October Update

It is sort of Sunday here. It is actually Saturday, but we got up and dressed for church because we had to go to a midday wedding, then we had the noon meal following the wedding (they served lunch to the guests), then we came home and watched a football game on TV this afternoon.  Now, doesn't that sound like a normal Sunday to you?  It feels like it.  

Thought I would let you know Dad is doing much better. And all because Randy went to the doctor!!  His doctor thinks his problem might be acid reflux, so he passed the word along to Dad, who immediately began taking Prilosec once a day, which was Randy's prescription.  So far, so good!!  In fact, he is singing a special at church tomorrow..the pastor asked him to do "What Sin?" because of the message he will be delivering.  So, good news.  

We have enjoyed a few weeks at home, especially since the weather is cooler. It is so good to step outside and not have the heat knock you over!! But this coming weekend we will be in Dallas visiting Rick and Denise. We hope to see their kids while we are there, too. Surely they will drop by, or we will drop by.....

 I spent all day yesterday working on getting caught up on this year's scrapbook.  (I guess when Dad is sick, I can't do anything....???)  He prints up the photos that we choose to include, and then I do the "scrapping".  I am just finishing up our Cloudcroft trip with Rick & Denise.  The fun thing about scrapping is that you can so easily go through past years and see how things and people have changed.   I would never compare my books to Brenda's, or to almost any "real" scrapper, but we enjoy them, and so do Don's siblings when we take them to Louisiana with us.  And I notice almost all of the local kids look at them  when I finish a new one.

Any way.   Will update again after we spend a while in Dallas.   Love you all....... G-mom

Home...and gone again!

We've traveled more this summer than any single summer ever! Disneyland, and Pahrump, and Dallas, and Shreveport, and San Diego, and Atlanta, and Ouray, and Cloudcroft... I can't even remember...what else? but it was all fun, and we got to see all our family, which is so cool!! Just not all at the same time.
We just got home from helping Keith's church in Pahrump celebrate their 40th anniversary. It was good. Most of the former pastors were there, and lots of old members who had moved came back, plus the regular attenders. There was a meeting (in a tent) on Saturday evening, then the big celebration on Sunday morning. We drove up on Friday, and when we were eating in Kingman, our phone rang and it was Zachary, Brenda, and Emily, on their way home via Pahrump, from visiting in Dallas and picking up a car. We ate together, then drove the rest of the way to Pahrump. It was so fun, and Emily is a little doll. She entertained us all weekend!
We forgot both our cameras, so I need K& K to send some photos from their computer so I can include this in our scrapbook.
Tonight we are driving up to Payson, AZ, for a Chorale concert. Actually, the concert is not until Sunday afternoon, but after Randy and Kathie get off work, we are driving up together to spend Saturday and Sunday morning in the cool country of that area!
When we got home Wednesday, we went by the kennel and picked up Charly so she could have a few days at home with us. She was so happy. Today we have to take her back, but only until Monday morning! We are so fortunate that she loves to go there. The staff has loved her since I got her 11 years ago, and she loves them back. Our vet said she is the only "patient" he has that actually likes to come see him!!
We love you all. If we have been in your vicinity and didn't see you, we're sorry. We tried to see everyone we could!
Here's a favorite picture from Cloudcroft.

Walker Infirmary Update

We've done a lot of fun things this summer, mostly trips. And we enjoyed them all. But it was nice to get to be home for a little while. Except for one little thing. G-dad got a killer sinus infection, and has been struggling with it for a couple of months off and on. He is now finishing up his third round of antibiotics, but still doesn't seem able to sleep all night without coughing a lot, so he's been sleeping in the family room...for 2 reasons...he can sleep better sitting up some, so the recliner and sofa are good for that, and he doesn't want to keep me awake. (As if his not being in bed with me doesnt keep me up anyway. He is better now, with this most recent medicine, but it's been a rough time.)

The weather here is beginning to cool down. Oh, it still gets up around 100 degrees in the daytime, but the evenings are pleasant enough to sit out in the back yard and watch our gorgeous Phoenix sunsets. We've had a lot of "monsoon" activity in August and this first week of September, so the clouds make for nice sunsets. The pool is cooling down now, but is still nice to swim in. Charly hates to swim, but in summer, that is her exercise, so I take her in every morning and make her paddle around for about 15 minutes, then when she gets out, she runs and shakes and wallows in the grass and on her towel until she is all fuzzy and almost dry. But we will start our morning walks soon. I can't swim in water as cold as Grandad can.

