Sellin Christmas Trees!!

We managed to get our lot going!  We opened Friday morning, as planned... but we also got our first load of Trees Friday morning.  We had a full crew here at 8:00 Friday morning.  They unloaded, cut and drilled and stood about 100 trees..  and we opened at 11:00.   It was a cold and busy day.

We worked another very long day on Saturday and Sunday, but today has been SO much better!  We have hardly had any customers, so I was able to get some stuff done in the trailer.  Our counter was loaded with dirty dishes!  It has never been like that before.

Its 6:30 now, and I thought it may pick up after people got off work, but its not too busy... yet anyway.
so Im sitting here in my sales booth doing my blog!  It was very warm yesterday, we even had the air conditioner on during the night.  Today it was 86!  This isnt exactly the holiday weather we are use to.

Jeff has flocked about 10 trees and they are selling like crazy!

Gettin' There...

Still no Trees, but we have a fence and we have electricity!  We got fenced in on Monday, and got the electricity yesterday.  The first thing we did was turn on both air conditioners!  (and it was evening before we were hooked up!) 
It has been so hot and humid here.  Its been in the 80's during the day, and the low at night has been 69!  I love the sunshine and warm temperatures, but the humidity the last few days has been crazy!  We are sticky wet all day.
Our tent is ready to go... EXCEPT we have nothing to sell.  At 5:00 this evening, we were given the choice of getting a load of trees this evening, or starting early Friday morning.  Although we had expected to get trees today, we were exhausted.  There was no way we had it in us to get 65 big trees set up.  So we called our help and arranged to have our crew AND the trees here at 8:00 Friday morning.  We will open at 11:00, and will have some trees set up before opening, but will work through the day, setting up our first load of trees.  We only have Noble and a few Nordmann right now... the trucks of Grand and Douglas should be in Friday.
We have a large crew hired... but we will wait to see how they work, before we schedule them.  They all need work, but we may need to separate those who really want to work from those who just want to collect a paycheck. 
Here's a few pics. 

Sweatin' it...

Still in San Antonio... although, we have considered running!  Our lot still is not ready for our trees... we don't have electricity and our fence isn't in, so we cant set up.  We can't sleep, and we are overwhelmed.
Oh ya... and they got a call today that there is a storm front in Oregon, and the next loads of trees will be late. 
Oh well... what will be will be... and we WILL survive it.

We are trying to get ourselves in the Christmas mood, by watching Christmas movies tonight.  Once the trees arrive, we will not have any time to watch Christmas movies or do anything else.  Tonight it's the Christmas Story (the Scrooge) 1930's version.

I will get away tomorrow to do our laundry, and get a few other things before we are so busy we can't.

Today, Jeff went to some training at the warehouse and I stayed here to go through my materials and prepare.  He was gone longer than we expected, and the generator is in the back of the truck, so I had no electricity.  I used up the battery on both laptops, and we ran out of propane, so the refrigerator lost power too! 

The days have been warm, and the nights havent been getting very cool.  Tonight the low is 66 degrees.  Hopefully the electricity will be hooked up tomorrow, so we will have air conditioning, or the fan for night.

Better focus on this good movie.

Learning...

We're exhausted... and we didnt do anything compared to what we will be doing.  Maybe it was the stress of something unknown and new.   I trained with Terri today at the office, while Jeff trained and worked with Brian at one of the lots.  There are 14 lots, 8 are within San Antonio, and the other 6 are in other areas... one in Corpus Christi.
We have met only a few of the people, but we plan to make our rounds to the lots in San Antonio tomorrow, to meet the other manager couples, and see if they need any help.  It will help us to know what we are doing when its time to set up our lot.
This is a huge and professional operation... its not like the Christmas Tree lot's I am used to.
We even have to flock trees if they want a flocked tree!  I don't know how to flock a tree!!  I guess we had better figure it out!
At least I don't think we will have any trouble finding help.  We had 2 people come by our trailer today and ask if we were hiring.  How did they even know we were a Christmas tree lot??  We gave them an application, which they both filled out while they were here.  We called the first person, and hired her.   We are most likely going to hire the second person too, but only Sheryl was here, so Jeff needs to meet him.  We're so impressed with their initiative to find work.  We just dont know how much help we will need... this is a new lot, so we have no history to look back on.

We have a mailing address while we are here... I have posted it under the "contact us" tab on our home page.  So now you can send us a Christmas Card!!

Here we are... San Antonio!

We got in at a decent time, and a temperature of 85... very nice.  We only missed one turn!  They had us meet them at the warehouse, where we looked around and chatted, until we had an escort to our lot.  The owners are very friendly people, and we're looking forward to meeting all the other lot manager couples.

Our lot wasnt ready for us as we had expected, but that's okay!  Jeff and another guy ran pvc pipe around the lot so we do have water now, and hopefully the electrician will get us electricity tomorrow or Friday.  For now we are using our awesome Honda generator.  We just have to remember we are using a generator and it does run out of fuel. 

Our sales tent doesnt have its sides on it yet... not sure why... and we still have to  build our cashiers booth.  they have all the pieces and parts (like a kit).  We just have to assemble it!  They said another lot couple will come help us.  They couldnt put the fence up until we were in, and that is suppose to happen Saturday or Monday.   Once the cyclone fence is up, which surrounds the tent and our RV site, we will move back another 15 feet or so.  We just dont want to get slammed, while we are out in the open.

They gave us our bins of supplies and paperwork, and I have been going over it this evening, and I AM OVERWHELMED!  What have we got ourselves into??  We can do this... We can do this...

this is the warehouse where the trees will be delivered (from Oregon)

already loaded us up with supplies

parked beside our tent... for now.

