Good Day Sunshine! (So far anyway.)

We have been truly lucky of late...   usually living on the coast you get used to misty, chilly, foggy winters. And summers.  However, we moved in a very unusual weather year. Since we have been here I think it has rained lightly once, and has been foggy maybe two afternoons... other than that the winter sun has been brightly shining, and we have loved it.  But now the weather lady tells us we will finally be getting some rain.  Thanks Roberta!

It is about 5 am and the wind is starting to blow hard enough to get my well traveled chimes on the front porch singing.  They are larger chimes so they have a beautiful baritone sound that I have always found relaxing.  There is just something about sitting in your quiet home hearing the chimes slowly ringing.  Love it.  I have been dragging those chimes around for years, they have been ringing through 100 degree weather, -20 degree icy days, and have watched over golfers slogging through the rainy, rainy, rainy days in Oregon.

(Good grief that is awful)

Well, we have been very busy working on the house.  There has been a lot more sheetrock, paint, trim, paint again and things are finally starting to take shape.

We could always see what direction we were going in but I know that has not been the case for all our visitors.

Here is David after, during, before replumbing, rewiring, repainting, and tiling the laundry room: 

A lot of people walk in and are just overwhelmed with no walls... or many different types of walls, wires being reworked, and a migrating 3 foot tall refrigerator which gets plugged in to wherever there is an open spot.  Ya just have to be patient and keep your eyes on the prize.  (The prize being a finished home.)

Speaking of the refrigerator... it has been an interesting job trying to 'keep house' during the remodel.  Fortunately, it was not completely out of my realm of experience but let me give you an idea of the joy of cooking in a house being remodeled.  I have a 3 foot tall refrigerator, that has a "freezer section" about as big as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  This refrigerator always seems to be in the way, so it frequently moves around the house.  I cook in a combination of an electric skillet and a single extra burner...

That is it.

Once in awhile I use the crockpot but for anyone who has used a crockpot you know that the meals prepped usually leave plenty of leftovers... I mean that is the point. You make stuff and save part of it.   Well, with a mini-fridge and no freezer there is no where to put leftovers so I don't use the crockpot as often as one would think.  That leaves the single burner and the electric skillet.

I have to say... the electric skillet is a useless piece of equipment and I plan to get rid of that S.O.B. as soon as I have a range... and I think just to keep it company that single burner will be joining it.   Because of this, lately we eat a lot of very similar meals... very similar.  David is a good sport but I suppose when one has worked all day and is hungry just about anything will do.

Something did happen the other day at Sears though that gives me hope and will call for a celebration!  There was a big ole MLK Jr. day sale at Sears and we ordered this lovely thing (queue Gregorian chant:)

Great sale, great stove, and I will be more than happy to cook on it... someday.  We have to get our cabinets going first but when they are done this puppy will be all ready to hook up and I will be digging my cast iron pans out of.. well.. wherever they are right now! 

Also... I did not want you to think we skipped Christmas.

It literally blew by!  

That is a picture of my Grandson Donovan.  That is what most of his pictures look like...  I even had my camera switched to sports mode. He is just ALWAYS on the run.  Anyway, he rolled in wearing his red footy pajamas and bright yellow Sponge Bob boots on Christmas eve and as usual he hit the ground running. 

Remind you of someone?

 Here he is below with his first view of Great Granny and Great Papa's tree sharing his excitement with David.   

 

After this picture I think he jumped up and down twice and then ran off again.

Then of course after his batteries finally wore out and we were all exhausted ourselves, 

he went down for the night...  

but when he awoke Santa had visited and brought him exactly what he wanted.  

Woody and Buzz

and he has played with little else since then. 

Holidays

I hope your holiday celebrations were filled with happiness, friends, and family. Our was very nice although David and I did not spend it together this year. I believe it is the first Christmas we have spent apart since we have been together... for geez... what is it now 7ish years or so?  Sumthin‘ like that.  We have the golf course right now and that is traditionally an active day on golf courses if the weather holds out.

