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1 to 15 January 2015   16 to 31 January 2015



Thursday January 1st, 2015.


January first, the day we make New Years Resolution!  Well here is mine, my resolution is to not make any New Years Resolutions.  I should be able achieve this one!

This morning we are at the flower shop buying flowers for the funeral home.

My mother was a person who loved to laugh.  Since I go some of Mom's genes in me, I also love to laugh.  Since I became an orphan, I am in split custody between my big sister Estelle and my big brother Rolland.  Today is the day when I move from one "parent" to the "other".  Estelle and Robert are going to Robert's family for diner.  We are waiting for my brother to come and pick us up.

Nice weather!


Once we are at my brother's place it is just like at my sister, we talked pretty late into the evening.



Friday January 2, 2015.


Brrrr!  We are not used to this white stuff on the ground!


I and Rolland talk about geocaching.  Rolland has started to look for caches with his car GPS.  It is not as precise as a hand held GPS, but it works if you want to see if you like geocaching.  We have found two caches today.


A good meal and some photos.  The good one!


And the funny one!


Another evening that finish late.



Saturday January 3, 2015.


Today we are going to the funeral home for the wake.  It is from 2 o'clock until 9 o'clock tonight.

Benoit will be sleeping here tonight.  Rolland and I are getting his bed ready.


My laptop has some issues, I think it is the keyboard that is the cause...


Marilyne and Charles picked up Benoit at the metro on their way here.


My Mother!  I was very lucky to have a Mom like her.


Many friends and acquaintances dropped by today.  We took a break and went out for diner.
Mom's grandchildren, Marc, Maryse and Marilyne with her spouse Charles.


Benoit, Guillaume, Karole and her spouse Moreau.


Mom's children, Estelle with her spouse Robert, Christianne with her new boyfriend Julien.


Rolland with his spouse Suzie.


By 9 o'clock, we left the funeral home.  The weather is changing.  It will warm up tonight, snow for tonight, but freezing rain for tomorrow.


The roads are getting ugly.  We know that some of Mom's friend and family did not come because of the weather and we do understand.


Once again, we talk late into the night...




Sunday January 4, 2014.


Benoit ended up sleeping on the couch because his bed deflated...


Brand new snow, but rain will be here soon...


Benoit getting his bag ready, as he will be going home after the wake.


The joy of winter, we really do not miss it one bit!!!
 

9 o'clock and we are on our way to the funeral home.


The weather is really turning bad.  The freezing rain has started and a few brave souls came to pay respect to Mom.
The liturgy for Mom was really good.  The priest was very thoughtful and respectful of our mother. He did a very good "closure" for our mother.
As per tradition, we had a small buffet for everyone present.


A view of the hall....


Marilyne and Charles will drop off Benoit at the Montmorency Metro.  Goodbye Benoit, we will see you again this summer...


We took some flowers back with us from the funeral home.


Here are some observation/comments about the last few days.
A big thank you to all the grandchildren for coming and staying the whole time.  As a child of the deceased, it was much appreciated.  One of the side benefits of my mother passing, is the chance to see people I have not seen in a long time.  Thank you Mom!
 

 

Monday January 5, 2015.


When I say the weather is changing, it is changing.  When we arrived in Montreal, it was -20 C.  Yesterday afternoon it was +6 C. This morning it is back down to -18 C.  Mother Nature does offer beautiful scenery!
 

Another good meal  and a beautiful Christmas tree.


One of the roses...


Despite a Siberian cold outside, me and Rolland went out to look for some caches.  We did not stay outside very long.  It was too cold and too much snow on the ground to find caches.  We made it back and were cold to the bones.


In the evening, I showed Rolland how to relief some pressure in his back.  As a joke, I also told him to do some Zen things with the fingers!!!


Do like me Rolland!


He is good.


We got to bed not too late since we have to get up early tomorrow morning to get to the airport for our flight back to Texas.


 

Tuesday January 6, 2015.


Brrrr!  And double BRRRRRR!
At 4:35 AM this morning, it is - 28 C.  We will not miss this temperature...


The night was pretty short, so a little nap as we wait for our plane!


Before we leave Montreal, we have to go through de-icing.


Here, we are about to land in Chicago.


Cute couple!


There is nothing wrong with this engine while it starts, but I am sure some passengers were worried!


A little snow on the tarmac.


This is a weird looking snow plow/broom truck.


We arrived at gate C 3 and have to go to gate B 3 in less than 30 minutes...  A good thing there is a tunnel half way down the hall or we would never have made it in time.


A pretty tunnel!


A dinosaur with a toque and a scarf for Christmas.  Cool!


On our way to San Antonio, Texas.


We finally leave the snow behind us...


A good book, a good wine...


With my love...  Happiness!


The runway in San Antonio.
 

Almost there!


We are out of the airport and on the road by 4:15 pm.  We lost one hour in Chicago because of a mechanical problem with the aircraft.  Nothing to worry about.  Nice sunset with a +17 C.


Oufff!  What a day, we got up at 4:30 this morning and got to San Antonio at 4 pm.  We only have to drive another 4 hours to get home.

Everything is good at home when we arrived.


 

Wednesday January 7, 2015.


Wednesday is Flea Market day.  Off we go for our Wednesday walk at the market.
A movie place and of course they all are illegal copies.


With the rain we had here, they still have some muddy holes...


