At the River

Stan suggested we try to cool off at the river so we drove out to the bridge with Sydney and the dogs. After Stan dragged me through the mud, which I fell into after my flip flop got stuck, we found a nice spot.

Grandpa and his shadow.

The dogs hated the water and Merlin rolled in the gravel to try to dry off. It took a long bath to get the sand out of his fur!

The boy dipping for minnows.

Came home and we all showered. Then I cooked bacon, fresh farm eggs and pancakes. Now to muster the energy to clean up the kitchen.

Serenity

The dogs and I are sitting on the porch, knitting and enjoying this lovely spring day.

I suspect the dogs are more interested in scouting out something to bark at. Well I just heard thunder, the storm they promised is moving in. Time to go put supper on the table.

A Great Day!

Christmas day was a blast!  Lots of food, family and friends-noisy with lots of good smells.  And all the gifts I made were loved, yay!

Millie was happy to get her Montana State colored fleece blanket.

Syd got a stuffed spleen from Uncle Dave in Texas.

Dog photobombing.

One reason for the good smells.

The other reason for the good smells, Christmas smells.

Some of us took the dogs for a walk and got in on a fantastic Christmas sunset.

Happy birthday, Jesus

I think she liked her pillow bed!

Today I called in tired, I'm glad I have a job like that.  I'll work a little longer tomorrow.  Right now I feel like I got beat up, didn't sleep much Christmas Eve-had a food reaction that kept me up way too late, then lots of work yesterday.  Fun work, but I was dozing in my chair watching the kids play a game.  I feel blessed that I have so many great people to share the day with.

The Rest of the Pictures

Here are the rest of the pics we took the other night.

"Soldier Hill," Kris' group.  Notice they're pinching their vocal cords in order to get the high notes.

This gentleman is 87 years old.  He is carrying the eagle staff and led the procession of flags for the grand entry.  He then gave the invocation, "The Seven Directions."

Procession of the flags.

Two boys watching the drum-they gather around the group and listen, sometimes a big crowd.

L to R-Kris, Stan, me, and Amanda.  Yep, she was ready to pop!

Amanda made these for me while she sat watching the dancers.  Gorgeous!

This drum came all the way from Texas.

Amanda said this particular pow wow was a little different than the ones they have on the reservations.  Montana State University has a spring pow wow every April and it was different than this one, too.  Amanda called the group here "Urban Indians."

Whatever, it was a blast, and we felt so honored to sit with them and to be gifted with the earrings.  On Facebook later Kris said we are his forever adopted family and our son Steve is his brother forever.  It means a lot coming from an Indian.  Can't wait to see little Crazy Bear!

The Four S's

Stan, Steve, Syd and Sam went fishing today.  Our four S guys!  They had a great day!

Excited about the day!

Best buds-they are going to be inseparable growing up.

The catch-they each reeled one in.

I'm glad they had the chance to do a last fishing trip before school starts-a week from Wednesday already!

Kiddos

Millie had another heart cath procedure in Salt Lake City today, so we've  had the two youngest since yesterday.  Chris is in Wyoming and Isaac has a new job at Pizza Hut so it's just the two little ones.

Stan took Sam fishing today, along with his friend Anders.

They had a really good time, Grandpa even let Sam "drive" the boat for a while.

The catch of the day-five walleye and a trout.  We had trout and walleye for supper tonight-yum!

Gracie and I went to town to get some sewing supplies.  We were just starting lunch when I realized I had left my phone at home.  Since I didn't want to miss Jim's call about Millie, we cut our time in town short and came home.  It gave us some time for some sewing.  I gave Grace a sewing lesson, and she watched while I made her a new dress:

A nice summer frock, cool and airy!

Millie is doing great-she was even alert enough to call the kids tonight.  They think they hit most of the damaged spots this time.

Summer Stuff

It's been pretty hot here.  We've had a couple of storms that actually brought some nice rain, but then it warms back up again-so not like Montana.  Usually it's hot for a few days, then rains and gets chilly.  I don't mind this one bit!

Took the grandkids to the Bogert pool, but it's an outdoor pool and the thunder and lightening hit, so the pool was closed.  They played in the playground for a while and then Millie stopped by and picked up Grace and Sam.  Syd talked his dad into staying for the farmer's market and concert, so he was with us all night.  Mostly he played on the playground-we positioned our chairs at the concert so we could watch him all evening.  He had a blast, and we heard a nice concert.

His dad gave him enough money to go on the bungee bouncer:

We celebrated Independence Day by going to the fairgrounds to take in the Bozeman Symphony's all-American concert, followed by fireworks.  The Symphony even accompanied some of them.  The best fireworks evening I think I've had.

Since Syd had to go back to his mom's soon, he, Stan & Steve took the boat out fishing.  They had a ball!

A beautiful Montana sunrise!

 Yesterday we took our Costco rebate and a World Market gift card to town-time to get them spent.  We made quite a little haul-I got a new vacuum cleaner, a small TV for the kitchen, a 16G memory card for my camera, and ribeye steaks for two meals at Costco.  At World Market I found a new outdoor rug for my deck.  When Stan and my cousin built the deck, my cousin talked him into leaving a gap between the floor boards.  The only problem is, the thin legs on my chairs fall through, so I put a rug over it to prevent that.  The old rug was bad enough to make it into the trash.

Chloe and I both think it looks snazzy-kind of tropical.  It's quite a bit larger than the old one.  This one is made from plastic, so maybe it won't rot quite so quickly.

We assembled the vacuum and I took it for a test drive in the living room.  I was astounded to see how much dog hair ended up in the dirt cup!  Plus a lot of dirt-and I thought my old vac was working!

