In Toledo until Tuesday **Change in funeral time**

Dennis and I made it to Toledo Tuesday around 4pm.  We got to spend time with Georgia and the rest of the Taylor family at Hospice of NW Ohio.  It was a bitter-sweet day and a half.  Georgia passed away peacefully at 5:40pm on Wednesday.  The people at Hospice of NW Ohio were absolutely amazing.  The level of compassion, caring and understanding that they all exhibited was very comforting.  If you are considering any contribution to a non-profit, I highly recommend Hospice of NW Ohio as a worthy recipient of your contribution.

Georgia's service will be held on Monday 3/21 at 3pm, preceded by a visitation of the family from 1pm-3pm, all of which is happening at Newcomber Funeral Home on Laskey just East of Talmadge.  You can also visit www.NewcomerToledo.com to leave a message in the guestbook for the family.  The obituary will be published in The Blade on Sunday.

I've created a Picasaweb album of pictures we've captured of Georgia over the years.  I would invite you to enjoy them, and feel free to upload any others that you might have in order to share with others.

Thank you everyone for your kind expressions of support over the last few weeks.  Dennis and I will be in Toledo until Tuesday when we fly back to Phoenix.  We'll chat soon.

Canyon Lake

We had a great weekend at Canyon Lake this weekend.  We went with a great group of friends.  We had 6 Class A's, a Class C, a fifth wheel and an airstream as part of our party.  All of our sites faced the lake with great views of the mountains and magnficant sunsets.  About half of the group left on Sunday and those of us who remained got together to play Jeremy's new Wii game Just Dance 2.  I want to share the video he took of me, Greg and Greg getting down to Iko Iko.  What a fun game!

We dropped our RV off at La Mesa today to get some more warranty work done.  We hope to get it back within the next 2 weeks.  We have a trip planned for St. Patrick's Day weekend and might be able to squeeze one in between now and then. 

I hope everyone has a great week.  I'll blog more later.  Meantime, enjoy the short video!

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's been almost 6 weeks since I last posted!  My, how time flies!  It was a typical December - very busy.  We joined a group camp out at Pleasant Harbor RV in early December and had a great time.  Our group raised money for Trevor Project and donated several stuffed stockings to the Children's Hospital. 

We had a very nice Christmas Eve with the Cronin's and picked George up at the airport for a visit.  Christmas Day was just the 3 of us for dinner but we had several friends over for dessert and karaoke Christmas night.  It was a great time!  George left the Wednesday after Christmas while we prepared for our trip to Bullhead City for New Year's weekend.

Despite winter weather in Northern Arizona, we set out for Bullhead City after work on Thursday the 30th.  We made it in about 3 hours and 45 minutes while dealing with below freezing temperates in Kingman and Golden Valley.  We visited the Golden Nugget in Laughlin on New Year's Eve and managed to walk away with more money than we had when we arrived.  It was fun!  New Year's Eve was spent with great friends as we marked the new year in Arizona in Mountain Standard Time and in Nevada in Pacific Standard Time.  We did a lot of consuming while in Bullhead City and Laughlin, hitting the post-holiday sales at Home Depot, Lowe's and Sam's Club. 

Half of our party departed on Sunday while the rest of us stayed until Monday.  We drove through snow falling in Kingman after stopping in Golden Valley to get fuel.  We made it home in 3 hours 45 minutes with not much traffic.  Tuesday, it was back to work for a short week.

This weekend, we stayed home and spent the whole weekend taking down and putting away Christmas lights and decorations.  The house is almost back to normal and the puppies are very happy that the boxes and bins are gone.  They get really stressed out when we have the bins out - it must bring back some horrible memories from before they were ours.  Tomorrow it's back to work for a full week - our last 5 day week this month.  We have some fun travels planned for the next several weeks - both by RV and airplane!  Happy New Year to everyone!  We wish you peace, good health and prosperity in 2011!

Picture:  Discovery and Jeep at the Maverik station in Golden Valley after the fill up. 

Fresh blanket of...leaves?

We've had a very enjoyable and relaxing week at Page Springs so far.  When we arrived on Saturday, the tree next to our site was still pretty full of leaves and losing a few each day.  Well, last night the temperature got down into the 20's and the wind kicked up.  When we got up this morning, there were about 6-8 inches of leaves on the ground from our tree.  There are virtually no leaves left on the tree.  I took this picture after I brushed the leaves off of the Jeep.

