I FINALLY got a day off! Yahooie!

Well, I FINALLY got a day off!  I counted back and I have either been babysitting, running up to the horses, or driving to Temecula for a baseball game now for 6 days straight.  PHEW!

I'm going to clean up my craft room/sewing room/office this morning.  I BARELY have room to sit down at my laptop!  I've been throwing stuff in here for 2 weeks!!!!!  NO PHOTOS...I'm sure you would faint from the MESS!

I went out and cleaned out and then refilled all my hummingbird feeders this morning.  Let's see...I have 8 of them!  Little buggers didn't have any fresh food and that isn't good for them.  I scrubbed them ALL with soap, rinsed them, and added fresh sugar water. The little guys sure are BUSY! 

I need to still go out and add water to the fountain out front and to the bird bowls.  We have a Cooper's hawk that now enjoys coming every morning, soaking his/her feet, and having a nice look around.  I didn't realize how far they can swivel their head!  Amazing!!!

Anyway, while of course I dearly LOVE the grandchildren, I DO need a break every now and then!  I have a 2 day break, then back to babysitting.  Ugh.  One of our local libraries is having its annual BOOK SALE tomorrow morning, and I'm GOING!  Come ____ or high water!!!!

Here are some pics of the little monsters:

 Helping mommie put the tomatoes in the bowl.  No, she did NOT have that knife!

 Wearing his mac & cheese, I see!

This kid CLIMBS everywhere!  Last night he climbed up onto one of the bar stool chairs, opened up his mother's laptop, and started banging on it!  NO, NO!  You literally CANNOT take your eyes off him for a second!  I was washing dishes and to my HORROR, he had climbed up into his high chair at one point!  I guess he was hungry!  Another time he was too quiet...yup...he and the dog were sharing dog food.  Another time he closed the pantry door and was rearranging all the food items in there!  ACK!  The only time I can rest is when HE is taking a nap.  Thank goodness he still takes naps!

Reality sets in...sigh...

I read with interest Al's post today and had to reflect on our situation...

Here's the link to Al's post:   http://thebayfieldbunch.com/2017

We both retired a year ago.  We have done 2 trips since then:  One last October to the eastern Sierra Nevada and one this August to the Mogollon Rim in Arizona.  THAT'S IT.  PERIOD.

Hmmm.....

We seem to be tied down now by babysitting duties.  We have 5 grandkids:  our daughter has a 4 year old and an 18 month old.  Our son has an 8 year old, a 2 year old, and a baby.  So, Saturdays we either go to the 4 year old's soccer games or the 8 year old's baseball games (evening).  PLUS, if our daughter's kids get sick (like that past week), WE have to babysit them.  I am now fighting something in my head and chest, thanks to the little man!!!

I'm only 65.  Hubby is 67.  However, I've had pneumonia...let's see... 5x.  I had it 3x one school year, and then twice after that.  My lungs are SHOT.  I used to get bronchitis each year after the pneumonia.  I haven't had it yet this fall and next week we will get our flu shots.

I'm not complaining.  Frankly, I enjoy staying home and working on my journals.  I hardly ever take photos anymore.  MAYBE next week we can get to Oak Glen or the Whitewater Preserve...???

How are you doing?
~Cheryl Ann~

Family FUN at the Living Desert Reserve

I met our daughter and her family in the parking lot this morning at 8:30.  Can you believe it...they forgot their stroller?  Not to worry, you can donate money and borrow one from the Living Desert, so they did.  It was a nice one.  Little Man could sit in it with his little legs out and see everything.  Of course, he spent most of the morning crawling in and out of it and at one point, he sat on the cement by the zebras and got out his water bottle for a drink!  It was either we met this morning or they wouldn't be able to meet for some weeks, so off I went.  Hubby stayed home because he just awoke a few minutes before I was supposed to leave.  We all had FUN and the young ones were EXHAUSTED!

Who says I can't WEAR THEM OUT?

 Father and son...

 The kids got to see ALL 5 giraffes this morning!

 Learning which is the correct way to sit in the stroller!

 Trying to get on the warthog sculpture...He finally made it!

 Mother and daughter...

 I told you he got thirsty and... TIRED!  He fell asleep as soon as his parents put him in his car seat for the drive home to Indio.

Bye, bye!

A good time was had by all!   :-)  And, we ran into our son's best friend there with his son, who is about the same size as our granddaughter!  They apparently come every Sunday morning, so I guess I'll start walking up there on Sunday mornings so I can run into Aaron and Levi again!

More Arizona photos

More photos from last August that I just uploaded:

 Looking west from the Mogollon Rim, which is on top of the mountains.

See...lots of standing water!

