Last Family Visit

Day 10 of my birthday celebration was bittersweet.  We enjoyed breakfast with the family--the whole family including Jennifer! Yay!  

We all went back to the house so that Duane could get something from the gun safe and Allie and Luke could show me their new trampoline moves.  Just jumping wasn't enough.  They positioned the trampoline next to the porch for extra fun.  The new game is now to jump from the porch (about 3 ft.),

take one jump, then turn a flip.

To dismount you jump onto the steps.

Then Josie takes a nap.

Unfortunately, after this  we had to say goodbye for a year.  We will be spending next winter in Arizona and won't return until doctor time again.

Tomorrow we pack up, then play pickleball in the evening.

Louise and Duane

Out With The Old

On with the new.

Duane said, "Why do you want a picture of them?  You can't tell the difference!"

Let's see, square to oval, medium sized to small, frames all around to only on top.  I can see that small print again, too.

Since I now have my new glasses, we have only my last dr appointment on Monday.  We plan to move on Tuesday.

One last breakfast with the family tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

Alone Time

I celebrated my birthday today with some rare time alone.  Duane took the bike to visit a local blacksmith/knife maker for some guy time and shop talk.  This left me with the house to myself for a couple three hours of quiet.  I used the time to write in my special diary.  I need long stretches of quiet time without interruptions to keep my thoughts flowing for this journal.  In the afternoon Duane and I enjoyed a 2 mile walk around the rv park in sunshine and under moonlight.   As well as the sun, the new 1/4 moon was visible in the cloudless sky all afternoon.

A really good day for me for both of us.

Louise and Duane

A Whole Birthday Week!

Friday--Birthday Party

Saturday--play and watch pickleball

Sunday--breakfast with the family

Monday--a beautiful ride on a beautiful day

Tuesday--enjoyed again a sign from our ride, thought "only in Texas"

Wednesday--a beautiful end to a beautiful day

Thursday--drove by this place again, laughed at it again.  This is a beautiful, well-maintained place.  The house is a modern brick 

with a very nice fence.  The house on the right.  The matching little house is the office for a used car lot.  The cars along the fence are the used cars for sale!!!

 I've really enjoyed the first week of my 13 day birthday party.

What shall I do for the second?

Louise and Duane

Nothing Doing

A beautiful day for just about anything.  Duane rode the bike on an errand this morning and we walked around the rv park this afternoon.  

Back to the pickleball courts tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

My New Puppy

At the Glass Center in Tyler we play pickleball with a few students from one of the local colleges.  One of these students is Rudy,  here in the red sweatshirt.  Rudy bounces all over the court with the unbounded happy energy of a puppy.  

Rudy is very quick at figuring out where the ball is going and putting himself there, then getting back to where it will be next.  His speed and dexterity amaze me.

I like watching and playing with Rudy.  He makes the game fun.

Too windy to fly but still beautiful today.

Louise and Duane

Flying

The Eagle screamed and away we flew through a perfect spring afternoon in the Piney Woods of East Texas.  Part of the ride was a test for our new motorcycle GPS unit.  The screen passed the visibility test with flying colors.  The rest of the ride we just enjoyed the scenery.

A great treat for the 4th day of my birthday 2 weeks.

Perfect day, perfect flight.

Louise and Duane

Celebrate Good Times!

My fun choice for day 3 of my birthday two weeks:  Sunday breakfast with the family, of course.

As of now we have one more weekend planned at this rv park in Tyler.  We are waiting for our new glasses and I need one more test which hasn't been scheduled yet, but we think we will be ready to move on within the next two weeks.

Let's see, what's fun to do tomorrow?

Louise and Duane

Lucky Number

With my birthday falling on Friday 13, and two 13 year-old grandkids, this year I decided to celebrate my birthday for 13 full days.  Today, day 2, we played pickleball for three hours this morning.  After that we drove out of our way to visit Burger King for lunch.  That way I didn't have to cook. 

It was a great plan and worked well.

Louise and Duane

Happy Birthday To Me!

