New Years Eve

Sunrise

There is still snow on the ground

We had a quiet New Year's Eve, we stayed home and watched TV and went to bed way before midnight.

Home Again

We were both up by 4 and ready to leave by 5, so we headed out.  Goodbye Days Inn!  We stayed here because the last time we stayed it was a nicer place than the Super 8 we usually stay in.  Not anymore, it felt like being in a prison cell, bare walls with no pictures, no chairs to sit in, tiny little pillows and the room smelled bad, the smell permeated everything, by morning my pj's had picked it up from the sheets!  It was supposed to be a non-smoking room, but I don't think it was!

Sign on the motel we stayed in

The sun peaking out at 7:30 between Tucson and Globe

We stopped in Globe for breakfast, there were some cool vehicles in the parking lot! What fun to have one like this to play in!

We stopped at Seneca and I got some pictures while stopped.  It looked like this must have been a cool place at one time, too bad it closed up, I'd have loved to spend a weekend in one of the cabins!

The sun shining on a yucca, one of the cabins in the background

I love looking at the rocks in Salt River Canyon

Back in the snow country

I'd love to live in this modern Victorian!

Mural painted by Steve Taylor

It always feels good when Escudilla pops up in my view on a trip home!

It ended up being a not so fun trip home for me, my stomach wasn't feeling good, I guess I ate something that didn't agree with me yesterday. 

Tucson

John's spikes are in Tucson, so we drove down today to pick them up.  We met Andy at the crossroads to deliver Jessie to him and headed out.

Leaving town, I love these hills!

Andy waiting for us at the crossroads

Mandy, Mandy says it's going to take us over 6 hours from the crossroads! I wonder if she knows the way??

Ewww, they left their sewer drains open and we got splashed all over the front of the pickup and the windshield!  Come on people, close your sewer drains when you are on the road!!

Salt River Canyon

A quick stop to pick up lunch to go at McD's

We turned left at Gobe even though Mandy, Mandy told us to turn right, does she even know the way to Tucson??

There are lots of yuccas along this stretch of the road, love them!

We've reached our destination!

Wow, these two buckets have a TON of railroad spikes in them!

Loading the spikes, I wish I had one of those fork lifts!  It was cool!

Charles, Nikki and Christy with the quilt Grandma made Nikki for Christmas

 It was a stressful trip because the place where we picked up the spikes closed at 3 and we didn't leave until after we found out for sure they were in Tucson, which wasn't until 9.  The directions John printed off from Google Earth and our Tom Tom didn't agree, so it was stressful deciding who to trust! We ended up using parts of both.  We made it with time to spare, thankfully they loaded the barrels into the pickup with a fork lift, or we probably wouldn't have gotten them all loaded by closing time because we'd have had to take them out of the barrels a handful at a time.  We went to Charles' house after we got done and visited with them, then took them out to Golden Corral to eat and had a nice visit with them.

We picked the Days Inn to stay in because the last time we stayed there it was nicer than our usual Super 8.  Things have gone downhill since then, we wondered if the guests have been robbing them, there were NO pictures on the walls and no chairs to sit in!  It reminded me of a jail cell.  It smelled bad, too, old stale smoke and old motel, yuck!  We had a hard time getting to sleep because of the noise, I think someone was playing in the pool area and going in and out a metal gate, slamming it shut each time, and running up and down the corridor yelling.  I finally drifted off, not sure what time it was.

Our room at the Days Inn

Our First Progressive Dinner

I got some cute photos of Jessie this morning.  She's so good about posing for me.

Carleen and Trish planned a fun night to celebrate Mom's upcoming birthday on Jan. 3rd.  Since Trish won't be here on her birthday she wanted to celebrate while they are here.  Jessie wanted to go, so we kept her for an extra day.  We all had a blast!  Jessie, John and I had never been to a progressive dinner and we had a lot of fun!  We had salad at Aunt Robbie's, Spaghetti at Carleen's and dessert at Mom's.

Mom and Aunt Robbie

Aunt Robbie's where we had a delicious salad.

Carleen's table

Jessie got her own little table. We all got a cute little mug with our
name on it to tell us where to sit.  The mug had goodies inside! 

Jessie, Me and John

Jessie, Sam and Trish

Sandy and Gary

Karen, Mom and Jessie with the flowers we gave her.

All of the dinner guests except Aunt Robbie, she was taking the photo.