Pictures from Arizona

I finally got around to uploading the photos on my camera and there were 219 of them, including some from our trip to the Mogollon Rim this summer.  FINALLY!  I went with our daughter and her family to the Living Desert Reserve today and took my camera along, so I had a ton of photos from that visit!

I've been TRYING to get a decent photo of a logging truck FOR YEARS and finally, upon spotting one at the General Crook overlook, I handed my camera to hubby and told him to "go for it".  The results are here, along with some other photos from the Rim.  There had been so much water up there that it was standing in the meadows!  Amazing!  From drought to deluge in a year!

 Logging truck, Mogollon Rim.

 Woods Canyon Lake, one of our FAVORITE places in Arizona! 

Old age is creeping up on us!

Al, over at Travels with the Bayfield Bunch wrote an interesting post last Saturday

http://thebayfieldbunch.com/2017/09/dealing-with-realities-of-aging-in.html?showComment=1507011258651#c1975459907768025361

about traveling.  I do all the driving now because hubby gets dizzy.  After a day out, however, I am exhausted for the next day or even two!!!  That's NO FUN!  Nowadays we only go out to visit the kids & grandkids, but that is a pretty full schedule!  The 4 year old granddaughter has soccer on Saturday mornings and the 8 year old grandson in Temecula has baseball games on Tuesday afternoon.  He won't be going tomorrow as he already has a cold!  We DID drive to Arizona in August for 4 nights and it took me 1 whole day to recover the 7 hours' drive there.  We managed to find an Air B&B home that was pet friendly, so we were able to take our dog with us.  We stayed in Overgaard, up on the Mogollon Rim.  She had a blast smelling all the wonderful and new smells and one morning I looked out and saw a coyote across the street!  I found a quilting shop and an antique shop that had some items I wanted, so I bought them.  Hubby was content to stay in the cabin. 

Other than that, we haven't ventured out much.  We DO want to get up to Oak Glen shortly during apple season (midweek, of course) and maybe down to Julian.  However, Julian is an all-day trip.  The Whitewater Preserve is only about 25 minutes away and the sycamores will be turning soon.

Saturday we ARE going to the Living Desert with our daughter and her two kids (ages 4 and 1).  Then, Sunday we might drive to Temecula to see our son and his 3 kids...depending on how tired we are from Saturday!  So, you see our situation? 

We BOTH take afternoon naps every day now and Saturday I went up to check on the horses and to be there to give the shoer his check.  Unfortunately, Gigondas, my big red thoroughbred mare, stepped on my right foot and wouldn't GET OFF!!!!!!!!   I had to scream at her and hit her to get her to move (I guess she was comfortable on my foot!).  I even had my steel toed boots on and it still hurt like....the dickens!  It is now completely black & blue.

OY!
Please take care.
~Cheryl Ann~
P.S.  I just finished journals #20 and 21 and 22 and I'm almost done with #23 and I have 3 more in the works!   :-)

Idyllwild!!!!!

We took a 3 night trip to Idyllwild, leaving Friday noon and returning early this morning because our daughter was experiencing stomach pains and needed our help with her kids.  It was DELIGHTFUL to get out of the desert heat for a few nights and go up into the cool mountain air.

And...

It was POURING here when we left the desert!  SAY WHAT?  Palm Springs actually got major flooding.  A mobile home park, too, was badly flooded, with water rushing down its main street.  We, of course, were up in Idyllwild by then.  We discovered that our black lab, Ripley (who will be 10 this month) does NOT enjoy thunder!  It was thundering, lightninging, and raining when we got settled into the cabin and SHE DID NOT ENJOY IT ONE BIT!  She tried to crawl under hubby's legs!  More rain Saturday morning.  I went outside and watching the clouds silently moving in overhead.  It was wonderful!  Our son and his family came up for lunch and stayed for a steak dinner and then drove home.  We took the kids (age 8 and 2) down to the fish pond to see the koi and they nearly jumped out of the water for the 2 year old!  They got to throw peanuts at the blue jays and I guess we wore them out because they slept ALL THE  WAY HOME!  HA, ha!

Sunday we all stayed indoors, not because of any rain, but because WE were exhausted...

Speaking of fall plans, we aren't sure we'll be going anywhere this year either.  Last year we did a 4 night trip to Mammoth.  Last month we took a 4 night trip to central Arizona and frankly, the 6 hour drive nearly did me in!  So, we're thinking maybe a couple of short trips back to Idyllwild.  It is only 45 minutes away, we can take all our food with us, and we can take the dog and she doesn't have to ride in the back seat for 6 hours.  Sounds like a plan to me!  While we would LOVE to revisit the eastern Sierra, I just don't see it happening this year.

I'll post photos after I upload them.
~Stay safe and stay well~
~Cheryl Ann~