Month: January 2024

Yesterday, I flew to Austin to housesit for friends of ours. I will be caring for two cats,Lefty and Pancho, while their people go to a show in Vegas and then head to Tahoe for an annual ski trip with friends and family. Bob is in Des Moines with family for a couple of days before starting a month long housesit on 2/1.

While I’m in Austin I’m hoping to connect with old friends and assess how much the city has grown since we were last here in December of 2022. I had a great visit with our friends yesterday after they picked me up at the airport and before I took them to the airport this morning. It was fun to discuss our respective plans for the year, and it’s great to be back in 70 F weather!

Tonight I hosted (with the home owner’s permission) four of my friends from Austin. We missed having Sandy there with us, but we had a great time catching up.

So good to reconnect with good friends!!

It’s been quite awhile since we have blogged and a lot has happened. We finished our Des Moines house sit (the one with the steep driveway). That ended up being our winter resilience building houses it as we had lots of shoveling, snow blowing, and other winter driveway work in sub zero weather. However, the home was warm and comfy and the dogs were super sweet, so we fared well and managed to get to some previously scheduled doctor’s appointments.

Since we left that housesit, we have been visiting family and friends (all in the Des Moines area) in short trips so that we don’t put anyone out too much. The first stop was with our nephew Zack and his fiancée Maggie. We had a great visit and even got to celebrate the news of Maggie’s acceptance into a pediatric dental program.

Then we headed to our friend Doug’s new home in a former church that they have transformed into condos while leaving some of the original building. Bob and I also walked to the nearby Art Center to check that out. Very impressive and Bob found a big head for a photo.

Another great visit! Bob cooked one night, and Doug treated the next and introduced us to a new (to us) game, Connect, that Bob and I are now playing, though only semi successfully at this point.

Then we visited our friends, Steve and Steph, and Doug came over as well. We had a great music and dart-filled night with lots of good memories and future happenings to discuss.

Bob and I are now apart for 10 days or so. More on that tomorrow. . .

After a great time in Naperville, Illinois, to celebrate our great nephew’s 1st birthday, Bob and I returned to Des Moines just in time for the season’s first big snowfall.

Starting Monday afternoon through yesterday afternoon, we received over 9 inches of snow and travel has now become more of an adventure than we’d like. However, we carefully drove the 6 miles from Bob’s sister’s house where we were staying to a hotel that would be closer to our current house sit to facilitate our travel to the new home yesterday, late afternoon for the walk through.

We had a great walk through with the homeowners and two of their three young children. We will be caring for their 2 golden retrievers, Bay and Mesa, while they head off for a Disney Cruise.

While we have a few doctors appointments scheduled during the sit, it’s unlikely we will be going out to do more than that for the next few days, as more snow and then sub-zero temperatures are in the forecast.

Bob and I had a relaxing stay in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. We were honored to be accepted by Jupiter and Bruno Mars to allow us to feed them and we were able to connect a bit with family while exploring a bit of the area.

Today (Thursday 1/4/24), we left Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, for Lincolnshire, Illinois. Since we have platinum membership in the Marriott hotel program, we have landed in a Marriott resort in Lincolnshire, IL. This has placed us near Naperville, IL, where we need to be for the 1 year birthday party for our great nephew. But it also allowed us to see “Beautiful“ which is a musical about Carole King. Lots of great music!