We still enjoy singing with the community chorale. We practice every Tuesday night for 2 hours. Then we do concerts, mostly on Sunday afternoons or evenings, and usually at Senior Centers or RV parks, and such. In a couple of weeks we will be singing at a church up in Peyson, AZ. It's so pretty up there, with trees and stuff. This week we sing at a Salvation Army place on Sunday afternoon. Hope G-dad is able to teach Sunday morning. Last week I had to teach because of his coughing.

We love you all, and pray for you, your families, your work/school/etc. Grandmom

Back from Atlanta, and Cloudcroft... sigh

By now most of our dedicated readers probably know that I (Grandad) am mostly over my knee problem that caused us to return early from Ouray... well, that and traveling with Randy. The orthopedic doc showed me the Xrays that show I have osteo-arthritis in the left knee, and it was irritated by impact (jogging and jumping on rocks in this case). He said the news was bad and good (the old doctor joke...ha ha). The bad news: it's arthritis. The good news: it should have minimum effect on normal activities.
No jumping, running or jogging (Denise says that's good news), but walking, climbing, non-impact activities are okay.

We spent 3 days in Atlanta in the second reunion of the year. Poo and Martha were there, having missed the earlier one due to sickness. Had a good, quiet time, mostly talking and playing Mexican Train.

We got home on Thursday and left on Friday for Cloudcroft, to a cabin which Rick and Denise had rented for a week. Nice weather, with a little rain every day. Rick and I golfed and the girls drove golf carts on Monday. Probably the highest course in the U.S. at about 9200 feet. Lots of hills, but only two lakes, so I set a record for fewest balls lost during my golfing career. We did some hiking (led by Atticus, their beagle who came with them), played Mexican Train (not Atticus), ate at every restaurant in Cloudcroft (3), and watched the olympics (no way those Chinese girls are 16 years old). Everybody went home on Wednesday.

Grandmom on the cabin balcony


Atticus and friends


My entry in the "Best Bella Picture" contest. I guess you read Randy's blog announcing a $25 grand prize.

We Were Missing The Heat

No photos tonight. Sorry. We are a little preoccupied. We mentioned yesterday that GrandDad's knee was acting up. It was serious enough that we came back to Phoenix today. He will look for an Orthopedic surgeon starting tomorrow, with the expectation of arthroscopic surgery soon.

It is supposed to be 110 tomorrow. It was 74 in Ouray yesterday. What a shock. No more hot tubs for us.

Ouray Must-Do Items For Our Last Day

What a whirlwind trip. It seems we are doing something nonstop. Take this morning for instance. We had a Continental breakfast, hurried over to the laundromat and spent the morning there, then it was time for lunch. Buen Tiempo, the local Mexican food spot we always go to at least once.

It was too early to check in the hotel room, so we headed out to Yankee Boy Basin. Actually, as we mentioned in yesterday's blog, that was always the plan. We spent quite a while there, maybe 2-3 hours. We didn't work on the Walker dam, and did not even go over there.
We ended up staying at the twin falls the entire time. We have never seen that much water. It is a result of over 21 feet of snow this winter. In fact, there was still a lot of snow up there. There was evidence of a number of avalanches all over the trail.

Here is a path from one of the avalanches.

Before we left, GrandDad and Kathie and Randy hiked all around both of the falls. Randy took a bunch of pictures, but it was GrandDad who had the defining moment.
"The Hills are Alive..."

On the way back to town, we started up the trail to Imogene Pass, but made it less than a mile. It was just too rough. So, we headed back into town and passed through a nice pleasant summer rain. In keeping with our breakneck speed, we only rested an hour before going to dinner at a sandwich shop at the north end of Ouray. Yes, we did get ice cream after dinner.

GrandDad's knee is acting up a bit, so please be praying for that.

Tomorrow, we leave Ouray and head north towards Gunnison.

Over Ophir On Our Own

We have not been hurrying out in the mornings. Today we drove over Ophir pass, and for some 20 minutes, we were the only people there. It's true. Look here.
Here is a photo Randy took using his remote control that shows the four of us, standing in the empty road at Ophir.

It was amazingly quiet up there. There was much less snow than the family reunion. With only four of us there, and all seniors, no snowballs were thrown. The marmot fussed at us...as usual. We drove past the little lake below Ophir and avoided the mosqitos. We drove over to Telluride and drove up to the base of Bridal Veil Falls. It was running strongly after an exceptionally high snowfall during the winter. In fact, the small number of four-wheelers we saw may have to do with how many trails are still closed. Here is a photo taken at the base of the falls in the mist and rain.

