Sleeping in at an RV park, and cute cats

WELCOME, Susan S!  Thank you for following my blog, I enjoyed reading yours, and hope you enjoy following along with me and Katie!

This is something I've been thinking about:  How easy is it to sleep in when staying at an RVpark?

Then Margie, (My Healthy Living Thru Weight Control), mentioned in her blog today that she and her husband, Bruce, set the alarm for 6:30 a.m. every day.  They are full-timers.  I work four days a week, and always set my alarm for those work mornings to make sure I am up on time.  Just In Case.  Since I've been doing this for so long now, I usually wake up before the alarm goes off.  But on the other three days, unless I have to be somewhere early, I NEVER set it.  I still usually wake up early, unless I'm really tired. 
 
I was always a sleeper when I was young, I always hit the snooze button over and over, and got up at the last minute. As a teenager I slept in as long as I could on weekends, 10 or 11:00 a.m.  Drove my mother crazy!
 
My grandmother was an early riser, one of those people who wake up and get up really early, like 5:00 a.m. - every day.  No alarm.  I always wished I could do that and now I can, kind of. 
 
Speaking of clocks and time, this little YouTube video is funny - a tiny bit off color, but funny:
 

 
My plan when I am a full-timer is to get up when I wake up without having to set an alarm.  I don't expect to be much of a sight-seer, I just want to park and live in different areas of different states.  I've wondered, though, how easy it is to sleep in when one is parked in an RV  park.  The rigs seem to be very close together, and unless I'm boondocking or staying in a relatively empty park, wouldn't the normal noise of people getting up, going out, moving around, starting cars, etc. wake me up, and everyone trying to sleep in?
 
Might seem silly, but this is something I've been wondering about. 
 
Speaking of silly, here's an April Fool's Day prank I read on-line.  Don't try this at home:
 
"I set the alarm clock for one minute past midnight so it was April 1st. The alarm went off, my husband got up, shaved, showered and then came back to the bedroom to get dressed, checked the clock and, well, he didn’t talk to me for two weeks."  LOL!
 
Even though I am a dog person, I have had cats in the past.  When I lived in Pollock Pines, CA, I had two cats, Baxter, a grey tabby, and Brady, an orange tabby.  They were the best cats, and I really miss them.  These are two photos I have of them, and I thought you might enjoy seeing them.
 

They were so cute together.

Baxter and Brady sitting on the back of the couch.

 

Judy, what kind of bird is this?
Baxter's favorite place on the deck.

This bird feeder didn't attract many birds!

 

From me and Katie, have a good evening, everyone! :)

Me and My Grandkids

Last night got pretty cool, and when I was sitting on the couch watching TV and playing with my laptop, Katie was sitting next to me shivering.  She doesn't shiver like a lot of small dogs, only when she is cold.  So I dug out one of her sweaters, she was so excited she ran and ran all over the house.  

Here she is - in a beautiful blue sweater with black polka-dot collar - what all the fashionable dogs are wearing. : )  And the shivering stopped.

My son, Tom, and his wife, Trish, are out of town for a few days and they needed help with the kids (my grandkids).  So, Friday I picked them up at school and dropped them off at home, where they have someone helping them with the kids.  I had wanted to spend some time with them while Mom and Dad were gone, but I've had a bug since I returned from Vacaville.  (I usually do come down with something when I get home from Vacaville, I think it's the change of weather.)  It's not too bad, but I didn't want to pass it on, just in case.

So, today at noon I picked up my grandaughter, Kennedy, brought her to my house for lunch and some playtime.  I always have my son's kids, who live nearby, come over for their birthdays and we bake a birthday cake for them, they get to help as much as they can for their age, and then they get to decorate it, and bring it home.

So, today when Kennedy got here, the first thing she wanted to do was bake a cake.  Not a birthday cake, an unbirthday cake.  I never bake anymore, unless the kids are here, but luckily I had a cake mix in the cupboard.  As Kennedy was putting it together and mixing it up, I realized I didn't have any "store bought" frosting, which I usually have on hand.  Out came the "encyclopedia cookbooks," remember them?  Sure enough, a ton of frosting recipes, including a simple white powdered sugar/butter frosting, just what I was looking for.  And boy, was it good!

