Month: November 2012

  • Thanksgiving in Arizona – Week 4 & 5

    I thought I would take a few minutes this Sunday to update my blog to update all of you that follow my blog to what we have been doing.  When last I left you we were in Logan and was enjoying our family there.  On November 11th, Jenn and Taurean’s little Madison Ann was blessed in Sacrament meeting.  Madi was a doll during her blessing and Taurean gave a very nice blessing with lots of choice words just for her!  We were so happy that we could be there with them on this special day for little Madi.

    After Sacrament meeting and before the “family gathering”, I took the following pictures of their family and little Madi


    Madison Ann, Jennifer, Bentley, Taurean & Jaidyn


    Madison Ann in her “Blessing Dress”

    In the afternoon of Monday the 12th, it finally came time to say goodbye to Jenn and her little family and headed South.  We went as far as Provo that day because Judy Lynn had some craft stores that were on her agenda to visit on our way through Provo.  We parked the MH outside of Melissa and Troy’s new home.  They let us “borrow” some electricity.  They had recently had quite a snowstorm and had several inches of snow on their front yard.  But the skies were clear which allowed some REALLY Cold weather to settle in.  That night I had the furnace running and it ran practically all night just to keep us warm.

    Our MH parked in front of Melissa & Troy’s home in Provo


    One of the stores in Provo we visited to try to find the paper Judy Lynn needs for her stamping.

    We had a lovely visit with Melissa and her family.  Thanks to them for letting us “park” in front of their place.

    After Judy Lynn finished the shopping that she wanted to do in Provo, we again headed south.  It was a lovely day to travel, clear sunny skies and no wind.  We often encounter wind on that road and if it is a cross-wind, the “sail-like” profile of the MH makes driving a little less enjoyable.  But that day was perfect weather for traveling and we really enjoyed the day.  We got away from snow on the ground about half-way through Utah.  We had planned to stay in Las Vegas for the evening, but those plans did not work out so we went on to Boulder to a RV Park that we has stayed at a couple of years ago.

    After we parked the MH, we unhooked the Terrain and drove it into Boulder to look around and get us some dinner at their Taco Bell (And yes I know… that was a very original choice of restaurants in a far-away town!)

    The next morning we headed for Phoenix.


    New bridge over Colorado River & Lake Mead before the bridge.
    The picture of the bridge does not do it justice.  I think it is an engineering marvel!

     
    MH parked to the side of Jeff & Becky’s

    It took us most of the day to get to Jeff and Becky’s.  We did stop before we got there to fill the MH with Fuel.  The fuel price was so much less expensive than anywhere we have experienced the trip, so I decided to fill up in case the price went up for Thanksgiving.  We arrived at Jeff’s before he got home from his work.


    Shauna & Her Mom – Judy Lynn, Shauna, Jeff & Becky

    AS most of  you know, Shauna moved to the Phoenix area a month or so ago.  She transferred with Wal-Mart, so had a job waiting for her when she arrived.  She lives in Mesa and works at the Wal-Mart on the boarder between Mesa and Gilbert.  She did not have to work that following Sunday, so came and spent the weekend with us at Jeff’s.


    Jeff and his Brother-in-Law Josh at the shooting range

    Jeff arranged with his Brother-in-Law (another Josh) to take me to a shooting range and shoot some pistols.  It was quite a ways SE of Maricopa and was a nice range.  It was covered (from the sun) with several shooting stations.  The three of us went through a lot of ammo!  Thanks for the fun guys!

    We had quite an “uneventful” week prior to Thanksgiving.  Both Jeff and Becky have to work, so we just spent what time we could with them.  Judy Lynn and I drove out to San Tan Valley to visit our good friends Grant & Colleen.  They purchased a home there a little over a year ago and now spend their winters there.  Colleen’s Sister LaNae also purchased a home just around the corner and down the street from theirs, and LaNae and Niel joined us and we had a lovely dinner together at a Chinese Buffet (they had steamed shrimp… so I was a happy camper!)

