Eat your heart out, Kim!

Bad title I know but I think of Kim every time we step outside the RV door as it is very close to our RV. This building was started Monday and they expect it to be enclosed by the end of this week The building behind the construction is the warehouse/second hand store and is crowded from one end to the other. And in addition, they have bigger pieces of furniture outside which works in a place that seldom gets rain. They do however have tarps to keep some of the dust off of the furniture. The construction area is an extension to the warehouse. The items in the warehouse are used to furnish all the buildings of the homes here and the rest are open to the public for sale. And before you brush this off as a lot of work with small returns I must tell you that last year they made 1.3 million dollars from this building and the boutique near by which carries the more high end items such as fine china, silver services and glassware. The winter residents go wild at these two building and of course Sunshine Acres appreciates it all.

Our work was mostly more of the same the past couple of weeks so not much to report on it other than we are finally getting organized in the "attic" which has more items for the camp except these are all new and are mostly smaller toiletries, etc. as I wrote before. The men continue to work improving the grounds an d buildings by enclosing a car port, adding a car port etc. There is a reason while so much of this work has to be done now because next Sunday is the big BBQ. We all will be working on the details this whole week I am sure. The women have been passing out flyers for the BBQ several days already. This event is another of their major fund raisers as anywhere from 3-5 thousand people come for it. Interesting there is no mention of a fund raiser on the flyers. The Home never asks for money. And they are totally removed from any federal or state funding so they are free to promote their faith in the way they want to.

If all goes as planned we will put in enough extra hours this week so we don't have to work the last 2 days of this project the next week. Sounds good to us as we will then have a full week off between projects.

FOOD! RVICS people, and us as well, like to find new interesting places to eat. Thursday evening we went to the Organ Stop Pizza place. Thy serve good pizza and they have a national acclaimed organist who plays the largest Wurlitzer organ in the world. The place is huge and it was full when we were there. The organist attracts so much attention that after eating most people sit around for an hour or so just to listen. On Sunday we and the Davelaars go to the Hope Reformed Church. We have found that after church the Village Inn really hits the spot. A while back we ate at the Iowan and I hope the people who eat there don't think that is how Iowa beef tastes. Disappointing! IHOP is good, especially with a Christmas gift card. Love their stuffed french toast. And when eating in we make good use of the fresh vegetables (beans are awesome) and fruits. Never ate so many blueberries.

We hope the storm of this weekend didn't cause any problems for all of you and hope it gets cleared up in a hurry. We still find the work rewarding but we are in the process of searching for

the answer as to whether we should continue or not. Lots of options - just need guidance as to what is the best choice for us. Since we are staying here for another month our address will stay the same as it is now.

Love you all, Mom and Dad Marilyn/Wilmer (what ever fits.)

Sunshine Acres

What an appropriate name for this camp and it is true in more than one way. Naturally the sun shines most every day all day. However, yesterday we had a quick rain shower just when I needed to retrieve my wash from the laundry room. No sweat, it was just sprinkles and brief. It did bring a beautiful rainbow tho. On Tuesday we have a social and the committee decided it was nice enough for a picnic. We had it early because the sun goes down early and than the air can be pretty crisp. (I know I am encouraging criticism when I write that to people who are hoping for temps above 0) Don't know who was in charge of the grilling but our steaks, done by our own griller, turned out very good. Baked potatoes in the crock pot, not so good. Good we have backup microwaves to use in just such an emergency. Turned out to be a fun night.

Most of the women ended up the last weeks with working in the "attic" where donations of new items are kept. Don't know how or when they will make use of them or distribute them but the room will look much better after we get done with it. Probably the staff will even have a hard time finding a few things. Reading labels will be a necessary part of finding boxes of items. The items range from clothes, dozens of shoes, files and record keeping ledgers, scrapbooks of students, humongous amount of scrapbook "necessities", toys, games, school supplies, soap, lotion, shampoo, crayons, markers, pencils, pens, glue, and a ton of other stuff for school, traveling size toiletries, office stuff like paper, envelopes, booklets the staff writes. snapshots of students, and on and on, you get the idea. It is not hard work but tedious, just when you get one section done with all one kind of items somebody invariably finds another box of that stuff. Rearrange again.

This picture is the front of one of the student and house parents' house. The philosophy is that these kids deserve something special and special it is. And even when we work around the house or on the camp grounds we never hear a lot of racket or hollering going on. In fact it is very quiet. The kids are very respectful and appreciative of the work we do for them. When I see all the money that is donated for buildings such as this one our work doesn't seem so big but we all give what we can of what we have. All of the buildings are built with donated money and, of course, the income from the warehouse and boutique is used on the kids as well.

The student rooms were all redecorated this past week. One of the staff must have a decorating degree because each room is a theme room and wall decorations and all are new and fantastically carry out the theme. This room has 2 beds with the same design theme. But if the kids want a tank with a snake in it in their room that is okay too because kids are kids. All rooms are immaculately clean.

Today was the last day of this Jan. project. We were scheduled to work one more month here and then go to Glendale, AZ for March. That project fell thru so we will stay in Mesa an extra month now. In other words, we stay and work here until the first of April. Good deal for RVICSers. We like it here.

As always we had trouble with the Wi-Fi here. Our Cell phone was suppose to help us with the Internet but was undependable to say the least. I won't give all the details but we finally went to a different cell phone server and now our phone is our link to the Internet. We could keep our own phone so that helps because it took us awhile to learn how to use it and we didn't want to start up the learning curve again. And since we are not residents of Iowa any more we could get out of our contract with Iowa Wireless without fees and without giving up the phone.

We think of you often and often wonder why you all aren't here with the myriad of Iowa people who are here for the winter. The winter residents had a Sunday brunch at a golf course Sunday and there were 71 people there and that is only the ones that usually go to Hope Ref. Church. There are many other worship places that others go to. One church actually closes its doors after the winter residents leave.

Love you all. Love the connection we can make with many of you on Facebook. Love the pictures. Until later, Mom and Dad, Marilyn and Wilmer