Notice the Jelly Belly hat - I didn't realize I brought it home in the bag with the Belly Flops, and Kennedy happily wore it while baking.

I couldn't find my usual cake pans, so we used a large shallow pan, and I cut it up into squares so they would be easier to carry home with Kennedy.  Also, she got to decorate four cakes instead of one.  First frosting, then marshmellows, jelly beans and lots of sprinkles.  Great Job, Kennedy!  :)

Close up of these beauties:

I have a second bedroom that was my guest bedroom, then it was my office. Then it was my sewing room.  Now it's my craft room.  It has everything you can think of - that I haven't already sold on Craig's List - for making paper type crafts.  Kennedy is 7 1/2, and very creative.  She wants to be an artist when she grows up, and whenever I set her up at one of my tables with my supplies, she always comes up with something pretty great.  Here she is seriously concentrating on her work:

Here is the picture so far...we had to leave for "cheerleading class," so we left everything out so she can finish it next time.

A bit blurry - here's close ups of the parts:

She used lots of 3-D elements that were pretty cute - a bell over the roof of the house, a wooden sign on a post that says "Home Sweet Home," a ladybug on the flower.

Of course, palm trees for a San Diego house.

A pink cloud and "Kennedy."  So cute.  But not finished yet...

After cheer class, we picked up Kennedy's brother, Gavin, who is 5.  He was at his Little League game when I picked up Kennedy, and then he stayed to watch his friend's game, too.  The friend's parents brought him home, and we picked him up and went to McDonalds for dinner.  They also have a little brother, Graydin, who was two in April.  He's my youngest grandson, and stayed home today with the Nanny, while the other two were out and about.

I have five grandchildren - two are my daughter's kids, in Vacaville, and three are my son's here in San Diego. They are such cute kids, enthusiastic, smart, polite, and so much fun.  There are all the best!  But they do wear me out - so I am now going to get little Katie and we're going to bed.  Looks like she's ready!

 From Me and My Dog, good night everyone! :)

Droid2 and Picasa

Good Grief!  I forgot to WELCOME my two new followers yesterday.  Too excited about my new phone.  So... a belated WELCOME to Heidi and Freely Living Life!  Thanks for following Me and My Dog, and I hope you enjoy the ride!  We're happy to have you along.

Still working on setting up my new Droid2.  I went in this morning to the Verizon store. They said on the phone it was a class from 8 to 9 am., so I was there at 7:50 - of course, early!  They opened the doors at 8:00, and their were a few of us.  It's not actually a class, just a tutorial of whatever questions you have.  They had 4 or 5 sales people there to help, so it went pretty fast for all of us.  I bought the screen cover - a thin plastic sheet that goes over the screen so it won't get scratched - and a cover for the phone.  I was going to get the leather cover, but a man next to me recommended the rubber, or silicon, cover, which he said was easier to hold onto, so that's what I got.

I've got all my contacts in now, with photos by their phone numbers so when people call me, their photo comes up and I can see right away who it is.  At least for my family and friends.  I always go around the house and take photos of photos with my phone.  Then I transfer them to the contacts.

I downloaded a few free apps - games mostly.  Organized the home page with the apps I will use the most.  It's a pretty cool phone, and I think worth the money I paid, $150.00.  (I can't believe I spent that much, but I did.)  At least my company will pay the phone bill until I retire - that's a great benefit of  my job, my boss pays for my phone and my gas.   (Not total freebies, the reimbursement for phone and gas was in lieu of a higher salary, so it's actually part of my pay every month.)

I downloaded Picasa again, I haven't had it on this laptop, and it did it's thing finding all the individual faces and putting them together in separate files.  Love the way it does that face recognition.  I'm wanting to put together a video of my granddaughter, Lauren's, first gymnastics class - she was so cute and loved it so much, I pretty much videotaped the whole 45 minutes.  There's a lot that needs to be cut out, so I need to find a program to do that.  I've never worked with video before, so between the new phone, playing with Picasa, and learning how to cut the video into a movie, I've got my work cut out for me.

