Lake Havasu Balloon Festival Jan. 2016

Virginia and Dennis made their migration from stormy, snowy, cold South Dakota and arrived in Havasu...to cool temps and rain. However, weather corrected in time for Mike and Sue and us to travel to Havasu for the balloon festival.

We side tracked to the VW bus gathering and found Santa Claus!  He was very jolly and more than happy to pose in a picture with us.

And one of the trip highlights was to be able to start the celebration of Virginia turning 60 on February 3rd!!  Hehehehe - so glad she is almost there!!

Mimosas one of the mornings.

A great second annual Havasu Balloon Festival!!  Thanks Virginia and Dennis for being such good hosts!  It was nice to see Doug, Dave and Nancy and Jerry and Julie as well!!

Happy Birthday to me! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2016!!

Larry paved the way and then I turned 60!!  I'm thrilled!  Nebraska (okay, actually South Dakota now) friends, Virginia and Dennis sent me flowers and wine!

Friends Allison and Brian, Sue and Mike and Michelle and Todd surprised me with a birthday celebration dinner on the 23rd.  (l-r: Todd, Allison, Sue and Michelle)

Brother Jim, Liz and Jimmy came to our home on Christmas Eve to celebrate our birthday.

Christmas Day, we were invited to Liz's sister and her husband's home - delicious food and a very pleasant day spent with that special group of people.

A few days after Christmas, we headed for the White Mountains for an overnight stay at Liz's brother's cabin with Liz, Jimmy, Liz's brother Don and Liz's nieces Haylee and Lacy.  We played board games, enjoyed time spent sipping on wine by Don's fire pit, good food and woke to snow the following morning!! What a treat!!

(l-r: Lacy, Haylee, back row: Jimmy and Liz)

Several of our friends and family came up this way to celebrate New Year's Eve.  We began the celebration with a sunset hike in Cave Creek Regional Park and ended the hike with a champagne toast.

(l-r: Allison, Michelle, Jackie, Mike, Brian, Sue, Larry and Richard.)

We all returned to our house where we met up with Jim and Liz, friend Lisa and Marilyn and Mel where we had a potluck dinner along with music and conversation by the fire pit waiting for 2015 to come to an end and welcome 2016 and all that it will bring!  Happy New Year!

We will travel to Lake Havasu in the middle of January to visit friends Virginia and Dennis who have escaped winter at their home in South Dakota at Lake Angostura for their winter home in Lake Havasu.  We'll enjoy the Lake Havasu Balloon Festival and begin the celebration of Virginia turning 60 on February 3rd!

Larry turned 60!

Why is turning 60 so such a weird feeling!  Larry turned 60 on November 13th and the next day, he hiked down from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River and back up in seven hours - and he felt great!  Larry demonstrated to me that old is merely a state of mind! 

He wanted to spend this birthday at the Grand Canyon.  We stayed at the historic hotel - El Tovar.  We had a great dinner the night of his birthday.  He had a great hike the following day.  I did the easy version which is the rim trail that is paved and easy and allows for multiple great views of the Canyon.  It was a great place to turn 60 and for me, to be there with that terrific person who turned 60!  He wears it well!

And his requested reward when he hiked out of the Canyon was:

The El Tovar is at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was opened in 1905 as one of a chain of hotels and restaurants owned and operated by the Fred Harvey Company in conjunction with the Santa Fe railway.  It is an early example of the style that would evolve into National Park Service Rustic architecture.  It was built before the Grand Canyon was a formally protected Federal park.  The Grand Canyon National Park was established by Congress in 1916.  The El Tovar was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Uncle Ron from Omaha informed us earlier this year of a veteran's memorial near us in Anthem, AZ.  It is a monument dedicated to honoring the service and sacrifice of the United States armed forces.  The five marble pillar monument was designed by Anthem resident Renee Palmer-Jones.  The pillars represent the five branches of the United States military.  They are staggered in size (from 17 ft. to 6 ft.) and ordered in accordance with the Department of Defense prescribed precedence, ranging from the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps, the United States Navy, the United States Air Force and the United States Coast Guard. 

Anthem chief engineer, Jim Martin was responsible for aligning the memorial accurately with the sun so that on each Veterans Day, 11/11, at precisely 11:11 a.m., the sun's rays pass through the ellipses of the five Armed Services pillars to form a perfect solar spotlight over a mosaic of The Great Seal of the United States.

Our plan was to visit the memorial on Veterans Day but those plans were foiled.  So we visited the memorial on our return from the 60th birthday Grand Canyon trip. 