    We were invited to enjoy Thanksgiving with the Widmer Family.  There were lots of them there along with some family members (in-laws) that we had not met until that day.  They put on a very nice dinner.


    Grant, Niel, LaNae, Beth (Grant’s Sister), Colleen,
    Krista, Jeff, Judy Lynn & Gene (Widmer… Grant’s Brother and our Jacki’s Dad)


    After Thanksgiving dinner, Grant brought out his “Train” to give the kids a ride.
    The kids LOVE this (as well as some of the adults!)

    Thanks Widmers for inviting us and sharing the day with us.  You are truly good friends and we love (and have loved) being so close to you and your family!

    When the kids were growing up we had a tradition that I would cook a nice breakfast on Saturday mornings.  Breakfast is probably my favorite meal and I have a myriad of choices to my liking.  One of Jeff’s favorite gowning up was “Egg-al-a- Golden Rod”, so one of his requests of my visit here was to make that breakfast for him.  So yesterday morning (and yes… it was a Saturday) I fixed the meal for him.


    Egg-al-a-Golden Rod, with Sausage on the side.

    On Friday I went for a walk around Jeff and Becky’s neighborhood and took these pictures:

    I walked over to their HOA pool and playground area.  I was interested in this because I have been trying to get
    The HOA where we live in Gresham to improve some of our facilities.  It seemed warm enough to swim in the pool,
    but Jeff says the water is awfully cold this time of year… which answers why no one was in the area.

    Today is Sunday and we are having another Thanksgiving Dinner today for Becky.  She had to work on Thanksgiving day, so she has invited her brother and some of her friends here for Turkey and the works.  Judy Lynn made three pumpkin and two cherry-O-cream pies yesterday, so it should be nice.

    So that pretty well catches you all up on what we have been doing.  We are REALLY enjoying the SUNSHINE.  Our kids in Oregon have been telling us that they have had LOTS of rain… and with encouragement (not) like that, the sunshine down her seems pretty nice.  We may leave this week some time, but have not set a date for sure.  Stay tuned and I will try to let you know when our plans develop.

  • November Family Letter

    It is Saturday mid-afternoon and I am sitting out in the motorhome thinking I ought to get this family letter written.  It has been a week and a half since I updated this blog, so thought that I would do that along with the family letter.

    Let’s see, my last blog update was just before Halloween, so I ought to post a couple of pictures of Jenn’s kids and their Halloween outfits.


    Jayden and Bentley in their “outfits”
    (I would post a picture of me and my costume… but it is the scary one that I have to wear ALL THE TIME!

    We left Richmond and headed for Bear Lake the day after Halloween (Thursday, Nov. 1st).  On the way through Logan we stopped and visited with our good friends Loran and Marcile (Hirschi).  While visiting with them I took a couple of pictures:

    Marcile & Loran
    I posted the picture on the right on Facebook and got so many comments about them not looking “happy” or “liking each other” that I had to correct things, so I took the picture on the left… which brought much more positive comments.

    We had a much nicer ride through the canyon than I had a week earlier.  Fall leaves were mostly gone, but I have always thought that the canyon was pretty anyway.


    The left picture was just as  you got a view of Beautiful Bear Lake as you come down from the top.
    The right picture was taken my first trip to Bear Lake a little over a week before.
    This trip to St. Charles, I parked the motorhome over on Dallas and Theresa’s driveway.  They were leaving with their family to visit Disneyland, so they just let me take over.

    Motorhome Parked in Dallas’ driveway.
    Pretty well took up the whole thing!


    Mom’s home this visit verses my previous trip!

    Before Dallas left, I helped him mow the lawns… mostly just picking up the leaves.  Looked pretty good when we got finished.

     
    Mom’s large lawn to the South -  Me on the mower (toy!).

