Dave had help from a couple good friends down here that weld metal so he was able to have them put the frame together to fit the solar panels. Then Dave had to add an extension to the existing pole so we could manually turn the panel to follow the sun. When the panels were in the frame and the post was in place, all Dave had to do is hook up the electrical wires. That took some doing but it got done and now we have more than enough solar energy to keep our batteries full and functioning. Before with the old panels, we wouldn't float, (meaning the batteries weren't fully charged) until mid afternoon. Now with the new panels we are usually floating by 9:00am. On cloudy days with the new panels we do charge better than the old one and very few times do we need to run the generator to charge the batteries. So life is good.
Today, the 13th is our grandson David's 8th birthday. He sure is growing up fast. Our friends, Phil and Creela that live in El Cajon, California, came down to stay a while at their Bahia house. It was good to have them here. They had a lot of work to do though on the house as they hadn't been down here for a couple years. It is hard to leave a place down here for that long without attention. Batteries go dead and material deteriorates. Today was Creela's birthday too so we invited her and Phil for dinner and I gave her a choice of what she wanted for dinner and she said lasagna. So that is what we had and I baked a cake for her. She didn't know that I made arrangements with the neighbors to come over after dinner to have cake with her and wish her a happy birthday. Creela said she really didn't care too much about the birthday as it wasn't a big one. So I figured a nice dinner would be good. I dressed the table real special and after we had dinner, the neighbors started heading up the stairs and into the house. Creela was shocked and very happy!!!! We blew the candles out and we all enjoyed a chocolate strawberry bundt cake. She just glowed.
I'm back playing train with the gals. I haven't been doing too bad lately. I won the pot of quarters so that is good. It's all for fun. Our old truck has been going back and forth to town to get more cement blocks.
The 16th the Baja 1000 race is coming through town and past our place. The road to town had been graded and then soil was put on top of it and rolled so it was absolutely pleasant to drive. We could go more than 15 miles and hour on that road now. But with the race coming through, there were bikes and the big trophy trucks just screaming by and we all were afraid the road would get trashed again. Well to our surprise it wasn't bad. There were some rocks that came up to the surface and a few wash boards but not like it was. So we were all very pleased. I have been able to ride the quad into town a couple times, so that is how good the road is.
This month is the time when the Mexican and American artists get together and have an Arts and Craft show. On Friday the 17th we all set up our tables and a couple of the gals came in the day before to set up the Christmas tree. I am the announcer again for the show so I usually start advertising over the VHF radio the Monday before the show. The day after set up is Opening day and we have a raffle where those who come to the show put their name in a jar to get a chance to win a prize. The artists give items for the raffle and it usually are items we had a hard time selling the year before. Ha!!! Need to get rid of them somehow. We serve finger foods, water and lemonade. We usually have a large crowd and the guys come out just to eat the food!!!!
We make most of our money the first day. The ladies who run the show always want the show to be a week. So we open on a Saturday, stay open until Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, then reopen again on Black Friday where we have items marked down ½ price. Then Saturday the show closes at 12:00pm. We break down our tables and pack all our stuff up, have a quick meeting and go to lunch. I mentioned that I thought the show was too long and we should only be open for 3-1/2 days. That way we close on a Wednesday before Thanksgiving. After the first day the rest of the days we only get a trickle of people coming through if that. So we sit from 10:00 to 3:00 all day just waiting and hoping someone will come and buy something. So we all decided we would run the show for 4-1/2 days. That works for everyone since most of us have either family or friends over for Thanksgiving and the day before is always a prep day for the turkey and pie baking. So we will see how it goes. For some reason the American ladies who have been doing this show for about 18 years, have wanted it to be long so they could make a lot of money. Well a few years back they did because a lot of tourists came through town. Not so much any more around Thanksgiving. And the American people who are here in November tend to start heading home either just before or just after Thanksgiving. Since I have been doing the show the day after opening just drags on. I don't work the show everyday thank goodness, as we all sign up for the days we want to work. I end up working a couple days and then the first and last day of the show. At least the gals were open to the suggestion to shorten it. I did pretty well with selling things so I was happy.