 The weekend before Thanksgiving, we traveled to San Diego as guests of sister-in-law Liz and brother Jim at their time share.  Liz's sister Marilyn and her husband Mel joined us as well.  We haven't visited San Diego since we lived in Yuma - nearly 20 years ago.  We enjoyed wine tasting in Temecula and a visit to Coronado Island and the Hotel Del Coronado.

The Saturday following Thanksgiving took us to Tucson for nephew Jimmy's high school football team Division II championship football game.  They won!! and we made television!

Early December we hosted a small gathering of our Friday night football group and Jimmy and some of his friends joined us as well.  We've now adjusted to having our Friday nights free but certainly miss watching Jimmy football!

The following weekend we joined Jim and Liz as their guests for Jimmy's football banquet.  It was a pleasure listening to the coaches talk about these young men and their accomplishments on the football field as well as in the classroom.  Jimmy was recognized for his 4.2 GPA, along with several other of the football players with GPAs of 3.0 and above.  Jimmy (I might have to really consider starting calling him Jim?) plans to pursue admission to West Point.  He graduates May 2016. 

Larry is doing well.  I'm doing well.  Life is good!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Fall 2015

September took us to Reno for Larry to present a paper at a conference but it also allowed us to see friends Alex and Lisa from our Yuma days (can't believe I didn't remember to get a picture) and Julie and Joost from our Bolivia days.  Cell phone cameras don't always do a very good job....

 We traveled to Christopher Creek in the White Mountains (north and east of Phoenix) for a Labor Day weekend stay with Jim, Liz and Jimmy.  We were on the road before the sun came up to drive about an hour from their cabin to watch early morning wildlife (deer, elk and turkey).

We then met up with friends Mike and Sue and Allison and Brian for a hike - great day!  We ended the day at Liz's sister and her husband's home for dinner.  Thanks Marilyn and Mel for inviting us all over!

L-R: Sue, me, Allison, Liz and Marilyn

 

Liz, Jimmy, Larry and I went to a Diamondbacks game.

We enjoyed the lunar eclipse.

Larry had business in Rapid City in October so we added some vacation time allowing for a drive through Colorado to see fall colors.  We drove to Telluride for the first night - beautiful.

Next day took us to Frisco near Aspen and the following day found us in Estes Park including a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park.  We saw a lot of elk on that drive but I most enjoyed all the elk we saw on the golf course in Estes.

We then headed to Harrison to winterize Dorothy's home while she is in Wichita  recovering from her knee replacement surgery.  We were able to spend some time with friends John and Terry.  Okay, so my camera doesn't always do a good job either....

Following an extremely quiet stay in Harrison (we're usually back during Fair when nearly all of the family is back) we headed for Angostura near Hot Springs, SD, to visit Virginia and Dennis in their new home.  Larry headed onto Rapid City for his business and I stayed with Virginia and Dennis - enjoyed some nice walks along the lake.

We missed two of nephew Jimmy's football games but they were able to overcome our absence from the crowd and win anyway!  Sister Jackie had arrived in Phoenix and was able to see Jimmy play allowing us a family photo.

The following Friday was senior night.  Jimmy invited me to walk with him and his parents when he was introduced - gad, what an honor.  They won their game for a regular season record of 8-2.  Playoffs begin this Friday, November 6.  Go Cats!!

The back yard remodel that began in late May:  One of the features we liked about this house when we moved here four years ago was the back yard.  We spend a lot of time on the back porch and we liked the back yard...but now we love the back yard.  The remodel idea started because we wanted to move the outdoor grill to a shadier area (imagine July and 115 degrees and using the grill) and we decided a fire pit was more practical than the beehive fireplace feature and we wanted to replace the tile on the under roof patio.  Well, those ideas morphed into a total back yard remodel. 

The before picture:

The after picture:

Larry has been working on the landscaping and I need to take care of some touch up painting but in the meantime, we're very much enjoying the final product!

Larry's job continues to go well.  He has been able to incorporate a reduced hour work week to a four day work week for the most part.  Most of his travel is in Arizona and New Mexico.

On the health front, I haven't been able to shake a cough for several months so Dr. Paripati decided to take me off the chemo oral drug therapy and is sending me to a pulmonologist.  My recent scan showed something going on in the lungs but she is thinking it is infection vs. cancer.  I've been off the drug for less than two weeks and the cough has pretty much resolved.  Interesting that the Temodar can cause lung infection in only 1% of the population.  I meet with the pulmonologist on Nov. 11, and oncology again on the 18th at which time I'll find out when I'll start up on the drug again. 

Thanksgiving is around the corner!  We'll be going to San Diego the days before Thanksgiving spending it with Liz and Jim and Liz's sister Marilyn and her husband Mel.  Looking forward to the trip - I can't remember the last time we were in San Diego.  We'll spend Thanksgiving with friends Mike and Sue and their family.