People are off of work, out of school, and have family visiting.  So David could not leave it. 

 At the same time, I was so close to my family I could not pass up the trip to see them this holiday season since I have missed the last few years... and in particular I wanted to see my daughter and wily Grandson.

I had a wonderful visit with the family.  Everyone is doing great. As for the gift giving part of the celebration we draw names around Thanksgiving to narrow down our shopping lists and then exchanged our gifts Christmas morning.  

My brother-in-law Jeff drew my name and with a bit of detective work he found a necklace on Etsy that I had my eye on and that was his gift to me and I love it.









I had my Mom’s name and picked her up a few things and a book she has been waiting for... she was especially pleased with the book and has already finished it. 









There was almost an international incident as the Xmas tree tried two or three times to tumble over onto the party but Grandpa and Ave saved the day!  They just propped it back up and we simply laughed about it, and partied on.  TIMBER!

 Donovan is a busy bee.  He ran all over the house and is learning to bite. I know because he bit me... he has some pretty nice chompers that he uses on me... his Mama,  and of course on chocolate raisins.  He also climbed the Christmas decorating ladder and let us all know about it ...

and had a great time opening his presents even though his favorite toy was the wrapping paper tube! 


He got some full on Jedi Knight action with that thing until it fell apart and he started eating it. 

 His mother got him a little truck that plays music and/or honks when you push buttons on the top.  Best of all one of the button plays the song... “Funky Town”  and he REALLY enjoyed that and would do the baby dance whenever he could get it going good. The baby dance at this age consists of shifting and bouncing back and forth on his feet and then once in awhile throwing in a shoulder/back twist.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 The drives down to California, and back home again were (thank goodness) uneventful and I decided to travel down Hwy 101 instead of I-5 because of the snow in the mountains.  On the recommendation of my sister and brother-in-law Jeff I also decided to try a couple of audio books.  I downloaded one off of Amazon (via audible.com) and the other from the iTunes store and found I really enjoyed listening to them on the trips.  It was super simple. I downloaded them and then burned them onto discs. 

Then for the very first time I learned just WHO committed the Murder on the Orient Express as I was driving through the Emerald Triangle.  Very exciting!

I was very glad to be home... David missed me and I missed him.  He just about overdosed on frozen burritos and Delta was starting to not be interested in eating her food.

Turns out though, Delta was not moping.... we found out after the fact but she had snuck a dead salmon out of the creek.  In case you did not know... eating dead salmon can kill dogs and is a big issue here in the pacific northwest.  She got sicker and sicker and it was getting hard to get her to eat. We did not know what was wrong at first but when she just stopped eating all together we said enough... there is something really wrong.. and took her to the vet.  Turns out she had salmon poisoning.  Very treatable if caught in time... but if not 90% of dogs will die from it.  Apparently, domestic dogs are the only critters who have an issue with salmon poisoning. Not wolves, foxes, coyotes, cats, raccoons, bears... only domestic dogs and the story is that once they get it and if they are cured they supposedly won’t get it again. 

The salmon eat a snail, the snail has these fluke egg things in them... so the dog eats the salmon and the flukes hatch inside the dogs.  And she was pretty sick.  IV fluids, antibiotics, floppy like a rag doll sick.

It has taken a couple days and we have had to become tricky with her medicine  (hiding it in a spoonful of ice cream) but she is much better and is slowly starting to eat again.  It broke our hearts to see her so sick she is really a tender sweetheart of a girl.  She gives us a lot of love.

Beautiful artwork by Artist & Author Jackie Morris

We are so glad to have her back on track now and feeling better each day that is passes.

Just one more additional story that made the holidays... oh so special.  I went to go get some supplies from the store because we had a small tournament lined up for Jan 1.  The supplies included a few cases of beer.  I set them up on the counter and with my head down I was continuing to unload the cart.  The woman behind the counter grabbed the beer, scanned it, then said “I am going to have to see your...” and I turned my head to listen to what she was going to say.  She looked into my face and said, “oh... never mind.”

