Backtracking..................

I fell behind in blogging..................retirement is just keeping me too busy.  I never believed anyone who told me I would be busier now than when I was working - but I'm starting to believe it!  So here's a little recap of the past couple of weeks!

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I joined a hiking club - it meets every Tuesday and there is a schedule done for the rest of the year - each hike is listed as easy, moderate, or difficult and lists the number of miles you hike along with the elevation climb!  The first week I hiked was a lot of up and down but I did it with ease - and I was excited to do the next hike since Glenn had given me the hiking poles to use!  The next hike was listed as moderate but believe me, it was NOT moderate!  It was HOT that day and the climb was switchbacks amongst rocks for a good portion of the hike - thought I was gonna die! But I did survive!  The next couple of weeks a friend and I just did our own hikes on Tuesday but I'll get back with the regular hiking group in a couple of weeks (after I decide to stay home on a Tuesday!)

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I also am doing a shift of volunteer work at a Thrift House in Co. Springs with 2 of my best friends!  The shifts are only 3 hours and the work is easy - distributing items where they belong - keeping the dressing rooms free of hangers - steaming - my, I get tired just thinking about this hard work - ha ha!  The best part of the job is checking out all the clothes and housewares!  Each time we've worked, we come home with a bagful of things!  I really don't think that was the purpose of doing this volunteer work but hey, I'm helping them out by buying things!

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Joleen and I FINALLY got to celebrate our late birthdays with a lunch at a new place in Co. Springs - it has a bakery attached and serves sandwiches and salads and wine and smoothies.  A great place and dessert was yummy!!  That's a mini key lime tart below and it was excellent with the fresh berries!

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I took one week and completely deep cleaned the house (except the windows) from top to bottom - I figured if I got it done now, I wouldn't have to do it this fall! In fact, I probably won't even have to do it next spring either - I've found that the older I get, my cleaning expectations drop.  Works for me!

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One morning I decided to make crepes - I haven't made them in a while and since we had a whole batch of strawberries in the frig, I decided it was a great time to make them!  They turned out excellent - mainly for the fact I have fought with that darn wooden "spreader" every time I make them and after reading through the recipe again, it actually states that after you pour the batter, just lift the crepe machine up and tilt it and rotate it and you'll have a flat round crepe - duh, you would have thought I could have figured that one out a whole lot sooner than now!

Anyway, they turned out excellent and I made a full batch which meant I had extras to take camping to use for sausage/egg breakfast burritos!  Now that I've had a sweet crepe with that mixture, it will be hard to go back to the regular tortillas!

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Building a house takes a lot of patience and a lot of waiting for people to return phone calls!  We have met with the architect a couple of times and FINALLY have the floor plan the way we want it!  Our contractor is bidding out the logs now and hopefully we'll have the final draft of the plans in a couple of weeks so they can go to the building department.  I think the plans for having the shell done before winter are slim but I'll try to be optimistic!