Family Time

Terry’s mom, Bess, turned 88 on February 2nd and her dad, Pete, turned 90 on the 11th. When you live that long you accumulate a lot of relatives, so family from as far away as England, New York, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida (us) came to Arizona to help them celebrate the occasion.

In the last few days there have been get-togethers at one of Terry’s niece’s condo in Phoenix, a birthday dinner in Chandler, and lots of visiting at their house in Mesa. Yesterday was the big family gathering at the clubhouse in their small, gated 55+ community. There were kids, grandkids, great grandkids, nephews, and their families, and a grand old time was had by all.

Here is a picture of Terry with her sons, Shawn, Cody, and Casey. If you didn’t notice, Cody and Casey are identical twins. Her daughter, Kelly, was unable to make it.

Everybody ate until we were all full as ticks, the little ones had a great time flying paper airplanes and playing together, and the adults visited, reminisced, and swapped lies. It was really touching when everyone took turns standing up to tell some of their best memories of Pete. A few choked up in the process, and some of us at our seats had to wipe a tear or two away.

Here are Bess and Pete with their great grandkids (Terry’s grandkids), Thomas, Peter, Jane, Althea, and the little guy in front is Brian.

After the gathering, Terry’s sons and their families went back to their hotel, her sisters and brother-in-law left to go home, and some of us went back to the house. We stayed a while longer but were pretty worn out and soon said our goodbyes.

Today is our last day here, and tomorrow we will go up to our old hometown of Show Low to spend some time with my daughter Tiffany and her family before we start the trip home. But along the way we will stop in Texas to see another old friend from our fulltime RVing days, and in Alabama to visit my son Travis and his wife Geli. You could say we are covering a lot of bases on this journey.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. Barbara makes several variations of these, and they all have pages where you can list the date, weather, where you traveled to and from that day, beginning and ending mileage, campground information including amenities at RV sites, a place for a campground rating, room to record activities, people met along the way, reminders of places to see and things to do the next time you’re in the area, and a page for notes for each day. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Trying to please everybody is impossible – if you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best and do it.