At Home in Palm Desert

I've mentioned how interesting I thought it was when at the beginning of spring we could see the snow on the mountains in the background and the palm trees in the foreground. Now that I can finally move pictures to my blog, I wanted to show you this shot from the street in front of our house. Sorry our neighbors hadn't taken their garbage in, but it does give you an idea of our view. The mountains are very high and our temperatures down below are perfect. We have a tram that can take you up to the snow. I went on it shortly after it was built and I hated it, so haven't gone back since. And to tell you the truth, I have no plans to visit the snow up there because I hate being in snow. Lots of people like to go up there though, both in the summer and the winter.

This is where we spend about 45 minutes each afternoon, doing our aerobic exercises so that we can keep fit. This only shows part of the pool. I'm afraid our pictures are not easy to access because they are not filed properly. Since I don't know how to do that, it will be some time before I can show you a bigger picture of the back yard and the pool area. I plan to show you our home and yard when I can find the rest of the pictures. If I can't, I will just have to get Dick to take them again. We took a lot of pictures of every room in the house last year to have for insurance purposes so I know they are somewhere. I just didn't have time to look for them right now. I want to do this because I know how much I have enjoyed seeing pictures of so many of your homes and yards and have always wished I could do the same, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

This has been a very busy week for me. It seems like every day I have had something major scheduled. Today we did a huge grocery shopping at Winco, which is a large supermarket that we like to go to about once a month because for the most part, their prices are somewhat less than Von's, Ralph's, or Albertson's, which are our three major supermarkets. It is getting to be so depressing to go grocery shopping as every month we go, I notice how much the prices have gone up. Honestly, it is really sad for those of us who are on a small fixed income, such as we are. Oh well, I am definitely not going to blog about our terrible economy.

Just found another picture of the pool which gives a larger view. These are some of the grandkids playing in it. Now I am finished for tonight.

Addition

I couldn't even post a comment on my own blog. I just couldn't figure it out. That's how lame I am. I just had to do it this way because I made a stupid mistake on my blog. I made Bryce a year older than he really is. He is just three years old, which makes him even more remarkable! Sorrry Heather.

Incidentally, I would have posted more pictures (yes, I did it myself, with Dick looking over my shoulder and giving me directions which I again wrote down.) but he only took two! He hates to take pictures so I guess I am lucky to have that many. I don't even try any more. I was never meant to be a photographer.

Visiting with the Andersons

Grandma spent an awful lot of time with Bryce listening to the gosh awful music that is connected to his numerous T.V. games. Unfortunately, Grandma doesn't think this is a good passtime for kids, although I will have to say I marveled at his dexterity and knowledge about finding his way around all this technology. Would that I could know as much about it as my adorable four year old Bryce!

Finally we got everyone together enough so that we could go out to dinner. We were starved about this time because Dick and I are used to eating at 5:00p.m. We went to California Pizza Kitchen, which isn't a place that I love going, but at this point I would have gone anywhere and everyone else was fine about going there. I can tell you right now, the best thing on the menu was the children's menu, but somehow I didn't think I could pass for an 84 year old child. I was sitting on the other side of Carli and she told me that she would order two desserts so that I could have a heated brownie with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry! I was delighted and guess what? I not only ate my own special $1:00 dessert, which by the way happened to be VERY large, as were all the other $1:00 desserts on the childrens menu. I hate to admit it, but I ate the balance of not only Carli's original dessert, but the rest of Jeremiah's. Yes, little piggy that I am, I ate all that was left of theirs but also had a pretty big taste of Bryce's key lime pie, which Sue let him order from the big peoples menu. I will hasten to add that Dick had to eat most of my tortilla soup, so I was really ready for the desserts and I admit that I left the restuarant plenty full.

The lineup of the people in the picture left to right is: Carli, Todd(my medical school student), Jeremiah, Bryce and Matt.

Today is the 14th anniversary of the day that Dick and I were sealed in the Temple. We have another couple who celebrate the anniversary of their wedding and we always celebrate together. It is time for us to leave so will have to call this my post for tonight.

Family Time Coming Up

It won't be long now until I will get to see Sue. I know all of you are very much aware of the fact that she is my second daughter, ----you know, the one with the talent to write interesting books, stories and all those countless poems. I can just imagine how Sue feels reading this opening sentence. How she hates me to brag about her, but I ask you, how can I not brag about her extraordinary abilities? I'd better stop right now, or I know what I can expect when I see her, which will be either tomorrow or Thursday. I'll know before the night is over. It is especially exciting because I had no idea that I would be seeing her soon. She just decided at the last moment to come, and I am so glad she wasn't about to ignore a special invitation to come and stay with Heather while Matt is away on business. Lucky for us all that Heather thought it would be a good idea for her to come.

