We got a new video camera for Christmas, and I want to share some videos we took of our Christmas lights. We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Love - Rodney & Dennis
The first video is early on before everything was finished.:
The second on is further in the progression:
The third one is pretty much finished:
Here's a snapshot of the lights in our game room, on a light show program:
Girl's Weekend 2012 started out like any other, with all of us heading up the mountain at various times on Thursday. I was the last to start out, and with winter weather looming, I was anxious to get there before the weather started. I loaded the dogs in a crate and packed food, clothing, and wine for a weekend, and headed up. For the last 15 miles or so while still daylight, I drove in very wet snow. I arrived, got unloaded and walked the dogs without any thought of what might be coming our way. Thursday was rather calm, Lisa made some lavash pizzas and we had some wine. I was exhausted from the day and the dogs and i turned in early around 10pm.
Friday morning, I got up, got dressed, put their jackets on and opened the door to walk the dogs. Much to my surprise, about 6" of snow had fallen overnight. The trees were covered, the road was covered and our vehicles were all covered. It was a very good thing that I had put the dogs' jackets on as the snow was so deep that they could not "walk", they had to hop. They really didn't know what to think, but they were having a blast. I made a cute video of them romping in the snow.
Friday, after an amazing breakfast of poached eggs on english muffins with bangers and bacon, we hung out and played games. I was feeling under the weather with a horrible cough so I wasn't really in the heavy drinking mood. I tried scotch and wine and scotch seemed to feel the best, so I sipped. I made chicken enchiladas for dinner with green chile chicken that I had cooked all day in the crock pot. It was a delicious dinner. We watched some movies and again, I was ready to call it a night early. The dogs and I headed off to bed.
Saturday morning started out uneventful. However, that all changed at 9am when the power went off. We had gotten another 6" of snow overnight, and the snow continued to come down Saturday morning. We reported the power outage to APS and eventually received an estimated restore time of 12 Noon. Ha!
12 Noon came and went, and still no power. We missed the opportunity to make breakfast and now had to be creative. Our plans were to make a sausage, broccoli and cheese quiche' in homemade pie crust. Judy rolled out the pie crust and our creativity had to take over. Fortunately, the grill at the cabin has a side burner, so I was able to brown the sausage. I "baked" the pie shell in the pie dish on the grill. I also put broccoli in tin foil on the grill to cook it. Once the broccoli was cooked and the pie crust was baked, I put scrambled eggs, sausage and broccoli in a pan on the side burner of the grill. When the eggs were cooked, I poured everything in the pre-baked pie dish, put some cheese on top and put it back on the grill. It was the most delicious quiche' we had ever had!! It was amazing!
Lisa called APS early afternoon and there was now no estimated time that the power was coming back on. Survival mode kicked in, and after having started a fire early in the day to keep warm, discovered we might not have enough wood to last the night. We also recognized the need to go back out and shovel some more snow (we had shoved the 'birm' caused by snow plow from in front of the cars on Friday) because the birm was back and deeper than ever. We saw a neighbor with his snow plow out there, so we asked him to plow the birm. He did an amazing job, and we had to do minimal shoveling to clear a path to the street and be able to get the cars out the next day. We also had to go to a neighbor's house to retrieve wood from their garage that was dry. Once all of our hard labor was done, it started getting dark. We settled into the cabin to relax and Lisa started pulling out candles to provide light. She must have pulled out 2 dozen candles, lit them, and placed them appropriately around the cabin. She then sat down to relax. Within 5 minutes, the power came on! By now it was 6pm and we were all cold and ready for the power to be on!
The rest of Saturday was spent making potatoes on the electric stove and steaks on the grill. Dinner was delicious! After dinner, we watched some movies and drank some wine. It was a very relaxing night and a nice end to the day. Again, I was in bed by 10pm with the dogs!
Today, our efforts of yesterday paid off. The vehicles were easy to get out and we got everything packed up. We shut off the water and winterized the cabin, and we all headed down the hill. It was truly an amazing weekend. We ate well, drank moderately, and had to practice our survival skills and learn to get things done without electricity. We dealt with over 18" of snow that came down in a 48 hour period of time, and had a great time!
My girls hold a special place in my heart. I will always treasure these weekends. This time, we all learned something about ourselves - WE ARE SURVIVORS! Lots of love to all of my girls!
