No April Fool's joke this year... we're off this morning to our home church, Providence Baptist in Montevallo, AL. Jerry will be speaking there tonight so anyone in the area, you are invited! He'll be speaking at Open Door Faith Baptist Church in Marion, AL on April 15th at 11am. We'll be at Ridgecrest Baptist in Tuscaloosa next Sunday but Jerry won't be speaking there because that will be Easter Sunday.

We now know why we had to leave the RGV a week ahead of schedule. The good Lord knew a bad storm was coming and we were not supposed to be hit by it! The park we were at flooded, there was tons of hail and high winds ripped off carports, camper awnings and downed telephone poles. Here are a few pics that our friends took. The first shows the size of the hail, the 2nd shows the sheer quantity of the hail and the last one shows some of the flooding. We sure are glad we weren't there! [26]

Jerry was able to get in to see his doctor at the Birmingham VA already! He called yesterday to see about making an appointment and they were able to get him in this morning at 10am. He came back with a couple prescriptions and the information he needs to make his appointment at the big spinal cord injury hospital at the Memphis VA. Looks like he will live to see another day. Now all we need is my appointment at UAB...

The new transfer case did not arrive today as we had hoped, but realistically it isn't due in until tomorrow. When it comes in, we'll take it and the Jeep over to our mechanic to get it installed. Hopefully, we will get it back the next day. The rental car is due back Friday morning so we hope we have our Jeep back before then.

We are currently parked in the front yard of a relative but we will move to Tannehill State Park for this coming weekend so we can camp with the grand kids. We'll be sure to post some pictures but if you can't wait, there are pictures from when we camped at Tannehill a couple of years back in the Picture Gallery. [27]

Now we know why we are having Jeep problems. If the transfer case hadn't went out, we would have been in Dallas when those tornadoes hit! We sure are glad the good Lord can see the big picture and keep us out of harm's way! It would not have been good to be in a motorhome when those tornadoes went rolling through that area.

The transfer case we ordered arrived yesterday on an semi truck. The driver called us for directions and we told him to meet us at a nearby intersection since his big rig would not make it to where we are at. We get there and before he unloads the pallet, we open it up and... IT WAS THE WRONG PART! Even little kids know the difference between the numbers "231" and "242". We need a 231 model transfer case and they sent us a 242 model. There's even a tag on the part just in case you can't identify it by just looking at it. We refused delivery and the company refunded our money. We went to a local salvage yard and had them order one for us and it should be here Friday. With our luck, it will be Monday or Tuesday. Oh well, no need fretting over things you can't do anything about.

The grand kids will get here today!! Yay! They'll spend the night with us and in the morning we will head over to Tannehill State Park to camp there for the weekend. We're so excited to see them! They called yesterday to let us know when they'd be here and they stated they had a "food request". They wanted Jerry to cook "Papa Burgers". They call him Papa Jerry so they refer to his grilled burgers as Papa Burgers. They are good! [28]

The 2nd transfer case we ordered arrived yesterday and it was the right one! I looked it over and it is in very good shape and based on the tag, it had 129,000 miles on it which is not bad at all. We called our mechanic and he will be able to put it in on Tuesday. We'll be glad when this is fixed.

We turned in the Jeep Patriot rental car and swapped it for a little Hyundai Accent. That Patriot was awful! Pitiful gas mileage, very poor interior design and very little room inside it. And the ride was terrible for being a non-4WD vehicle. Ever since Chrysler took over Jeep, they have tried to blend the two brands together and the result is not very good. We remember Jeep's glory days when you knew you were getting a rugged off-road vehicle capable of navigating the Rubicon trail unassisted. Now when you buy a Jeep, you get a glorified grocery getter.

Cynthia got her a new bicycle this week. The one we had from Walmart finally deteriorated after a little more than a year. We sold it for $25 right before we left Texas. She got her a folding 6-speed bike from Camping World. We got it for $150 since we had a rain check from a previous sale. It actually rides pretty good and folds up to easily fit in our Jeep. We also bought a Good Sam bobblehead and we'll take him with us as we travel. We already took a picture with him at Tannehill State Park. Here it is... [29]

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The price we must pay to be able to see clearly! We both went to the eye doctor today and got an updated prescription... $130 total. We asked how much glasses would be at the Walmart Vision Center, $139 for just one pair of lenses! Yeeeouch! So we ordered our glasses online from Zenni Optical, a place we have used numerous times before. We got 2 complete pairs of glasses with bifocal lenses, anti-glare coating, clip on sun shades and delivery for $120 total. So we paid a total of $250 for both of us to be able to see for the next year. Oh well... gotta do it.

We had a great weekend camping with the grand kids. They think the motorhome is a club house and they are fascinated that the dinette folds down into a bed just for them. We toasted marshmallows, chased the ducks, rode bikes and had lots of fun. They were a joy to have but a weekend is about all we can take at one time - LOL. We're now back at Cynthia's sister's house and we'll stay here a few more days before moving to another campground. We're still waiting on Cynthia's doctor's appointment and we don't know when that will be... and we don't really want to "camp" in a front yard. :)

We got the new transfer case put in the Jeep today and everything works like a charm. No more weird noises, no more leaks, no more cracked case, just good ol' Jeep 4WD goodness. We sure are glad to get that fixed! We'll turn in the rental car in the morning... we sure will miss that 30 MPG - LOL! [30]

We'll share a little exciting news on this last entry into this blog. Scooter was "discovered" by a producer from Animal Planet. The producer saw a YouTube video we posted of Scooter and he will be appearing on a show about dogs on the Animal Planet channel. The show is called "Bad Dogs" even though it is not necessarily about dogs being bad, but also dogs doing funny or silly things. The video is the one where he is ashamed of his gas and you can see the video in the Video Gallery. We're not sure when the episode of the show will air but they told us it would be late summer or early fall. Scooter is excited about becoming famous and having groupies. :) [31]