Visiting and Helping Family

Our visits to the Denver area each year are centered mainly on seeing family.  This year that visit included a lot of work.

First we went to our son Eric's home for dinner on their back patio.

We also met them at the Cherry Creek State Park shooting range.  Here are John and our grandson John shooting.

Then we all came to our trailer for lunch.  When you travel in an Airstream, having friends for a meal means eating outside.

A few days later, the work began.  Eric and Liz, Kylie and John are moving to a new home.  It is exciting and it also is a lot of work.  They have been packing boxes for weeks.  The closing was to be on Aug. 30 so Eric and Liz both scheduled a day off from their work as teachers to attend the closing and begin the move.  Then the moving company announced they would pick up the furniture a day early.

Eric asked if we could help and we said yes.  I went to supervise the movers and John took care of our scheduled move from Chatfield State Park to Cherry Creek State Park.

The movers had beds, like grandson John's bed,

 

and many other items to put in the moving van.

The dining room table was a big item.

Finally, the truck was almost full.

The movers closed up the truck and got inside to drive everything away.

When Eric, Liz and John came home, I joined them at Breckenridge Brewery for dinner.

 

We went to a motel for the night.

The next day, they went to the closing and I waited for John to come from our trailer to pick me up.  We met Eric and Liz at their beautiful new home and helped unpack. I obviously didn't take many photos at the new house.  I was too busy.  Here is the back yard.

This is a view of the back of the house and patio.

Granddaughter Kylie came home from college at the University of Houston to help with the move. Saturday we all ate lunch on the patio.

Since our legal address is Eric's home, we were very interested in where we are moving.  Now we know where our mail will be delivered before they ship it to us priority mail.

Where Did That Come From?

Where on earth did this really long screw come from?  We didn't know what the problem was but when John checked the trailer tires Thursday in preparation to drive to Chatfield State Park on Friday, he found that one of the tires only had 30 pounds pressure instead of the normal 65.  Oops!

We called our road service company, Coach-Net, and they sent out a tow truck from the nearby town of Berthoud to remove the low-pressure tire and put on the spare.

We were very impressed with the service.  Coach-Net called to tell us the truck would be there in 45 minutes.  The driver, Jake, called us when he was 10 minutes away.  And by the time he had started to work we received a call to be sure help had arrived.

John watched as Jake jacked up the trailer.

Once the tire was off, they inspected it to see if they could find the problem.

Yep, the screw pictured at the top of this post was imbedded deeply in the tire.  No wonder it was leaking air.  Jake put in a plug so the tire wouldn't leak and put it back on the trailer.  One of these days we will have the tire repaired even better, but hopefully this will hold till we return to Arizona.

We needed to get on the road Friday so we could see family in Littleton.  We shared adult beverages and chips and dip with our son Eric and his wife Liz and grandson John.  Kylie, our granddaughter is in Oregon swimming the in sectional meet.  We will see her next week.

Last Days of Company

We had been going almost non-stop with our company so Monday, before John and Kendal left, we just sat around and talked.  Family time is so important and we had a good time together.  Mid-afternoon we saw them to the security checkpoint at Phoenix-Gateway Airport for their (fairly) short flight to Colorado Springs.

Cindy was leaving late Tuesday afternoon so we explored one more location she had not seen, the Queen Creek Olive Mill. We had been there but never took a tour. This time we learned a lot from the Olive Oil 101 presentation.

This old olive mill from Italy decorates the grounds.

Our tour guide was friendly, funny and full of all sorts of good information.  We started out in the olive grove.  They have 7,000 olive trees on 25 acres of land.  We learned that if 4% of the spring olive tree blossoms become olives a grove is commercially viable.

Queen Creek has 16 varieties of olive trees.  Olives have no natural threats in Arizona so they have no need for pesticides.  From the grove, we were off to the mill.  We learned a lot about how they make the oil and what makes it high quality.

These vats are where the oil is processed.  They bottle their oil every 3 weeks so what you purchase in their stores is always fresh.

We heard about the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil and about the other kinds of olive oil.

After the tour, we had lunch in their café.  They grow their own produce for many of the dishes they offer.

They also have fresh bread.  Did you know you can substitute olive oil for other fats in breads and cakes?  I didn't.  I had delicious red velvet cake made with chocolate olive oil.

