Relay for Life Williams County, Ohio

I'm proud to be traveling to Northwest Ohio in June to participate in the Williams County Relay For Life on Friday June 24th.  Our whole family is participating in honor of my mom and my partner who are cancer survivors.  We have so many family members who have been affected by cancer.  We are a family of survivors.  Our team, Counting our Blessings, is growing and raising funds.  I hope you'll join us or support us with a donation.

Donate to Relay for Life

I fly into Detroit on Friday June 24th at 1pm, and depart on Monday June 27th at 3:15 pm.  I'd love to see friends and family who live near my folks during that weekend.  I hope we can connect!  Join us at the Williams County Fairground after 6pm Friday for the Relay.

In Memory of Frank Muehlfeld, 1917-1998

Today marks 13 years since my Grandpa Muehlfeld left us unexpectedly.  I'll never forget that day.  I was at work at GE in Cincinnati when my mom called.  I think I was in shock.  It's always painful to lose someone you love.  I think about my Grandpa often.  He was always larger than life and he could fix or do anything.  For a very short time, he got me hooked on Skoal Bandits.  Fortunately, that didn't last long.  As a young adult, some of my favorite times were sitting in Blakeslee with Grandma and Grandpa, doing nothing, just talking and watching TV.  Those were precious times! 

Remember to tell your family members that you love them.  You never know how much time you have left with them or that they have left with you.  Don't take any moment for granted.  Live it like it's your last.  I know Grandpa is smiling down on all of us now, proud of his legacy.  And while we miss him, we know that he will be with us forever.

Lots of love, Grandpa.

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!