Déjà vu ?

Chris and Melody took the children and went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a vacation. I have talked to Chris and Melody a couple of times since they left and everyone is having a good time. I can always hear Riley in the background whooping and hollering and just being a child having the time of his life. Melody said that Seth doesn't like riding in the car any more. I wonder why...poor baby!

Yesterday when I opened my e-mail I found this picture of Buck-a-roo Riley riding a wild bull. Just the other day I had gone through old pictures of Chris to put together a slide show for his birthday on the 18th of this month.

Hehehe.... This is one of the pictures I had picked out. Hey isn't that Buck-a-roo Chris? It sure is!! This picture was taken of Chris at Knott's Berry Farm when we lived in California, he was the same age as Riley. That was a dream come true visit to Knott's Berry Farm for Chris. Being a huge fan of 'Dukes Of Hazard' one of the stars of the show was going to perform there that day.

I thought I would give you a tour of our 'Heaven on Earth'. This will be stretched out over several days, so don't forget to come back so you don't miss the follow ups. When we first found this house, from the parking area you couldn't see the house. In fact I wouldn't even get out of the truck to go look at it. I did finally walk down the path to look at it on another house hunting adventure. J.D. insisted that I take a look at this house. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. The house consisted of four rooms (and small rooms at that). The bank wouldn't even finance it because it was so small. We talked to the owners and together worked out a land contract. We were the proud owners of a slice of the God's Heaven on earth.

In this picture you can see how much of the briars and underbrush J.D. had cleared by hand. Where the dirt is worked up to right of the path was a tangle of briars and underbrush. The same was true of the left of the path to the second bend in the pathway.

This is the Wood/Tool Shed. J.D. had cut back enough of the under brush and briars to allow enough room to walk around it without getting snagged by thorns.

This is where you come in the gate from the parking area.

As much ambition that we had, it was soon clear to see that it was going to take a lot more muscle and energy than either of us had to give to clear the property of all of this excess wilderness.

We even have an operational little house out back. It is a compost outhouse so there is no smell to it. Of course some that remember using an outhouse may argue that without the smell it doesn't count as a real outhouse. This is the view that we had from the screened in back porch. One evening while sitting on the porch enjoying the peacefulness that we had found in this house and the property that it sat on, I saw something run across the path to the outhouse. I sat there and watched quietly and pretty soon there it went again. It was mice....... lots and lots of mice. Back and forth they went across the path.

On the right of the path about half way to the house you can see a pile of just a little bit of what J.D. had cleared that needed to be burned. It didn't take a lot to convince us that we needed a bulldozer to come in and clear what we wanted cleared. The top of my list was getting that mess cleared out in the back to drive the mice further away from the house. We called a young guy that Melody recommended for the job (She used to work at as a secretary at a lumber company. I used to tell people my daughter-in-law was a lumber jack). He showed up with his bulldozer and for all the work he did (2 days worth) he only charged us $600. J.D. paid him $750 for his work. I couldn't begin to tell you how many tree stumps he uprooted in the proccess of clearing out the brush.

That's it for today friends. You will get the second installment of 'Our Retirement Home' tomorrow. Have a blessed day.