Here are the pictures that I took last weekend in Ohio. We were at Lyn's house Thursday to see Kate and the boys, Relay was Friday and Saturday and we had a cook-out for the Taylors on Sunday. Monday we had lunch with Delise and then came home. It was a great, exhausting weekend!
We had another productive and fun weekend at home. Friday we tried a Chinese restaurant with Lisa and Patrick that we hadn't tried before. It was really good even if they didn't serve alcohol. Everyone enjoyed their meal.
Saturday morning we took advantage of the great weather and cloudy skies to do yard work. Our yard looks great now! We had several hours of relaxation before heading over to Lisa and Patrick's for dinner. We had a great meal and got to see some of Lisa's family that we hadn't seen in a while. We also had a fun game of Taboo.
Today we did some shopping at Big 5 Sporting Goods and Costco and them put some pork in the slow cooker. We found a TV show on Netflix with Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz and watched several episodes.
Next weekend we are going to Tucson. We took Friday off and are looking forward to spending some time in southern AZ.
Hello friends and family. It's Sunday of a busy weekend at home. Friday we stayed home, watched TV and relaxed. Saturday, it was early to rise followed by several hours of housework. When that was done, we had some time to rest before heading to pick up Chino Bandido to take dinner to Ray and Mary and the girls. The boys got to go for a play date with Geter as well. We had a delicious dinner, some great wine, played some games and had a lot of laughs. Today after watching a messed up movie called Hanna, we went and picked up the RV. The next several hours involved spraying, scrubbing, shining and drying the coach. It had been close to 6 months since it was washed and it was a mess! I'm sure we will both find it hard to move tomorrow but the rig looks great.
Tomorrow it goes to Massey's Diesel to get the coolant surge tank replaced. Friday it's off to McDowell Mountain for a quick weekend of relaxation in the RV.
Check out my latest article on Examiner.com regarding a recent off-road trip in Sedona and a truly amazing service experience from Barlow Jeep Rentals.
My friends and family, I apologize that I've not been very good about using this blog to keep you updated on our lives. I promise to make the effort to do more updates.
January seems to have flown by. We spent New Year's weekend at McDowell Mountain Regional park with some friends. We had great weather - in the 70's all weekend - and had a very relaxing time. For those of you who don't know, McDowell Mountain is near Fountain Hills on the east edge of the valley. It's about an hour away from home - just far enough away, but close enough to civilization.
Our other trip in January was to Lake Pleasant Regional Park. It's even closer to home. We were both off Monday of MLK weekend, and we were going by ourselves. We waited until Saturday morning to head to the lake. Dennis was sick all weekend, but we had the most amazing site with a beautiful view of valley pointing towards the southeast. We had a chance to spend the afternoon and evening with our friends Ron & Marilyn who live in their RV on the other side of the lake. The weather was a little gloomy but we still had a nice time. Dinner was fantastic! Unfortunately, I caught Dennis' cold and the 2 weeks since then have been pure hell for me!
I truly hope no one catches the chest cold that we had. It was viral and BAD. We are both still recovering. Not only did I cough my head off for over a week, but I've been completely drained of energy. I didn't walk the dogs for 2 whole weeks and haven't worked out since before MLK weekend. I was able to walk the dogs a few mornings this week, but I'm still not 100%.
We have a trip planned mid-February and we are going to Page Springs near Sedona. We haven't been there in a LONG time - perhaps since we were there with Aunt Marie & Uncle Jim - I can't remember. We were supposed to go there for Thanksgiving, but RATS, we didn't make it!
Next week I'm traveling to Des Moines for business. Now that Home Equity is part of Consumer Lending (along with Home Mortgage) Des Moines is the place to be for business meetings. I'm not really looking forward to the weather, but it should be a great opportunity to network, meet lots of people from Home Mortgage, and listen to what our leaders say about our 2012 strategy.
I hope everyone has a great February, and most importantly want to wish my Mom a VERY Happy Birthday on February 5th and my brother a VERY Happy Birthday on February 21st. Also, Happy Birthday to Lisa Crane, George Taylor, Jose Romero, Diane Taylor, David Taylor, Uncle Larry and any of our great-nieces/nephews who are celebrating a birthday in February (sorry we have not been able to "memorize" their birth dates!).
Here are the pictures that I took last weekend in Ohio. We were at Lyn's house Thursday to see Kate and the boys, Relay was Friday and Saturday and we had a cook-out for the Taylors on Sunday. Monday we had lunch with Delise and then came home. It was a great, exhausting weekend!
