Work, Work, Work

Well, we started working full time last Friday. Doug has been scheduled to work the PM shift for the whole season, which means starting any time between 1:40 pm to 3:40 pm depending when the park closes. On the weekends in June and July the park stays open until 10 pm, which will be a long day. The retail department was kind enough so far to change my schedule to PM shift also to accommodate Doug's schedule. Hopefully this will continue throughout the remaining season. The only difference is that I always start the PM shift at 2:40 pm doesn't matter how long the park is open. It will be some very long hours for me on the weekend, as long as the park is busy.

We are lucky to have some very nice neighbors next and across from us. Last Friday was Julie's birthday (neighbor to the right of us) and we had a little party at Dave and Jody's across from us.



See the nice small fireplace. It is actually fueled with propane so you have the heat, but not the smoke from a wood log. There is one couple in the park that burns wood logs in their big fire pit a lot and I'm sure glad we are not next to them, since the wood sure smokes a lot.

Working has not been so bad so far except on Sunday. It was 94 degrees in the park and I had the swing shift. Swing starts at 11:20 and you give lunch and afternoon breaks as well as restock the stores that are assigned to you. I managed to get the two stores that are on opposite ends of the park. It took me longer to walk to the store at Gulch then give the actual 15 minute break in the afternoon and my next stop was the candy store at the beginning of the park. It was so hot that the retail department actually was giving away water to their workers to make sure that we don't pass out (normally you have to pay 50 cent for a bottle of water). Makes you wonder what it will be like in July!!!

Yesterday was our first day off together and we went to see Shrek in 3D. It was pretty good and we also checked out a couple of stores to check on prices for new glasses for us. It has been three years, which means, as old as we are getting, we need new glasses for these tired old eyes. LOL

Well, that's it for today, we are both scheduled to work the PM shift through Sunday and hopefully the weather will stay in the mid 80's, which is not so bad.

Surprise!!

We bought a new car!! Many of you might wonder why we did this, but there actually there was a good reason. All the time we had the VW, we really never drove more than 200 miles a day. Well, coming up here meant driving 300 mile days and I realized just how uncomfortable the seat in the Rabbit really is. Doug would step out of the truck still refreshed and ready to go another 200 miles, while my back, neck and hip really were aching. So once we got up here we started talking about maybe looking for a more comfortable car.

So without me knowing, Doug went to check out what is available in cars just a little bit bigger than mine, so he would also have some more leg room. So about three weeks ago he came back with this brochure for a Chevy Malibu. I was skeptic, but said okay to just taking a look and maybe doing a test drive. Well, to make a long story short, after getting the car below invoice and getting $2000 more for the Rabbit than Kelly Bluebook suggested, we ended up buying a new car. Here it is!!


Isn't it beautiful! It actually has heated seats and since it has been cold up here, it was really nice to have a warm butt while driving. I did not say any thing earlier, since we just got the car back from having a clear plastic film attached to the hood and sides to prevent rock chips like I had on the Rabbit and now the car is the way we want it.

Otherwise, not much has been going on. We had a 5 day rain streak and I just about went crazy in the rig. We decided to go to a mall just to get out and of course found the one mall that had about 2/3rd of its stores closed. It was just not our day. It was nice last weekend, but the park was really slow so some of the people that were supposed to work Sunday afternoon got told not to come in. I was supposed to do a double shift and was send home at 3 pm, which is just a normal AM shift. Doug has his training day in rides today and of course it just started raining about 30 minutes ago. At least the weather is supposed to be nice and warm for the weekend. We both are scheduled to work the whole weekend.

Yesterday we got our tour through the whole park and had a chicken dinner sponsored by the park. It was a lot of fun and I should have brought the camera, but I did not know that we were allowed to, so unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. By May 31st we are allowed to visit the park on our days off and then I will take pictures of our new work place.

Pella Tulip Festival

I can't believe that we have been here for three weeks now. The weather has not been very kind to us. We are running the heat pump almost on a daily basis and it is 48 degrees right now outside and the wind is blowing so hard, it is shaking the rig ever so often. It has been so rainy and cold the last few weeks that we were happy when the weather was decent yesterday and we decided to check out a tulip festival that we saw advertised on TV.

Each year they have a tulip festival in a small town about 40 miles from here called Pella. They have a huge window and door factory on the outskirts of the town, which reminded me that we actually had a Pella door front door installed in our house in New Jersey. We found a place to park the car and started walking towards in the center of town to see what was going on.

There were tulips planted all along the main street and pretty much in front of every house. I was not aware how much of a Dutch influence this town has, but we were soon to find out. Walking towards the town square we heard some music and went to check it out.

The little kids were so cute. We continued on to find a huge windmill, which is actually a museum. We will visit it some other time, since there was a lot of people around waiting on the afternoon parade.

We checked out some really nice victim shops and found this beautiful tile work on the side of a building.


Well, it took us about an hour to finally make it to the town square.



The tulips were so beautiful and all over the place. There was also a small oldies car show and I just had to take a picture of this car. Apparently Doug's dad used to own one when Doug was a child and him and his brother used to ride in the back. Would not be able to do this today.

Well, I have to work again tomorrow and Sunday. Sure hope it gets a little bit warmer, or I will be freezing my buns off.