Author: Rudy

I don’t know what’s wrong with me — I just can’t seem to get into the proper timezone. Every evening I fall asleep watching TV on the couch until Sue sends me to bed, and then in the morning I wake up just before 6 and I’m wide awake, ready for the day. Why can’t I just shift everything ahead by a couple of hours? Ah, but then my 11:30am lunch would only get to the table at 1:30pm, and that would be disaster!

I worked on my web project all morning. Sue gave up on her book and has now downloaded a new one to her Kindle. It was a warm sunny day again — good day for golfing. We went to hit some balls on the driving range at Gold Canyon and met Dave D. there. The three of us teed off (the boys played from the blue tees because we’re so good!) at 1:17pm. It sure was a busy day at the course today. By the 5th hole the guy behind us asked to join us. He was hitting from the gold tees, way back behind us. He said his drives were around 330 yards, that his longest was 377! I impressed him when I birdied hole #5, chipping my second shot to within 3 feet of the pin! Too bad I couldn’t keep that up! I held it together okay for the front nine (45) but fell apart on the back nine, ending up with a 99. (Sue, on the other hand, continued to play well, getting a birdie 3 on the second last hole!) It was slow-going; we were waiting for the groups ahead of us on every hole. We barely finished before dusk.

After G&Ts, Sue made delicious chicken stir-fry for supper. We thought we’d watch a couple more ‘Suits’ episodes, but Sue ended up on the phone with Alex for a while, and after that we watched the CBC News at 8. Big story today: Paris Newspaper Shooting — 12 Dead. Crazy. We watched John Stewart after the news and then Sue went to bed while I spent another hour working on my project.

I got up at around 6 and made a good cup of coffee. Sue joined me an hour later. After breakfast, at around 10, we got into the van and did a bunch of errands — banking, fruit market, Walmart, etc. Got back in time for ‘Holmes on Homes’ and lunch.

I worked on a website all afternoon, and listened to iTunes on my (new) sound system. Fun. Sue went back to Wells Fargo on her bike and then scouted out a haircut place. It was around 23 degrees today — nice and warm. I was getting tired of all the bird shit on our driveway near the garage — birds are finding a nice perch on the satellite cable that is stapled under the eaves. So I spent almost an hour moving that wire — up on the step ladder with pliers and a screwdriver. After I cleaned up the mess Sue and I headed across the street to the driving range. I hit a couple of buckets with my fairway wood; Sue whacked a few balls with her wedge.

When we got home we put on our cycling shorts and went for a spin around the loop. We met Marylou cycling home on her bike and arranged to stop by for a drink on our way back — which we did. Dave had been at baseball practice and had some tales to tell. We cycled home in the cool of the long shadows of the evening sunset at around 6:00.

Sue made a nice supper, I barbecued some sausage. After supper we watched a few episodes of ‘Suits’ before ‘Frontline’ started at 10pm.

Worked on a website all morning. Sue went to the pool and read. I wanted to go to the driving range for a bit but I got sidetracked when the new neighbour across the street introduced himself, etc.

Sue and I went to Mountain Brook for a 3:15 tee time. It was busy; we were stuck behind 4 ladies who insisted that they were NOT slow — but the old guys ahead of THEM were walking very slow. Well, it took us nearly an hour to finish 3 holes! And those ladies ahead of us were taking up to 5 ‘strikes’ at the ball and missing it every time! When I hit the ball onto the green AHEAD of them they got the hint and let us play through. Things sped up a little after that, enough so that we actually finished nine holes before sundown.

Some nice views of Superstition by the time we got to number 9. I parred 3 holes and bogeyed 6 — for a 41 on the front nine. Probably my best nine so far.

When we got home Sue made us each a G&T before supper. Leftovers. A couple of episodes of ‘Suits’ before we watched a depressing documentary on PBS. Went to bed after 11:30.

Today is Sunday. That means we watch CBS Sunday Morning. And NFL Sunday. And Fareed Zakaria. And football. But first…

French toast for breakfast! And freshly ground coffee.

Sue did six loads of laundry. There were 2 NFL Wild Card Playoff games on TV today. I watched the Colts beat the Bengals. Then the Lions lost to the Cowboys.

In between, Sue and I went for a walk to Ed and Val’s house and back —  to return some table games we’d borrowed from them. The day was bright and sunny and considerably warmer than it’s been for the past two weeks — and we’re happy for that, although it would have been nice to have this weather for when ‘the kids’ were here.

After the Dallas game I took the van to the car wash — just to rinse off some mud splashes. There was a nearly full moon peeking out over the top of Superstition Mountain but by the time I’d parked the van and got my camera out it was already up above the mountaintops. But the red sky in the west was worth a photo.

