Arizona Visit

Wednesday, Nov. 3, I flew to Phoenix for a visit with family and friends. Nick was my chaufeur to Lisa's. On Thursday morning, sister Marla picked me up. We went to the Apple Store where I got a new battery for my MacBook. Since I had paid $300 for an extended warranty, I saved the $129 the battery would have cost. I stayed with Marla Thursday night and we went hiking on the 6 mile GoJohn trail in Cave Creek Park. Friday afternoon we met Lisa, Nick and Aaron2 at Dos Gringos in Old Town Scottsdale for Happy Hour. I went home from there with Lisa.

Saturday, Aaron2 took Nick, Lisa and I to his parents' house in Gold Canyon. Lisa and I spent the afternoon looking at scrapbooks of Aaron2's life. Saturday night Aaron1, Nick, Dan, Lisa and I joined a large group that went to a Japanese steakhouse for dinner in celebration of Aaron2's birthday.


Sunday, Dan and I went to see "Hereafter." We thought it was good and had a happy ending. That evening, Lisa, Dan, Taylor and I went to Old Town Scottsdale for dinner at Oregano's pizzeria. Aaron1 and Marla joined us. After dinner, I said good-bye to my family members as I was going to be staying with Marla.

Monday morning, Marla and I went to 7th Street for a 5 mile hike. In the afternoon, we drove to Terravita for a visit with dear friend, Marilyn. We also spent an hour with friend Trudy in The Boulders.

Tuesday morning, Marla and I decided to hike Piestewa Peak. We had only gone about 3/8 of a mile when Marla said her foot was hurting. She has a broken toe and we decided it probably wasn't a good idea to continue the hike to the top. We found another trail that wasn't as steep or rugged and hiked another 3.5 miles. Later that afternoon we went to Terravita once again. We went to visit with good friend, Jane. She served us dry martinis, which we sipped slowly. At 6, the three of us went to the clubhouse where we met seven other friends for dinner. I was happy to see so many Terravita friends and acquaintances. As we were leaving, the former president of the golf club was heading straight for Marla, thinking he was saying hello to me. I intercepted him before he got to her and he did a double-take. Several people had commented it was easy to tell that we were sisters. I also got many compliments on my hair. I haven't colored it for eight months and think I'll not do it again. I still have a lot of my natural hair color with enough gray to look frosted.

This morning Marla took me to the airport. I had an 8 AM flight to Albuquerque. From there, I took the New Mexico Rail Runner to Santa Fe where Erik picked me up and brought me to Los Alamos. To be continued...

Happy Halloween

Neighbors, Brad and RoseAnn, came over for dinner and we had a wonderful evening catching up. They spent most of the summer and early fall at their New Hampshire home. They invited us to visit them next year and we plan to do just that.

Since we don't have any children living near us, we didn't have to plan for trick or treaters. AND we didn't have to worry about ghosts as Ghostbusters visited our house and cleared them out. We are so lucky to live in a neighborhood where we have our own personal Ghostbusters. Hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween.

BOO!

It's October and in the Midwest it's Harvest time, but here in our village of Bridgeport at Miona Shores, it means the Boo Bags are being delivered. We received one Sunday night sometime. I didn't hear a knock as we were watching "Iron Man 2" which has lots of action and loud explosions. Fun movie. A Boo Bag is similar to a May Basket in that it contains goodies and in return I had to deliver two Boo Bags to neighbors who did not have a sign on their front door with a ghost saying "I've been booed." I think its best to be one of the last to be booed as then there's noone left to boo. Actually, it was fun to give as well as receive. I created this centerpiece using the scarecrow which came in our bag.




One morning as I was moving my orthodics from one pair of shoes to another, I started thinking about the different shoes I have for my different activities. I decided to line them up and take a picture for you. Pretty exciting, huh?

New and Old

Today we were blessed with another grandson. As Erik wrote to me, "He has arrived ... Jeffrey Erik ... 7 lb 13.5 oz ... 21in long ... This is what makes life so beautiful ... Giving life. We've already had our 1st father son talk & he listened so well. I'm definitely in love again."