Whenever my birthday comes around while we're visiting any of our kids, I always say that it's my birthday and I expect a big 'do'.  Then I wait to see what happens.  This time son Jeremy, daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandkids Allie and Luke rose to the challenge.  For dinner there were pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and green beans.

Allie whipped up a super duper double decker  chocolate cake with chocolate frosting 

and Luke found some flattering candles.  Today I'm 34 years old!

Allie relaxed after her labors.  It tickles me how these long limbed rangy kids can fold themselves into small bundles

For fun we opened the presents sent from my sisters in Ohio.

Luke kindly offered to wear the button for me.

 Allie and Jeremy rode the big rooster--

This was hysterically funny to watch!

We topped off the evening with an excellent game of Ticket To Ride.  Allie couldn't sit still when she got close to winning. 

Added to all of this fun, telephone calls from the other kids throughout the day made for a very fun birthday for me.  I can hardly wait to see what happens next year!

Rain today, sunshine tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

Happy Days

Tomorrow is my birthday (I actually was born on Friday the 13th), but because bad weather is in the forecast I decided to start my week-long celebration today.  We played pickleball this morning, then opened all of the doors and windows and lounged around inside all afternoon while the sun streamed cheerfully through high thin clouds and a strong, gusty wind cooled the house.  I decided to save the laundry for tomorrow when rain is in the forecast. 

Our last doctor visit is tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

Running Around

Another beautiful day spent in another doctor's office.  Today Duane went to his new ophthalmologist.  The doc was somewhat concerned about his glaucoma.  Duane may have to be retested in about 6 months, if we can arrange it on our travels.  Next stop was the eyeglass place.  They were having a 60% off sale which made their prices less than what we would have paid with our insurance.  One last stop to get our propane tank refilled, then we were free to go home.  We left at 12:15, and arrived back home at 5:00.  The weather wasn't entirely wasted on us, though.  We found it very pleasant to be out about in the beautiful sunshine.

Tomorrow we plan to play around.

Louise and Duane

Rummaging

With nothing better to do, a beautiful sunny day enticed us to shuffle stuff around between our house and our storage unit, which is parked at son Jeremy's house.  Since we are planning to spend next winter in the Arizona desert, we swapped out the fishing equipment for rock finishing equipment.  We took some time inside the storage trailer looking for some of Duane's photographs and sorting through some other stuff we took with us.  We went to the house to collect our mail and a couple of packages that we had ordered.  While we were there we said hello to Jennifer and collected some hugs and smiles from Allie and Luke before we headed back home. 

Tomorrow, another nice day, another doctor.

Louise and Duane

All Smiles

Establishing our doctors in Tyler led us to abandon our long-time dentist in Shreveport (LA) for a new one here.  We saw two different dentists so that we could be treated at the same time.  Nice.  I was called first.  I was asked to sit on a stool and had my blood pressure recorded.  I was draped in lead and had a thingy put in my mouth and told to bite while the tech popped around of the corner.  This was repeated several times.  Next the tech stuck a bigger thingy in my mouth and held it in various positions while she aimed a thing like a hair dryer at the thingy.  She took off my lead drape and asked me to step into the next room.  I was redraped in lead, then asked to step under a machine and bite the projection in front of my face while two bars swirled around my head taking more ex rays.  After that I went into an exam room and lounged on the couch.  I was able to view the results of all of those ex rays.  I could see every surface of my teeth--the tops, the root tips and everything between.  Interesting.  After a bit my dentist came in and cleaned my teeth, then an assistant polished them.  Duane reported that he had the same treatment.  We agreed that we experienced several firsts on this visit:  we were seen by different dentists, we had ex rays taken three different ways--one in a machine, and the dentist cleaned our teeth whereas before the "dental hygienist" cleaned and polished our teeth before the dentist came in.

We were both told that we had good teeth with no problems and left with bright smiles.  To reward ourselves we enjoyed unlimited soup, salad, and bread sticks at Olive Garden.  Delicious.  We left with our stomachs full and our smiles still in place;   lunch was free thanks to our daughter Rachel and our favorite son-in-law Benji.  They gave us a gift card for Christmas.  Thanks, kids!

