Who are these grown-up looking girls?

Our Granddaughters?  

It seems like just yesterday when they were babies and we would hold them in our arms.

We have two baby white tailed Doves!

One of the things that made us sad about leaving our Whidbey Island home is that we knew we would miss all our springtime tropical birds.  We have discovered that we have a whole new world of birds here in our desert home.  We see and hear new breeds of birds everywhere we go:  on our walks around the ponds and paths in Leisure World, in the ravines and bushes on our desert camping and hiking trips, and just sitting on our front and rear patios.  This is a new world filled with birds just waiting for us to identify and enjoy them.

A few days ago the eggs hatched in the bird nest in our lemon tree, and we have two new babies birds!    I quickly took a few pictures of the babies while their mother or father anxiously watched from our rooftop.

Both the mom and dad Dove take turns sitting on the eggs, warming their newborn babies, and feed the babies together until their babies can care of themselves.  We love these nurturing Doves.

These beautiful Doves surround our home and “coo” all day long, making music and delighting us. Every time we sit on our back patio and talk with Kathy and Bill on the phone, they comment on all the beautiful bird noises they can hear in our yard.

We have not only a lemon tree ”very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet,” but we also have two orange trees that bear copious amounts of delicious oranges.  We started eating our oranges at the start of the new year, one or two every day, as they slowly ripened.  Almost five months later, on the day our baby birds were born, we ate our very last orange.  I just happened to glance out our kitchen window and spied this on our orange tree.

New baby oranges!   The circle of life.

Here is another bit of evidence that spring is really here.  I found our very first double yolks this year when I made Dan’s breakfast....and not one double yolk, but two!




Spring is beautiful, but it is getting a little warm, even for we new Arizonians!

update a week later.  The babies are grown and gone.  We now have another nest in our orange tree.

Our all-time favorite films....and top 10 movies

These are  not a list of what we believe to be the best all time films.  Just the ones we have enjoyed the most, and ones we find ourselves frequently tossing into the DVD player to watch again rather than taking a chance on one we haven't seen.

1.  The Searchers

2.  The Trip to Bountiful

3.  Once Upon a time in America

4-6

Jules and Jim

Lonesome Dove

Blade Runner

Thursday's Game

7-10

Mountains of the Moon

Mary Poppins

How Green was my Valley

Peggy Sue Got Married

Forrest Gump

Next group

True Grit remake w/Jeff Bridges

Magnificent Seven (original, not the dreadful remake)

Paper Moon

Meet me in St. Louis

Old Yeller

As it is in Heaven

All the rest, in no particular order

Cider House Rules

Legends of the Fall

Billy Elliott

Saving Private Ryan

Hoosiers

Friendly Persuasion

A Fairy Tale

One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Lone Star

Flight of the Phoenix (original, 1965)

The man who would be king

All that Jazz

The Best of Times

Dunkirk

Dark City

Children of Men

The Finest Hours
Vanilla Sky
The Sound of Music

Friendly Persuasion

Many Westerns:  

   Magnificent Seven (original, not the remake)
   Dances with Wolves

   Big Country

   She wore a Yellow Ribbon

   Bite the Bullet

   Scalphunters

   3:10 to Yuma (original 1957)

   Bravados

   High Noon

   Man who shot Liberty Valance

   Open Range

   Last Wagon West

   Outlaw Josie Wales 

   The Professionals
   Man in the Wilderness
   Red River
   The Shootist
   Stars in my Crown
   Cowboy
   Night Passage
   The Appaloosa  ("Appaloosa" is different, and also good)

This is Spinal Tap
Field of Dreams
Blazing Saddles
Breaking Away
Manhattan
Vacation &, especially, Christmas Vacation
Wizard of Oz
Miller’s Crossing

Ed Wood
Julia

Easy Rider
Carousel
Oklahoma
The Grapes of Wrath
Paris, Texas

The Straight story

The Dish

Frailty

One False Move
Cabaret

Road Warrior

Young Frankenstein
Braveheart

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Rob Roy

Tropic Thunder

2001 A Space Odyssey

A Clockwork Orange

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Dr. Strangelove

Titanic

Glory

Godfather I

Grease
Quick Change
What about Bob
Groundhog Day

Annie Hall
Miracle on 34th Street
An Officer and a Gentleman
The Sweet Hereafter

Singing in the Rain

Pollyanna

Tender Mercies

Gone with the Wind

East of Eden

American Graffiti

The Wizard of Oz

The Vikings

Brigadoon

Giant

Nashville
Master and Commander:  Far side of the earth

Memphis Belle

Delores Claiborne

Winter's Bone
Tomorrow

To Kill a Mockingbird

Singing in the Rain

A Mighty Wind

Top horror:

Psycho--still the best

Housebound

House at the end of time

The Orphanage

Halloween

Let the right one in

Don’t Look Now

Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte

Sixth Sense

Signs

The Birds

The Shining
Unbreakable
The Other

Eddie Haskell dies

One of the icons of our 50s childhoods.  He defined obsequious.  He was Wally Cleaver's friend on Leave it to Beaver.  