That's the new...the old is Chubby Checker. Friends invited us to join them for the dinner show. It was fun, but lasted only an hour. Chubby didn't have too many hits. The Twist became popular in 1960, my freshman year in college. It resurfaced in 1962 and again became #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1988, "The Twist" became popular once again, due to a new recording of the song by The Fat Boys featuring Chubby Checker. Chubby was born Oct. 3,1941, sharing a birthday with our Moondog.

Finishing the Master

On Sept. 12, I told you we, actually Arne, had painted our bedroom. A couple weeks ago I found curtains at BB&B that we really liked so had to order them in the length we wanted. They arrived yesterday, less than an hour before my MahJongg ladies. I did get the corner windows pressed and hung before they got here and showed the end result. You can see for yourself in these photos, which really don't catch the true color...

Last week I began teaching ESL classes again. Right now I'm teaching on Tuesday AND Thursday mornings. They didn't like the Tuesday teacher so I'm teaching both days while the search goes on for another teacher to take one of the days. I started with three ladies and got two more today. Since the trailer where we meet is small, we don't have room for but maybe one more. They are nice ladies and are trying hard to learn English. I've signed up for a Spanish class starting in November at the Lifelong Learning College. I figure it will help me appreciate what they are going through trying to learn another language.

I played pickleball with the "non-beginners" yesterday and see I need lots of practice. It's possible to play pickleball every day here in The Villages as there's open play at every rec center from 7-10 AM and some days even more hours for open play.

Not Lovin' These "Love Bugs"

We were told the love bugs appeared each May and September. Well, seems that is true as we just had our second session with these "lovely" critters. They weren't so bad in May, except when we drove through them on our way to Ft. Lauderdale. This month, I've already swept up hundreds of thee critters and they don't seem to be done with their lovin'...In case you don't remember them from my May blogs, here's another picture.

I AM LOVIN' the fact that Jim Furyk won the FedEx Cup today at 40 years old. He's a nice guy with a nice family and while I would have liked to see Phil win it, Jim is my second choice.

Yesterday, Arne and I went to see "Get Low" with Robert Duvall and Bill Murray. It's based on the true story of a Tennessee hermit who throws himself his own funeral. Duvall does an outstanding job. I didn't realize he is 80 and played Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Now I want to see that movie again.
Played pickleball a couple times this week and am really liking it. I'm ready to move from the beginner groups to Intermediate. We'll see if they're ready for me. :=)

Played basketball this afternoon. Had several new gals come out as interested. We're working on our teams for the Florida state games in early December. You have to play in those to qualify for the National Seniors in Houston next June. I'm starting to see improvement in my play, which was definitely needed!

Won money again in Wednesday's golf group. Got closest to the hole for women, even though it was almost 30' from the pin. It was very windy and guess the other ladies didn't make the green. I tied for low score which meant we had to take it to the highest handicap men's hole. Rick and I tied on the first two handicap holes but he won the third. I said we should go by the women's handicap as I would have won on the fourth handicap hole. :-) Rick was such a gentleman and gave me half his winnings which I didn't want to take since I won money on closest to the hole but he insisted. I'll buy he and his wife a drink at next Wednesday's 19th hole. I noticed the gal in charge of our Wednesday games said this week would be men's handicap and the following week would be based on women's handicap, in case of tie. Guess I made a point. :-)

Mama Mia!

A few weeks ago, another transplant from Arizona asked if I'd be interested in going to the Mama Mia party at Katie Belle's. She lives outside The Villages and Katie Belle's is the only restaurant to which you must be a Villager or come with a Villager. I said I loved Mama Mia and would get us reservations. Today was the day. We arrived around 7:40 AM, breakfast was served at 8 and the show began around 9. They did a warm up song getting everyone off their...chairs. They passed out tambourines and maracas of which I got a maraca. As each song was sung in the movie, the words were on the screen so we could sing along, shaking our tambourines and maracas. It was a lot of fun and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that movie. Meryl Streep was outstanding!! While Pierce Bronson's singing was lacking, his other assets more than made up for his singing voice. :-)