The Long Overdue Post - Major Catch Up Time

First I want to say thank you for the emails and phone calls wondering how we were doing since it had been awhile since I had posted a blog update. We are doing fine but lots has been happening, so let me try to catch you up on all the happenings, news, move and where we are now.

We spent the last three weeks in Portland at the Funtastic Shows Corporate Office and Shop just off of Powell Blvd. All three units (we are in the blue unit) were all together for this festival. The first two days in Portland was set up days. Ron worked both days and I worked on Wednesday. Ron set up his normal Lolli's (swings) and then other rides as needed. I helped with set up for the burger kitchen. I hope I don't ever have to do that again. We had to pull the lines for clean water, dirty water and power. The power lines are heavy. We had to string the three lines through a bridge. The bridge is a U-shaped metal contraption that the lines go up one side across the top and back down the other side. I believe the bridge is 12 feet high at its highest point. It is held in place by 2'x4' metal plates/feet. Believe me it was a lot of work especially for someone not used to doing physical labor (me). For this festival Ron worked in the rides department. He was on the Mardi Gras. It is a house of mirrors two stories tall. He enjoyed it and especially liked being upstairs as he could see down the midway in both directions. And like usual he loved seeing the excitement on the little ones faces as they went through the maze. I worked in the Burger Kitchen with Wendy & Joel. I did the cash register, fixed hot dogs, served corn dogs, pop corn, cotton candy and soda pop. I even made one cheese burger! It was a fun job for three weeks but it is definitely something I do not want to do all the time.

We worked long hours. Leaving the bone yard between 9:30 and 9:45 every morning and returning home after 10:30 p.m. each night with a few nights not getting home till almost midnight. The first day of work we rode the show van to the Rose Festival. After that Ron was asked to drive Joel & Wendy's car as the traffic, one way streets, and blocked streets made Joel nervous. Ron did have to drive the show van one Wednesday both ways and one Friday morning as Eric, a gamer was off and there was no one else authorized to drive a show van. All but three days it rained. It made for lots of mud, dirty socks and shoes and cold feet. Getting home at night and taking off the shoes and socks was a wonderful feeling. And sleep was wonderful. 7:30 a.m. came awful early.

We did have a medical scare with Shawn, one of the ride jocks, who was taken to the hospital with extremely high blood pressure. He was hospitalized for two days and then went home for three days. He is doing much better and has rejoined the unit here in Marysville. As well, Nicole, one of the ride gals, who was 9 weeks pregnant miscarried while we were in Portland. She is feeling much better after being off work for a few days. Please keep these two friends of ours in your prayers.

Bad things do happen ~ James from games was fired for getting into an altercation with another employee. Niki, a gamer, and Daniel, a ride jock, quit for personal reasons.

Last week Wendy was sick and missed Wednesday and Thursday. She ended up going to the ER and being diagnosed with bronchitis. Thursday night when I went to bed I was not feeling too well. Feeling like a cold was coming on. Friday morning I woke up at the regular time, texted Wendy and told her coffee was ready and I felt terrible: bad headache, sore throat and achy body. By the time she came for her morning coffee I was back asleep. She asked Ron how I was doing and he told her I had fallen back asleep. She told him to tell me to keep my behind in bed and that is what I did. I woke about 2:00 in the afternoon and promptly fell back asleep till 6:00 p.m. I got up and made myself something to eat. Stayed up till about 9:30 and went back to bed. Woke up at 7:30 Saturday morning feeling so much better. Went to work and did okay ~ moved a little slower as the day wore on but made it through the day. Sunday I was feeling a lot better.

Sunday was a very long day as we only got 6.5 hours of sleep Saturday night due to not getting home till after 12:30 a.m. and up at getting ready to go again at 7:30 a.m. The carnival closed about 8:30 p.m. and then the fun began. It was tear down time. It took Joel, Wendy, David (a spot helper) and myself from 8:45 to 11:15 p.m. to tear down the kitchen and ready it for travel. I helped a little outside but mostly did the inside stuff: had to take everything off the counters and put it on the floor after all the dishes & utensils had been washed and put away. The final job of the evening was hooking up the refer truck to the kitchen to be moved up to Marysville. I got home about 11:50 p.m. I called Ron who was doing tear down of the Lolli's and other rides and told him I was home. I told him to be safe and I would see him sometime Monday. The guys worked all night finishing up about 9:30 a.m. Ron had worked 22 hours straight with two one-half hour breaks and two fifteen minute breaks. Needless to say he was exhausted when he got home. He crawled into bed after grabbing a quick shower about 11:30 a.m. I woke him up at 6:45 p.m. I wanted to make sure he could sleep Monday night. After he was up for about an half hour we borrowed a friends truck and went to Winco to get groceries. After we got home we reading the inside of the motor home for the jump on Tuesday morning. We crawled into bed about midnight Monday night. During the day I spent time reading and chatting with others in the bone yard. We had been having with the power throwing a breaker off and on while in the bone yard and Monday happened to be one of the days that we had no power till evening. (That is why there have been no new blog posts this past week).

