LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : Our Grandsons Soren and Sebastian visit

Soren and Sebastian were with us for a week. We had a blast, as we always do with all of the four grandsons we are blessed with.

Here they are arriving at the airport. All full of excitement (them AND us!)

Twice we walked to breakfast at the Rendezvous Cafe in Leisure World. This cafe is something in LW about which we are very pleased and proud. It is sponsored by the MARC center. The MARC center is described as "a private nonprofit corporation providing educational, therapeutic, rehabilitation and social services to children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities and behavioral health challenges."

We can't leave tips for the servers, but we can make contributions each visit to the MARC center, which we do. Everyone there likes the boys because they are so polite and respectful. When Adam was here three weeks ago, this was the only place he put in a request to go, and sadly we couldn't because he was here only on a weekend when the Rendezvous is closed. But, Adam, there is next time! Come see!

The boys know how much we like western movies. And that this is part of visits with Grandma and Grandpa. Little do they know that we have a collection of about 400 of them, so they will have to come here as long as we are alive.

On this trip they saw several really good ones: Jeremiah Johnson, The Scalphunters, and Man in the Wilderness. Look them up on imdb. They are good.

We also watched two Disney ones: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier and, of special significance, Old Yeller.

Old Yeller was a rite of childhood for us baby boomers. It is so much more than just a boy gets dog, boy loses dog, boy finds dog movie.

After "Pa" gets back home, and finds out about Old Yeller, he gives a memorable speech to his son: ""Now and then, for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat. … But it's not all like that. A lot of it's mighty fine. And you can't afford to waste the good part frettin' about the bad. That makes it all bad."

Then "Pa" gives him the horse he had promised his son. And says something so very profound: "Brought you that horse I promised. I reckon you ain't in no shape to take pleasure in him yet. Well, you'll just keep him for awhile. Maybe you'll come to feel different later."

In other words, even though "Pa" went to great effort to get his son something that the son at one time wanted, he didn't guilt trip him into feeling good about it right on the spot. He accepted his son's feelings at the moment, and allowed him to have whatever feelings he wanted.

"Pa" should have stopped ranching and become a child psychologist.

The second day here we went 4-wheeling in the 4-Peaks Wilderness area.

The 4 peaks are in this photo.

.....and we went swimming:

The next morning we drove to Rimrock, AZ, so we could be close to a number of fun and interesting places for the next three days.

One spot was Fort Verde State Park. Fort Verde has several buildings still standing from the 1800s when it was an Indian fort.

The boys decided to learn what they needed in order to become Jr. Park Rangers. They did great, and got badges for learning. Here they are being sworn in:

Here they are with their badges. They DO need "steeenking badges!"

Then we went to Montezuma Well National Monument. It is basically a natural large hole in the ground that fills with water. In the early 1000s Indians dug canals to their settlements from this huge hole. Interestingly, the well also leeched arsenic, naturally, so they were slowly poisoning themselves. Fortunately for them (huh?), they only lived until age 30-35 so died of other causes before the arsenic could kill them.

Both Soren and Sebastian had "spending money" courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa. Sebastian wanted to dress up as a cowboy, so we stopped at a very large antique store that seemed to have possibilities. He found a hat there that was to his liking:

Looks like a cowboy, doesn't he?

The next day we went to Montezuma's Castle National Monument. It is several old ruins, dating to the 900s. Thankfully, now, they are protected, as in the early 1900s people basically had parties in them and stole all of the artifacts.

Then we went to the Tuzigoot National Monument, which was an old Indian village, of the same era, except it was built on the top of a hill instead of into a rock face. Many of the buildings are still standing, as are many of the foundations of others.

We stopped at another antique/western store so Sebastian could look for more cowboy stuff:

Then we went to Dead Horse State Park. It was named for a Michelangelo statue....JUST KIDDING!! It was named because of a dead horse that was found there many years ago. Kind of an odd reason for a park name. It would be like naming the Custer National Forest "Dead Soldier Forest.'

Anyway, they had a bunch of lagoons there, and the boys seemed to enjoy throwing rocks into them more than they enjoyed all of the very interesting, historical, and educational places we took them. (told you they were boys!!!)

For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant. Now that may not seem like a terribly big deal and worth mentioning, but this one was really interesting. All of the furniture had beautiful and vivid 3-D paintings. Never seen anything like this.

The next morning was New Year's. Grandma made breakfast, including blueberry/M&M pancakes. Yum.

And then we went to the Jerome Ghost town. Jerome was a huge mining community many years ago. The mines dried up, and virtually everyone left. One attraction was a private "Ghost Town." It was actually pretty cool. Many years ago a guy started collecting old vehicles. Some were running (and still are) and many are just shells. But even the shells are interesting, and unique. He contracted with the owners of this area to be able to create this ghost town and display his vehicles.

The boys took this picture of us in front of a VERY old camper:

Grandpa lost his keys somewhere in the ghost town, so everybody had to walk around looking for them.......for over an hour (meaning we all got to see all of Ghost Town about three times!). The boys found them fallen into a crack:

Then we went to the Jerome Historical State Park, which was basically a mansion that one of the mine owners built. It was very interesting, because now it is a mining museum, and the boys enjoyed playing on the old mining machinery.

View of the mine, and the hotel that once was owned by the owner of the mine:

I'll bet you are like me and have often stayed up late a night wondering: "what did miners in the olden days do about toilets when they were in the mines." Well, wonder no more. They had a specially built rail car. You could do your business sitting right next to your friend! No wonder boys in the late 1800s wanted to be miners when they grew up.