    The Friday before Dallas and Theresa left we had an impromptu dinner over at the Paris Cafe.  Both Maxine and David had been working all day, but agreed to meet us on their way home from work, so Mom, Dallas, Theresa, Judy Lynn and I piled into our Terrain (kinda squished) and “motored” to Paris to meet them.  So sorry Brent and Jan, would like to have had you included… but things happened too fast and not time to recover after because Dallas and Theresa left the next morning and did not get back until after we had gone.


    Mom, Maxine, David, Dallas, Theresa, Judy Lynn & Me

    We tried to spend as much time as we could with Mom.  We took her to Montpelier one day, to Logan another, and back to Montpelier on another day.  We also tried to see Maxine and David as often as we could.  We went over to Maxine’s and watched her fix Mom’s hair.  She still looks really good, don’t you think!

     
    Maxine Fixing Mom’s hair — and the “Final” look at the end of the project.


    I fixed Mom Breakfast almost every morning.
    This morning was scrambled eggs and toast.


    This morning was bacon, easy-over eggs, toast, home-made raspberry jam, orange juice and Milk.
    She looked pretty happy!

    We left Bear Lake for Malad on Tuesday (election day) and drove straight through to Malad, only stopping in Logan to pick up some flowers to put on  Ashley’s & Dad and Mom Alder’s graves.
     
    Motor home parked in the lane to the side of Mom Alder’s Home.


    Ashley’s Beautiful Head-Stone


    Mom & Dad Alder’s Headstone

    We stayed in Malad until Friday morning and worked most of the time in Mom Alder’s house.  We spent most of our time cleaning out just one of the upstairs bedrooms.  Didn’t find anything too interesting… not hidden treasures that I could ascertain… DANG.  We visited with Jeff, Wendy and Jennie Ann each evening and got to see Logan for a few seconds on the last night.  We were going to spend most of Friday working in the house, but woke up that morning to HUGE snowflakes falling and decided we needed to get to Richmond before the snow started sticking on the roads, so we cleaned up our mess the best we could, buttoned up the MH for travel and was on our way before 11:00… pretty early for us.


    Leaving Jeff & Wendy’s driveway.
    The big white specks all over the picture are HUGE snowflakes.


    Motorhome parked back at Jenn’s

    We drove straight to Richmond through Logan, but by the time we got to the Logan valley, the snow was coming down as rain.  It was forecasting snow though, so when I parked the MH at Jenns, we did not put the large front slides out so I would not have to crawl up on top to remove snow in the morning.  And they were right, not much snow, but enough to cover my satellite dome to block out TV

    MERRY CHRISTMAS!

    Last evening we made our last visit to Golden Corral and their shrimp for a while.  We do not have a Golden Corral or a Chuck-rama in Oregon, so I have to take advantage of it while I am here.  This makes the second trip to Golden Corral and one to Chuck-rama (I have their shrimp-days all figured out!).

    And I ate my share.  They didn’t make much money on me last night!

    This morning I got up and showered and was ready for the day when I got a text from Jenn inside asking me if I would tend Jaidyn and Madi while they took Bentley to wrestling.  I was happy to do that.  They were only gone for an hour, but then “the girls” needed to go shopping to get “stuff” for tomorrow.  I guess Jenn wants to feed the folks that come to church for Madi’s blessing, but I will bet that food is not the only thing that they went shopping for.  Taurean and I stayed home with the kids and I stayed inside until Taurean’s brother came over to watch Nebraska play football (they are HUGE Nebraska fans since their family is originally from around there).  So then I left and went out to the MH and worked on this.  Glad to get it done.

    Me doing my “Grandfatherly” duty.  Love these kids!

    Our plans are to stay here for tomorrow and then head south starting on Monday.  We plan to go as far as Provo on Monday and park the MH out in front of Melissa’s, spend the evening there.  Judy Lynn has some craft stores that she has to hit and we will do that either Monday after we get there or Tuesday morning if we get there too late.  Then we will head to AZ through Las Vegas, taking two days to get there.  We will stay in WARM AZ until Thanksgiving and then work our way back to Oregon.  And yes… we are having a BALL.  LOVE our motorhome!