Back at the house Sue had cheeseburgers ready for supper. We watched 60 Minutes and then switched to our schedule of downloaded TV shows and watched another episode of ‘Suits’. Then we caught the premiere of season five of Downton Abbey. And the News. And soon it was time for bed.

I woke up at 5 a.m. Finished sleeping. Lay in bed waiting for 6 a.m. Time to get up. The kids want to be at the airport by 7:20 for their flight to Fargo. Max is up a little earlier than usual, but the smile on his face this morning is as big as ever. He’s just a happy kid. He’ll eat some toast and cheerios while we have our coffee and toast. I start the van a bit before we need to leave so it will warm up. We load in the suitcases and we’re off. One last drive through our neighbourhood narrated by Max. “Opa? Opa? Opa? What are you doing? I saw two cactuses!”

We get to the airport in no time. Unload. Park the van. Go in — there’s no waiting at the check-in. Max’s car seat, which has been buckled into our van for the last 2 weeks, is now getting checked in as oversize luggage. We head to the gate. One last photo of Max next to a big cactus. Then it’s time for them to go through security. Hugs. Tears. Goodbyes. We’re happy and we’re sad.

Now what? Sue has a shopping list. Groceries, Costco, etc. It’s a bit early, but we find a Fry’s Grocery store not far from the airport and fill up a cart. Then down to Santan Village –first to a coffee shop for a muffin and coffee, then to TotalWine and then to Costco. It seems that we always come home with more than what was on our list. No exception today. I’ve missed having a decent sound system to play my music at the house so I’ve bought a soundbar which I will connect to our TV.

We’re back at the house by around 11:00. Sue puts away the groceries. I check my emails — a few from Dave Driedger. What’s up? Wanna go golfing? He comes by on his bike to say hello. We decide to join him and Marylou for nine holes at Mountain Brook this afternoon. It’s cool, but the sun is making it ‘feel’ warmer than it is.

After lunch we have to hurry to get ready for our golf game. Sue decides she’ll leave the laundry and clean up for tomorrow. I have a quick shower and then the Driedgers are here. We load the clubs into the van and go to the golf course. Four golfers walking nine holes. Just like old times. It’s a fine Saturday afternoon. The golfing is fun — Sue hasn’t golfed at all since before the kids came two weeks ago; Marylou hasn’t golfed since the four of us golfed at Buffalo Point this summer! We finish our round at 5:00. The Driedgers are off to meet friends for supper. We go home to our ’empty’ house.

We watch the last quarter of the NFL Wildcard game — where the Panthers easily defeat the Arizona Cardinals. No surprise there. Then I Skype with my parents for a bit. Just before supper the kids Face-time — they are home, safe and warm and happy. They had to boost their car in Fargo, but otherwise had an easy ride home. It’s VERY cold there now. They’ll have tomorrow to rest from their vacation, and then it’s back to work for them.

We have leftovers for supper and watch the second NFL playoff game. Sue goes to bed before the Ravens win their game against the Steelers. She didn’t sleep very well last night.

Tomorrow is Sunday. It will be a ‘normal’ Sunday morning. It will be quiet in the house. We’ll watch our morning news shows and drink some good coffee — alone. And we’ll miss the ‘busyness’ and the happy ‘hubbub’ of the last couple of weeks.

It’s 6 in the morning. I’m finished sleeping. That’s what I get for going to sleep at 9:30. Oh well, might as well make some coffee. Max and Alex will be up at quarter to seven. I have a few minutes to upload my photos from yesterday.

It’s not raining today, but I’m still a little concerned about our A/C unit outside. It’s completely frosted up and it’s running full time. After breakfast I get out the garden hose and give it a good hosing down to clear off the ice. Then I turn off the furnace so that while we go on our morning hike out to Silly Mountain, the unit can dry off and hopefully get back on track.

Tim watches over things at home while the rest of us drive out to Silly Mountain. Sue and Alex go hiking up to the top while Max and I stay at the base and wander around the ‘cactus walk’. I decide to take some photos for Max to look at once he’s home. He’s so good at identifying the different varieties — maybe he can look at some photos and recall the names. I didn’t get a photo of the ‘Elephant Ear Cactus’, but I got most of the other ones that Max has come to know.

After the hike we stopped at Bashas so the girls could pick up some groceries. While they did that Max rode his Strider bike around the parking lot.

After lunch back at the house, I called the golf course to see if we were still on for our 1:00 tee time. Oh no — two and a half hour delay because the big frost last night! Well, that way we won’t even get our game finished before dark! What to do? We decided to go to the course at one and hit some balls on the driving range. Maybe there would be some cancellations and we’d still get on.

