Bye bye Kastle - April 24 - May 7th

This past week, nothing much to report, rain, rain, and grey skies for the better part of a week. Produces lovely rainbows though.

We spent most of our time sorting through things and getting stuff done before his knee surgery. On Sunday, April 28th, we completed a deal on the Motorhome, so officially sold. After two hours of looking in and under every nook and cranny, they took it for a test drive.

Ron from Kelowna, sent us our deposit in parcels over the next 4 days via e-transfer. He will pick up the coach to take back to Kelowna after giving us our final payment Monday, May 6th.

Meanwhile we've been filling our planters with soil in preparation for the bedding plants. Still too cool outside to actually plant them, but I've bought them and they are all out of the wind and rain waiting for better weather.

My herbs are in for the vertical garden in the front of the house and my veggies are planted on the deck.

Our front garden is pretty with our flowering shrubs.

My Lilac is just starting to bloom. It didn't have very many flowers last year but has quite a few now.

Jason and Kristi's puppy Olaf, continues to get bigger and gets into everything. lol

Amelia finally got her knee brace from Germany. She'll wear it at night to help get her left knee bending as it should. She doesn't mind as she wants her leg to bend "like the other kids" at daycare.

Wednesday, May 1st, we're off to Nanaimo early for my Doctor appointment and then a Costco shop for hanging baskets. :)

My hanging baskets and the important things in life, coffee and baby cookies :)

Thursday, we spent the morning filling up all the planters with dirt ready for planting. Too soon yet with the cold. I got tired of moving all the flats of flowers separately, so came up with a plan to use our multi-use dolly with a piece of plywood so I can move them in and out of the garage all in one go.

After getting all the dirt in, we moved our old chairs from the deck to the front driveway. We'll be making a patio area, once the motorhome leaves the driveway on Monday. Too windy to sit in the back, but this is nice and warm.

Ray finished the puzzlet Pat and Darryl gave him to do. It's really hard apparently, but it only took him 5 days to do it, so couldn't be too bad. lol He will have to exchange it for another. Kept him busy on the rainy days.

Friday we headed into Duncan for Ray's dental appointment. Just a look at the tooth extraction area to make sure it's ready for an implant down the road after his knee surgeries. We'd be looking at this December :)

Lunch at Brunch on Third before heading to our appointment with Toyota to check out a Grand Highlander, that's supposed to be there today. These cars are hard to find and as this is a new model this year, very few are out there. The Sales Manager has one as his family car. We want to actually see how much bigger it is in length compared to our Ford Edge. 

As we were early after our lunch so we decided to go for a stroll through Somenos Marsh. We drive by this everytime we go into Duncan, but I have never stopped and walked the boardwalk. Lots of birds in the houses with their babies at this time of year.

After our stroll, off to Toyota where Liam, told us the sales manager did not come in today, so his car is unavailable to view. Bummer. The picture below is a Grand Highlander in the colour we hope to get.

The weekend is wet and gloomy. Not much to report. Ray did get my irrigation all set to go, so I can just turn it on after planting. 

Jason took this picture of Amelia, so cute. She sure is getting taller.

Monday morning and Ray's out the door at 6:30 am, hooking up the MH for it's last journey with us. He's off to Nanaimo to meet Ron, the buyer, and trade documents, deposit the cheque and cancel our insurance. 

Their she goes ..... sure is a good looking coach. In all our travels we never saw another one with the exact colours.

Wow our driveway looks huge!

Tuesday, we were very busy getting all the last things I needed Ray's help with before he's incapacitated for the next 2 months after his right knee replacement.

My tomatoes and peppers need to planted on the sundeck. He cuts off the bottom of the pots with the zip cutter and lay the pot into my planters. That way, I don't disturb the branches in the cage.

Next up, assembling our new replacement e-bikes, so he has his to ride for physio in a few weeks.

As I've mentioned, we've been looking for a new car, a Toyoto Grand Highlander Hybrid 500 Max, Platinim package. Talk about hard to find. We'd stopped in Duncan Toyoto last week and were told that it's an 8 to 12 month wait if you order one. Each dealership is only awarded 7 units for the year and they have 4 spoken for and don't know when the last 3 will arrive. Imagine our surprise when we got a call Tuesday morning at 11 am. The car's at the dealership and we can come at noon to see it.

We needed to go into Duncan to turn in the motorhome plates and cancel our insurance anyway. As the MH is in both our names it required both of us to be there. Another chore off our list. 

We went to Toyota and were able to test drive the demo. It drives like our Edge which I love. Lots of power. A little different feel with the hybrid part. Imagine our surprise, as they decided they could sell it to us (2400 kms/1500 miles) on it. With the shortage there's no deal on price, so it's at MSRP. The only stickler is, we have to trade in our Edge. We'd contemplated keeping it as it's depreciated so much (as Ford's don't hold their value), but we've not experienced a lick of problems with it. This is the only negotiating option we have, and they really wanted it. They really wouldn't sell us the new car if we didn't trade it in as their inventory of vehicles is so low. We negotiated a better deal on that end than we would have. End of the story, 3 hours later, we signed the papers on our new car, with delivery May 22nd so Ray can come as we both will be registered owners of the car.

This saved us buying new tires for our car \,which is necessary. Towing wore them out faster. The new car is not the exterior colour I would have preferred but it still looks nice. "Blueprint" with a tan leather called Portabello.

Tomorrow surgery day!