RV Travels With Huggy

When I logged on tonight at about 20:00 for the first time today, I saw that Statcounter, the program I have monitoring visits to my blog, said there have been 20,001! I have been posting here about a year and a half. I would like to thank those who have been here from the start and any new visitors who happened to find my little corner of the web.

I don't have any photos to post today but should soon. I have been working on my house and have sorted nearly everything in the place. Except the shed in the carport. I am thinking that I'll be ready for a yard sale on Sat but probably not yet ready on Fri. I'm looking forward to getting this behind me so we can get on with our new life. I should have done more before the wedding to get the place ready.

Pat & I did go visit my son's Navy ship on Memorial Day and it was fun. We took Pat's 13 YO grandson along and he really enjoyed seeing the Navy base and the ship. They didn't have an official open house but since I had a family member who is a crewman we got a very good tour. I had forgotten how step those stairs (I would call them ladders) are when you go from one deck to another. And there are no elevators. I did take some photos and should be able to post a few later, when I can get them reduced in size.

Labels: Boating, Family, Grandkids, Pat and I, Trips to see things

I am making pretty good progress on sorting & packing up my house. I am writing this from the new location for my PC in Pat's computer room where it was moved to yesterday. I just took a little time this evening to reduce & edit a few more photos to post so will do those now. I didn't get things ready to hold a yard sale this weekend but that might be for the better as it is a holiday weekend in the USA (Memorial Day) and many people will be away from home. I really think I can have it ready for next weekend. Uh-huh. I hope.

These photos will start out with the reception line as our guests entered the clubhouse where our reception was held.


There were a lot of friends and family who came, some coming quite a distance to be here with us. These are long time friends of Pat's who have now been introduced to me.


This photo combines new friends and old friends. I am shaking hands with my next door neighbor in the park, D, who I've known about three years since he and his wife, B, moved to the same park where I live. He also took some of the photos we are enjoying from our wedding day. There is also a couple that I've known since 1969, along with their youngest grand daughter who is the same age as my youngest who was one of our flower girls. D & J are the God Parents to my youngest son, M.


I am about to shake hands with the Red Hatter who is now the Queen of the Little Mountain Red Hatters while Pat is greeting S with her husband B behind her. They are members of our church, St. Paul's Episcopal here in Mt. Vernon. Pat's grandson, B, who was our ring bearer, is between S & B in the background.


Here is our Priest, Vicki, who not only performed our service but met with us many times before the service to help in so many ways. Thank you, Vicki!

Pat is an Elvis Presley fan. She has always been a fan of Elvis' and has quite a few things in her collection. When her younger daughter heard that we were getting married and going to have a wedding, she said she wanted to take care of ordering the cake. About all we knew about it was that it would be Elvis themed and included raspberry filling.

Here is that cake! It was wonderful.


Pat and I are posed behind the cake in one of the traditional photos that you just have to have in your collection.


I am including this photo just because I like it. I think we were kind of trying to decide where to cut into the cake and how we would go about it.


Okay, we probably broke tradition by cutting the top layer. I guess it is supposed to be taken home and frozen to be eaten on the first anniversary. The cake was very good but we are both trying to watch what calories we eat and unfortunately cake, even very good cake, isn't on that list. So I guess it is okay that the top layer was eaten on the wedding day.


We had agreed ahead of time that we would not smear cake over each other's face and we held to that promise. Here I am feeding Pat her piece of our wedding cake.


And here is Pat feeding me my piece of the cake.

There will be a few more photos from the wedding in the next few days but right now I have to get back to putting things away. I have made an awful mess in the middle of Pat's computer room with boxes of my "stuff." I told her tonight that I thought I only had another 18 to 20 car loads of my stuff to bring over. She said she might move out of her own house. Good thing I was just pulling her leg. A little.

Labels: Friends, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos, Wedding

We held our practice fairly early the morning of the wedding day as some of those involved came in from out of town and didn't get here very early Friday night. The day dawned clear, sunny and beautiful, although it was a little cool that early in the morning (9am.)


This first photo shows the guys walking from the clubhouse toward the gazebo where the service would be held. Our park is a senior manufactured home park and it is beautifully maintained. They are from front to rear, my sons M and B, my brother L, Pat's grandson B and me. The part of the clubhouse behind us is the indoor swimming pool which most of the kids would probably rather have been in than out here doing this practice.


Here is our Priest, V, getting the ladies and Pat's escort lined up, talking about spacing, etc. They came from Pat's house and walked up this pathway to the opposite side of the gazebo from where we guys came from. We had my two grand daughters, ages 6 and 10, as flower girls and they did a great job.


Pat was escorted by her older grandson, M.


We all made it to the gazebo and are receiving directions from V as to who stands where, who moves when and to where, etc.


Getting more directions.


It was all finished and Pat & I were walking away toward the clubhouse for the reception. Wait, this was just the practice but it sounded good to maybe just go ahead and sign all the papers and consider it a done deal. Except that we had a lot of guests coming in just a few hours to participate with us.