When we to the course we were welcomed by the crew. And yes, if we were ready, we could head out to number one tee right away — before anyone else showed up. Okay! We zipped out to the tee — there was a foursome ahead of us but no one behind us. And the sun was shining. It was cold, but we felt lucky to get one last game in.

And what a start we had. I parred four of the first five holes, and could have easily had a couple more! Tim shot a 45 on the front nine, I shot a 43.

Things fell apart for me on the back nine. Tim finished with a 49 on the back nine, but a couple of eights and a nine (and a seven and two sixes!) wrecked what might have been my best round ever. Still, when we bogeyed the final hole at around 5:30, with a big red sun sinking in the west and a nearly full moon rising in the east, we felt great about the afternoon.

Tim and Alex bought a couple of pizzas from the Hitching Post for our supper. Great! Last meal together. Max entertained himself (and all of us) by playing with his toys on the carpet in the living room. At around 8 o’clock Tim gave him his bath and read him his bedtime story. He came and gave us each a big goodnight hug. We’re supposed to be up tomorrow at six, ready to take them to the airport.

A bit of champagne and some sweet snacks for the rest of us.

Woke up same time as usual. Furnace is going pretty steady these days. All the rain yesterday and the cold temperatures at night resulted in a frosty cover on Superstition Mountain. A frosty coating on the van too! Yikes! Almost like living in Manitoba!

Before Sue had finished making bacon and eggs I hopped on my bike and pedalled up the small hill behind our place to get a few photos of the rising sun lighting up snow-covered Superstition Mountain.

Then, after breakfast, we got into the van and went for a ride through Mesa. We ended up at the Target across from Superstition Springs Mall. And when the Target didn’t have any crazy sales we headed across the street to the mall. Max had a lot of fun riding the escalators and elevators with Tim and me.

But the highlight for him was when we discovered the merry-go-round near the food court. Opa joined Max for a few loops on the zebra. Then we all got back into the van — if shopping has anything to do with exchanging cash for big bags of returnable outfits this visit was a total bust — and headed back for home. We stopped at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food restaurant in Gold Canyon and brought the burgers to our house for lunch.

Max went for his nap and I took the van to the gas station for a fill-up — the fuel warning said I had 1km to go on my tank! — and filled my tank with just-under $2.00 gas. Sue did laundry and Alex read. Tim was using the hair dryer to defrost our outdoor A/C which had a layer of white frost all around it. After a call to the A/C repair guy I found out the A/C is a combination air conditioner and heat pump — so what we were experiencing was normal for these conditions. Okay, that’s a relief. Got an email from Dave D — they’ll be arriving in G.C. tonight.

When Max woke up (happy, as usual) from his nap, he and I went out for a ‘bike’ (Strider) ride.

We ended up at the Vista Point hill again, so we parked the bike and climbed to the top. The sun was out, but it was still very cold. Max didn’t seem to be too bothered by the temperature though — he managed to find a pool of ice-cold water in one of the big rocks at the top of the hill and had his fingers in there, fishing out little stones and branches. Nose running a bit, but no complaints.

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We got home for happy hour, soon followed by Sue’s supper. And then we sat around and were entertained by Max for an hour or so before he had his bath and was ready for bed. I read him the Three Bears, got a big hug, tucked him in, and turned out the lights on his smiling face. One more day with my little buddy and then he and his parents head back into the frozen north.

We watched a bit of TV and had a little dessert and then wandered off to bed too.

No rain when I got up at around 6:30. I got Max from his bed and we sat and read stories. I made coffee. Everyone else eventually found their way to the living room.

Tim, Max, and I once again went to Bashas to pick up some doughnuts for breakfast. We also picked up some more things while we were there. Max is quite the hit here — people give him a big smile and compliment him — I think they are all grandparents who wish their grandkids were here with them. The bakery lady gave him a free cookie to eat while we shopped. By the time we got home there were sprinkles of rain. And by 9 o’clock it was raining steady. It did that more-or-less all day.

Tim got the steaks he bought ready by marinating them and trimming them. Max inspected; it will be a fine barbecue for supper tonight. The Max and I went for a walk outside, just to check out the rain. Max managed to find quite a few puddles to splash in so that by the time we got back home his runners and socks were soaked and his hands were frozen.

After lunch Alex and I headed into town to see a movie; “Mockingjay: Part 1”, another in the Hunger Games series. Although the movie was over 2 hours long, it was enjoyable enough that it seemed shorter than that and we didn’t even finish the whole bag of popcorn we’d bought. When we got home Max had just awakened from his nap. Tim read him some stories and they played on the iPad. We had happy hour at the table and then the cooks in the group started getting supper ready. Still, it rained. Tim barbecued the steaks to perfection out under the patio roof in the backyard. Supper was great!