I decided to buy/try this cup of fruits.  It is covered with a red power spice, not too hot and some (lots) freshly squeezed of lime juice.  It is good, but you hardly taste the fruits.  I prefer the taste of the fruits.  The spice taste covers every other taste.


We find these little dresses so cute.  We have offered to Guillaume and Marilyne  some.  Once we know what color they like, we will buy them a few.
 

The weather forecast for the next week is not nice.  Cold, for here, and rain.



Thursday January 8, 2015.


Michele went out and got all the ingredients to make the same soup as her sister-in-law Manon.  It is a soup with very low calories.


It must have been a good soup because by the end of the day it is all gone!



Friday January 9, 2015.


I wake up to a gray sky.  I still go out to do a few caches.  I have to get out and breathe a little fresh air.  It is a nice + 7 C.
By the time I get back home at 11:30 am, the rain starts for good!


Might as well use this time to catch up on our blog.  By the end of the day, I finally made it to January 7.
With the forecast for the next few days as wet and cold, it will be inside time a lot.
We are actually thinking about moving to Florida where it is warmer, but I do not think we will.   We do not feel like traveling for 5 or 6 days in rain and cold weather.



Saturday January 10, 2015.


It rained all night and it continued until noon.  At 7:53 this morning, it is 36 F (2 C) outside and 56 F (13 C) inside.
BRRRR!


The ground is saturated with water and the water is just traveling on the road.


There is actually current...


The funny thing is once the rain stopped, in 20 minutes the water puddles are all gone from the grass area.


We got an email from the owners of the RV Park we go to in Ontario, North Shore RV Park.  They are camping at Bentson Palms and invite us for a "cheap beer".  We will be going this afternoon.


Jan & Jannie are really nice people.


Of course, the toys have to come with them.  They even have a dune buggy in the trailer.


Jan & Jannie.


We really enjoy seeing them again and the cheap beer was good to!  I think we will have to come back for more cheap beer!



Sunday January 11, 2015.


What is this bright light in the sky?


We had a few sunny breaks today.  A lot of Winter Texans came out of hibernation...

We decide to have lunch at eh Chinese buffet.  On our way there, we saw an old fashion lawnmower!


It was OK, nothing more, nothing less.


After dinner, we skyped with our son Jeremy and grandson Gabriel.
 


Gabriel was a little rascal, but so funny!



Monday January 12, 2015.


We are in the middle of a heat wave!?!?!  Not really, but the temperature still went up to + 18 C.
Usually we play petanque on Sunday evening, but with the cold day we had yesterday, the games moved to today.  We had a good afternoon off fun playing petanque.
 
Tonight is bingo night and Michele goes and plays, but not me.  She did not win anything!




Tuesday January 13, 2015.


Last evening we received an email from Charles and Agnes asking us to the movies tomorrow afternoon.  Since the temperature is going to be in the +8 C range, we accept.
 
I can just imagine this police "car" having a high-speed chase after another golf cart ?!?!?


Just for fun I went around Charles' truck with our car.  We all got a good laugh about it!


We are going to see the movie "Into the woods".  I am not going to go into the description of the movie, but we liked it.


Here, most movie theaters offer, for free, head sets to help people hard of hearing and they also offer a device so you can read the sub-titles of the movie playing.  What a good idea.


The way you see the sub-titles.


This movie theater does have some pretty cool washrooms.


To put an end to this very good afternoon, we all go to this Buffet restaurant.


Very nice restaurant, but we have seen way better.



Wednesday January 14, 2015.


I woke up to this weather!  A light drizzle in coming down, just enough to keep everything wet.


A nice 43 F (6 C) at 9:42 am...


Yes!  It is warming up, we are up to 6.6 C by 12:21 pm...


OK!  I have to keep my spirit up and positive!  It will really warm up, soon, I think!  The weather is so yucky we do not even go to the flea market this morning.

After lunch, we go shopping for a new kitchen sink.  Our sink is not looking very good.  Of course, they do not make the same model anymore!  They have one very close to it, but not quite the same.  So tonight I will premeasured everything and make sure it will fit with very little modification...
I will order it tomorrow morning.

It is now 7 pm and as I write this blog and yes, it is still raining :-(.



Thursday January 15, 2015.


After lunch, I ordered the new sink for the motorhome.  The RV service center is very busy just filling the propane tanks because of the cold weather!  Good business for them!


We should receive the new sink some time early next week.

This railroad crossing was the site of a terrible accident in 1940.  You can read about it on the second photo below.
 

Next, I am going to look for some more caches.  On my way to a cache, I see so many birds in the field.  It is hard to see and I could not take a good photo of it, but the field was literally black from all the birds.


This is a very small sample of the quantity of birds in the field.


My first cache is outside of this church.  It is a beautiful church, but no luck for me finding the cache!


The second cache is located on the grounds of the "Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle".


The cache should be here!
The cache is supposed to be at the Vietnam War plaque, but it is gone.  You can read more about the  signs just a few photos down.
   

Like a said, no luck with this cache either!
This is not good, I did not find two out of two caches...

I have better luck with the next few caches.
The cache is located under the first dinosaur!


At the end of the day, I got 4 out of 6 caches, not too bad!
The weather is warming up some, +56 F (12 C).

The sun even pokes his head for about 20 minutes WOW!

Some time ago, we purchased a brie cheese fondue.  We only have to heat it up 4 to 5 minutes in the microwave and it is ready.


It is not too bad for a fondue.

Until next time.

Life Is Good!



    
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