Here are some good clips of him:  Eddie.

This vaquero (cowboy) dodges a bullet

Three weeks ago we were given a definitive diagnosis of prostate cancer.  Oh goodie.

Preliminary tests suggested it strongly, but a biopsy was the deciding factor.

Not only that, which is bad enough, but the results of the biopsy were that I was at extremely high risk for an aggressive type of prostate cancer.

So three more tests were run, including a bone scan and a CAT scan, because with my preliminary results the likelihood was that it had already metastasized.  The third test looked at the cancer to get a precise reading of its aggressiveness.

So we have been living under a cloud.  Trying, and mostly being successful, at living our lives well anyway.

Yesterday we got the results.  It was caught early.  It is a very high risk cancer if I don't do something in the next few months.  It isn't one of those slow-growing ones that I would likely just have for many years and die with (but not die from).

And it had not spread.

We are scheduling radiation treatments.  There will be 40 of them, over 8 weeks.  We are going to kill that sucker.

My bad joke had been that because some pieces that were inserted into my heart to fix my congenital heart defect were made from cow tissue that I finally, after all of these years, get to be a cowboy.

So, to continue with the bad joke, now I feel like I was ambushed by some bad guns, but luckily dodged all of their bullets.  And now I am shooting back.

I can expect a normal lifespan.  I am truly fortunate. And can take care of my family, and especially Vicky who I promised I would do my best to always be there for.

To celebrate Vicky opened me a bottle of Chianti.  And made me a gigantous order of nachos, which we ate in bed while watching one of our favorite movies:  The Best of Times.

It truly is the best of times for this vaquero and his esposa!

We cross 1000 cycling miles this year

And all but about 25 miles of it in Leisure World.

And, sort of weirdly (and sort of not), all but about 25 miles in the dark.

We cycle very early in the morning, actually very very early in the morning.  We started doing this last year when it was hot during the day, and found out it is easier and safer.    So we have just altered our lives to be up well before anybody else (and to bed before anybody else.......or at least anybody else normal).

Even our birds are sheltering in place

We have a bird's nest in our lemon tree.  There are two little babies in it.   

Ninth anniversary of our first date

All of a sudden we look up and it has been nine years.

Our first date was to a restaurant in Everett and then a dance in Everett.

As everyone knows who has been there, that stint at the restaurant lasted a lot longer than we had anticipated, as we talked and talked.

And the dance was supposed to be just going to a dance together.  But we ended up dancing with only each other.  In fact, at some point, a man crossed the room to where we were sitting (far away from everyone else....imagine that) and asked Vicky to dance.

For some reason I felt I had permission to gently turn him down, explaining that we only danced with each other. We had never discussed this, but I could feel Vicky tensing up when he asked her.

We have gone back to the restaurant and to the same dance to celebrate today every year.

Of course we can't now, but we did our best.

Our day started with me getting.......bacon!  I always get bacon for special occasions, and most of the time end up being surprised.

And then Vicky made a terrific dinner--better than anything we ever got at the restaurant.

You are probably seeing a pattern.  Our "celebrations" consist of Vicky making me good food.  

We ran out of gas and didn't dance, but will today.  Hope that guy doesn't ask her to dance again. 

Won't matter though.   For our anniversary she gave me a 1931 dance card and put my name on every line.  All I have to do is show that to the guy!

Dan finishes another diorama

This one was of Ian in the Mojave National Preserve.

On a hike, deep in the preserve, we came upon an old settlement. At the settlement was a rusted-out 1957 Mercury.

Here is Ian looking at the old Merc:

 

On eBay found a Danbury Mint model of a 1957 Mercury.  It was of a much fancier model of the car:

And a small figure that looked like could be converted to Ian:

Here is the final version of the diorama.

Looks pretty good against the original!

Sweet Aryana's first six months

These pictures of Aryana are worth a million words.  We love this little bundle of joy!