Thursday September 30th 2010

The weather is cooling off some, seemed kind of warm last night but I think it was the humidity.  Supposed to cool off and be nice but humid today and the weather says tomorrow will be about the same.  Probably some showers.

The air show starts tomorrow and the Blue Angels are practicing. I even got a glimpse of the Canadian Snow Birds.  Can’t see them very good though.  We are about 5 or 6 miles from the Air Station. Here is a shot though of a couple of jets, Blue Angels….

You can see the jet but they are quite a distance away but they are sure loud.

The sky looks pretty nice doesn’t it?  The direction the jet is heading is black and lots of lightning.  The Blue Angels perform rain or shine.  It was kind of neat watching them fly into and out of the clouds.

The weather was pretty rainy and Linda called me and wanted me to take a picture of a rainbow….

You have to look kind of close but there is a second rainbow just about the telephone pole.  Really nice to see the rainbows even though they were just partial ones.

We went to Von’s grocery store for a few things and came back to take a break and rest up.  Won’t be much going on tonight, just a little TV.  I tested the camcorder to see how long it would go on one charge.  Did very well.  I think it went for at least an hour, I was getting tired of watching it.  I ordered another battery off the internet for $8.50 and $20 shipping.  They want $80 or more at the JVC store or an electronics store.  I will wait to see how well it works before I start bragging about it.

Guess what??? It is still Thursday!!!  Not very often I write my blog on the happening day!!  We will be busy tomorrow and I probably won’t turn the computer on until tomorrow night….See y’all then….

Wednesday September 29th 2010

The weather is still warm but supposed to cool off somewhat.  The sun is shining this morning and I think we will have a beautiful day.

We don’t have anything planned for today except to go to the store. We thought that we would try Target today.  They have added groceries to this store and I guess that is something new for Target.

Got a picture of Jake on his new bike….

Jake loves his new bicycle!  Not a lot of room to ride in the back yard but is sure good practice for him.

Well, we went to Target.  The prices are quite high but then this is California.  We still spent a lot of money here but did get a few things out of the way that we really needed to do.

Linda fixed BBQ Pork today.  Smelled great, tasted great too. Along with the BBQ we had baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad.  It was really good and now we have leftovers.

I have still been looking for a battery (backup) for my camcorder and looking through the literature I find there are three batteries I can use and they are different sizes so they have different length of times they will hold a charge.  To late to get one for the air show but that is OK we will be going there twice so if I miss something on Friday maybe I can get it on Sunday.  We decided not to go on Saturday because that will be the day most people will go and it will really be crowded.  Don’t really need to see the night show and the pyro techniques. 

Time to go to bed and get some rest.  Hope everyone has a great night and day.  Oh, I have to say that we watched Landon Skipper’s new movie “Yearning for the Basilisk”.  I have to say that Landon for a young man has talent and a great imagination!  The movie really scared our grand daughter Alexa, she wasn’t used to seeing that kind of movie.  I have to say though that I really liked the story and the comedic acts in parts of it.  I wonder, Landon, if you had the resources and money what kind of movie you would make???  Keep it up Landon you have real potential….

Good night y’all…

Tuesday September 28th 2010

Tuesday and it is a beautiful morning, not real cool but still very nice.  We had the window open all night and the fan on and it finally cooled off enough to sleep.  I think the really hot weather is over now.

I have to make a correction.  I said one of the trees in the back yard was a persimmon tree but actually it is a pomegranate tree..

 

Brenna told me after reading the blog that it was a pomegranate tree, or bush or what ever it is, I think it is a tree though.

Linda and I stayed home today, didn’t go out for anything.  We thought about it but didn’t go anywhere.  I’ve been trying to find an extra battery for my camcorder but am not having a lot of luck.  One will have to do I guess.

It is still warm today but not nearly as warm as it has been.  The humidity is pretty bad right now so it still feels like it is pretty hot.  We didn’t want to cook anything.  Thought we would have sandwiches again but Brenna wanted to try some Tofu!