Now that my deck is spruced up, I'm headed out there to catch a cool breeze and eat ice cream with fresh strawberries from the garden.  Can't beat that for a summer evening!

Last Day(s)

Saturday some of us headed to El Centro or downtown.  We wanted to take in the Mercado and show Dave and Laura the cathedral and the downtown area.  Steve stayed back with the four boys and they camped out in the swimming pool for the day.  Millie talked Gracie into going with us, but she wouldn't go near the pigs' heads in the meat counters!  Gracie did get her twirly dress and Laura found some cool earrings.  We had to finally leave the market because it was a bit overwhelming for Gracie.  Then to the fabric store, but I need time to think, which is hard to do when you're with a bunch of people and it was really hot so I just decided to forget the fabric shopping.  Too bad-fabric is dirt cheap there, and they are more into the apparel kind of fabric and less into quilting.  So off to the cathedral.

 It's such a beautiful church, and there was a wedding just starting, which thrilled Gracie.

Dave and Laura in the square in front of the cathedral.  I think I need to frame this-a great picture of the two.

Lunch at Panama then back to the Golden Zone so people could buy the goodies they saw there the other day.  For the first time, I went upstairs in Seashell City to the museum.  Pretty nice-this is a fountain, completely encrusted in seashells.

Dave, goofing off.

That night, we fed the kids macaroni and cheese and the adults ate a nice grown-up dinner in the resort restaurant.  Sweet and sad-nobody wanted to go home.

We left for the airport at 4:30 the next morning.  We got back to Montana at about midnight, so we were an exhausted group!

 I don't know how he sleeps like that!

 

Or that way, either!

A nice little place for a nap.

 And another one bites the dust!

There went the girl, too!

Gracie sobbed all the way to the airport and when she got out of the taxi she threw up on the sidewalk.  She did NOT want to leave Mazatlan!  I think the grand throw-up total for the week was four for Sam and two for Gracie.  Plus Sam had a pretty bad allergy attack after the Fiesta.  Didn't seem to make them sick, they just threw up.  Millie was so embarrassed she washed the bedding at 1:00 A.M.!

We're already planning our next trip-hopefully sometime in late February or early March.  My heart is still there, but now comes the hard part-the knee surgery-so I have to wait until I'm cleared to fly.

Another Fun Day

On Friday, the first thing I did was watch this cloud over the ocean pick up the rising sun's rays.

It almost looks like a mushroom cloud.  The weather forecast was for rain, but it never came.  Steve, Chris and Isaac headed out for a zip line tour.  The rest of us, all but Irene, headed to the aquarium.  First, Stan, Dave, Laura and I headed for a drug store to buy some Poli Grip.  The cashier looked at us-probably wondering which one of us had false teeth!  Laura had a temporary crown come out, and Millie had suggested this.  It worked well-that crown stayed in until they got home.  I'll be remembering that!  Then we hopped a pulmonia for the aquarium.  Jim, Millie and the kids got to see the sea lion show, but we were too late for that.  We hooked up with them just after the show got out and walked around with them.  Of course we saw sea turtles:

 And many, many fish:

We did get to see the bird show, very cute!

 Just watching the kids' faces was entertainment for me.  Everything was in Spanish, but it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on.

It was very reasonable-85 pesos for adults and 60 pesos for children.  That works out to about $7 and $5-not bad for a whole afternoon's entertainment.

Then we headed to Mega for more groceries then back to the resort.  The kids got a huge kick out of riding in the pulmonias-half of us in one, half in another, and we had to keep shouting and waving to each other!

We had a taco supper and the kids hit the pool.  The teens and Steve related an awesome time zip lining.  They even got to tour a tequila factory-and grumped because Uncle Steve wouldn't let them taste the finished product!

Then to bed-whew!  We were all pooped, and we had one more day of fun to enjoy.

The Jungle

We knew we wanted the kids to take the Jungle Cruise.  This is a tour of an estuary in the mangroves on Stone Island, and a walk through an old time Mexican farmyard, where we saw a cayman and several sea turtles.  This is followed by a stroll on the beach-we were carried there from the farm on a "Mexican Hummer."  Actually a big trailer pulled by an old tractor.

Crazy happy family.

 Don't remember the name of the smaller birds, but this is the first time I've seen them-probably has to do with the time of year.

The waterway through the mangroves.  The tide was still high enough for us to boat through.  During low tide it becomes a mud bog.

On the "Hummer."

Stone Island has the best beaches in the area.

After the hour or so on the beach they hauled us back to the hut, where our delicious lunch of fish cooked on mangrove wood waited for us.

The tables and benches were petrified palm tree trunks.

Our dessert was coconut candies-actually macaroons-made with fresh grated coconut.  So yummy and they gave us the recipe.

Then we headed back, and Fernando our guide brought out a bucket of fish to feed the pelicans.  He asked for volunteers and Sydney was first in line.

Pretty cute!

I had to get a shot of that hat!

That night most of the guys went to a baseball game.  Mazatlan has a professional AAA team-some of the players even come from major league teams in the US, wanting to stay in shape during the winter.  They do this at a mere fraction of what they earn in the US.  The guys had a blast-they showed Stan on the JumboTron and played Christmas music.  He played along and waved.  The crowd cheered and some lady from Canada passed him her e-mail address.  Nice try lady, that Santa is taken!

The name of the team is "El Venados" the deer, since Mazatlan was named by the local indians, "Land of the Deer."  Here is their mascot.

The family had had spaghetti for dinner, but I didn't eat since I was allergic.  So after the guys left, I freshened up and went to the restaurant all by myself and had a lovely shrimp salad.