We visited Telluride for lunch. We wanted to drive Last Dollar Road, but it started raining. So, since Keith wasn't here to help with a new song, we avoided the muddy road.

Tonight, just as we have the last two nights, we will end with a soak in the hot tub. We start in the 105 degree pool and then cool off in the 102 degree one.

Tomorrow, maybe Imogene and then Yankee Boy Basin. We are not sure if we can pass the rocks in Imogene this year, but we will try.

An Easy(?) Day

Hey, this was supposed to be a lazy day. We ended up walking/hiking all day. I think Randy's new camera is pacing our trip. We started out downtown and did a little shopping. Randy had to buy a new tripod because he forgot his. While we were there, we hiked up to Cascade Falls. Here is GrandDad taking a photo of the water. It was flowing very nicely, it wasn't very crowded, and so we stayed quite a while.


After lunch, we went up to Box Canyon Falls. It was a little warm in the afternoon, but quite cool in near the waterfall. GrandDad, Kathie and Randy hiked on up to the High Bridge to look down on the falls. This is a shot Randy took as we entered the falls area.

The town reopened the San Juan Odyssey and so we saw it after dinner. It was fun to see, but we miss the old version. This one was on a screen and they are thinking of making a DVD of it. The old show had 5 different screens and so included a lot more images.

It looks like we will drive over Ophir tomorrow morning, lunch in Telluride, and end up on Last Dollar Road. Many of the passes remain closed due to snow, so we are having to adjust our schedule.

Getting There Is Half The Fun

We made it from PHX to Ouray in one easy trip. We made just a few stops for obvious reasons. We are staying at the Hot Tub Hotel (it's name is actually Box Canyon Lodge), but needed to stretch our legs before hot tubbing. We still don't know what we will do tomorrow, but we are OK with that. It's a vacation! It's pretty and cool here. We can hear the river outside our room.

Here is a shot along the road between Telluride and Ouray. The sunset colors caught our eyes and we had to capture it while we could.

Check back for updates later.

San Diego

We took a trip to San Diego with Carey and Leigh this week (Monday thru Thursday; came home Friday). Jay had the opportunity to join us, but chose to work instead. He's working at Kyrene schools with the group where Carey works. Paul has had a similar job in past summers.
Back to San Diego. We stayed at a hotel on the beach, but the water is too dang cold for swimming. I did get my feet wet, twice. Went to Sea World,

Wild Animal Park,


And, my (Grandad) favorite, visited the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway.

The last picture is sunset from our balcony on Thursday night.

disneyland and graduation stuff

Caleb graduated from high school this month. We drove up to Pahrump to help celebrate. We had never been to a home-school graduation before. It was a good time for us all. Katie and Justin drove down from Redding for the occasion, too. Caleb wore a blue cap and gown, and got lots of presents and cards. They also invited special friends from the church. There were speeches from family and friends. The ceremony was wrapped up with a Chinese dinner from a local Chinese restaurant. We took photos, a few anyway.
Sunday we all went to church. Keith, Lauri, Caleb, Dad, and I sang a cool arrangement of "Jesus Loves Me", and Kim accompanied us on the piano. We had Sunday lunch at a local country club. Katie and Justin had to leave soon after to head back for Redding. The rest of us napped. There were some activities at church that Keith and Kim had to attend later.
Monday we all packed up our cars and headed out for Disneyland! Laurie drove until we stopped for lunch, trying to get in enough hours driving to qualify for her license. We got to LA and spent the evening at the Disney Village looking and browsing in shops, then played a domino game before we went to sleep.
Tuesday we literally spent the whole day in Disneyland. Got lots of pix, and had lots of fun! But when G-dad rode Space Mountain he got "beat up" pretty bad. He was sick the whole next day, but the rest of us, being the kind of people we are, went to the California Adventure for most of the day, with a quick run over to the other park later. Thursday G-dad felt some better, and joined us for part of the day. After a good breakfast at Denny's, we all headed out for our respective homes.
We have more trips planned this summer...stay tuned for further reports!

My, How The Time Goes By!!!