This may not look real good but it didn’t taste to bad.  It is marinating in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil and something else.  I didn’t know it but sesame oil really smells good!  This was baked in the convection oven for about 20 minutes.  Tasted good but the consistency of Tofu is kind of like Flan.  I told the kids it was fried Jell-O! They still didn’t like it, but there weren’t any leftovers!  We also made Panini sandwiches and had some left over potato salad.  Pretty good.

I need to mention Linda’s glucose level, it has been excellent.  The last two days in has been in the 90s but fluctuates between 100 and 116.  I think that is pretty good.  She does a pretty good job of watching what she eats.

Our favorite shows are on tonight, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, and the Good Wife.  Sometimes they put snippets of things in that really aren’t needed. The shows are good without the trash.

Well, guess that is about all for today.  Not real exciting but not to bad. See y’all tomorrow…..

Monday September 27th 2010

The weather is cool this morning but it won’t stay that way.  It is supposed to get up around 100 degrees today.  Very unusual for San Diego.  It was very pleasant sleeping and we really were tired.

I didn’t take any pictures today, we just took it easy.  In fact we took a nap in the afternoon and when I woke up it was 88 degrees in the room and about an hour later it got up to 90.  To warm to sleep and it probably won’t cool off until after dark.

We went to the store and bought some things for sandwiches because it is way to hot to cook.  For supper we just had cold sandwiches and potato salad.  It was really good.

I made a DVD from the pictures or videos I took at Santa Barbara when we visited Jacob for the weekend.  I was happy with it and the picture quality is great (for me).  I was kind of worried after the first video but now I think I really like the camera.  I’m not good at downloading onto discs yet but will probably get a little better with time and practice.  I am also not good at holding the camera steady or keeping it on the subject which I hope will improve with time and practice.

We aren’t going to do anything tonight but take it easy and watch TV.  When we went to bed I think it was still about 75 degrees in our room but with the fan it was comfortable and I think we will sleep pretty good. Maybe I will take more pictures tomorrow…Night y’all….

Sunday September 26th 2010

Got up kind of early this morning and went down to the computer room? Not sure what the room is called but I set up my computer and wrote my blog then I watched Steve Ayers from Bowling Green KY.  Kim came down a little later and said Linda was up and getting ready.  Kim and I sat and talked for quite awhile and then went back up to see if Linda was ready yet. She wasn’t quite ready but getting there.  Kim looked up on the computer for a place to go have breakfast.  Settled on the Cajun Kitchen..

I know that Kim and Jacob both had California eggs Benedict, and Linda got a Denver Omelet and I got a bacon breakfast burrito, no Kim changed hers to the Jambalaya with eggs.  I thought about that but wasn’t sure.  I tasted Kim’s and I’m glad I didn’t order it.  Something in the Cajun spice that I just don’t like, and that is unusual, I like almost anything.

 

From there we went to Jacobs Fraternity House to see his room.  Jacob is President of the Frat House.  The room was pretty nice, I took some video shots of it.  Today is “Sunday Fun Day”. After “Rush” and all the fraternity stuff that went on for the last week it was time to “play”.  I guess anyone that has gone to college knows what this is all about.  I got a picture of the “little girls” going around to visit all the frat houses..

To me most of them didn’t look old enough to be starting college but then I’m an old man. This is just one part of one group and there were probably a thousand of them altogether, well, they weren’t all together but in groups, it was really crowded!

We went to the bookstore and Kim bought Jacob’s books for school, then we went back over to the frat house but Linda and I didn’t go in, things were getting kind of wild by then.  Jacob and Allie came out and I got a couple of pictures….

  The music was so loud you couldn’t hardly talk but that is what they like I guess.  I bought a digital camcorder, seems to work pretty good and I wanted to mention it here because I have it in my shirt pocket!!  Love it, it seems to take good pictures and I can carry it in my pocket.  My first camcorder used a VHS tape and was probably over a foot long and weighed about five pounds.  I like this one.

