Author: bbpeck

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!

Bob and I had a nice walk today on the path that runs along the Menomonee River. Today, we walked on it away from downtown so were able to see both Lime Kiln Park and Rotary Park. We saw probably 6 or 7 other people out walking on the trail either by themselves or with their dogs.

We started the walk at the end of our street, which is in Lime Kiln Park. This is a 19 acre park on both sides of the Menomonee River from Main Street to Arthur Avenue. It is named after the Garwin Mace Lime Kilns which operated on this site in the late 19th century. The kilns were used to produce lime to be mixed with sand and water to make mortar for construction. Nothing like getting educated on a walk!

I was interested in the sign below, as our current homeowner is quite a bird lover. Bird City Wisconsin (per their website) is a nonprofit organization that provides public recognition to municipalities that understand that nature, including birds, is vital to healthy communities. The organization supports municipalities in their efforts to protect and manage green spaces, educate their citizens, build nesting structures, landscape with native plants, and reduce threats to birds. Bird City Wisconsin has 96 registered members.

Bob and I have officially landed in the village of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. It has a population of 39,000 and actually does have a falls (created by a dam). It is also the headquarters of the Kohl’s Department Stores.

We will be coexisting with two very cute but mostly human-averse cats, so mostly we’ll be putting out food and cleaning the litter box. The lighter colored one is Jupiter, and he is definitely the friendlier of the two. He has sat in the hallway and watched us and has let me put treats in his vicinity as long as I move away after that. The black one, Bruno Mars, has no need to be near us and I was thrilled to even be able to get the photo of him below. This is a 2 story house with a full basement, and Bruno spends much of his time in the basement ceiling — even for his owner.

Yesterday after we arrived, we mostly caught up on laundry and other items that we neglected over the holidays, but today we got out into the misty rain to check out a bit of the downtown and then head to Target for items for dinner and a new umbrella for Bob. it was an easy walk up our street onto a path along the Menomonee River into downtown.

*50 points if you know the reference. It’s likely something only my sister and I would get, but it’s dialogue from a tv show set in Milwaukee and has something to do with Tunisian camel jockeys. I am tempted to say this every time I hear the word Milwaukee.

Now, on with the blog. . .

Bob and I left Janesville at 9:00 am yesterday to make an 11:00 am meet-up with our next homeowner in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin. We will be caring for two cats through January 4th. The walkthrough of the home and pet care needs went well and then we were off to The Trade Hotel in downtown Milwaukee for the evening before beginning the house sit after the homeowner’s departure the next day.

Bob enrolled us in the Marriott Hotel program which allows for free stays once you incur so many points. We used points for a free night at The Trade Hotel which is right next to the arena where the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team plays when they are in town. The area around the arena is known as the Deer District in honor of the Bucks.

The hotel was new and lovely with a good fitness room and lots of dining options. We had fun exploring the hotel as well as some of the area.

Bob and I had a busy but lovely holiday with my relatives in and around my hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. Since my mom lives in a one bedroom apartment, we rented a one bedroom house through Airbnb. We usually stay in a motel where we’re in Janesville, but this time we wanted the ability to cook.

One of the first items on the agenda was a baking day at my aunt and uncle’s house in my mom’s hometown of Albany, Wisconsin, about a 25 minute drive from Janesville. They have a lovely new home that they built with a spacious kitchen. We made 2 batches of cookies and 2 batches of bars and had a great time catching up.

Saturday, mom and I finished some last minute shopping while Bob made a salad to take to the Runaas (my mom’s family) holiday celebration on Christmas Eve afternoon. We do our Runaas Christmas at theAlbany’s Lion’s Club since there are too many of us for anyone’s house.

On Christmas Day, mom came over to our Airbnb for breakfast and opening gifts before we headed to my aunt and uncle’s house on my dad’s side. It was a much smaller gathering, but still good to be with family and catch up.

Last Wednesday, Bob and I left Bob’s sister’s house where we had been staying since our last sit to meet up with our new homeowners in Waukee, Iowa (suburb of Des Moines) for a walk through, dinner, and a stay overnight before their early morning departure for Oregon. We had a great visit, met the adorable Bebe, and learned the ins and outs of the home will be staying in until 12/20/23.

We had some time to kill before we met the homeowners on the 13th, so we stopped at the local library and found a photo op for Bob.

Most of our time in Des Moines has been spent on errands and catching up on doctor visits. However, the other day we made a brief visit to drake University where my sister had gone to law school.

Today, Saturday, we drove back to Bob’s sister’s house to spend a couple of hours with her family, including our nephews and their partners (one wife, one new fiancé), and our great nephew, and we do think he is pretty great.

We drove about 30 minutes from the Hotel Pattee in Perry to a house sit in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, called Urbandale. This will be one of our shorter sits at just three nights. After which, we’ll stay with my (Bob’s) sister in Grimes, also a suburb of Des Moines.

The house we’re sitting in seems to be in a fairly newer development. We’re caring for three dogs, two are pretty tiny, Olive, a Maltese, and Lyla, a Chihuahua, and Ralph, a pretty good sized Golden Doodle.