OUCH! 

I wailed, “OH MAN!  The timing of that!  You could have finished the sentence... Geez!”  She said “oh no.. no.. no... that's not what I meant.  Um... you just seemed to be in a hurry so I was not going to have you get your i.d. out.” 

Not a convincing recovery but I will take what I can get. 

Bit of rain... and a twister

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and emails about my Uncle Russell.  If you were looking for the post I wrote about his passing it is here: My Uncle Russell

We have had a touch of rain over the last week or so. I can hear you saying... umm.. Rebecca.. it is Oregon. It rains there.  Yes yes... I know.  I lived in the Pacific Northwest several years ago... in the great state of Washington and absolutely loved it... there is a reason it is so green and lush.  David was living in Oregon around the same time I was in Washington... so he is familiar with the weather patterns in this part of the country as well but the rain we received recently was a touch more than we expected.  

 There was even the added bonus of being in the path of a tornado.
Of course being in the path of a tornado that peters out is soooo much better than being 'touched' by one.

We are not in Kansas anymore Toto.... we are in Oregon. Tornadoes are not real common in the Pacific Northwest so it was pretty big news around 'these here parts'.  David and I had closed the course during the worst part of the surge in water and were trying to loosen tree trunks that were lodged under the covered bridge.  David had climbed over the railing and was standing on one of the support pilings chainsaw in hand 

and I was leaning over with my hand on his collar so he would not fall in. That picture there is two trees...  and they look small in this photo... the one is underwater and then the other has the roots showing.  Here is a different angle.  They were not small:

Another view of the trees hung up on the covered bridge

David was sawing away at parts of these trees and I thought cold, wet, wood chips were hitting me...  it was hail.  Not that unusual except that is was the hail that preceded the tornado that touched down to the south of us. We had no idea until we came back to the clubhouse to defrost and turned the TV on to see the tornado warning... and that we appeared to be in it's path.  It lost steam though and passed through our area without any problems although it demolished some buildings where it touched down in nearby Aulmsville.

The creek that runs through the course that seems to swell and at times overflow like over-filled bathtub with every drop that falls from the sky... or every Russian golfer I catch wading through it.  This overflow seems to occur semi-sorta-frequently despite previous assurances that the creek floods .... "oh maybe once every 20 years or so."  Well, this must be an off year because we have seen the river crest it's banks twice in the past 7 months. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

That photo above is normally a grassy area and cart paths... under all that water. This shot below is of David and Delta and her stick (sigh) walking past a small golf cart bridge on the way to the big covered bridge. That railing is the TOP of the railing and is normally waist high.

One thing about the speed of this particular creek's rising and subsiding is that the very next morning, after a break in the clouds and a couple hours between rain showers the creek is back within it's banks and golfers are able to make their way around the course relatively easier... and much dryer.  David got some help from Adam and they hooked the trees up to tractors and managed to work them loose so they could flow under the bridge. 

Because of the weather and because it gets dark so quickly it has been slow here at the course.   We planned for it and after the wild and crazy summer it is nice to catch our breath.  Christmas is coming and we have been getting ready for that.  

I put up some decorations, baked some banana bread, put Duke Ellington's Nutcracker Overture on the stereo, and got out the world famous and rather well traveled Christmas Angel and placed it on the top of my faux Charlie Brown tree.

This will be a fun Christmas time this year as there is a baby in the family...  well, he was here last year for Christmas but in the semi-floppy needing to be carried baby mode.

This year Donovan is running around like a madman getting into absolutely everything and he is going to get a big kick out of this Christmas business for the next few years.

He is going to just dig on that huge tree at Great Granny and Great Poppa's house!  Little ones make it fun... Christmas is best seen through a child's eyes and we are going to soak it up.

Merry Holidays from the Gulf of Mexico...