The show is over and now I am back to making the angels for the nursing home in Poulsbo
and ornaments for a select few of my friends to take home and put on their trees. I usually like to make something to give as a gift. The garage is coming along. It is going to be nice when it is done. Dave drew up the plans for the garage. It is bigger than the house but all that is going in it is the Toyota Tundra truck and the 16' boat.
The garage under the house will become a work shop and store the quad. We got the tin sheets off the roof that covers the trailer and the bamboo room and bathroom. It looks funny but that roofing is going on top of the garage. We will start tearing down the rest of the roof over the trailer and other rooms soon. Right now we are having a big wind storm so it is blowing gusts to 30. We have had to flatten the solar panel so the wind isn't putting pressure on the panels. Tito had to quit working as the sand was flying and so were buckets, barrels, empty cement bags and one of the tin roof pieces went flying. Don't know how that happened as there were rocks holding them down. Obviously one wasn't secured well. It landed in the bushes and like a dummy I thought I could grab it and try to move it back to the pile, but that didn't happen. It blew out of my hands and flipped over and landed in the bushes. I was lucky as it could have been a disaster for me personally. Dave was in town getting material to finish the support for the roof. So he couldn't help me. I put 3 large rocks on top of the tin and I am hoping it doesn't go anywhere. Tito wants to finish the roof so bad he will work in the wind and sand storm. We told him to take the day off, but he is stubborn and wants to get the job done. He only has another board to cut and put up so he should not be long. The wind is so strong we have to hold on to the railing coming down the stairs as there is a north wind. The house vibrates and the windows rattle, but that is a Baja house. I was going to clean, like dust and then vacuum the other day, but when I heard it was going to be windy, I held off. I am glad because there is already sand on the inside window sills. This is winter for us. It blows then calms down but it does get cold enough to have to wear layers. We do have a propane heater if we get too cold, but that usually doesn't happen until January. Here is a picture of our view when it is windy.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for my family; friends here in Bahia and up north. The wind has calmed down and Tito is back at work, starting the process of tearing down the structure around the trailer. Tito agreed to exchange building the garage for the trailer. We would pay him each week for the hours he has worked and in the end he would have the trailer to either live in or sell. It looks like he wants to sell it. He starts at 6:30am and works until about 7:00-7:30 then goes home and has breakfast, comes back and works the rest of the time. He wants all the wood that is good from tearing down the structure so when he is done for the day he piles it in his truck and hauls it to his house where he takes the nails out and cuts off the bad parts and then burns the rest. We knew the termites ate a lot of the wood but didn't really realize how much until we started taking it all apart. It was good we are tearing it down now before someone went through the floor. Dave and I talked about saving the bamboo to use later but decided it was too full of years of dust so Tito took it. If he or someone else can use it that is great. When the cement needs to cure he then starts on the structure near the trailer. He is anxious to get the trailer out so he can sell it. There are some people interested in it and are coming to look at it next week. Tito finally got all the structure over and around the trailer taken down and now it will be interesting to see how they move the trailer. It has no wheels or tires. Tito managed to borrow what he needed to get the trailer to move. He tried to move it with his little truck but there wasn't enough horse power. So our neighbor came over with his truck and pulled it out and delivered it to Tito's house, just up the road.
The next couple of days Tito's dad came and hauled the trailer to his house in town so the people coming to look at it didn't have to come so far to see it. Needless to say it didn't sell. The people would have to supply their own wheels and tires and I don't think it would make it very far. At least it is out of our hands. Now that the wind has settled down, Tito put the tin panels on top of the garage.