Halloween is here!

It's been a beautiful Halloween Eve day!  We went for a walk this morning and it was so warm we didn't need coats.

I love walking on this old highway.

 We took John's cat boat out on Becker Lake this afternoon for a short spin around the lake to try out the placement of the trolling motor.  We hope to have some fun times boating next summer.  It's such a relief not to be going back to the Art Barn, so many things we can do with our summers!

The ducks didn't like us and would take to the air when we got near.

This evening we went out to eat at Java Blues.  We ate outside on their patio and enjoyed all the trick or treaters walking up and down the street.  After we ate we went through the spook house, what fun!  This was the funnest Halloween I've had since I was a kid, LOL! 

Inside the spook house, what a fun adventure!

Nice Weather continues!

We've had such beautiful weather this week!  Lots of breaks and lunches outside.  John remodeled an old chair into a swing and hung it from the locust tree and I'm enjoying swinging time!
 

Old Corral on the Apache Reservation
Loving the fall colors!

We went to ShowLow today to bring home some sculptures from the Casbah and Show Low City Hall.    The art show at the Show Low City Hall is winding up it's 6 month run and it's time to switch out or take home what we have on display there.  John is going to put his timepiece sculpture where the bear was and we took a few other things to display, too. 

Loading the bear at City Hall

How could we resist, pizza for lunch!

Unloading the bear at home.

Cloudy Start to the Day

The weather report I printed out for this week said today was going to be mostly sunny. So far it's overcast and looks like rain. We did our two mile walk this morning, saw lots of planes and several trucks loaded with straw again. I heard that the straw is coming from all over the US, I didn't know there was so much straw! We see trucks loaded with it parked on the side of the road and traveling all the time!

Week In The Life Day 3

Had a hard time walking this morning, the toes on my left foot just didn't want to walk! They were hurting the entire 2 miles! The smell of the willows we walk past were really strong this morning and river willows don't smell good!

My morning break treat was cocoa and crackers, I went bare foot all morning because shoes made my toes hurt too much.

After a bath we went to the Credit Union to deposit checks, then ran errands.

Lunch was mini tacquitos made for me by John while I got his pictures ready and printed them out. They are for the scratchboards he'll be working on this weekend.

Did dishes, cleaned the kitchen and uploaded a picture to facebook.

Made layouts for Monday's WITL and baked cookies for us.

3:30 we left on an adventure to Alpine to check out the flood damage. Made us sad to see, the Sportsman Lodge in Alpine looked like it had had water high enough to get inside, Tal Wi Wi had ditches dug, lots of culverts were taken out to make the ditches deeper and still it looked like water had gotten to some homes. The bridge over the river in Nutri has been removed and the level lowered to make room for water. We stopped and checked out an under pass just the other side of the road to Escudilla and found where ash had run down the hill, I could see pieces of burned bark in the mud. I could smell the ash, so sad!

WITL Day 2

I took 301 photos today, that's more than yesterday! I'm so glad for digital, couldn't have afforded to take that many in a day back in the days of film!

I ended up spending most of the night in the recliner. I coudn't get to sleep, I had heartburn from the Orange Chicken and had to get up to take some tums and ended up staying up. This recliner isn't as comfy as my old one to sleep in, so it was an uncomfortable night!

We got a late start for our walk this morning, but we did make it! Yesterday, when we went out to check on the drainage down the hill, we stopped and talked to a guy in a big tree trimming truck that was parked by our driveway. They were setting up today as we left right by the tree that's been needing trimming, it's been blocking our view when we are coming out of our driveway.

Our street has been scoured! The rain cleaned out a lot of the dirt that was in the crack between the pavement and the curb. Wow, just shows the power of Mother Nature!

Stopped and took a picture of this horse, it lives down the street a bit. What gorgeous eyes! I just love horse eyes, they are so expressive!


Visited with Mr. Sherwood, saw more planes flying overhead, dodged the puddles in the road and had a good walk this morning. Love our morning walks!

Had cocoa and cereal with strawberries for breakfast. I was going to eat at our "roadside table", but it was too sunny, so I went to the table at the back of the house, then ended up under the locust tree so I could watch the tree trimmers.

Ordered supplies to start project life and for my week in the life from Amazon, checked 593.org for news on flooding and found Alpine had some flooding yesterday. Had a bit of rain and John made lunch for us while I helped him print out his latest scratchboard ideas.