I spent a good part of this morning adding names to the photos Picasa didn't recognize.  Then I made a collage of some photos of Andrew, my grandson.

They are such cute kids, smart, athletic, good looking, sweet, well behaved, and they love Grammy and Katie.  What more could I ask? 

Have a good evening from Me and My Droid...I mean Katie! :)

The best intentions

I had the best intentions of posting some info and pictures I took last week, but then my new Droid2 arrived!  Taaa Daaa!

I haven't bought a new phone for three years, so all the features in this phone were really foreign to me.  When I was at my daughter, Kristy's, house last week, she had a new iPhone and it looked pretty neat.  She was following people on Facebook, getting and sending e-mails, checking websites, lots of different things.  I've been thinking about getting a new phone for a while now, and that tipped the scale for me.  When I got home I did some searches on the phones available, and decided on the Droid2.

My daughter-in-law, Trish, has the Droid X, which is the one Leo Laporte, the Tech Guy on the radio recommends, but I was thinking I might do better with a real keyboard and the Droid2 has a slide-out keyboard.

So, it arrived this afternoon, and I've been playing with it since - pretty much non-stop for over five hours!  At first I couldn't even figure out how to get the normal Home Page - it had something weird on the page that I couldn't get rid of.  And it kept "going to sleep" every 30 seconds while I was trying to figure out things, very frustrating! : (  I called Verizon, and the woman couldn't figure out what was going on, either, put me on hold, and I lost the call.  That was probably when my old phone was disconnected.

The phone didn't come with an Owner's Manual, so I went on-line and downloaded it.  I'm going to have some fun with this!  For the last 5 hours I've been setting it up, downloading apps, syncing it, etc.

It's kind of like reading the blogs I'm following:  I see something, click on it, start reading, accidentally hit the screen wrong, then I'm in another area, so I start reading about that, or checking it out, looks good, download that one, etc.  Little by little, I figured out some things, and I think I like it.

I called the local Verizon store this afternoon to see if someone there could take some time with me if I came down, and he said every Saturday morning from 8:00 to 9:00 they have Droid2 classes.  So, think of me tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. (if you're awake) when I should be sleeping in - down at the Verizon store learning what I need to know to operate my phone.  What a world we live in!

I also got the Multimedia Station to charge it.

I can create a wi-fi hotspot with up to five connections with this phone, so, from what I'm reading in some other blogs, it might be helpful on the road?

I'm with Verizon, and until today I was on a month-to-month basis since my 2-year contract was up last year, but I'm sure I'll stay with Verizon, so signing up for another 2 years won't change anything for me, except to get a $150 discount on the phone.  This is the first time I've actually paid anything for a phone, I hope it's worth it!

From Me and My Dog, have a good evening, everyone! : )

Catching up on my reading...

I have so many blogs to catch up on.  I didn't do much reading while visiting with my daughter and her family, so tonight I'm catching up and enjoying hearing about all your adventures while I was gone.

I'm also following the links to some of the blogs you are following.  Once I start doing that, I'm gone...  Suddenly it's two hours later, and I'm following new people in all phases of their RV lifestyles. 

It's fun to add new followers to my list.  Seeing that you follow their blogs is a good recommendation for me that I'll probably enjoy their journeys, too.  So, thanks!

I love the way Blogger allows me to list the people I follow, and puts them in order so the most recent blog updates are at the top of the list.  Before I started my own blog, I had the list of blogs I followed in an Excel spreadsheet, and every day I copied and pasted every URL into my browser, in order, so I wouldn't miss any.  Of course not everyone posts every day, so lots of my copy/pastes had nothing new, and it was really time consuming.  This is a MUCH better way, and I can zip through all the recent posts until I get to ones I've previously read. 

So... back to my reading.  I'll blog more tomorrow.  My eye is on the prize:

From Me and My Dog, have a great night! : )