actually is doing more to keep his health than he had been. He gets out and walks some and some good exercise.
So, with the house in OK rented and I think the new renters like it? And having passed a magical age (66 full SS retirement) which I took and all the other things holding together we are still making monthly trips to Oklahoma to visit Sherries Dad. Fitting that in with catching all but one of the FB games and some of the BB games (they are doing better than we all thought but still have a long way to go). I even still have my Ham Shack in Oklahoma with the backup radio and can get one when there as well as having finally gotten some “hidden” antennas up in Colorado. I say Hidden because we live in an HOA that is very Anal about anything outside the house. The HOA has dominion over anything you want to do outside the house. You have to file a permit application for even minor things like painting, gutters, landscape, changes to fences, etc. I think they want to control everything so in reality we only rent (for a hell of big price) the house in the HOA area.
For example on the HOA, I wanted to put in a gate to have access to the back yard in case I need to get back there, well that required a permit and they approved the permit with the description that I would put in a drive for that gate… well we got a violation notice that we could have the driveway….? They approved it but we can’t have it? So we had to take the drive back out… ouch… I had hired the same contractor to build stairs off the back deck for safety reasons and they started that in June… but after failing to know we needed a county permit for the road in the back and having to remove it they got way busy on other stuff and said they had ordered the “trex” I wanted for the stairs and it would be here in 5 weeks… hum… by October we only had this:
I then woke up and started doing some other checking around, had a couple of local licensed contractors come by and was told they probably would not meet code and did they have a permit? Hell I didn’t know we needed one and had hired a contractor that was supposed to take care of all that, so checking that I found that for such work yes it had to have a county permit and no there was no permit found…Further I found the contractor that was supposed to be licenses was not. At this point I had to file a BBB complaint on the first contractor and hire another one to take this mess down and put in the proper stairs… it only took him a few days to get the inspection, (had to have one for the rework of concrete posts and then one to finalize the build) and have it done… of course this time we didn’t go with composite steps.
We have also done several other updates on the house and have several more yet to do… we put wood floors down in the office, dining and living area and had the other wood refinished… new carpet in bedrooms, and some painting and changing and new insulated and sealed garage doors with windows at the top… that has been a big help as well..
In December we did have family pictures taken. Of all things the Real Estate Agent that helped us find the house and same one that worked with Amy and Sean had us all come to Denver one Saturday and got family pictures done… warning… some of us are much better looking than others… ummm some (the old guy in the center)have not aged well?
So that pretty much was the year… good and bad. We are much closer to the Grandsons which Grandma likes, we are still on the road a lot but not exactly what I had thought we would be doing, and we are all doing pretty well. I still do a lot of Radio time, build can birds, spinners, angels, and airplanes when I have time, Sherrie is knitting about 80% of the time and watching old Perry Mason shows… and the rest of the family is doing what they do… so …
Merry Christmas to all our friends, and hope you have a very Happy New Year…