Max entertained us for a while after supper — he’s been such a delight these past 10 days. He wakes up happy and he goes to bed happy. So, once again, after a bath and a bedtime story, Max went to sleep. And now the four of us had the evening ahead to try and stay awake until ‘next year’. At around 9pm Tim opened up a bottle of champagne and we had some of that with the tasty marshmallowy treats Alex and Sue made today. We tried to avoid playing table games by pretending to enjoy some schlocky “New Year’s Eve” TV specials.

So, Happy New Year everyone. We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet / For auld lang syne. Twenty-fourteen has been a blast. See ya next year!

Well, it’s the second last day of the year. And it is supposed to be a nice day today. And it’s supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow. So… we’d better do all our fun outdoor things today.

After toast Sue and Alex and I went for a bike ride. I got the short end of the stick and rode the crappy old mountain bike. I had to work pretty hard to stay with the girls. Then, when we were on our way back, about a mile from home I got a flat tire. It seemed to be a slow leak, so I pumped up the tire and cycled as fast as I could before it went flat again. Meantime, Tim and Max were tooling around on Max’s Strider — Max seems to be getting the hang of that bike! PLUS, they got to watch the garbage truck when it came by to pickup the trash bins and dump them into the truck. Exciting times!

At around 11:30 we got into the van and drove 20 minutes into town to have lunch (again) at the In-N-Out Burger place. Lots of fun there too. We sat outside under the patio umbrella and ate our burgers and fries and drank our milkshakes.

The girls dropped Tim and me off at the golf course at Mountain Brook for our 1:00 tee time. We were joined by another golfer, a nice man who lives in the RV park across the road. The beautiful sunny day and the threat of not nice weather tomorrow made for a busy day at the course. We needed the whole afternoon to finish 18 holes. But we had a very fun time. It was back to reality for me — the 95 that I (and Tim) shot today was more in line with my skill level than last game’s 87. But I felt like I made many good shots and I look forward to more scrores in the LOW 90s and maybe even lower.

The girls came to pick us up from the course at 5:30. We went home to wash up and change and then we all walked across the road to the restaurant at the Gold Canyon Golf Resort. We had a very nice dinner there — and after I finished my plate of scallops I was happy to help Max with his “Kid’s Burger and Fries”. Plus, because he was by far the cutest kid in the restaurant, the manager arranged for Max to get a big dish of chocolate ice cream for dessert — and I helped him finish that as well.

When I got home I got to read Max his bedtime story. After he went to sleep the rest of us sat in the living room and visited. If only people would ask us, we’d have answers to most of the complicated problems in the world today. Still, even experts like us get weary — and so, after some of Sue’s cake for dessert, we trudged off to bed by 10:30. But we can sleep in tomorrow — it’s supposed to rain!

Sue sent Alex, Max, and me out to Bashas to pick up some things for breakfast. We came back with doughnuts for everyone. A big pink one with sprinkles for Max. It was a hit — even better than homemade porridge!

Sue announced that we should ‘aim to leave by 9:30’. We were going to take a trip to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a 320-acre nature park located about 20 minutes east of Gold Canyon. Ed and Val told us about it — said it was worth the trip. The forecast for today was sunny and not too cold, a perfect day to go to the park. And what did we expect to see? Lots of ‘pokey cactuses’. Ever since Max and I went on that hike up behind our house and I showed Max how NOT to touch those cute teddy bear cholla cactus plants, he reminds me of that mistake. And he is very wary of touching any and all plants here in Arizona.

We got to the park almost at the scheduled time and set off for the 1-mile trail walk around the park. Lots to see! Great for kids Max’s age. The highlight was near the start, when we sat down at a water fountain and a hummingbird came down and performed for us, flying right at us, then backing up, and then taking a bath in the fountain.

After about 2 hours of sight-seeing it was time for lunch. We drove home and had the usual: sandwiches and chips and a monster cookie for dessert. Then Max headed off for his nap, the girls went to the pool to read (and watch the big Amish family take over the pool!), Tim did some phoning, and I took my six-iron to the driving range.

When I got home Sue was working on getting supper going. The rest of us took a trip out to the Goldfield Ghost Town not far from our house. We knew it was late in the day, but we really only wanted to do a quick walk-around and maybe take a little train ride around the town.

By the time the sun was painting Superstition with reds and oranges the temperature was cooling down enough for us to head home. Supper was well on its way, and a new cake was sitting on the counter.

After supper we all watched Max run around for a while. I skyped with my Mom for a while. And after Max had his bath and got tucked into bed, we watched “The Trip to Italy” on Netflix.