Shot Ray's animals having fun in a puddle and a neat car at the drug. Mailed my drive to asus in the rain gased up and headed for SJ to get Andy's tools, delivered them and came on home.

Steak, corn, green beans and rolls for supper.


Drove up to Eagar to check on any flooding, didn't see any problems. 593 posted that there is flooding at Alpine, Greer and Southfork.

A Week In The Life

I decided to do Ali Edward's Week In The Life this year. Her project is a week of intense documenting of your life. It's hard to remember to write my thoughts down, taking photos not so hard, LOL, I took 224 photos today! WOW! I took lots of shots through the window of the pickup, man that thing gets dirty fast, so lots of my photos aren't great quality, but they did document my day! Here's a few of them. . .

The sun rising as we started our walk this morning.


One of the planes we see and hear every day. I think they must be helping with the reseeding project in the burned areas of our forest.

Breakfast today was cereal. We were out of strawberries, so I added a sliced banana. Not as good as the strawberries. I always eat my cereal in this bowl. Charles and Nikki gave it to me one year for Christmas, makes me happy to use it! Thanks guys!

One of my flowers with raindrops from last night's rain.

I gave John a much needed hair cut this morning.

We rode out to the airport to watch the planes coming in to see if we could see how many there were. Not sure, we saw several. They would land, taxi to a spot where it looked like something was being loaded in the plane, then take off again. We watched 3 of them come in and leave. Busy, busy!!

You can see the seeded areas covered in straw behind this plane coming in for a landing.


Here's one of the trucks loaded with straw that we are seeing in the area. I heard that they are bringing it in from all over the country!


Last winter was hard on plants in our area. We lost part of our grapevine, I kept hoping it would bounce back, but I think some of it is gone. I need to trim off the dead branches.

Part of our morning routine since John retired is a 9 o'clock break. John was used to having one with his fellow workers when he was working, so wanted to keep doing that when he retired. It's been hard for me to get used to stopping what I'm doing to have one, but I'm adjusting.


I made the mistake one day of asking John where it was chiseled in stone that we had to have a break at 9 and later that day, this is what he brought me. So, if anyone asks you where it's chiseled in stone that you have to have a break at 9, you can tell them, it's at my house!


Our neighbors got some chickens, ducks and turkeys this spring and they are beginning to venture out. I have listened to their rooster grow up, one day he discovered he could crow and he sounded so funny. He's getting better at it now. Today, I got a few shots of the ducks swimming in the pond. What fun, makes me wish I had some. . .


We had some rain today, wow, did we have some rain! It was coming down in sheets and it blew in under our porch roof, hitting the bay window and running down it in sheets and somehow it got inside! I had to put a towel in the window sill to soak up the water. It came in under the front door and the sun room door, too! Wow, I wonder what it did in Alpine, Nutrioso and Greer? I'll bet they got some flooding today. We walked down the street to see what the drainage below us was doing, not much was flowing there, that's good, we've had the road washed out in the past by flooding in that drainage!


I took the optical drive out of my laptop today. I called ASUS about the problems I've had with it a while back and they said it needs to be replaced. I had a hard time getting them to tell me how to take it out, I called and the lady I talked to was so unhelpful! She told me to send in the whole computer, I told her NO way, she said then take it to a repair shop, I told her I'd taken one out in the past, Gateway sent me a new one and instructions on how to do it, and I did it with no trouble. Then she put me on hold for a long time, came back and started telling me on the phone how to do it. BUT, my computer wasn't the one she was giving me instructions for, so then she says take it to a repair shop, like I was too stupid to see the plate over the drive with 4 screws to take out that wasn't there on mine. Excuse me, but mine doesn't look like that! I finally hung up on her after telling her ASUS customer service stinks, did a search on google, and in a few minutes found a video on U Tube telling how to dismantle my computer completely! It was so easy to take out the drive once I knew which screws to take out, why couldn't they have just emailed me the directions! Dumb ASUS! Maybe if I'd told them this was Pinky's daughter they were talking to, they would have believed me when I said I could take it out myself!!


Supper was Orange Chicken followed by a movie, Sanctum. Wow, what an intense movie. It's based on a true story about some people trapped in a cave that's partly under water. Made me scared to go in a cave!

Then off to bed . . . and hopefully no nightmares about caves!