The Road Traveled...

I-10 East, Texas. So much of the road has been cut out of the rock.


I-10 East, dont know the name of this mountain, but if its not squaw mountain, it should be tit peak.

RV Park - Ozono, TX

San Antonio... Here we come!

We hit the road at 8:30MT this morning, and at 1:00 Central Time, we crossed over into Texas.  We managed to miss our road twice this morning, but we were able both times to find a road to cut across to where we were suppose to be.  Hopefully we're done adding on miles to our day!

We had to give Callie back to her other mommy and daddy, last night.  We miss her... she was alot of fun.  We have requested joint custody.

We made one last trip into Roswell (alien town), but we still didnt look around alot.  Everything is alien.

Doggy Sittin

Our friends, James and Laura, decided to go to the races for the weekend, so they left Callie with us!  We've had her since Thursday morning, and are having a great time.  She gets called "Lucky" as much as she does "Callie".  For those of you who didnt know me when I had my dogs, Lucky was my toy poodle. 

We're making sure she gets plenty of exercise, we go for 2 mile walks where we can take her off the leash.  She takes off running ahead of us, then back, then ahead, then back... sometimes bringing a stick for us to throw.  Callie got a bath yesterday, because Jeff threw her stick in a muddy pond, and she didnt hesitate to go in for it.  It stuck end down in the mud, and she couldnt get it out.  She tried... twice... then gave up.  By the time we got back, she was dry, but she wasnt getting in bed with us without a bath.

As soon as Callie's "parents" come back for her, Monday, we will be leaving for San Antonio, Texas.  We received a call yesterday offering us a job managing a Christmas tree lot there.  It will be work, but it pays good, and it will be yet another experience!  So that is where we will be for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It froze here last night, and we hadnt taken the precautions... but all is well.  We shouldnt have to worry about freezing in San Antonio.

We also decided that since we are going that far, we may as well keep going.  So after Christmas, we plan to go on to Florida.  I doubt we will stay long... we have someone we want to see, then we will make our way back to New Mexico by mid to late January, probably.

Now for some pics:

Jeff working on a bead project

Laundry Day!

I didn't know what to use for a title since we're still in the same place... but laundry is on my mind, so there it is.  We're going into Roswell today to do laundry (it's been over 2 weeks), get a few groceries, and check out the downtown area. 

We drove into the little town of Dexter yesterday after our 8 mile bicycle ride around the lakes... much of it uphill.  I would tell you it was all uphill, but I'm not sure you would buy that.  Our lungs were burning.  Hopefully, soon... an 8 mile hilly ride will be no big deal.  But at this point we were real proud of ourselves... no motors on these bikes!  Not much in Dexter, but they had a post office so we could mail our property tax payment.

Monday was a really warm day, upper 80's, so we took the tahiti's out on the lake and paddled around.

Would love to hear from all of you.  You can comment here on the blog, or find our email address under the "contact us" tab on our blog.

Enjoying...

What a beautiful day!  Sunny, warm, and no wind.  We walked the trails this morning, hung out at our site doing things this afternoon, then went for a good bike ride this evening.

This is Lea Lake and the campground from atop the bluff:

Yesterday, we went into Roswell... which is much more of a city than we had expected.  We only went in to get a few things and have dinner with friends, James and Laura.  We will make the trip into town every 5 days or so, and we plan to be here for awhile, so we will plan on one of our next trips to "see the sights". 
Laura made a really great dinner for us.

That's not Callie... I put Callie down, to see her neighbor friend.  Laura was sanding her nails.
 I dont remember her name, but she is a maltese mix... just  a few months old.

Bottomless Lakes SP - Roswell, NM

There were way too many flies at Oasis state park.  So we drove the long 100 miles to Bottomless Lakes SP, out of Roswell, NM.  We still have flies, but not nearly as many... maybe we even brought them... I wouldn't doubt they hitchhiked the ride.

We like this place.  We paid for one week, but we will hopefully stay longer.  This is our site:

Lea Lake is right here... a few yards from the campground.  It is 90 feet deep, but not a real large lake.  It is suppose to be stocked with rainbow trout during the winter, but it hasnt been stocked yet.

It is suppose to be 80 this weekend, so we hope to take our tahitis out on the small lake.  It depends on how many day visitors are here over the weekend.

We went for a walk at Oasis park before leaving, and passed by a snake that Jeff was sure was dead.  To prove to me that it was dead, he poked it with his stick....

I TOLD him it wasn't dead!!

Well... Did you all vote??

We are closely watching the election results.

We moved today... from Sumner Lake to Oasis State Park.  So far, we arent so sure why they call it an oasis.  There are about a million flys... and that is not an exageration.  I've never seen anything like it. 
We were just happy to go shopping.  We were out of just about everything.  Portales has a Walmart superstore, and its only 6 miles away... yeah!

There is a small lake, or large pond, for fishing, but everyone here is saying there is no fish right now.  Jeff  will probably give it a try.  We had planned to stay a couple weeks here, but if the flys are always like they were this afternoon, we will move on very soon.

It suppose to get down to 30 tomorrow night, so we bought some RV antifreeze and hose insulation.  The temperatures here, all over New Mexico, can drop really low at night, even with the days around 70.  It's the sunshine we are here for, and it looks like we should have that. 

We've been watching the workkamping jobs as they are posted daily, so who knows... maybe we will see something that interests us and go somewhere else.  We've been accepted for 2 different camp jobs this summer, but havent given either an answer yet.  We applied to a campground in Oregon for a couple months this Summer, and will wait to see what they say.

Be sure to check our blog tomorrow...  I will send a picture of the flys!!