I'm Baaack!

So how is everyone??? I thought about you all and wondered how things were going...just fine I am sure but still I wondered. We had a good trip but boy did we work hard. Mom and I were commenting on the way home last night how nice it was going to be to get back to work for a little vacation!

We left about 4:30am on Friday (after about 3hrs. of sleep), drove all day and got there around 7:30pm, spent Sabbath day at church and with Grampa and then Sat. night the "fun" started. We had a HUGE garage sale on Sunday, to the tune of about $7500.00 which was completely crazy and insane with people. The rest of the week we were up by around 7 or 7:30, started working around 8 and hardly stopped until 10 or 11 every night. Then Saturday night we started loading the truck, finished around midnight, got up early and finished packing the last minute stuff and Grampa and my uncle drove out around 11am. Then mom and I had to get our stuff packed up and between us and my aunt who stayed on to help we got the house pretty clean and left around 3pm ourselves. Then we stopped and spent a couple of hours at some friends house while he fixed the u-haul trailer I was towing and then we drove until around 12:30am. Slept till 8am, stopped in Portland at great aunts house for a few hours and got home around 9pm last night. We are actually quite exhausted. While we were at grampa's mom did a lot of the dirtier cleaning out on the jam packed covered back porch, she did most of the burning (there was a burn barrel that never went out from Monday morning till Friday evening!) and she did a lot of the selling of the food stuffs that grampa had like wheat, dry goods, canned food, etc. that he wasn't going to take with him. I did all the cooking, hauled a lot of furniture around to various places by hand and in my truck, and did the fiddely sorting and packing and wraping inside. One day I also did a bunch of cleaning in the shop and hauled three loads of furniture to the neighbors house in my truck, with the help of the neighbors teenage son. Right until the end no one believed that we would actually get him out of there when we said we would and I even wondered at little at the begining but once all the big stuff, cars, ATV's and furniture that needed to go was sold I knew we were on the home stretch. I haven't worked that hard in a long time though and I am glad it's over!
It was wonderful to spend time with Grampa though and I also had the chance to stop and play the piano from time to time which was great. I haven't played in so many years I wasn't sure I even remembered how.
We had so many experience while we were there and I won't bore you with them all but suffice it to say that so many things fell into place and we had the strength to get through everything, despite the lack of help and support from any other family members, so we know we were supposed to be there.

I learned a lot of things during the last 10 days:
1. I learned that I don't last very long in the car awake after only 3 hrs. of sleep...not very long at all. I don't think I made it 10 min. out of bellingham and slept all the way to almost Portland! Good thing mom was ok driving till I woke up. :-)
2. I was thrilled to actually be able to find a waterfall that I vaugely remember visiting about 15yrs. ago. Not only did we find it again but we took lots of photos and I will try and post some soon.
3. I learned that while I am not nearly as good as I used to be I can still play the piano, sort of, and my hands are still too small to reach more than an octave!
4. I learned that most people keep TOO much stuff!
5. I learned that people that come to yard sales are a different breed of duck and some of them are downright obnoxious and way too cheep to be considered the good Christians that they like to think they are. There were some that really got on my nerves and who's behaviour I found quite shocking.
6. I learned that if you rent a u-haul trailer from some place called "Discount World" thats probably what you are going to get...discounted service and goods...long story but after really bad customer service they rented me a grounded trailer, meaning it was not supposed to be out on the road, which of course I didn't know till 2 days later when it was loaded and we were on our way out and stopped at our friends when we discovered that I had no lights on the trailer. God is good though and our friend is somewhat handy electrically so he was able to fix it enough that we at least had running and brake lights and one blinker, that is as long as my truck lights were on! No I am not planning on paying for this trailer...I have an appointment with the manager at the Bellingham U-haul tomorrow and we are going to have a little chat!!
7. I learned that I will not die if asked to lead song service and give people a mini lesson on proper breathing. I did not volunteer but I did it and survived and actually it was sort of fun. Would have been a little better if I had known more of the songs but it went ok.
8. I learned that family members get pretty weired over "stuff" and anything they think will be valuable.
9. I learned that with enough rain the area in CA where we were can actually be quite beautiful and now I understand why people live there, sort of!
10. I also learned that I just can't resist bringing home books when they are there for the taking...yes I brought home 3 boxes full, though I have no idea where I am going to put them...I guess I am going to have to reorganize my room and put up some new shelves. Wonder if this is the sign of something terrible?? :-)

We didn't really bring home that much stuff, mostly books and glass ware and kitchen stuff so that was good. There were a few other things like a set of lamps and a big mirror but that was the extent of the big stuff. Probably my favorite items were an old 8x10, hand colored, of my gramma and her brother when she was probably about 3 or 4, my grampa's navy uniform from when he was in during WWII, photos of him wearing and also an old hand crank drill that still works beautifully. (I also had fun going through the shop picking out a nice box and a bag full of tools.)

The weather was beautiful while we were there, in the 80's while we were there and the last Sabbath we were there after church we also went to a place called Bald Rock which was great fun. It's an area of huge rocks that you can climb all around with fantastic views of the Orville and Feather River valleys. I will make sure I put some photos up soon.

There were moments of joy and laughter, moments of reflection and a few tears as we all closed out 30+yrs. of history moving grampa away from the place I was born and from where he lived and said goodbye to my gramma . It was worth it to be there and I am glad we took the time to help him and share it with him since the rest of the family couldn't be really bothered to help out anymore than they had to.

Thanks for listening to me ramble on. Please let me know how you are and if there is anything interesting that happened while I was gone.