They sell oils and vinegars, as well as breads.  There are tasting stations throughout the store.  A chocolate olive oil and balsamic vinegar mixture was my favorite.

After lunch we were off to Sky Harbor Airport where Cindy caught her plane to Denver. We had a great week with family, but we also needed a day or two of rest after they left.

Food and Woodcarving

We did a lot of eating and talking over the weekend with Cindy, Kendal and John.  It included dinner at our house in Gold Canyon

and lunch at Sweet Tomatoes in Tempe,

Sunday morning before worship at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Tempe, we gave our guests a tour of the memorial garden there.

After lunch we were off to the Mesa Woodcarving Show.  There were lots of amazing projects there, including this intricate carved or scroll saw worked box.

I like this unusual bowl with turquoise inserts.

These two segmented bowls were prize-winning for sure.

And this large segmented vase is impressive, too.

We enjoyed this relief carving of horses and a wagon.

This was John and Kendal's first visit to the Phoenix area. Kendal is a multi-talented artist and John does a lot of woodworking so they both enjoyed the two events we visited over the weekend.

Family and Gourds

After the visit to the Musical Instrument Museum we took it easy for a few hours before going to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport to pick up John 's sister Kendal and her husband John.  They didn't land till after 9 that evening so it was a late night for all of us.

Saturday morning we showed them around our resort, including a stop in the weight room where we go to work out.

Then we were off to the Gourd Festival at the Pinal County Fairgrounds.  It was a warm but not hot day and we had a good time.

We have been to this festival several times.  Cindy enjoyed it last year and came back at the same time again this year so she could shop some more.  Just look at all these creations.

This gourd had a weaving at the top.

The painting on this one has Southwestern kokopelli figures painted around the outside.



This gourd with the scene inside shows a group of soldiers, perhaps from the Civil War. 

Family Comes to Visit

A week ago, our son Eric and his wife Liz and son John drove down from Littleton to visit for four days. Since they had driven a long way on Friday after school and Saturday from Albuquerque to here, we didn't do two much Saturday afternoon. We did go for a walk around the resort. Grandson John didn't walk, he rode his hoverboard.

Sunday, after attending Palm Sunday worship at Epiphany Episcopal Church, we stopped by the Mesa Swap Meet. Our visitors enjoyed see everything that was offered there, but very few purchases were made. In preparation for deals too good to pass up, we made a stop at the ATM for some cash.

Everybody else thought I looked good in this hat, but since I didn't agree, I didn't buy it.

Granddaughter Kylie didn't come with her parents. She was in Federal Way, Washington, swimming in the Speedo Sectional Swim Meet. She swam well, reaching the finals in all 6 individual events she participated in and recording 5 personal best times. Monday, she flew in to Phoenix to join the family. In two of the events, she was awarded medals--meaning she was one of the eight best swimmers out of 100+ entered in those events. Look how proud she is of those medals. We are proud, too!
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Kylie has asked to be able to have her nose pierced as her 16th birthday present. Her parents said yes in November when she turned 16. But she waited until her Spring vacation, when she has two weeks off from swim practice, to accomplish it. So Monday afternoon, the family visited a tattoo parlor (that is where piercing of the body--other than ears--is done. Her grandparents didn't come along, but it really doesn't look offensive, does it?  She looks kind of cute.

We weren't aware of all that goes along with being a competitive athlete. Colleges are very interested! The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has strict rules of allowable contact between colleges and high school athletes. Kylie is only a sophomore so she can ask to visit schools, they can not contact her or her family. Within the next year, first the schools can make contact with family, followed by contact with the athlete by letter or email. Not until the senior year can the college invite a student athlete to come to the school for an official visit. And the athlete can only accept five such invitations. Since neither John nor I, nor our sons, were outstanding in sports, we had never known about these rules. The next two plus years will be interesting.

Kylie and her family have a good friend who swam in college and knows about the swimming program at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He urged them to go there for a visit. They contacted the school and arranged to meet with the swim coach staff, observe the swim team practicing, and and tour the school on Tuesday. Kylie was very interested and bought this shirt from U of A. Bear Down is the motto of the school.

We all tried some bocce ball.

We went to Organ Stop Pizza for dinner and the concert. Everybody loved the evening! Look at these three good looking members of Eric's family.

We also had relaxing time, just sitting around and talking.

We had a great time with our family. It is good to spend our winters in a favorite Spring Vacation destination for younger families. What fun we had!