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I hope you are all high and dry right now. 
The images on television are just heart breaking. 
Those who read from Texas I pray that you and your loved ones are all okay and have what you need.

We arrived home Saturday around dinner time.
It was wonderful to be home.
I think we brought the cooler rainy weather from up north back with us.

There was no vacation.
There was no sitting on the beach and soaking up the sun.
There was no relaxing.
This was a visit, not to be confused with a vacation.
I was seriously stupid to think otherwise as my husband has pointed out to me.

There was nothing done that I was hoping to do or all the people to see.
People disappointed me big time and there was a boat load of guilt thrown at me.
I tried to deflect but.....it didn't always work.

I did get to see my parents, a couple of friends and my sister Jen and nieces and nephew. But overall I wouldn't do it again.
I don't imagine I will go up there again until my father passes. But I do feel bad for my mom. She is a care giver and it looks like it has taken its toll on her.
For her, I would go back to help her. She doesn't get a lot of help with my father.
Everyone has their own busy lives and my mom takes care of him and no one takes care of her. She continues to work and I am thankful she is 14 years younger and can care for him. He is not well and I hope he doesn't have to live long like this because it is so sad to witness. He deserves better. Doesn't everyone when that ill?

I came home to hook up my camera to my PC to download the photos and somewhere along the line I lost my cable. They were always in my camera case so I can't fathom what may have happened to them. I may have to purchase another to see all my photos.

It stormed most days there. The beach outside of the house was washed away after our 2nd day there. The waves were too much for Izzy. She was thrown around and came out of the water with her bumper and ran up the stairs back to the house. Those stairs that the woman said were 30 steps to the water were actually 49.  This was after a storm and you can see the beach is gone and all the debris all around. My nieces are those tiny figures trying to get sunset shots. You can see the rain drops on the deck in the forefront.

I forgot after not living there for over 24 yrs that the sun never really is out there.
I mean, a full sun and no clouds. Sun and clear blue skies.  We had clouds every day. Sun would peak out and people would say, It is sunny, what are you guys talking about? We laughed. It reminded us of Seattle. It was exactly like a summer in Seattle only Seattle doesn't have storms and lightening etc. It just is soft rain. That is glorious if you don't wish for a beach vacation. 

We stayed in a little village that has every spare space filled with grape arbors. I think that is pretty in its own way. This town is the home of Welch's.
So there are Concord grape vines everywhere. Izzy would walk by in the morning on our walk and sniff them every day. She would put her head in the air and just sniff. I think she liked the smell of the grapes.  Because of this, there are a few wineries around. And you'll be surprised to learn that I did not go to a single one. Not a fan of the concord grape or its wines so no big deal to me.
(I don't even like grape jelly)
I grew up with that wine and tried those wineries and just didn't care for it so that saved us so time and money right? 

The house was nice enough but the view was great.
The house was clean and that to me is all that really mattered. 
Very clean.
First time I have ever rented a home this clean and I loved it. Rick and I both felt like it was well maintained.  Sitting in the living room was a wall of glass and it was awesome to sit and look at. To see the rain coming from Canada or the lights over a city in Canada and just hearing the water hit the shore. That was wonderful to sleep to.

For 6 months everyone was made aware of the party for family and friends. 
At the 2 month point, I reminded everyone
At the 2 week point, I reminded everyone. All rsvp coming except 2.
Cornhole, food, booze, overlooking the water kind of fun.
Only a few came. (10)  To say Rick and I were upset pissed is an understatement. Then all those that didn't show up kept after us asking when we were getting together.  More guilt heaped on. The purpose of the party was to see everyone at one time so I didn't have to be given this guilt if Rick and I may have wanted to spend some quality time together or to be with my parents. We got one evening together alone and it was only for a couple of hours.

We spent a small fortune on food and booze for this event. Those that came we had a great time I think. All laughed like crazy, ate and drank a bunch. The corn hole was up but everyone was just mingling and laughing and telling stories and having a nice time. The last person left at just past 11 pm. We watched the sunset that night and here is a shot of it from my phone camera.

This one below was after a storm one evening. See the sun peeking through? 

That was what my family calls sunny.

 This was after the same storm. I loved the sky and the water here. It felt like fall and it was very pretty to watch the sky change. We were glad we brought cool weather clothes! The water sounds all week were the best!!

 

Seeing the rain coming from Canada across the lake was a cool thing to watch.

We watched this until we got wet. See the sunny day? 😎

 Another sunny afternoon off the deck below. 

 This is one of the sunnier days at the beach. See the pattern here? Izzy loved it here.

The sunniest day of our week was the day of the eclipse and it was overcast/partly sunny. The eclipse was nothing there because we were too far north. But that didn't stop people from trying. It was funny to watch the people more than anything. The cereal boxes instead of glasses. Remember those from grade school. I sure forgot until I saw people with them.
Colanders. Yes, we saw a woman with a colander on her head at the beach. I didn't want to take her picture without asking. I didn't want to ask. 
Rick said she was asking for a photo op she was wearing a friggin' colander on her head. Yea, it was pretty damn funny.

This below is a sound bar that was underneath the TV. One rainy evening we actually got a couple of hours alone. We attempted to watch the television.

Boy, it ended up being an hour of laughter. There was no sound coming from this sound bar.

They had a tablet that you may see to the left of the sound bar in this photo.

This was pages of instructions on how to use the TV. We followed it and we finally got it turned on. Then we couldn't change the channel or raise or lower the volume without standing up and putting the remote over top of the sound bar so the TV could accept what we wanted. You can imagine how fun that was. But you couldn't be a couch potato since you had to get up any time you wanted to view the guide, raise the volume or change the channel. We had some laughs about this. Rick would ask, "Don't you want to change the channel, Margaret?" 

I knew that meant he did not wish to get off his arse in the corner of the comfy sofa. 

After an hour of playing around with this thing, I thought Rick was going to throw it in the lake. But since he had a few drinks he too was laughing. Oh, my goodness, a sound bar with no sound. When a friend stopped by who we knew would know how to use this stupid TV we asked him for help. He did everything we did.  Mr. I.T. who has a sound bar said that the sound bar wasn't working. DUH. We knew that but it had to be turned on for the TV to work at all. We looked at connections and finally just gave up. We went outside and sat in the drizzle and just laughed at the whole horrible week.

One evening while I was with my parents my husband went to the local casino.

He likes to play Texas Hold "em.   When I picked him up he said it was an odd vibe there. He said most at the table didn't know how to play and everyone was a senior in the whole joint. I said, "You do know you're a senior right?"

He laughed and said, "Oh yeah,"  Rick thinks he is 35 years old. 

So here we are with the weather we had up north. It's cool, it's rainy but it's all good. We are not flooding, we have power and we are thankful for all of it.

I hope all of you, your pets and your loved ones are high and dry.