Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Home.

We are home, having arrived at 4 PM yesterday after spending 2 days in Oregon with Navy buddy Gary and his wife Judy who was Clyda's best friend from early school days. While there, Gary and I tried our darnedest to best the ladies in multiple games of Sequence and Five Crowns, all to no avail. We will get them next time for sure.

Our next stop was in Walnut Creek to visit Gary and Cindy. Always a nice stop. We even managed to take in a movie called Eye in the Sky. It is about the new drone technology used to track and eliminate terrorists. Quite a tense story while the political vs Military aspects were debated under real life conditions.

One memory from the trip is how green everything was all the way from home, up to Lynden, and back. All the fruit trees were in bloom which made it very colorful.

Trees in bloom at a rest stop in northern, CA.



We had our taxes done today. Still waiting for one piece of paper however.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Final thoughts.

The service for Candi was held on Sunday afternoon in the Rotary building in Lynden. This building was used as it was thought that more people would attend than the regular church Mark and Candi attended would hold. In fact somewhere between 250 and 300 hundred did attend. It was a beautiful service with Mark, daughter Dawn, and daughter-in-law Lizzie speaking. All had eloquent words to say. This was followed by a slide show set to music put together by Mark from all the thousands of photos the family has. It was a very nice synopses in photos of Candi's life.

On Monday family members started leaving for home. We took Mark out to dinner Monday night. Clyda and I waited until Tuesday to leave so we could do last minute things, like laundry for all the beds, towels, etc. We drove to Portland to spend a few days with our friends Thomas and Debbie. They had driven to Lynden for the service on Sunday.

To all those who sent cards, flowers, and thoughts, we would like to thank you for thinking of us in this very difficult time.

Candi was 55 years old and in the prime of her life. She had two new grand children under the age of 6 months. A lot to look forward too but the good Lord had other plans.

A beautiful bouquet of white lillies. Candi's favorite flowers.


Tuesday, March 15, 2016

In memorium.

Much has happened this past week.

First, Clyda's sister Candi passed on Thursday morning. It was not unexpected but it happened very fast. She had been on Hospice care at home but had been moved to a Hospice house on Tuesday. 
 

I had decided to drive to Lynden on Wednesday afternoon. I drove because Clyda suggested that we rent a car and drive home so I thought I might as well drive up also. Airfares were quite high as they would be last minute. I reserved a rental car and a motel and left home at 5:30 AM Thursday. It was a fairly easy drive to Weed, CA where I arrived about 4 PM having driven 600 miles. All the hills were nice and green and all the fruit trees were in bloom. A very nice drive.

I started again at 5:30 AM on Friday in the dark and driving rain. Within a few miles I drove out of the rain but did need to use the wipers intermittently all the way to Lynden. The trip through Portland was fine, however as I approached Seattle it all went to heck. With construction on I-5, multiple interchange construction, and heavy Friday traffic my progress was slowed considerably. There is no easy way around Seattle. I finally arrived in Lynden about 7 PM after driving another 650 miles.

My days have been spent on the computer, scanning photos, etc for a slide show at the memorial service this coming Sunday. Candi had so many photos, both hard copies and digital. She had over 29,00 digital photos alone.

We have so enjoyed the 2 new grand babies. Both Michael and Lizzie's Mathias, born in January and Mat and Dawn's Samantha, born in October.

Clyda and I will probably leave for home next Monday or Tuesday depending on what needs to be done here.

Friday, March 4, 2016

Catching up on the to-do list.

Clyda went back up to Lynden, WA 2 days after we came home from our winter trip. Her sister is not doing well and Clyda wanted to be there for her.

I in the mean time have a long list of to-do items. The most pressing was to get control of the weeds in the garden area and the flower beds. The rains that we did have while we were gone greened up the local hills but also made the weeds grow. The garden area was tackled with the lawn mower which made short work of them. The tree areas and the flower beds took much longer. Basically I did it on my knees using my gloved hands to do the pulling. This works fine except we have lots of cactus which require fineness and the use of forceps to get around the sharp thorns. Over the last week I have filled 3 of the large green waste barrels. They were emptied yesterday so that was good.

We are expecting rain over the next few days and hopefully it will amount to something. The hills are still nice and green and rain would help keep them that way. Anticipating rain, I bought a 6 foot length of tubing to direct rain water from a shed roof into garbage cans to be used to water plants later. We are still under a severe drought restriction by the water district so every gallon counts. I also direct our wash machine water into 2 plastic barrels and from there it flows through a hose onto the side yard. It isn't much, but it does keep the grass green.

The other things on my list involve the RV. I have several major things that need doing none of which would prevent me from using it if I needed to but they do need to be done. I need to replace the kitchen faucet and I need to work on the pump switch.

I did get the rig vacuumed today and the floor scrubbed so that is done. I need to run the two Honda generators as it has been more than a month since I last used them. They need to be run periodically so they will start when needed. When I don't plan to use them for some time I drain the gas from the carburetors. This is recommended by the local Honda dealer.

I had a long list of people to call after I got home. Some of that is done with more to call next week.

While we were in Willcox I took a photo of an old building on a back road. It just caught my eye.