I had a very interesting day today. I went to the dental specialist and he gave me a brand new way of making a new bridge to go on the three implants I have left. He will put a titanium ring that will fit over the implants which will give them support and stability. Then he will make a new denture supported implant that will snap on to the ring and hopefully it will be a lot better than what I now have. I hate to spend the money because of my age, but I am going to take the chance anyway because I think it will be so much better. For one thing, the teeth will be porcelain instead of plastic, which is what these are, so the whole thing will be much slimmer. This thing I have now is so fat that it hides a lot of my taste buds and I don't get the full flavor of the food I eat. I hope I am making a good decision.

I am so darned mad at myself because I can't remember a darned thing about how to transfer pictures onto my blog from my online album. I seem to be so stupid. It was as if Dick didn't spend a lot of time trying to teach me either. I think I tried to write directions down but I can't find the directions. I am a hopeless case. I will try again, because I do think it makes posts a lot more interesting if you have pictures to show about what you are writing. Still, I'm not sure what kind of a picture I would have posted anyway with this particular blog, so I guess it is okay. I will be taking some pictures tomorrow, or Thursday, so maybe you will get to see some more pictures of the Matt Anderson family and me. (As if you haven't already seen countless pictures of my darling great grandchildren.)

Not very interesting tonight..........pretty uneventful week, actually. Sorry. I will try to do better next week. If anything of interest happens in the meantime, I might even blog before next Tuesday.

San Diego Experience

Yesterday we went to San Diego to re-connect with a friend that I worked with 28 years ago in Orlando Florida. We went there in 1983/84 when Dick went through mid-life crisis when he was in his 40's. His so called "best friend" that he went to college with decided to take advantage of getting the right to build British hovercraft, which is a pleasure boat seating two people, that rides on top of the water. He talked Dick into going into business with him and they truly started from scratch. They had to find a big plant where they could manufacture these boats, and all the things that go with starting a new business kept the two of them busy for quite a while. Unfortunately Dick only had a 10% interest so he didn't have a whole lot to say. The whole mess was a bad decision that I may blog about later, but it is a long story. I just wanted to explain why we were in Florida to begin with. We were there 11 months and during this time I was the sole bread winner. We bought a home thinking we would be there for a long time. Dick didn't take any salary, so it was up to me. We also had a daughter in college that we had to send money to each month.





I got a job working for a CPA company and Ivette Rivera was the girl I met in that office. She was from Puerto Rico. We really hit it off even though she was lots younger than I, having recently graduated from college with a degree in Accounting. I was 54 so there was at least 20 or 22 years difference in our ages. That didn't seem to matter though as we really got along well.

I got an Email from her recently telling me she was going to be in San Diego this week, starting on Sunday. She was here for a conference that her company sent her to. She is a CPA now and tomorrow she gets her certificate for financial planning. Since she has been living in Puerto Rico for the last 20 years, needless to say we haven't been able to see each other although she has invited us to come and see her for many of the last few years. That is why we were so eager to see her in San Diego. The convention was in downtown S.D. and neither Dick nor I had ever been there. We had been in Oldtown San Diego, but this was like a maiden journey to a place we had never been before. We were so happy to have our GPS. She was staying at the Hyatt Manchester, which is a beautiful hotel with two very high towers. She was on the 5th floor so we got a beautiful picture of the harbor from her window.

Ivette was staying in the Seaport Tower . The other tower is called Harbor Tower. These two towers are more than the length of a football field from one to the other, which gives you the idea of how far it was between the two towers. Unfortunately, I had to do so much walking. There wasn't any place I could sit between towers so just had to do it without so much as a minutes rest. When Ivette arrived on the airport shuttle, she went up to her room and then she came looking for us. It was so great to see her again. She took us up to her room and wouldn't you know, hers was the last room on the floor so we had to walk about 50 yards to get to her room. We visited until it was time to get something to eat. We decided that it would be best to eat in or near the hotel as we didn't want to take the car out of the garage. Dick had been looking the place over before Ivette got there and he found a village that had pretty much started out one of the doors to the Hotel, so we walked all the way through it. It would have been fun to browse, but my feet and legs were bothering me so much. I wished I had brought my wheel chair, because it was all cobble stone and it really made it harder for me to walk. Fortunately there were many places to sit down though so it was okay. We had dinner in a very nice restaurant. Then we bought warm cookies right out of the oven on our walk back to the hotel. We went up to Ivettes room and visited a bit more and left about 8:30p.m. so that we wouldn't get home so late and Ivette could get some sleep. We actually made pretty good time and got home about 11:00 so that wasn't too bad. The shocker was that for the six hours our car sat in the parking garage, it cost us $28.00

We figured with all the walking we did, I had walked the length of a football field 8 times plus the circle around the village. I'm so glad we did that circle though because on the other side was the harbor and there were a lot of ships and sail boats, such a pretty sight. I wish we had taken more pictures. Dick left the camera in the car so we had to take these with the I -phone, but I think they turned out better than the camera, so next time we go somewhere, I will definitely take more pictures. I did this earlier tonight because I really needed Dick to help me with the pictures. He let me do it, so maybe next time I can do it myself......just maybe though, because I still may need Dick.