Visiting Rose and Dennis

We needed a Rose and Dennis fix, so when we discovered that we could have a 3 day weekend last week, we took advantage of it and headed off to Phoenix. It was a lovely day for a drive with the top down. When we got there pizza and wine with lots and lots of laughing. We really miss them.

It was great to get back to Phoenix and of course wining and dining with Dennis and Rose. We had a great time eating and laughing. Amongst other restaurants we found a new place in Queen Creek called the Deli. It’s a great little wine bistro with a scratch kitchen. All of their food made on site. Great coleslaw, pickles and some of the best pastrami that we’ve ever had. Just to prove that we were there, here's a couple of pics…

Rio Norte invades Ruidoso

As part of our ongoing activities with our residents we chartered a bus to go to the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Oh, and by the way they have a casino. We do this about every six months. Last trip MB and Sheri were the chaperones, this was Doug and my turn.

Waiting for the bus to arrive…

I forgot to mention that I got kicked out of the casino. As it turns out you're not supposed to have a backpack in the casino, so I was invited out. It didn’t dampen my day as I was planning on spending most of my time in the hotel. If you recall from earlier posts, they have a great view in the lobby. My back pack had a book and some cigars. The bar had one of my favorite beers, so my disappointment was very short lived. Doug and I spent the day talking and enjoying the view. I didn’t even crack the book.

Guess who was waiting when we got home…

I assumed she was happy to see me and then I realized that we stopped at a pistachio farm and she was hoping that I got some pistachios. She was right.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day

With our penchant for parties, no holiday goes by without a special celebration. All was green for the Irish tradition. And while we can't serve green beer or any beer for that matter, we did have a green drink… lemonade.

Bob got in the spirit…

MB was no slacker…

And the winner of the best St Patrick’s Day garb…

The sea of green in the atrium for the entertainment…

Newlywed Game

Not so newlywed game would be a better name as the ‘newlyest’ couple was married in 1967 [for you math challenged that’s 43 years]. We had a lot of fun as Bob ‘Eubanks’ Hunt was the host and the questions designed by MB and our Enrichment Coordinator were fun. My favorite… in bed, if my husband was a basketball team he’d be the [a] Heat, [b] Trailblazers or [c] Rockets.

The winners [top left] are the King and Queen of our Valentine’s Day party.

Grand Entrance Event

Our company is having quarterly promotions. This quarter is a move in incentive and to support that concept MB came up with a series of games. Of course we had entertainment too. This was a dance group and in between their numbers, we had the games.

Remember the first suitcases with wheels? You know the ones before they discovered inline skate wheels, the suitcases that wobbled and fell over a lot. We found one at a goodwill store so one game was to see how far you could roll it. We stuffed it with awkward stuff so it would tip over easily. Here's what it looked like.

Another was to pack, so MB put a bunch of stuff in a box and you had to trash it or put it in the kitchen box or bedroom box. You only had 30 seconds, so you had to work fast.

The next day we had a great dinner followed by banana splits. Here's Bob scooping it up.

Bob thought they came for his banana splits, but everyone really came for the chance to win a $100 bill.

Christmas in Boston

We’ve been sooo busy that I haven't had time to post any blogs, so I'll get caught up now.

We had a lovely white Christmas visiting our daughter Suzie's family in Boston. The back story is that we flew in on the same day that the worst “nor’easter” in 50 years hit the New England states. Airports closed, flights cancelled. Luckily for us it happened just before we took off. There was just enough time for the runways and roads to be cleared. So we cruised in, one of the first to land at Boston's Logan airport.

We weren’t so lucky on the way home. We wanted to spend every minute with the kids that we could, so we left late in the day. Our plane arriving from Chicago was delayed to the point that we could not make the connections to El Paso so we called the kids to come back to get us. We got smarter and started early the next day. With the recent terrorist attack, we allowed 2 hours to check-in, but as it turned out we didn’t need it. We didn’t need it as our flight that was originating from Toronto was having trouble getting boarded because of the heighted security.

It was delayed so long [4 hours] that American Airlines had to find a different plane and crew to make the flight. Well as you can imagine that started a series of missed connections that would boggle your mind. We have to give American credit, they worked tirelessly to keep us on the move. We were re-ticketed and re-ticketed, my head was spinning. The best example was when we were in New York the agent saw that we would miss the last flight out of Chicago to El Paso so he rerouted us to Dallas. He even upgraded us to first class for the last leg. The only rub… the flight was already boarding. We boogied over to the new gate and jumped right on the plane. The rest of the day was uneventful with one surprise. When we got to El Paso we went straight to the missing baggage office to let them know that our bags would arrive on another flight. The agent looked and lo and behold our luggage arrived with us. Way to go American!

We have lots of photos, but we can't do a better job than what Suzie did, so check out her blog for the rest of the story…

http://molonfamily.blogspot.com/2009/12/emme-9-month-gramma-and-gramps.html

Talent Show

We have a lot of fun and while we bring in professional entertainment we sometime entertain ourselves. In this case we decided to have a talent show or in my case, lack of talent show. We started out singing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. Did I mention we’re not great singers?

Since we’re not great singers we had to settle for spicing it up with gimmicks. We started out emphasizing the not so great part and it worked as planned. First you heard some giggles like they thought we were singing badly on purpose [we were]. Then you heard silence as they started thinking that we really were terrible. Then a few groans. At that point we stopped and started talking amongst ourselves.

Next we huddled by the piano and voila transformed into… well, see for yourselves.

All in all we had a great time and so did the residents! BTW we got a bunch of toys for the Marines’ Toys for Tots program.