Spring in Iowa

Well our 3rd winter in Arizona was as wonderful as the first two…but our cold, wet and windy Iowa spring is producing a total reality check. Evidently I’m still experiencing AZ withdrawal.

Our trip home was fairly uneventful except I didn’t get much skiing in because of my knee injury that occurred before we left AZ. I was on my bicycle about 10 days before our scheduled departure and for some odd reason, (probably my clumsiness), while turning a corner near our RV…down I went. My left knee cap was the first thing to hit the pavement. Needless to say, it HURT! And it is still in the healing process. I think my ego was hurt as much as the kneecap itself.

Went to ortho doc when I got home and the
x-rays showed no breaks, chips or cracks, so that was good news. It did however bruise and inflame the tissue and muscle under the kneecap and the healing process can take awhile…hence the reason my skiing (during our stop in CO on the way home) consisted of 3 short runs and one long one before I finally had to concede that it wasn’t worth the pain and headed to the lodge with my book and diet coke. But I did get to enjoy watching our niece Michelle and her husband Chad put my great nephew on skis at the ripe ol’ age of two and a half. Isn’t he a doll? Maybe I’m just a tad prejudice.

Gavin all geared up, and even in Aunt Claudia’s goggles.

Easter Sunday

We had a wonderful Easter with our children and grandchildren. It even warmed up enough to do a cookout and Easter egg hunt for the 8 and 9 year old granddaughters. The sun actually gave us about 15 minutes of its full glory before escaping back behind the clouds.

Maggie, Jeni and Jenna

Can you tell how cool it was when the sun went away. Notice two of them are wrapped in blankies.

Easter Egg Hunt

They each had twelve plastic eggs filled with candy to find. One of the eggs had their name on it and a dollar bill in it. I think the money was better received than the candy.

Jordan (8) is in front, Joy (9) in back.

The hunt was on…

and showing their treasures!

Pat and I did not get to plant potatoes on Good Friday as we have every past year. The garden was just too wet from all of the rain, so he played golf with our son and a couple of friends and I had a friend over for coffee and gab session. He finally got them in a couple of days ago.

Our daughter bought a small picnic table off of Craig’s List. We picked it up with the truck. It had several boards that needed to be replaced but it was cheap so she got it.

Original Table

Pat decided to replace all of the boards with nice new ones. After cutting the new boards, and rounding the corners, he sanded them to a wonderful smoothness, then we stained them. He painted the metal frame and we will  reassembled the table today. It is beautiful and should give Jeni and Joy a wonderful place to sit and have a sandwich and do a few crafts on a nice day.

Pat at work…

or trying to figure out his next move.

He is such a perfectionist. He hates working with wood because he says, “if I make a mistake I have to go buy more.” He equates that to his years of working as an ironworker and when a mistake was made, he cut it off and re-weld a new piece of steel in place. But he always does such a beautiful job, no matter what he is building.

Table redone

I almost hate giving it back to Jeni, but I will.

Foggy Morning

One morning about a week or so ago, I got up to a lot of fog. The sun was just coming up and as I looked out our bedroom window what a sight to behold. I could not resist grabbing my phone and taking this picture.

It was such a moody morning image and had a very calming affect. Not long after the fog burned away…you guessed it…back came the clouds. Oh well, it will be back in the 70’s and 80’s one of these days and until then I’ll just throw on a couple more layers and be glad to be alive.