We headed back to San Diego about four I think.  I was tired and was really glad Kim was driving.  We stopped at a mall, not sure where it was but was about eighty miles north of San Diego.  We went into a Red Robin for a bite to eat. I didn’t get a picture inside but I did get a picture of some birds taking a bath.  It was still hot at six PM.

I thought it was cute watching them cool off in the pool.

We got back to Kim’s about eight PM I think and we went in and talk to Dave for awhile before heading back to Brenna’s.  When we got back to Brenna’s we watched “The Event” which was OK but if all episodes are like this one I don’t think I will make it a habit to watch them.  Reminds me of “Jericho” a series that you couldn’t figure out what was going on until the end of the season.  Didn’t like that.

We had to go to bed, Linda was really out of it.  She looked like a Zombie!  She was really tired.  For now, goodnight y’all….

Saturday September 25th 2010

Saturday morning and we have no plans for today. The sun is shining again and I think it is supposed to get pretty warm. I got up early and the kids and Bren were already up and watching a video about horses.  The kids like the video but lost interest about half way through. The kids wanted bagels for breakfast.  That was easy! Darin had plans to go to the beach for a clean up day with the kids.  The kids love the beach.

I think it was about 10:30 when Kim called and asked if we waned to drive up to Santa Barbara to see Jacob.  We have no plans so that sounds like a good idea.  Bren and Darin got home before we left so we let them know what we were going to be doing.

Went over to Kim’s house, traffic was terrible, about noon and she was ready so we loaded up her car and took off.  It is a four or five hour drive, so I’m glad she was driving.  I did get a nap on the way up. Oh, the reason we are going to see Jacob is he is having a showing of his PSA which I think stands for Public Service Announcement.  “Save the Sea Otters”. The clip, or PSA, was very good and very well done.  There weren’t a lot of people there especially for the movie, “The Eleventh Hour” which was TMI and probably not correct.  “Green People” would love it! Back to the the rest of the story, no, I think I will put a couple pictures in here….

This is the Santa Barbara Channel around El Capitan.  Beautiful scenery.

This is our oldest daughter Kimberly and I won’t name others in the picture.

This is Jacob and the girl, I can’t remember her name, was his study partner his Freshman year.

Jacob’s PSA was on the beach. Doesn’t look like to bad of a crowd does it?  Most of them left after his PSA and before the movie.  Don’t blame them.  I about froze out there.  The wind was not blowing hard but right off the ocean it was really chilly.

This is Jacob and Allie.  She seems like a very nice girl and they seem to get along quite well, that’s all I know!!  I didn’t ask questions because I’m sure they wouldn’t answer and I’m sure they would think I really didn’t need to know.  I believe Allie is a Senior this year, “Go Allie!!” 

The picture of Jacob and Allie was taken in Chili’s, where we went to get a little something to eat and get warmed up.  Can you believe it, 55 degrees and I’m freezing!!!  Supposed to get up around 90 tomorrow so I will get warmed up then.

We rented a room at the Super 8.  I don’t think I have ever seen a room this small before!  Well, the bedroom in our camper is smaller, but that doesn’t count.  We got settled in about 11:30PM and decided it was time to get some sleep.  We have plans to meet Jacob in the morning I guess, I’m not sure about the plans I just follow along and smile.  See y’all tomorrow, sleep good……

Friday September 24th 2010

Another beautiful day!!  It is cool and there isn’t any fog!  We kept the fan on all night with the window open and it was really comfortable.

We don’t have much to do today.  We will go to Kroger’s to get a few things then kind of relax.

Brenna is going to a Bible study tonight and she volunteered to take a desert.  She was going to pick up some cookies from the store and we thought about making cookies but decided not to.  When Bren called in the afternoon I asked if she would like to take cinnamon rolls.  She thought that would be great.  In the afternoon I started them so they would be done before she got home.  Well, different oven, I didn’t take them out in time and they burnt.  Nuts!!!  Linda says you still have a little time can you make another batch?  Got about an hour and a half so I will give it a try. I didn’t let them rise like I should have and didn’t give them the second rise like I should have and just turned on the oven and let them bake, this time for less time.  They looked OK, we didn’t try them but they were done in time for Brenna to take them and they cooled enough also.

