Happy New Year!!!

We’ve been here in Needles, California for a month now and are deciding when and where we’re going.  Our repairs are all done and it’s SOOOOO nice to finally have everything working again.  We also ended up replacing both faucets because the water pressure was so bad and the bathroom one was broken.  We tried to only replace the knobs but I guess they don’t sell those separately.  I love, love, LOVE the new ones.

We haven’t done any site seeing while here either.  We did our Christmas shopping and grocery shopping in between visits to the RV dealer.  Michele, Todd, Ashton & Reilly were coming to spend Christmas with us this year so I couldn’t do online shopping like I usually do.  I had to actually GO to a store, buy presents, wrap them and put them under the tree.  The shopping part was kinda fun even though I’m NOT a shopper.  The bad part was the wrapping.  I ended up wrapping the presents right before they arrived on the 23rd.  Rod and I did a little bit of last minute shopping that day as they weren’t expected till early evening.  Part of that was to keep Rod occupied so he wasn’t asking me every hour to call them and find out where they were.  LOL

Michele & Todd rented a cabin here because there is no way we could have housed 6 people and their 2 dogs.  The kids stayed with us on the Aero bed and Michele & Todd stayed in the cabin with the dogs.  We had been having really nice weather before they got here (of course) and then it turned cold.  I mean, really cold and windy.  Well, not “east coast or midwest” cold but too cold for the kids to go outside and play so the first few days were spent with all of us inside.  The kids were fine playing and watching videos and the adults spent the time catching up.

Here’s the gingerbread house the kids made with help from their Mommy

Christmas day brought NEW toys!  New toys are the best!!  Kept them occupied ALL day!!

Papa Rod liked Reilly’s presents too

After being cooped up for days we decided to take a little trip to Oatman, Arizona.  Since we are on the border of California, Arizona and Nevada it’s pretty easy to take a day trip to any one of those states.  This is an old wild west town where they stage a gunfight right in the middle of the street several times a day.  There are also a lot of “wild” burros there.  They are very used to the tourists and will walk right up to you for a treat.  Several of the shops in town sell bags of carrots to feed to them.

We saw all the decorated yuccas along the road.  Apparently they do this every year for prizes.  It costs $15 to decorate a bush and they get that back if it’s cleaned up by February 1st.  A lot of them were themed.  One even had coffeemate containers all over it and another had CD’s and still another had oranges.  They were pretty interesting….

All ready to go for a ride to Oatman

The gunfight

Rod wanted everybody to know that HE took this picture.  LOL

The burros were VERY tame.  The babies had stickers on their faces because they were not supposed to be fed

Do we look cold or just me?

Ashton as a burro

We just HAD to go eat here because both Rod and Todd can’t pass up a place that says “Buffalo Burgers”.  This place had one dollar bills stuck all over the walls and our waitress informed us that there is $65,000 in bills on the walls and ceiling.  WOW!!

 

Later Reilly helped me make sugar cookies

Ashton has had a loose tooth for quite some time and wouldn’t let anybody touch it.  It was barely hanging on and then the last morning of their visit as he was drinking his hot cocoa the tooth came out!! 

Christmas 2009

So, now with the holidays officially over we need to decide where we’re heading next.  We need to start heading over to San Antonio to visit with John & Erica and then we have reservations in Rockport, Texas for March so we have two months to play around with where we’re going.