Mexico

Spent New Years weekend with Sue and Scott on BHI. Da girls had their first freedom walk on the beach and they loved it!

Two days later we dropped off Zoe and Zelda at Companion Camp while Sim and I flew to Mexico to cat sit and visit Sim's daughter, Lee, her husband, Richard, and his grandchildren, Simon and Noah. The weather there was lovely- high in the 70's, low in the 40's. We stayed up on the hill overlooking San Miguel de Allende (SMA). We got to enjoy the 3 Kings celebrations with King Cake on Ephiphany. All the kids on our alley got new dolls, trikes, and scooters. The decorations were wonderful featuring gigantic perforated tin angels with light shining through them. We took a walk at the Botanical Gardens and ate out most nights. Didn't take many pictures but glad we missed the sub freezing temperatures and snow in Pittsboro. I did get a cold of some kind which I still have. Plane rides were fine but couldn't get car started at the airport to come home so waited for AAA for 2 hours to get us going. My new fountain is not very happy today. I hope it improves after filling with more water. Had an aquarium heater in there to keep the water from freezing.

Dining room in our place

Our view

Our location

Where we were dropped off to walk down the alley

King Cake

Cocktails for Emily's birthday

Sim in Botanical Garden

Little tin angels in the market

Here are some of Sim's pictures including one of the new house in SMA that Lee and Richard will run as a B&B next Fall.

New house

New house

Sim, Richard and Lee on roof of new house

Botanical Garden including Emily and Simon

At cocktails

Our charges, Max and Sophie

We returned home on Lyle's first birthday. Clearly he enjoyed his birthday cake in Fairfax CA!

Happy First Birthday, Lyle (Jan. 15, 2017)

December

Lyle 11 Months

Lyle 10 months

Xmas Lyle

Patti made us beautiful stockings for Santa

Autumn

I realize I have not posted in a few months. I was involved with campaigning for the Democrats but then highly grieving the election results, but we may have kicked out our incideous NC Governor.

My rose garden was completed, I had visitors from Maryland, I held a cooking class on tapas at my home, I went to Bald Head Island for a girls weekend, and I travelled to CA to see my grand babies, so who has had time to post anything. On a sad note, Sim lost his older brother to CHF and I lost a dear neighbor to the same.

Super moon

Grace and Sue at BHI

Add captionSim and Cathy in photobooth

Arlo and Lyle at Halloween party

Tapas Class 2016

Zoe checking out new fountain

Redone rose garden from the West

Redone rose garden from the East

Untitled

End of Summer

The folks came and installed my new sliding glass door in the den and I love the extra light.  We put one of the old windows into the garage for some extra light and ventilation there.  The other window we donated to Habitat for Humanity.  I painted one of our old wooden bookcases and placed in the den to hold some of my stuff for ready access. There is still work to be done in the rose garden like installing the fountain but hope that gets done next week when it is not so hot.

I attended a Chinese dumpling and sushi making class at Southern Season and highly recommend the dipping sauces.  I had mostly failure with the dumplings I made, with 1/3 exploding in the cooking process.  I will work on it some more but buying frozen dumplings and using the sauces is a winner!

This last week had several milestones including my 8-year anniversary of retiring from federal service and moving to NC (Sept 3) as well as John & Carol's 20th wedding anniversary (Sept 7).  My how time flies!  I also spent a fair amount of time looking into cruises to Alaska and have booked one with John & Carol in late Spring.

1996

Sim and I spent Labor Day at his tennis club with round-robin tennis and BBQ.  It's still mighty hot here but pleasant in the den watching the US Open tennis on TV.  I see pictures of Arlo and Lyle most every day so have included some for you.

First music lesson

The Big Clear

In order to make room for some summer purchases, I had to purge several shelves in my storage room.  I went through lots of stuff but only some could be kept and moved to the attic. The rest I put in the recycle bin. Here are the results:

Kept:

1966 program from my first opera - Don Giovanni at the old Met

1973 World Series and National League Championship programs (NY Mets)

Some of Moody's  and ML's childhood books

1978 Opera News with Beverly Sills on the cover as Thais

My transcripts and recommendations from Columbia University (several professors wrote that I was "exuberant"!)

MBTI materials and books

3 typed sermons from 1978 written by Moody on the reserection and eternal life

Book on medieval feasts, a few souvenir pamphlets from my 1972 trip to Europe

Recycled:

My SF 171 and personnel folder from my 30 year career with the Federal government

Many awards from work and press for my publications releases

Many files with articles that were helpful to my research on physician and emergency medical utilization

15 year old cell phones

Given to Public Library:

Books not previously disposed like Follow the River, The Frontiersman, Stonewall Jackson

Some of the books written by cousin Julia Davis

Anthologies of English Literature (Norton's type is too small for my eyes to read)

It was fun looking at this stuff that will be totally meaningless to whoever has the go through my stuff when the roll is called up yonder.  There are still plenty of shelves that can be tackled and I will soon. I have a whole raft of stat books that should be given away, hard copies of all my publications, and many books on embroidery, smocking, and quilt making. I also have tons of music for my various instruments including vocal, piano, mountain and hammered dulcimer, guitar, violin, etc. Then there are my hymnals, bibles, and prayer books.  We won't even mention all the VHS tapes!

Progress nonetheless, I now have space for my dozen juice glasses for holding gazpacho, and new paisley chargers in turquoise and white, and devices for serving stacked food in various shapes.  Looks like party planning is in my future rather than scholarly research.