Linda fixed “pork burgers” for supper.  They were really good.  I think I like the pork better than the beef. They have a lot more taste and they are pretty solid so they don’t break apart.  She did a good job.

After Brenna got home the first thing she said was “they all were eaten” so I guess they turned out OK.

We watched TV tonight and just took it easy. Nothing planned for tomorrow, I looked up on the internet about the MMCAS Airshow and it will be going on Oct 2-4th. Now we just have to figure out when we want to go.  It will all depend on who all wants to go with us.  It will be a very long day if we go  first thing in the morning.  I want to see the radio controlled airplanes that starts at 8AM, then goes on through out the day.

Time to go to bed…..Night y’all…

Thursday September 23rd 2010

This is going to be another beautiful day!!  It is nice and cool this morning.  We left the window open with the fan on again and it was really comfortable. Very cool this morning, probably about 58 degrees some where in there.

Linda and I wanted to go to the store and Brenna wanted us to check on a cake.  The cake would be for Alexa for her birthday. She will be five years old next month.

We picked up Alexa from school today. She was just eating her treat. Back to the store.  We went to the $100 store, oh me, spent more than $100 today.  I bought a digital movie camera.  It was on sale and it was kind of what I wanted.  It is very small and uses an SD card for memory.  Maybe I can get some videos of the family and the air show I hope to go to next week end.  Linda said she will use her camera to take pictures to.

Our second chore of the day was to go pick up Gianna from her riding lesson. Horses, she loves them.  I can do without them.  They are magnificent creatures but I don’t really care for them that much.

This is Gianna with General Rommel. She was finishing up with cleaning the horse or whatever you call it. She showed us around the ranch and all the horses there, she knows the names of them all.  Linda got to feed some of them hay.  They have big teeth.  I didn’t feed any.

Gianna on General Rommel bare back.  We gave Gianna and her friend Lulu a ride back to San Diego, Lulu’s father was going to pick her up at a restaurant and we took Gianna on home.  I thought I had a picture of Lulu but I must not have taken one.  Listening to the kids talk in the back seat on the way home was very interesting.  I think Lulu has been in more foreign countries than I have been in states!!  One statement they made was they thought Starbuck’s drive thru was really silly but the drive thru at Krispy Creme Donuts was great.

I took a few pictures of Darin’s back yard…this is a lemon tree..

I’m guessing that this is a persimmon tree??

I’m also guessing that this is a Macadamia Nut tree..

Darin really likes his back yard.  I don’t know how many different kinds of trees he has but there are a lot, and a lot of them are exotic.

We had a pretty good day today, spent a lot of money, not real good, but other wise a pretty nice day.  Have some things to do tomorrow then the weekend we will probably see the rest of the family except for Jacob who is in Santa Barbara at school.  We may take a trip up there later to see him.  Going to stop for now. Have a great one, or two  Y’all….

Wednesday September 22nd 2010

Oh it is going to be a beautiful day, it is cool and the sun is going to shine!! It is kind of hectic here with getting the kids ready for school and day care but the kids are quite well behaved and know what they need to do.  Brenna isn’t going in to work today, still recuperating.  Linda slept in this morning.  She is still getting over all the traveling we did for the last week and the heat.  It has been cool here, we had the window open and the fan on all night.  Nice and cool this morning, probably about 60 degrees.

 

I went with Brenna to pick up Alexa from school.  Now we know where to go and we will pick her up tomorrow. I have been authorized to do that now and they know who I am.  All I have to do it remember where the school is.

We did a little something different for supper.  We made pancakes! The kids like pancakes and I had some help….

Jake has his chef uniform on..

Alexa likes to help also.  She likes to pose too!  Now I tried something a little different, see if you can identify what these are, besides pancakes..

Not real pretty but the kids thought they were great!!

Got a nice picture of Jake and Brenna working!!