Chore day tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

Chillin'

After a short but restful night,  we braved the 39 degree weather to enjoy what is becoming our usual family breakfast when we are in the Tyler/Kilgore area.  Since we had spent the afternoon and night with the family, we opted to go home after our breakfast visit.  We were looking forward to a warm house on our return.  We were doomed to disappointment.  Our propane tank was empty and the house was cold.  As soon as we switched propane tanks and fired up the furnace and the electric heaters the inside temp soon rose to a more comfortable temperature. We warmed up and rested for a while, the enjoyed a brisk walk in the chilly air (upper 50's) before holing up for the evening.

Tomorrow we visit the dentist.

Louise and Duane

Cold And Hot

After a week of beautiful days, today decided to be cold and wet.  To stave off the nasty weather we stayed with Allie, Luke, and their friend Emerson while their parents attended a local fund raiser.  

Grampa and Luke started off with a hot game of table tennis which quickly moved to

coffee table/candle  pong to

candle pong, and ended in

ping pong basket ball.

Out into the cold (45d) for at trip town for hot pizza,

and back home for cold home made ice cream,

and a hot game of Ticket To Ride (a train board game.)

Later, gator.

Louise and Duane

Passed His Final!

This morning's appointment was with Duane's knee doctor.  Dr. V gave him an A+.  Duane's knees are in great shape, and he is ready to test them out with some serious hiking this summer.  Also, Duane graduated and doesn't have to return to see this doctor any more.  Yay! 

For exercise we walked around and around the park this afternoon.  We did stop more than once to visit with two couples who came in today.  They are both new to full-timing and both ride bikes; we talked of nice sightseeing rides.

Tomorrow we're staying with the grandkids while their parents party.  Be on the lookout for fun kid pix.

Louise and Duane

A Frabjous Day!

Today's doctor was in Shreveport, LA. with Duane's urologist.  After a sonogram of his kidneys, the dr. declared him still tumor free.  Yay!  While we were in town, we visited our financial guy and arranged for Duane's first required withdrawal from his IRA account, since he is now 70 1/2 years old. 
To work out the kinks from our long day of mostly sitting, we walked around the rv park for a mile or so when we returned home.

That was our exciting day in Louisiana.

Louise and Duane

Turn Down Day

Nothing to do today but relax.  The weather was sunny but chilly at best--too cold for us to fly the Eagle.  I read Louis L'Amour short stories while doing laundry.  Duane tried to make sense of the online manual for his new GPS unit for the bike.  After a bit I went walking around in circles within the rv park, reading a magazine. 

Tomorrow we drive to Shreveport.

Louise and Duane

Phase Three

In our annual poke, probe and squeeze, the first phase, the poke, refers to any injections we have to get.  This year we received the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine.  The probe belongs in the men's category, and refers to a part of the prostate exam.  The third phase is mine--my annual mammogram, which was the doctor visit of the day.  A lady who went in for her first mammogram
came out and announced that whomever told her that her mammogram wouldn't hurt lied!  Amen, sister.

A prediction for bad weather in the afternoon kept us from making any other plans for the day.  After lunch thunderstorms moved through.  We spent the afternoon with Gibbs and company watching NCIS reruns while Duane played on computer and I worked Sudoku's. 

We're looking forward to the return of nice weather tomorrow.

Louise and Duane

Hoodah Thunk!

Our only doctor's appointment for today (which we made two months ago) was for me to visit the optometrist.  I have been looking forward to this visit because I definitely need new glasses. When we arrived at the Vision Center (the people that order the new lenses)  there was a sign on the door that the doctor wasn't there.  We went next door to the Vision Center; the two ladies working there said that the doctor packed up and left!
The nice ladies did give us a card with another optometrist to try.  I have an appointment with the new doctor next week.  Meanwhile, Duane called the original optometrist and found out that they'd moved to bigger quarters.  Apparently they'd missed us with the memo.

I guess I'll have to wait a while longer to see straight!

Louise and Duane