This month's calendar Archives Our Google Calendar
April 8, 2016
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
We started out last Friday by driving into West Salem to stay with our daughter, Leslie and her family. Leslie and I were going to the "Gardenpalooza" in Aurora the next day. We had so much fun looking at all the displays of plants, garden art and tools. I tried to keep from spending too much but ended up with a Hori Hori Knife which I have been wanting for a long time, a cat nip plant for Jerry, a metal crab to place in the yard and some sedum plants for Leslie for her vertical planter that Dave and I had made for her last year. There were so many people there and the weather was perfect.
Meanwhile back at their home, when we returned from our shopping at the Gardenpalooza, Leslie and I worked out in her yard. We got all the weeding done, transplanted a couple of plants, including a Dogwood tree and did some pruning. She was so pleased to get her yard in shape. She has a pretty small yard so it didn't take long to do.
That evening, all of us went out for hamburgers at a place in Salem called "Rock N Roger's" which is located on the Willamette River. The theme of the restaurant is 1950's. They boast having the best hamburgers around and we stuffed ourselves.
Also while we were in West Salem, Dave helped Jason put Ashtin's trophy shelf up so she could display all her trophies she had received over the years. They took up the whole shelf too. She also proudly showed us her "medal" that she received when her team won the State Championship basketball tournament last month. She is so smart with the cell phone that if we have any problems, she knows the answer. Dave kept losing e-mails and so Ashtin dug around and discovered that he had over 500 old emails on his phone! She deleted most of them and now everything is fine. She also did some tricks on her I-phone where we change images with each other so I looked like her and she looked like me. We were laughing until we cried and had a lot of fun.
Ashtin's sister, Paige was not at home this weekend. She was at a regional soccer tournament in San Diego. She has been doing a lot of traveling going to soccer tournaments and knows her way around an airport pretty well for a 14-year old.
The next day, we drove into West Linn to see our other daughter Lara and family. It was Jadyn's 13th birthday and I had a date with her to take her shopping and out to Red Robin for our annual birthday treat. We had a lot of fun shopping and having her one-on-one with Grandma.
The weather has been unbelievable this week and it feels more like summer than spring. I have been trying to get as much yard work as I can before it starts to rain again (and it WILL rain again). I had to spend a couple days this week working at the Master Gardener's Learning Garden. There were a lot of seedlings that needed to be transplanted for the upcoming plant sale, so I helped with that. Today I was back, helping to transplant 400 tomato plants. Our sale is going to be on May 7th at the Tillamook Fairgrounds.
Dave and I have been trying to walk on the beach to get some exercise. We did pretty good last week, but sort of tapered off this week because of so much going on. Dave's shoulder has been giving him quite a bit of pain, so he got a cortisone shot last week. It worked for three days and then it was right back to where he started. He went back to the doctor on Wednesday and after a re-evaluation, he is now scheduled for an MRI this afternoon to see if maybe he has a torn rotator cuff. It seems like he makes it through one crisis just in time to dive into another. It would be nice if he could get some relief.
We did drive down the coast to Pacific City and visited with Dave's cousin, Marta and her husband Gene this week. They have a second home about a block from the beach. Since it was so close to the beach and the weather was so nice, we decided to take a walk with them while we visited. It was a little breezy, but it was very nice and we had the whole beach to ourselves!
One thing this nice weather has done is to make us take a second look at our surroundings. We live in a very beautiful area, but when we see it every day, we seem to take the view for granted. Now, with an increasing number of tourists coming to visit, we're seeing people stopped along the road in all the picturesque turnouts. The first reaction is, "What are they looking at"? But when we stop and take it all in again ourselves, we can re-discover the beauty of our area. Of course, the down side of this is that those tourists don't move very fast and as a result, it takes us 50% longer to get from Point A to Point B this time of year. When we have to go to the doctor in Tillamook, we allow a half hour to make the drive in the winter but 45 minutes in tourist season.
This Saturday, we have two local memorial services to attend. They are back-to-back and not far from each other so we should be able to make it to both of them. We are also planning on going back into West Linn and spend the night as we have an appointment with our attorney in Hood River on Monday. After that, we are heading up to see Dave's cousin, Connie and her husband Gene. I am looking forward to seeing them.