I hope everyone had very merry Holidays!

We made a quick biz stop in Georgia, stumbled on to a VERY nice park... Georgia Veteran’s Memorial State Park which I highly recommend.

While David took care of the things he does... I sat at the shore of Lake Blackshear watching turtles. I was watching for a gator (my new obsession) but instead I saw turtles. Several of them. At one point there were 10 turtle sunning on that log.

This picture shows 7 and I saw 3 more in the water making their way towards the log and then suddenly something much larger slithered up and over the log. This caused the turtles to leap .. yes leap... back into the water and totally freaked me out. That is until I realized it was an otter!

I fumbled around trying to get my camera going to get a picture because he was swimming around with his head out of the water right in front of me. Unfortunately, muscle memory of the old fashioned cameras had me trying to find the button and putting the damn camera up to my eye and then not be able to see anything. Then when I finally remembered to look at the nice convenient digital screen he had gone under again.

Dang.

It ends up this was the only picture of the otter I was able to get.

While we were there I told David I don’t know HOW anyone in the South (before swimming pools) EVER learned how to swim. There is no way in hell you would get me into any body of water unless I could see all the way from one end to the other. I am pretty sure that there are no backsies with gators.

Either they are in the water, or they are not... and if they are in the water they eat you tearing off limbs by going into a death roll or dragging you to the bottom of the water to drown and they will eat you later. Or maybe not.

So... you tell me. How brave are ya?

You going to be the first in the water to test if there is a gator there?

(tee hee I just love it! The wild beasts)

Then after a couple days, on December 23rd, we packed up and headed south again...

passing cotton fields...

and pecan orchards as far as the eye could see.

We were leaving Georgia and heading towards Florida into the panhandle.

We landed at Grayton Beach State Park. Again another very nice park and I do recommend it but I have to tell you... I would not want to be here during spring/summer. If you come, come off season during the winter time and just be prepared for some rain and chillier days. During the “on” season this place would be a zoo.

The “towns” which are an easy bike path ride away are not really towns but beach communities along Santa Rosa Beach. Well, if you look a little deeper they are not really even individual communities. They are secretly housing developments that are pretending to be towns and while VERY nice and planned out and organized... they are rather sterilized step-ford wife-ish. Disneyland like. We have not seen so many BMWs, Land Rovers, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars in one place in a long time.

Those of us familiar with the Mendocino Coast have plenty of opinions about the Coastal Commission... and I still STRONGLY believe they ere too far in the other direction. But when you see a place like this. You understand reluctantly why there is a need for a type of a coastal commission. Without one you can’t see the beach through the trendy, matchy, stylish, well planned condo - house things.

Anyway we wandered around on a stormy day in town... here I am playing with the sea nymphs...

and here is David playing with the sea...

And after we were done and a bit chilly we went on back home and set up camp.

David even put up the Christmas lights for me,

and I got out a couple of decorations that I had brought along for the trip. It was one very festive trailer!

On Christmas day we talked to the families back home... I talked to Amber like 3-4 times! And via the internet I immediately saw pictures of everyone and after the get together both Beth and Brooke posted pictures into their Picasa on-line albums and I was able to see all the photos of the day without having to download individual pictures. Technology is pretty spiffy!

I have had a couple folks ask me if we exchange gifts. Officially we don’t. But come on... I wake up every day on this adventure after sleeping a warm and safe night. We have all the comforts of home... literally... and I am on a trip I never imagined going on. In fact, in the past 5 or 6 years I have gone places and enjoyed experiences that I could not have imagined. No gift exchange? Yeah right. I get a gift every day... and while I try to express my gratefulness, there are simply not enough words. I appreciate it all more than I can ever say.

So... we had a great Christmas, and are looking forward to the New Year. Stay tuned as we are changing up a couple of stops on the itinerary but... get this...

we have not yet planned the route back! Isn’t that great!?

And look at this....

Donovan's First Christmas... and the festive reindeer outfit!