I think Jake did pretty good for three years old.  He got in a couple of jams but Mom helped him get them straightened out.  This kept his attention for about forty five minutes!  He was playing an alphabet game.

Audrey (Dee Dee) came over last night for a visit.  The kids couldn’t come over, they hadn’t finished their homework.  I think I may get pictures tomorrow, at least of Gianna.  We will pick her up from her horse camp which is about an hour a way depending on traffic.  We put the address in the Tom Tom so we could find it.  I guess it is really out in the sticks. Thursday nights are really busy out here. The kids have Awanas and there is a school thing going on for Dee and for Brenna and Darin is working late getting ready for a presentation and Linda and I aren’t doing much of anything!!  I love it!!  Well, we had a really nice visit with Dee. She let us know how the kids were doing in school etc.  Gianna is in ninth grade and doing very well, Kedric is also doing very well in school and he told his mother that he was going to be an “Honor Student” and graduate as a Valedictorian!!  Now he is smart and has very high standards.  He decided this on his own.  Jared is going to be a “gamer” I think.  I’m not sure but I think he will be into computers and computer games, but all is subject to change.

 

We aren’t going to stay up late, need to get to bed and get ready for another busy day.  We have a lot of things to do tomorrow so I will stop for another night…..Bye….

Tuesday September 21st 2010

It is cool out today!!!  We had the window open last night with the fan going and I think it is about 60 degrees this morning.  Nice sleeping weather.

We took Brenna to the hospital for her out patient surgery.  The traffic was a little hectic and I can see why I don’t really like driving around here.  I guess if I  lived here long enough I would get used to it.

We found our way back home without to much of a problem and we waited for the news about Brenna.  About 1130AM she got home.  Didn’t look real good and she went to lay down for awhile.  I was surprised, she was up in about an hour and feeling pretty good.  She rested most of the day and didn’t do a lot.  I actually think she felt better than the rest of us.  Linda laid down and took a nap and I think I dozed on the sofa.

I baked some bread and made some pasta from left over food and I thought it turned out pretty good.  This is Brenna’s small convection oven.  Gets pretty hot but works really good, I may have to get one of these.

This was made from all purpose and whole wheat flour.  It is a garlic and cheese bread.  It was quite light and tasted pretty good.

Spaghetti sauce with left over corn, black beans and hamburger.  Made some shell macaroni and mixed them together.  I thought It was pretty good.  Had to take a picture of Jake, he looks like a little “imp”

A couple of his favorite sayings are “I like you” or I love you”! Quite a kid!!  We really are having a good time with them. They are really fascinated with grandma’s teeth which is something I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to write in here:-)

We are pretty tired tonight, Linda is having a terrible time staying awake. Have some new shows on TV I want to see and I am kind of tired.  See y’all tomorrow……

Monday September 20th 2010

We would like to get on the road a little early today.  Want to make it all the way to San Diego by this evening.  I wanted to take a picture of the motel we stayed at in Benson.  It was pretty nice…

We got on the road a little aft 9AM.  It is already warm but supposed to get quite a bit warmer. We stopped in Tucson and filled up with gas.  Now I have to mention the gas prices… Tucson was $2.44 and El Cento CA was $3.21!!  Almost eighty cents a gallon difference.  We didn’t fill up in El Centro either, we filled up in Yuma and it was $2.71 there.  Anyway, we had a pretty nice trip, I kept an eye on the temperature and the longer we drove the hotter it got!  We passed El Centro and it was 112 degrees there. Not real cool but about 90 miles later it was 70 degrees, nice!  It is cool here in San Diego, the ocean is always cool and if the breeze is from the west it keeps it cool.

We arrived at Bren and Darin’s about 5:30PM.  Made good time and had no problems at all.  The Marine Layer was coming in so we were under the clouds the last 5 minutes of the trip. I guess that it isn’t hard to believe but Alexa and Jake both remembered us!  I was surprised but it has only been about 8 or 9 months.  I had to get a couple of pictures…

I think they are watching Linda do something, not sure what though.

Mexican hat time….