Today, we went into Sedona and revisited a few trails that we did back in February with our old Jeep.  Broken Arrow is the most challenging and was a lot of fun.  There's a section of the trail called "The Steps" that is VERY treacherous.  We scraped on the skid plates several times on the way down but made it safely to the bottom.  We then did Soldier's Pass, which is a little more tame.  Both trails were hopping with hikers, bikers and people paying WAY too much money for the Pink Jeep tours.  We joked that we should have taken on a few tourists when we stopped at Barlow's to air down.  We could have paid for our gas for the day!

Lisa and Patrick are coming down tomorrow from Munds Park to hang out and enjoy the beauty of Page Springs.  We are looking forward to one final day of relaxation and fun.  It's back to the Valley on Sunday.  We are very glad that we chose this option for our week of vacation!  It's been tons of fun and very relaxing.

The picture above is of our camp site after the leaves fell.  Enjoy!

Page Springs

We arrived safely to Page Springs this morning.  We left home about 8:45 and arrived before 10:30.  It was a beautiful drive, very "fall" like with little traffic.  Once we got to the top of Verde Valley the wind picked up.  It was a fun drop down the hill!  It took us a while to get situated on the site so that we could level and try to get satellite with the self-tracking satellite on the roof.  We failed at getting satellite.  It's a good thing we brought our portable satellite dish with tripod!  The park has cable, so we hooked that up for the TVs in the bedroom, front of the coach and outside and ran 2 cables from the portable dish, through the slide out by the TV and into the back of the DirecTV box.  Now we can watch one thing and record another!  Or record 2 things and watch something that's already recorded.  We are living large!

We took our time getting set up.  I did the outside stuff while Dennis mopped inside and got the inside put together.  We didn't mop when we left Bisbee because it was going into service for 2 weeks.  It got pretty dirty while there!  We are ready for our guests tomorrow (Jimmy and the dogs) and have most of our holiday decorations on display.  I coined the phrase Thanksmas.  We have some Thanksgiving decorations and some Christmas decorations up.  Thanksmas.  :)  It's very comforting in here!  We got some LED rope light and put it behind the slide outs on the top.  It puts off a very nice and inviting glow towards the ceiling. 

It's been a relaxing day.  We haven't done much.  We had Tony Roma's ribs for dinner.  I also fried some potatoes - haven't had those in a while!  We are now sipping on some cocktails enjoying the warmth from the heater!  It's supposed to get cold here tonight and possibly rain tomorrow.  We do have Internet, but it's very slow so I don't stay on it too long as it's very frustrating!  Feel free to call or e-mail.

I've uploaded a picture that I took of our camp site.  It's beautiful here with the falling leaves, flowing creek and cool temperatures.  Have a great Sunday everyone! 

Vacation time!

Dennis and I are officially in relaxation mode!  Today was our last day of work for 10 whole days!  We have the motor home all packed up to head north in the morning.  We are going to Sunrise Resorts Page Springs which is between Sedona and Cottonwood.  The RV Park is right on Oak Creek, so we'll get to listen to the creek flowing all week.  This will be the first time we've had a week off in a couple years and our longest trip ever in the RV.  We are both excited about leaving in the morning!

I just want to take a minute to take note of all of the things we are thankful for.  We are thankful that we both have loving, supportive, caring and sharing families.  We think of you all more than you could possibly know.  And we miss you when we aren't together.  We are thankful that we both are gainfully employed and can enjoy the things we love to do such as go RV'ing, drink nice wine and spend time with friends.  We are thankful that we've met a lot of new friends this year and grown closer to the friends we've known for a while.  We're thankful for our two little white bundles of joy who keep us on our toes every day and bring so much love and happiness to our lives.  We are thankful that we live in the Valley of the Sun and can enjoy 330 days of sunshine each year.  And most of all, we are both very thankful for our good health. We continue to improve our health every day so that the other things that we are thankful for are still attainable. 

We will no doubt have Internet service at Page Springs and will upload pictures as we have time between all of the relaxing, eating, drinking and relaxing.  We hope that everyone has a happy, safe, and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday.  And remember, take time to stop and smell the roses while you can. 

Much love to all!  Rodney & Dennis

Jeep pictures and Video 10-9-10