Gosh, people, I didn't realize it had been so long since we updated! We are still around, although we had a rough few weeks fighting that flu stuff that everyone had. We are fine, now, and busy. Grandad and I have only made one trip.. We went to Tombstone and Wickenburg and Karshner Caverns in January before we got that flu. The caverns were beautiful, and it was fun seeing the actual street on which the famous shootout took place in Tombstone. The museum there was in the old courthouse. It has been well kept, and in great condition, and the exhibits were interesting.
Then we came home and started the 'fight the flu bug" deal, which hung on for about 3 weeks, off and on. We were never sick enough to stay in bed, but just lay around and stared at all the junk on TV, and griped about feeling bad. No one came to see us because they all had some form of it, too.
Keith, Kim, Caleb, and Lauri came for a brief visit the week of Keith's and Carey's birthdays. We ate at Fuddruckers, and laughed and visited, and went on a geocache. That was the greatest, because we hid a special geocache for Keith's birthday with little gag gifts and cards (thanks, guys, for your participation!). We totally surprised him. He started going through the cache, and you could tell he didn't suspect a thing. Then he exclaimed, "Wait a minute! Hey, how did you guys do this?" or something like that. Then he read and reread all the cards and exclaimed over the little geocache gifts we'd all included. If you catch Randy's blogs lately, you saw some of the photos we took. Oh, the ones who were here were: G-dad, G-mom, Carey, Leigh, Paul, Jay, Randy, Kathie, Alison, Keith, Kim, Caleb, Lauri,
Since then, things have been pretty boring. Everyone went back to their homes and jobs, and nothing else exciting had happened, to speak of. Just normal everyday stuff.
We are busy planning our summer trips. We will go to Parumph and California for Caleb's graduation and celebration. We have the Walker family reunion in Shreveport in June, and also our annual early summer visit to Dallas for some time with Rick, Denise, Ben on that same trip. We are still working on the rest of the summer. Carey and Leigh want us to go on a trip with them, but we have not got that set up yet. If you have a date we need to get on our calendar, be sure to let us know!
There is no change in Neen. She just lays there on her bed or in her wheelchair. She is pretty much unresponsive to my visits, and only occasionally acknowledges that she knows I am there. Please pray for her and for us in that matter.
We put out some new plants in our yard after we got healthy again, to replace those that were killed in the late frost. It all looks so pretty. If you are looking for a nice place to visit, we offer excellent accommodations!
We love you all so much, and pray for you always. The Great-Grandparents

Sorry about that!

After we finally got past the wedding and Christmas, I thought things would slow down a bit. But we still seem pretty busy. With church and family and chorale and choir and housework and laundry..... Need I go on? Anyway, we are doing just fine. Things have settled down at church, which is good. The pastor is preaching good sermons, and our choir minister is choosing some pretty good songs. (Not at good as Chorale, but better than he used to!)
I am not teaching the women's Bible study this winter. So many of my ladies have either had to quit because of health, or other reasons that I decided to wait until nicer weather. We have had lots of rain and cold, and there are all those flu bugs and stuff going around. At our age, we seem to pick that stuff up pretty easy. But G-dad is still teaching our Sunday School class, and our attendance there is pretty consistent at 35 to 40 almost every Sunday. And we still sing in choir and Chorale.
We haven't been off on a trip since our trip to Dallas last November. So, to rectify that oversight, we are going to drive down to southeastern AZ to tour the Kartchner Caverns and maybe Tombstone. We will only be away a day or two, but winter is a better time to tour in AZ than the rest of the year which is hot! We go down there Wednesday, and come back either Thursday night or Friday, depending on what we find to do. Charly is excited to get to go back to the kennel and her friends there.
By the way, I am not complaining about being busy, just surprised. When I was a youngster, the old folks didn't do much visitiing and traveling...
We thought the Super Bowl (which was here, in case you didn't know) was a pretty good game, considering there were no Cowboys in it! We stayed home out of the cold and drizzle, and watched the whole thing on TV with Paul and Kari, eating popcorn and rice krispie treats. It was fun, but we didn't take any pictures.
To those of you who still take time to blog....thank you so much. We love reading them, and the comments, too. To those of you who don't...shame!!
We love you all, and pray for you daily. Which brings up a new topic...Kendall (now 2 months old) is having some digestive problems. The doctor is working with Kyle and Lyndsay on it, but she needs us to be praying for her.

To settle a Family Blog misunderstanding

I ran across this picture from our Ouray reunion which seems to contradict both Randy's and Kara's comments re Lindsay's blog. Hope this helps.
G'dad