Bill’s friend of 30 plus years, Joey, and his wife Janet drove all the way from Northern Illinois to get a bit of Florida sun and warmth…

Why all the coats, long sleeves, long pants you ask???? Yikes!!- a series of thunderstorms rolled through the night before they arrived making the sand roads just wonderful to drive on…. AND the cold front behind the storms whooshed through to the tune of a cold, breezy day of barely 50 degrees with their first night here dipping down to 23. We had installed them in the Magic Bus as Janet was particularly cold and Bill and I (OK ME, ME, ME!!! mostly) like the house cool at night. (Lest you think I am freezing the man, I also introduced him to down comforters which he LOVES…) Anyway, guests in the bus mean everyone has a bit of privacy and each couple can keep the temp whatever makes them happy.

BUT…when we went to bed, the temperature was forecast to get to mid-30’s so we had the bus set to heat with heat pumps. Heat pumps are good to 40ish and then less efficient as it gets colder to usually no heat at all below 30. When I woke and it was 23 I panicked a bit…but good news - for whatever reason the heat pumps spewed out heat all night and kept the bus at a cozy (HOT) 74 and all were happy.

It was a bit warmer the second day so a 4 wheeler trip was taken. A good time had by all and a great visit all around.

Funny how one thing leads to another… It is always fun to find out that someone new has found “From the front porch” and even more fun when it is someone who doesn’t know me. Yesterday I received a comment from a Jill Shalvis so off I went following her website link to see what she wrote about.

Turns out she writes about quite a lot! She is a best selling suspense-romance author as well as a fellow blogger. A visit to Amazon.com is in the works for me but as I perused her blog, I came across an entry titled How to amuse yourself. You should take a look at her entry as then this entry of mine will make a bit more sense. Plus, her entry is funny and we all need to laugh!

I’m not giving it all away, you need to click on the link and go look. Her “How to amuse yourself” entry reminded me of these photos - I took them last year on the property adjacent to mine in Montana. I had such fun looking at them again, I decided to share and everyone can laugh at me!

I had my “new at the time” camera that had a snazzy timer allowing me to set it on a tripod and have it take multiple shots at preset intervals. This entailed a lot of back and forthing on the snowshoes to get focus and background “right”. I wanted the mountains as the background so I had to put the camera some distance from where I needed to be in order to get them in the photo.

Off I go!

Oops!

At least I’m laughing!

A couple nights later, the full moon called me out to almost the same spot.

Karl, waited patiently while I fooled with the camera and settings…

A beautiful night with the moon, the mountains and my good dog - captured for remembering.

ORS friend Carole, who lives in Texas - east-southeast of Dallas - emailed me that she had daffodils up and was planting pansies next week and commented “Spring has sprung!”

It took me unawares…it is still February!!! However, here in north Florida, the azaleas are blooming and the camellia are leafing out and OMG!!! - it looks and feels springlike!

hmmm…maybe it is “spring”? It was 75 yesterday, although the forecast today is for wind, and thunderstorms and then a cold front and freezing temps the next 2 nights before it returns to the 70’s.

And I thought Montana weather was fickle….

And Bill has 4! They are not so little anymore and all have little girls or boys of their own - some of them (grandchildren) not so little either.

Youngest daughter, Nicole, visited this weekend. They traded a few choice comments about each other’s hair and other things…ya know…father-daughter stuff! We ate Bill’s spaghetti - one of Nicole’s favorites - and watched a movie. Nice!

I had fun starting to get to know Nicole. Having no children of my own, I often thought that if I had a relationship at this point in my life, “the man” would likely have grown children and I would get the benefit of knowing grown children and the grandkids by association…and so…it has come to pass!

We had been kicking ideas around about fitness equipment - what we might get, where we might put it, whether to do it now or wait until we had a better handle on where we are going to live …remember we have a house in FL, a house in MT and still 2 motorhomes …

Short story - Bill found, bought, picked up and installed (with a little help from his friends), the above treadmill. We decided to put it in the front room to start. The idea is that if it is there we will get on it, maybe several times a day. When we get in a good habit of using it, we’ll move it to the garage which has an air conditioner and power.

Now, neither of us have unrealistic expectations of recovering the bodies of our youth - the idea here is that we both need to shed a few - ok more than a few - pounds and increase fitness and generally we both want to be in condition to enjoy the activities that we love. To do that we need to change a bit…

change - to do something different.

There are so many things in life that we cannot change or control or do anything about but accept them for what they are. And change, even something as seemingly small as a bit more activity, a little less food - it is hard! And we resist - we don’t like change. Kind of funny as this week on Flawed but Authentic, there is a great post called 27 Words.

The 27 words are the first part of the “Serenity Prayer”:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity, acceptance, courage and wisdom - powerful words.

Hmmmm…time to quit fretting over some things that I cannot change, time to get on the treadmill and change what I can!