Monday, September 10, 2007

August 8-18: St. Louis, part 1

We left Custer August 1 and spent 9 days driving to St. Louis. We will stay here until the end of September, around the 25th.

Our time here has been very busy with projects downsizing at the small condo, visiting with Barb's mom, Elsie, visiting with out of town guests including Linda's brother, Larry, and Barb's cousins, Sue and Deb, and seeing friends from St. Louis. In addition, we have had to move RV sites every 2 weeks since the state parks have a two week limit. So let me see if I can summarize our time here.

August 8-11: We arrived in St. Louis and set up at the St. Charles , MO Rv park called Sundermeyers. It is very close to where Elsie lives. We do not stay there normally because the daily rate is about 2-3 times the rate of the state parks. But this time we decided to stay there for three days because Linda flew out of St. Louis to Las Vegas to celebrate her oldest daughter's, Susan, 40th birthday. Susan planned her birthday celebration to meet 4 of her girlfriends in Vegas and spend the weekend together. It was to be a girls only weekend. Linda flew in a day early and spent the day with Susan and Robyn. It was the first time that the three of them had been together in over three years. They had a great time visiting. While Linda was gone, Barb spent the 3 days with Elsie. Linda returned on the 11th and they moved to Robertsville State Park, about 45 minutes outside of St. Louis

August 12-18: This was project week. We actually packed out suitcases and moved into the condo for 4 days. While there, we started the downsizing project. Our plan is to sell the condo in about 2 years but want to have it almost empty now so that we will not have work to do when we are ready to sell. I did not realize how much stuff we still had; Barb had been telling me that we had a lot but I did not believe her. Now I know. It took us the four days to just work on the storage locker that is in the basement. It is a small room that we had filled from floor to ceiling. There was a portable closet with clothes and shelves lining all walls with tools, supplies, cords, boxes of pictures, files, etc. We took all of the clothes, tools, etc. to the Indepencence Center as a donation. And then we started on the files and old pictures from my childhood and Barb's. It took us those four days and more to finish with the storage locker. I shredded all the files that were before the year 2000 and hope that I will not need them! The plan with the pictures is to scan them to a DVD.

We felt very good about our accomplishments and will start on the condo itself later in the month.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

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