Yeah!!!! By the end of December we will have a garage. Things are progressing and little by little the old structure in the front of our house is going away. What a mess but it will be nice to have a full view of the beach and water. It is December now and we have to drive to Guerro Negro to get money from the banks ATM to last us for a month. So the trip was a quick one. The last time we came to Guerro Negro we stayed overnight and did some shopping in the new Mercado (store). It reminds me of a mini Costco but they don't sell in bulk. They have a butcher that will cut meat the thickness you want and grind fresh meat for hamburger in addition to fresh vegetables and fruit plus other goodies. So we did some shopping at that time. This time it was just to the bank and back home. I painted the wood door frames red. The same color the trim of the house is in. Then the main building will be the beige color our house is. That way it blends in with everything and doesn't stand out.
We have had some friends over a few times for dinner before they head north for the holidays. Then it will be pretty quiet here as there will only be our neighbors George and Mary and us. Christmas was a good one and quiet as usual. The weather has been beautiful. I gave our fake Christmas tree to Tito and his wife so they were happy. They have a tiny tree right now so they welcomed the bigger one. One of these days I want to get another fiber optic lighted tree like we had years ago on our boat. I do have a spiral metal glitter green tree that I put on our large kitchen counter and hung an angel on it. Then I put a string of LED lights on a wall that went around a wreath and a couple shell decorations I made. I love having the lights on at night when we are watching TV. It is so pretty. And then I burn a couple candles just to make it feel festive. Christmas gift to us was the garage. Ha!!! On Christmas day I baked a pork roast so we had a nice dinner. Our neighbors George and Mary are leaving on the 28th to celebrate the rest of the year with friends south of us and won't be back until the 8th of January. So it will just be Dave and I and Tito and Brenda. Quiet. There are only a couple Americans here and then one of them will go home after the 1st. The structure of the garage is all done and Dave is in the process of making the doors. It is turning out that it is not an easy job. For not being a carpenter guy, he has done pretty darn good constructing the doors. I have had to help on occasion to hold the doors as he measures for the fit. There was a cement pad that had been poured before we came to the house and it wasn't a very good job and part of it is uneven. So Dave had to chip out some of the cement to get the doors to fit. Quite a process. Then he bought a regular door to put up for the man door into the garage. There are three doors when all said and done. One tall door, a man size door, and then a little bit smaller door from the tall one. Well Dave tried to put the man door in and it didn't fit. Things are askew!!! So he will have to make a door like he is doing for the other ones. So one side of the garage is fitted with doors that open out and the non-fitting man door for now. I painted the trim on the north side of the garage and it looks nice. It will look great when it is all done. The structure in the front of the house is all gone and the mess is being cleared slowly. Here are pictures of while it was being torn down and then afterwards.
I raked up all the scrap wood pieces and burned them in our burn barrel. That clean up took about 3 days. Then I dug up the cement posts that were left in the ground which weren't real deep. I gathered all those in piles and then for a couple/three days I piled enough in the wheel barrow that I could move comfortably and dumped them in the arroyo on the south side of the house. That will help slow the rushing water down when it rains hard in the summer. That job is all finished and Tito has taken a lot of the garbage away so that was very helpful. There are still some big pieces of cement to be moved, but we can do that later. We are still thinking of building our house eventually in that spot and using the existing house as a guest house for a while and then eventually tear it down and just have the garage left. We aren't going to do anything for a while. We have to recoup from our spending of the garage for now. The ole bank account needs to get fluffed up a bit!!! Ha!!
I am still working on making the angels for the nursing home and I have made 165 so far. Only 35 more to go!!!! I am also making some jewelery sets (necklaces and earrings) to do something different while the angels are drying and before I do the next step.
Well the year is almost over as it is New Year's Eve. Dave and I were invited to join our gate guard, Tito and his wife Brenda for a bon fire. They go to bed early so we won't be there long. I made some hot chocolate and Dave added some Kahlua which made it tasty. We walked to their casa and joined them by the fire. It was a beautiful night and it was warm for being winter. No wind and clear skies. The moon was bright and beautiful.
I had made a chocolate cake to celebrate the new year so we had some of that and I gave them half of what was left over. We thanked them for a wonderful evening and wished them a Feliz Anos Nuevo!! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!
