23 March 2009 Snow for our Australian Visitors

The snow just doesn't seem to want to leave us. We had a few warmer days and then it got colder again. Maybe the snow wanted our Australian Visitors, Allison and Collene to enjoy some snow as this was the first time that they had seen snow in their lives. Allison lives in Tasmania, Australia and Collene was born in Queensland, Australia and had lived in Tasmania for 3 years and is now living in Victoria, Australia. When we were visiting Australia last year we were staying with Collene and her husband Darryl in Tasmania, now it was Collene's turn for a reciprocal visit.

Here you see my favorite tree, our pear tree. You know that I love this tree because I see it out of our dining area in the kitchen when we have the blinds of the French doors open.

As you can see, we had quite a bit of snow that day.

That same day, Allison, Collene and I went shopping and stopped for lunch at a McDonald's.

On the left is Allison and on the right is Collene.

Our Trip to St. George, Utah and Red and Bryce Canyons, Utah

We left home on Monday 9 March 2009 around 10.15 a.m. to go to St. George, Utah, for several days. The distance was about 300 miles (480 km). We were going to stay at the World Mark by Wyndham. We had a nice 1 bedroom unit with a king-size bed for our use. It was on the 2nd floor but there was an elevator and they had those hotel trolleys for luggage that we could use. This made taking our luggage upstairs quite easy.
On Tuesday we went out for breakfast to Denny's and then bought a few things at Smith’s Supermarket. The GPS found Smith’s for us but it couldn’t find an Albertson’s supermarket, which must have been too new. The GPS also couldn't find World Mark so we had to phone there to get directions as to how to get there.

Later on we saw an Albertson’s and I went to it when I had to buy a few things there that Vance needed.

Worldmark by Wyndham is a travel share, a friend of ours allowed us to use the facilities since they had bought credits, it used to be called time share. We were invited to a presentation to see if we were interested in buying into it.

We enjoyed our stay at Worldmark and it is nice to have so much room, we had a dining area with a standing full kitchen with a fridge that has an ice maker, and a stove. There was a nice square table with 4 chairs. The bed was nice and comfortable and the bathroom was very nice as well. We were only on the second floor with an elevator further along the outside balcony walkway or a set of stairs very near out door. We chose to do the stairs a few times when the car wasn’t nearby and to just go over to the office for the sales presentation and the pick up our one free movie that they give you.

On Wednesday Vance was up to our planned outing to Bryce Canyon. I had planned for us to go either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how Vance was. He wasn’t up to it on Tuesday but was on Wednesday. We had breakfast at JB's restaurant this time .

We drove through 2 of these tunnels which were made in the red rock. It was surely a lovely drive.

We had a lovely time in Bryce Canyon and saw some deer as well. It snowed in Salt Lake City as we were leaving on Monday. and it had apparently snowed in Bryce Canyon as well that evening, so we saw the lovely snow on the red mountains.

We also saw some wild deer. I managed to capture a photo of one with a little one.

Just think of what the weather and the elements did to the mountains to give us such a lovely view to see.

We have proof that we were here by having someone taken a photo of the 2 of us

We stopped at the Visitors' Center on our way out of the Canyon and we watched a nice movie on the Bryce Canyon National Park.

Birthdays Dinner at Jacob & Kathy's 1 Feb 2009

My brother Jacob and his wife Kathy invited us Vance and I to come over to their house

for a Birthdays Dinner. There are a few birthdays in the

family towards the end of January and some in February.

Sophie, Michael's French poodle lives there and was at the party

Toni and Cami were snap happy with their cameras. Here they are looking at some of the photos they took. Later on Michael also took some photos with his dad's camera. He took the photos that are shown here as I didn't take my camera with me.

After the dinner had settled then it became time for dessert. Here is Kathy making ice cream cones for her grandchildren. We see Cameron, one of them, eating his ice cream cone. We also see Dan holding the knife after cutting the chocolate cake made by Toni.. Chocolate came with chocolate pudding and chocolate chips in. The cake was till warm when we ate it with ice cream. Yum. Yum.

After the dinner and the dessert we were doing what the Dutch call "natafelen"; sitting at the table chatting away and having a good time doing so.

New Year's Eve!!!

We spent New Year's eve by going out for linner (in between lunch and dinner) at the Chinese Gourmet restaurant with Klint and Michelle, our dear friends. We met at 3:30 p.m. and stayed there just having a good time eating and talking until 5:30.

You see them on the photo with us that was taken on 12 December 2008.

After leaving Klint and Michelle we went home and phoned Doug to come and join us for the rest of the evening.

We had fun watching some movies and snacking.

Hope your New Year will also be a great one!!!

Vance at Work from Home

As you can see, on the 2nd photo, Vance does not have very much room on the computer desk that he has in our office, that’s why we set up a table in our front living room in front of the fireplace.

We don’t use the fireplace as it takes wood to burn in there. We would have used it if it was a gas fireplace.

The second photo is Vance typing up the things he had worked out at the table in the living room. He is quite happy to work from home. He has all the things he needs here.

During the Christmas holidays, we had FM 100 playing their 100 hours of Christmas music on in both the office and lving room stereos.

Shoveling all that snow

We had at least 10 inches (25 cm) of snow fall during evening and night. We got home from my brother's at 4 p.m. on Christmas day when we shoveled what had fallen during that day and after breakfast this morning, 26 December 2008, when we measured how much snow we had received since then.

On the first photo you can see Vance taking a little break. The 2nd one shows him busy shoveling the entrance of our driveway. You can see how the footpath of the neighbors on the other side of the street.

The 3rd photo shows how deep it was on the footpath leading to our frontdoor. And there is me with the shovel in hand. I did help some, but Vance did the most of it.

You can also see the back of my car in the garage and a corner of Vance's little black truck.

White Christmas

I've enjoyed watching the pear tree during these last few months from having pears in it to this one with no leaves and the snow falling. You can also see the neighbor's house on the other side of the canal that runs between our back fence and their back fence. There are always so many leaves on our trees and shrubs and theirs and the other neighbors.

Here is a photo of our grandchildren showing off their Christmast gifts from us with their Uncle Doug looking on. This was taken on Christmas eve.

Another photo of our backyard, snowing and with snow taken today, 25 December 2008.




This photo of our house was taken just as we were off to my brother's for Christmas Dinner. So you can see we had a white Christmas.





Best wishes for a happy and healthy NewYear!