I was told on Sunday morning that I would be needed to drive the show van from Portland to Marysville on Tuesday morning for the jump (move). The plan was to be on the road by 7:00 a.m. So we were up at 6:00 this morning to do the final pulling of power lines, take the windshield cover off, pick up the rug to be ready to be on the road by 7:00. Well I went around to see who was riding in the show van ~ 2 people and myself, and waited for Kenny to get back from getting gas in the show van and his truck. When he pulled into the bone yard he told me I might not have to drive the show van. It seemed there were two drivers for the red unit and they only needed one. So after discussions between Kenny, Pat and Mic it was decided that Pablo would drive our show van, Daniel would drive red units show van and I could ride with Ron. Yippee!!! The extra hours would have been nice but riding with Ron is so much more preferable. We finally left the bone yard at 8:00 a.m. We stopped in Chehalis at the Nike Outlet store and bought ourselves each two pairs of good tennis shoes. If you remember we stopped at Walmart in Wenatchee and bought new shoes for each of us. Well both our pairs of tennis shoes had problems. Ron blew out a seam in the top of one of his shoes and I ended up with a hole in the bottom of one shoe thus necessitating new shoes for each of us. We plan on taking the shoes we bought in Wenatchee back to Walmart for a refund ~ they should have lasted more than 6 weeks.

We arrived here in Marysville about 1:30 this afternoon. Another successful jump without any motor home problems! Ron got us backed into our site and leveled and then headed off to work. They started set up at 1:45 p.m. Because the power was not set up I turned the generator on so I could take the fridge off of propane. About 3:30 the power tower was up so I pulled wire from our motor home behind four rigs and over to the tower. Rob Rhew asked me if I needed help and I said no, I could handle it. Boy am I learning how to do things with the motor home (smile).

We were blessed by a friend yesterday with a 150' power cord so once Ron was finished with set up today, he and Albert went to Home Depot to get the necessary parts to put two plug ins on the power cord. So now we don't have to use two extension cords to get power. This should eliminate the problem of throwing the breaker at the tower. While Ron was fixing that, Albert hooked up our water. We are T-d off of his line so we don't have to go so far to get water. We are now totally set up in the motor home with the windshield cover being the final thing to be done. I made dinner of roast beef with mac&cheese and now we are settling in for the night.

Changes that are happening with our unit and my job~~~
When we arrived in Portland Theresa went to the doctor with a health concern. It was discovered that she has advanced cancer and will be having surgery tomorrow (6/16) morning. She will then have to go through chemo and radiation treatments. With this new health concern, Rick & Theresa will not be traveling with the blue unit. They are hoping to join us again in August in Salem, OR. Rob Rhew, the man who interviewed & hired us is now our acting show manager and I will be taking over the responsibilities in the office that Theresa had. This week, Debbie, from the white unit, is also here in Marysville to finish training me on how to do payroll, manage the money boxes for the ticket sellers and the two food booths, and other things that Theresa did. I will be working closely with Rob. Ron will continue to sell tickets, do set up & tear down and run rides as needed. Ron had a conversation with Rob. It went sorta like this:

Ron: Theresa & Rick was our bosses and Theresa told Ron what to do. Now who will be his boss since we know that Rob will be my boss.

Rob: I am your boss.

Ron: But you can't be telling me what to do all the time with all that Rob has to do. So is Alice going to be the one telling me what to do?

Rob: Guess it looks like that. That's probably not much different than normal any way.

When Ron told me about his conversation with Rob I just started laughing as we have this joke between us. Ron can tell anyone that he is the boss because I say so. Guess I just get to boss him around a little more now and get paid doing it.

So tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. I start my new job. I am excited and a little nervous. I know I will do fine.

Our itinerary for the next few weeks ~

6/15 ~ Marysville for the Strawberry Festival (6/17-20). We are at Marysville Middle School. The carnival opens Thursday at 3:00, Friday at 3:00, Saturday at noon and Sunday at 1:00.

6/21 ~ We jump to the Puyallup Fair Grounds where the bone yard will be for the next two weeks.
~ Taste of Tacoma (6/25-27). The carnival will be at Point Defiance Park.
~ 4th of July (7/4). The carnival will be at Ft. Lewis for a one day show.

NOTE: as of right now we have been told that we will have 2 or 3 days off between the Taste of Tacoma and the 4th of July. If it stays that way we are planning on going to Blaine. We would like to get a few things from our storage unit and see Jamie, Suzanne & Opal along with a few friends. I say this tentatively due to my recent job change we do not know if I am going to have to work the last 3 days of June and July 1st. As soon as we know the plan I will update you all.

7/5 ~ We jump to Kent for the Kent Cornucopia Days (7/8-11).

7/12 ~ We jump to Olympia for Capital Lakefair (7/14-18).

Praises & Prayer Requests ~~

1. Praise that we made it safely through the Rose Festival with no major injuries and those that got sick are feeling much better.

2. Praise for friends who are making a special trip down to Marysville bringing my next three months of prescriptions.

3. Praise for the hours we are getting to work which means we are meeting our financial obligations. And we paid off a major bill this month.

4. Prayer for Rick & Theresa as they face this major health concern. Theresa is scheduled for surgery tomorrow (6/16). Please pray for guidance and wisdom for the surgeons, for peace of mind for Rick as he waits during the surgery and for complete healing for Theresa.

5. Prayer that Ron & I can continue to be a witness to Rick & Theresa even though we will not be seeing them on a regular basis. Praise that God gave both Ron & I opportunities to to encourage and let them kno we are praying for them during this time and it was well received.

6. Prayer that I can catch on quickly to the new details and responsibilities of my new job. That God's love will shine through me as I work with Rob.

7. Prayer for continued safety for Ron as he works the rides, set up and tear down.

I know this was a very long post and I hope you made it all the way through. Hopefully I will not be working the 12+ hour days and will have time to write more often. I enjoy writing my blog and keeping everyone up to date with what we are doing and where we are hanging out.

Till next time ~ Alice & Ron