Home Sweet Home

We rolled into Minnesota last Thursday and checked into the Mystic Lake Casino RV Park, needed to spend some time with the MN grand kids. BTW the RV Park at Mystic Lake is open year round...yep I said year round. Crazy huh? It is a great park however and close to Lenny and Kelly's which is the icing on the cake.

You cannot imagine how happy I was to see Julia walk out the door with her daddy and in a happy and very excited voice said, "Grandma". Julia, Shelby and their parents moved from Nicollet to Prior Lake April 1 and Julia was more than happy to show us her new house. She ran from room to room announcing, 'This is Shelby's room, and ' This is my bathroom' (she's two and even though it is her and Shelby's bathroom everything is hers and hers only), 'This is momma's and daddy's room, and then.......
This is my bedroom

It's a comfortable home large enough for a guest or two :) with neighbors who are younger with young kids of their own. There is even a babysitter next door! Lenny says that on about day two the next door neighbor girl (who is 8) knocked on their door at 8pm asking if Julia could come out and play. It will be great for the girls to have a neighborhood with kids next door...good luck keeping Julia in the house this summer, haha.

And here is Julia's almost always smiling little sister Shelby Maria. Is she not adorable.

I wondered if we could do something fun one day and because the weather was not nice enough for the MN Zoo we headed for Underwater World at MOA. Now Julia was a little (a lot) apprehensive about going in the dark tunnel surrounded by water as you can see. To heck with the cool fish daddy lets get out of here.
She was much happier when we found these 'pretty fish' and were no longer under the water.
Shelby on the other hand just took it all in
I loved it actually. How often do you get to see the underbelly of a swimming shark.
This was much more to Julia's liking.
And then Julia and Grandpa spending some quiet time watching Tangled. BTW the purple chair that Julia is sitting in is the one that I made her almost two years ago. It was a great project because she loves it:)
We came to our official-summer home Monday. Everything was in place, nothing amiss thank goodness. You know I had forgotten how slow the internet service is here in the woods and it has taken me forever to get this blog loaded!

David immediately busted into laying the wood floor in the new living room and I am STILL trying to find places for all that we took out of the camper and organize the house.

Happy Easter to you all.

Texas 2011

This was an interesting trip to say the least.
First and formost was our 5th grandchild was born. Aiden Micheal came into this world 2 weeks early and pretty effortless...I am sure due to the daily yoga that his momma does. Pregnancy may not be-and is not- easy for her but delivery consists of getting to the hospital in the nick of time!
Here he is only a few hours after he was born.
And with his proud, and very good, daddy.
My biggest regret is having to pack a year's worth of grandparent time into one week...it sucks actually but we have to make the best of the situation so we spent lots of time with Abs. Abigail's middle name happens to be Rose and since she was trotting behind the rose bushes I felt it appropriate to snap a shot of her behind her namesake:)
Abs is a pretty good subject. She has these great facial expressions and loves to explore her environment. And it might be that grandma allows her to explore a bit farther than momma and daddy do.....shhhhhhhhhhh it's our secret.
I couldn't resist manipulating this picture of her peeking out from behind this tree
Abs loves bubbles and I bought her her very own bubble gun...squirt-er...whatever in the heck is the correct terminology. Umm she's a Texas girl so perhaps gun is OK?
And as you can see she had a blast with it
I can't figure it out...both Abs and Julia like to thieve and drink out of whatever water bottle I happen to be drinking out of. I say they are just grandma's girls and that is all that needs sayin about that.
This is a rarity, grandma and grandpa and the grand kids all in one picture together.

Texas is known for many things but a biggy is their blue bonnets. We were lucky enough to be there when many wildflowers were blooming. The most stunning in my opinion are the fields of blue bonnets.
And then there is the BlueBonnet Festival in Chappell Hill Texas. Ry, David, I and Abs went early in the morning (attempting to avoid the heat) hoping to see all of the crafter's stands, food stands etc....blocks of them in fact in this small little town. As it so happened the festival didn't start until noon...go figure we were there at 9am. Ah well we walked through the town and I busied myself taking pictures of the historic homes and buildings.
Porches, wonderful inviting porches


