Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Happy Birthday to littlest grand baby…..Robert!

We can’t believe that it has been a year since Robert was born.  He is the fifth generation in our family that we have known in our lifetime….our grandparents, parents, our siblings, our own children, and now our dear grandchildren.

Soon Robert will be riding a tricycle, reading books, swimming, getting his first job, and before we know it he will be getting married and having children of his own.  But for now we want to enjoy every single moment of his precious life….




























We are taking extra special care of each other, because we want to be with you when you get married and have your own special little babies….our sixth generation.

Happy Birthday, to our dear grandson, Robert….and God bless you today and every day.

Monday, July 28, 2025

Our 5,114th day of marriage….happily ever after!

14 years…..and counting.

My Danny told me 14 years ago that in 30 years he wanted to be able to tell me that he had kept all of the promises that he had made to me during our wedding ceremony.

And when we were married I made a vow to him, God, and Mom and Dad (Dad married us and Mom sang beautifully at our wedding) that I would love my Danny more every day.

Here is our 14th wedding anniversary in pictures….


Unbelievably , I found a Chianti named “Anniversario!”





Toasting to us and our love!


One of my gifts from my love….an air conditioner for our bedroom, so we can cuddle together all night long.  A super great, loving gift!


I prepared a special surprise for Danny….his Mother’s traditional family dinner treat—roast beef with mashed potatoes, gravy, and her homemade noodles.  My sweetheart played our favorite old songs on the piano for me as I cooked our anniversary dinner!



I baked my chocolate chip cookies for desert….


We watched slideshows of several years of our five-month-long road trips (eight road trips in all) where we crisscrossed the United States in our truck/camper all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and the tip of Florida, plus we thoroughly explored all of our country west of the Mississippi River.  It continually amazes us to re-live all these glorious adventures, and to once again see the unprecedented beauty that we have experienced together!

We exchanged loving gifts and anniversary cards to commemorate this special day in our lives….the day that we pledged our lives to each other for all eternity.



 
My Danny has kept all the promises that he made to me 14 years ago….and I have loved him more every single day since we were married.

14 years together….our anniversary

Vicky is 75 and I am 77.  We met at a dance 14 years ago.  My first words to her:  “Can I have a dance?”  (who remembers the first words ever spoken by them to their wife?).

These are photos of us dancing a few years later in the Deer Lagoon Grange Hall where we met….and Vicky is wearing the same clothes that she wore on that first night when I fell in love with her.


It was love at first sight for me.  At that dance, she sparkled with life.  It’s like God was shining down a sunbeam on her and saying:  “DAN!  pay attention here!”  

So I showed up at public dances where she was just so she could get to know me and decide if she felt the same way.

Four months later we were married.



Both of us grew up at the edge of town, so spent our childhoods in fields, streams, and pools.  Hunting (me) and swimming and horseback riding (her).  But always outdoors.

Since we got married we have cycled 33000 miles, hiked almost 5000 miles, and camped in 350+ dispersed sites (not campgrounds, but in places off the beaten track, all by ourselves).  



Here we were celebrating cycling 24,901 miles together.  We had cycled as many miles as “around the world!!!”
























In other words, we returned to our childhoods.

And we dance, every week.  And, like everything else we do, our dancing reflects our childhoods.  We mostly dance to music that is 50-65 years old.  Music from our childhoods and adolescences.  

Today’s anniversary dance….




Age has caught up with us, mostly with me, and so we have had to slow way down.  We live half of the year in the high desert mountains of Arizona.  We are 4 blocks from a trail that heads up a mountain in National Forest.  We do a 2-mile hike there every other day.  



We have deer and elk on our front yard, and last year had a mountain lion on our front porch (we can finally knock that off of our bucket list).

We have, between us, 6 kids and 14 grandkids.  We have camped and hiked with them all over the country.  They are now our spiritual purpose.  We have incredible and close relationships with them.  (we tell their parents the old joke about why we have such terrific relationships with our grandchildren……reason:  we have a common enemy).    They are our major purpose in life now.  The older ones, in particular, see two oldsters who act like two teenagers in the first throes of love, and they want that.  They tell us that we inspire them.  Inspiring somebody?  What joy they give us.  We want them to see to not be afraid of growing old and of staring death in the face.  To, instead, LIVE!  Dance!   Be in nature!

While we could and as much as we still can we are in nature.  As I said, it was our childhoods, and it connects us with our wonderful times in the 1950s when we were free as birds……coming home at dinner time, with our parents having no idea where we were.  That freedom still exists in us, very powerfully.

Earlier this spring we took one of our grandsons to show him where we want our ashes mixed together and spread.  It will in the high desert mountains in an area where fields of grass extend for miles.  We regularly dance to Sting’s Fields of Gold, and that is where we will spend all eternity together—in nature, just as we did in our childhoods.  

“But I swear in the days still left we'll walk in Fields of Gold.”