I'll finish a third post with wedding photos in a few days, that will cover the reception and the amazing cake that Pat's daughter, P, ordered for us. I've never seen anything quite like it. Now I must get back to sorting and packing things. I have to get this house finished.....

Labels: Family, Grandkids, Photos, Wedding

Our priest who married Pat and I two weeks ago gave us a pair of tickets to a Mother's Day concert with Glen Campbell at the Skagit Valley Casino's Pacific Showroom. We attended last night and had a good time, although it was over sooner than we thought it would have been. I didn't take my Nikon camera but did take the small Sony. I wasn't sure if I would be allowed to take photos or not, with a big name entertainer, but it looked like it would have been okay. Anyway I do have three photos that I'll post today from the concert, even though they are not as sharp as I'd like. It seems that in order to get good stage lighting photos I need one of the faster lenses that I can't get with the small camera.


Here is Glen singing fairly early in the show. There was a live band supporting him and the way they worked together I would guess that they are his regular band.


Glen's daughter, Debbie, was also in the show and she sang a few songs herself, then did a couple with her Dad. Here she is by herself.


And here they are singing together. I think he moves around more than she does as I seem to have less sharpness in the photos of him than I do of her.

We enjoyed the concert. The Skagit Valley Casino is one of the best of the casinos here in the northwest, but the showrooms are just flat floored with regular stacking chairs, so it is almost better designed for chairs with tables or something like that than for a live show on the stage. I'll try to get a good photo later of the outside of the place.

Labels: Entertainment, Photos

Here are some more photos from our actual wedding ceremony. I have had to work on all of these in Photoshop Elements as they were dark from the camera due to us being under the roof of the gazebo on a sunny day, so it has taken a bit longer than I had planned to get more posted. I have decided to break it down into about three sections and will start with this set which is the middle one, the ceremony itself. Later I'll post some photos from before the service, of the practice and things leading up to this point, then some from the reception after that.


This first photo was taken by our friend, R, who was running the sound system. We decided we didn't want to use traditional music so the bride and her escort, along with the two flower girls, entered to the song, "Truly, Madly, Deeply" by the Australian group, Secret Garden. This photo was shortly after the whole party had arrived "on the scene" in the gazebo. The guests were on the lawn behind the priest and facing us. That was our Priest's suggestion as she said they came to see us, not her, so she wanted to have us facing them. It makes sense when you think about it.


This is a similar scene taken about the same time from the position of the guests by my DIL, J. J was able to move around so she took a lot more photos than R did who was pretty much stuck in place by the sound system behind us. There were the two of us, my brother L and Pat's grand daughter N as Best Man and Maid of Honor, Pat's grand son M who escorted her in and presented her to be married, her grand son B who carried the rings, my two grand daughters K and K who were flower girls and my two sons B & M along with Pat's two daughters C & P as attendants. I think this photo shows at least a glimpse of most of them.

I am skipping over part of the service where there were two bible readings, one by my son M, the other by Pat's daughter C, followed by the song "Love Me Tender" by Elvis. Did I say that Pat is an Elvis fan? Wait until you see the wedding cake in one of the later photos!


I am placing the wedding ring on Pat's ring finger in this photo. We have since taken them back to the jeweler's to have the two soldered together as they wanted to turn independently of each other as they were. They are designed to fit together and look good that way.


Pat is putting my ring on me. She had a hard time getting it over my last knuckle so I ended up pushing it into it's final position and I think that is the reason for her big smile. I was threatened to not tickle her & make her laugh and I didn't do it this time. Honest!


Ah, we are nearly finished. This is the final blessing by the Priest before she presents Mr & Mrs Dick Phillips to the guests.


And we are leaving the gazebo to head into the clubhouse to great our guests at the reception. The music we left to was "I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters, followed by "From This Moment On" by Shania Twain. You can see our two flower girls starting to follow us. They still had flower petals left and had so much fun dropping them as we came in that they did it again as we left!

As you can see from the photos the weather couldn't have been better. The day before was overcast with showers and we were really thinking it was going to happen inside but the day dawned clear and stayed that way. There were tables and chairs set up inside in the Mirror Room and outside on one of the patios so guests had their choice of where they wanted to sit. As to the service itself, I think it went very well.

I have cropped these photos to a 4 X 3 format as I just bought a digital photo frame to display them in and that is it's format. I figured I would have more control over how they look by doing the cropping myself rather than just letting it cut them. I've had too many heads partially cut off that way!

Now I've got to get back to work on my house. I've still got to sort & pack more things in order to get it listed for sale. I want to go out and use our new motorhome and Pat says she doesn't want to do that until I have finished with the house. I think she knows I am a procrastinator. More later.

Labels: Family, Friends, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos, Wedding

Saturday, April 28th dawned bright and clear. We had sunshine and warm temperatures which was a real change from the weather the day before, with rain most of the day. We held a practice at 9am, then the actual ceremony happened almost on time at 1pm. We have been pretty busy since then and were away from home a few days, so I don't have many photos ready yet to post but here is a first one:


Thank you all for your well wishes and helping us pray for good weather. It worked fine as the weather was perfect all day. More later, but now I have a house to get cleaned out!

Labels: Pat and I, Wedding