And benches surrounded by plants
The historic Chappell Hill Bank building
And Victorian homes
And on a back route to Ryan's, what is Texas without the Brahmas. No longhorns although I looked for some.
And windmills...I love windmills
The front of a great old building that looks like the inside of our porch with the old barn-board and corrugated tin
An old church that was soon to be torn down. Oh what David could do with that wonderful old wood
To top[ it all off....fleas. Yup I said fleas. Damn..... They do thrive in damp hot weather...it was damp and damned hot while we were there and the grass was infested with fleas. They are a nightmare and despite monthly treatments Peeko became infested scratching himself raw. We bathed him twice in special shampoo, sprayed the camper twice with flea rid spray....washed the bedding more than twice, vacuumed numerous times...blah blah blah. We are hoping just being gone takes care of the problem and of course the cold weather will help, the fleas anyway.
Thanks kids for the southern hospitality.
Texas was the last leg of our snowbird trip and we are currently about 500 miles from home. It was a great winter and we saw a lot and learned a lot but it will be nice to be home again. I am of course anxious to see out Minnesota girls and their new home. Here we come Leonard family.

Roscoe-A Street Fair and The Colorado River

Here he is our little street urchin who likes to get his nose into everything. This was the before picture, before little Roscoe became so ill that we thought we were going to lose him. He started throwing up last Tuesday and it continued constantly until Wednesday when we took him to the vet. The poor boy was drooling and looked just awfully sick...he was awfully sick! We were lucky to find a seemingly good vet who did blood work, Xrays etc only to find nothing amiss, no foreign object lodged in this tummy and no organs shutting down. I guess that was good news. Figuring that somehow he got into poison they kept him overnight to give him constant fluids. When we picked him up Thursday he was no longer drooling or vomiting but had also not eaten or drank anything. We did entice him to eat later that day with canned dog food, his bladder and bowls worked but still not drinking. Out we went to get an eyedropper so that we could force at least some water in him...very little but we did get some. It took two days before he could take a walk and after that walk he came home and drank water-insert huge sigh of relief. As of yesterday (Saturday) he is finally back to normal, eating, drinking and finally terrorizing Peeko. I think Peeko missed him as well. I wont even mention the vet bill!
We hit a street fair in Southern Cali on a very nice day. Lots of stuff at those street fairs/flea markets/swap meets.
This one had an entire row of food-Breakfast Tacos, Gyros, Coffee, Lemonade etc etc etc. David and I can personally vouch for the breakfast burritos.


There were olives and canned 'things' for sale
And brussle sprouts on a stick. Or maybe it was a stock....
And art galore
There are dresses for those of us that think it is warm in Cali this time of year

And coats for those that live here and dress like this when we are running around in our shorts and flip flops.
There are colorful hats
And knitted kids sweaters
And garden art....well someone must like this stuff the guy had a huge display of them.
And husbands waiting for wives to return with the Visa card
It was a fun morning and I was able to get our grands a few Christmas gifts. Nah they will never last that long, may have to be birthday gifts:)

The Colorado River is where one of our new parks is located and it is wonderful. Friendly people, great RV sites, two pools and a hot tub, a pool bar and grill, a mile of sandy white beach and loads of things going on.
These are the riverfront sites, nice, very nice.

And further upstream running through the mountains
David wondering how in the heck he is going to get a boat out here next year. Good fishing on this clear as a bell river we hear tell.
Around here the signs tell you to beware of Burros as opposed to deer.
One of our parks is located about 40 miles across the AZ/MX border on the Sea of Cortex. We hope to spend some time there next year. Dear family...we are allowed to have you join us in one of the rental units for pretty cheap....think about it.

A Day Trip

My son, the connoisseur of beers and at home garage brewer, asked us to hit a micro brewery store to get him some 'You can't get em in MN' beers. Off David and I went to Orange CA, a pretty nice drive along the coast. The town of Orange is a nice little artsy fartsy town that would be fun to spend a day in. Our mission was the beer supply and this is where it started
It is just a small little shop with their brewery beers on tap that you can taste by ordering a flight...impressed Len?

The store window is quite inviting
And inside is as well. There are beers with names like-
De Proef Van Twee
Xbeeriment #44

.	Provision Series - Workman's Friend

Green Flash Double Stout

Some were in coolers

With wine on racks
And many on shelves with snifters and glasses as well
Just a neat little shop that had David and my mouth's watering! We would have loved nothing more than to order a flight and do our own little tasting party!
Just a small sample of what we picked up for Len
On our way home we stopped at a wayside rest to let the dogs stretch their legs a bit. David was walking the two dogs when all of a sudden Peeko jumped and there they were not three feet from a rattle snake who had his tail rattling! Thank goodness for Peeko or who knows which one of my 3 boys would had gotten bit. David convinced me to take a picture of the damned thing. It is the first one that he and I have ever seen and hopefully will be the last. Barry oh Barry where in the heck are you when I need you!