Brenna with some stuffed animals.  They are the kids animals, they don’t have any real ones

We had a great evening even though we were tired.  Bren is going into the hospital for outpatient surgery tomorrow.  We will drop her off and Darin will go to be with her after dropping Alexa off at school and Jake at the day care.

We are all tired so I think we will go to bed, have to get up early….Night y’all…..

Sunday September 19th 2010

We are going to go to church today, we will pick up Marian first.  We found the church yesterday so we wouldn’t have to look for it this morning.  I can’t remember the name of the church but it is an Independent Baptist Church.  I liked it and Linda liked it, Marian thought it was OK.

They had just moved into this church this year.  This looks like the sanctuary but they didn’t have the service there. I can’t remember the preachers name but everyone was really friendly…

This is the inside of the sanctuary which may be the temporary one, but I didn’t ask.  The service was quite good.

We went to Bisbee AZ this afternoon which was twenty two miles past the city where the OK Coral is, now why didn’t I just say the name of the city? Well, right now I can’t remember it…Tombstone!!!!  I’m just a little slow right now.  Bisbee is an old city and it was a copper mining town.  I had to take a picture of the “pit”.  This to me was the high point of our ride this afternoon. Have a couple pictures…

Doesn’t look very big but each one of those layers you can drive a big truck on and I couldn’t figure out if the roads were wide enough for them to pass or not. The bottom of the pit had a pond and I think it was sulfuric acid.  It had an acid smell around there.

Bisbee is a quaint little  city. Reminds us of Galena IL or Eureka Springs Arkansas.  Got a couple pictures out of the window and then the batteries went dead on the camera..

We had lunch in a restaurant in what I would call a little mall.  I had a Gyros and Linda had a Panini and this wasn’t the highlight of the day. I was hungry for a Gyros but this didn’t taste anything like a Gyros.  Pita bread and some kind of meat and sauce.  I should have gotten a hamburger. David got one and it looked great.

We headed back to Benson and dropped off David and Marian so they could head back to Safford.  We went home and crashed.  I think the day kind of wore us out.  Tomorrow will be a big day traveling on to San Diego, the last leg of the trip out.  The news was reporting some road construction delays in Tucson so we may have a little problem there, sure hope not…..Catch y’all tomorrow……

Saturday September 18th 2010

 

This morning I backed up my pictures.  I bought some DVDs and I practiced until I got them.  One good thing about the DVD is you can erase them or clean off the DVD and redo it again.  Good thing.  I sure wasted a lot of CDs that way.  One mistake on a CD and you start with a new one.  They don’t cost much though.  I downloaded 3662 pictures on the DVD and I know some of them are repeats but at least I can find them if I want to take time to look at them.

We went for breakfast at Jack in the Box.  It was actually lunch but they serve breakfast all day.  It was OK. Not my favorite. We all had pita sandwiches.  After lunch David had to go back to work and we took a ride to find a church to go to.  It was at the end of the frontage road on the west end of Benson.   Looks like a nice church.  Will find out for sure tomorrow.

We stopped at the $100 store and picked up a few things and went back to David and Marian’s place and talked for awhile.  I couldn’t stay awake so we came back to the motel for a nap.

This is the sitting room part.  It is a nice room.

We went over to David and Marian’s about 5PM.  Going to grill pork burgers.  Marian can’t eat beef so this works out quite well.

They grilled up nicely and tasted good.  Marian fixed scalloped potatoes and beans.  Had a nice dinner!!  I also got a picture of some quails.  You have to kind of look for them but they are there…

There were probably half a dozen of them, I think they liked it under the shed.  Got a few more pictures…These are in the campground…

This thing had to be at least twenty feet tall!

I guess I can see why people like the view. For this being the middle of September there are a lot of people here!

I got a couple pictures inside the camper of us…

Had to get a picture in here with Munchkin!  Had a good night, just talked and since David worked he was kind of tired and we didn’t stay to long. He has to work again in the morning.  When we got back to the motel we washed some clothes.  Need a few things for in the morning.  Night y’all..