Our indoor hobbies

Many people, like us, are stuck indoors because of Covid-19.  And many places we might go are closed (restaurants, theaters, etc.).  In addition, it is too hot during the summer in Arizona to be outside for very long during the day.

So we have adapted.  And are quite happy. 

We do our cycling (14+ miles/day) and walking (4+ miles/day) and are home before the sun comes up.  Thus we catch the "cool" part (ha ha) of the day to be active and outside.  Sometimes that "cool" part of the day is in the low 90s.  And, surprisingly, it is relatively humid at night around here.

But that leaves a good part of the day when we are inside. 

Our two main indoor hobbies are knitting (for Vicky) and assembling models and dioramas (for me). 

Vicky has been a knitter since she was a child.  Everyone we know has a blanket, a felted purse or backpack, and/or a hat that she has made for them.  I have several hats, blankets, and some sweater vests.  And I treasure every one of them.

She has knitted a blanket for each of our grandchildren and children and for our sisters and brother and for Tonia, our niece.  The blankets are cuddly and soft and large enough to be used on a bed or couch.  Each blanket takes 3-4 months to knit.  Vicky enjoys making things for those we love because the entire time she is working on the project she says that she thinks about that person and all the joy they bring into our life.

And now that we have a new granddaughter in Iowa Vicky has become a knitting queen for--little Aryana. 

For the past four months, since we went into isolation early in March we have stayed away from where people are.

In that time Vicky has completed many knitting projects and each one is a piece of art.

This is me working on the "Ian" project, a desert diorama.  This example of model making is different in that instead of building one I was "unbuilding" it.  I took a finished example of the car and made it look old.

The original.  You buy them this way from a company, no assembly required.  (boring!)

The fun is making it look old and rusted:

Here is a photo in the Mojave National Preserve with Ian inspecting this rusted-out 1957 Mercury. 

And here is the finished diorama of that scene:

I also build "Entex" model car kits.  Their kits are larger scale than average, and generally have 200+ pieces.  They are also unique in that they don't have the standard knob and hole feature, where pieces snap together easily for gluing.

I have always favored these model kits, selling many in my antiques/collectibles business over the years..  They were made by a famous Japanese company Bandai.  They are extremely difficult to build, which is why you can get many of them on eBay.  Generally all that was done was that the person started on them, said "this is impossible," stored them in the garage, lost some pieces over the next 40 years, and finally sold them. 

What I do is always purchase two of the kits I am building, so I have extra parts to use.  There are some 200-250 parts in each of these kits, and some of the parts, and I kid you not, are less than 1/8 inch by 1/8 inch.  The instructions are are terrible which is another reason one can often find partially built ones. 

Here are two totally cool vintage vehicles that Dan finished painting and building recently....

(Vicky wrote that sentence!)

A 1986 Daimler-Benz:

Ford Model T Stake Truck.

We have already started on our next projects.  I am building a 1/12 scale 1937 Cord and Vicky is knitting a colorful green blanket for our bed.

Time doesn’t stand still....it seems like we were married yesterday!

We were married nine years ago.  And my goodness, what a unbelievable nine years it has been! 

Getting married in our 60s we knew that time is a funny thing.  Suddenly you look and realize that ten or twenty years has past and you wonder where did the time go.  So when we met and fell in love (virtually at the same moment) we vowed that we would make each day count.  That every day would be a good day.  And every day has been even better than “good." 

Every day and night has been a day we took note of and have been able to say to each other in the evening:  “This was a day worth living.”

Nine years ago today we were at Mom and Dad’s assisted living apartment in Mesa, Arizona.  Mom zipped up my wedding dress, fastened a pearl necklace around my neck, and pinned flowers in my hair,  Dad carefully pulled himself out of his wheelchair and walked walked me into their living room.  When Dan saw me enter the room he glowed with happiness. I will never forget the look on his face. 

Dad performed a very touching and lovely wedding ceremony.  We had several telephone meetings with him because he wanted to make sure it was just right for us.  Dan wanted him to include two stories from the Bible--the story of the Prodigal Son, and the story of Ruth and Naomi.  Mom sang at our wedding. 

Dan and I made promises to each other and we both have kept these promises.

Our romance and wedding was straight out of a fairy tale where “they lived happily ever after.”  Of course, in the last nine years life has happened and we have had health issues, but we have each other and “we have lived happily ever after."

This year we are celebrating our anniversary in Mesa for the first time, back again where we were married nine years ago.  The Springs, the assisted living residence where we were married, is across the street from the  community where we live.  And our home is in the same community where Mom and Dad lived for almost twenty years, the years before they moved to The Springs.  Everyday we ride our bike by Mom and Dad’s home, and when we do we always say “Hi Mom, hi Dad,” and tell them any news we think they would be interested in.

Mom and Dad in front of the home where they lived in Leisure World. This is how we see them every morning as we cycle by the home they had owned and loved:

Today we went to The Springs, where we were married and said:  “Hello and thank you and we love you Mom and Dad.“  We feel very close to them living in Leisure World in Mesa, and we love it here.

The Springs is where Mom and Dad waved goodbye from their balcony every time we left after a visit.  And it was so hard to say goodbye that Dad inevitably said, “I wished you hadn’t come,” and we would all smile, but also cry because we knew what he meant.

Here is Mom waving goodbye to us from balcony at The Springs as we left Mesa in our truck and Chinook camper in April 2012 at the end of our first road trip.  Life was off kilter as Dad had passed away, but Mom waved to us for both of them.

It was good to visit the Springs today, where we were married nine years ago and it is good to be living here, in Mesa, celebrating these wonderful nine years.  This year we are celebrating our wedding, our marriage, our family, each other, and life.  For the first time where we were married.

After our 2:30 am  hour long bike ride (where we saw three skunks!) on our tandem, Daisy,  and after a beautiful starlit hour and a half walk, we arrived home hungry but excited as we had a whole day stretching ahead of us for our anniversary celebration!

Dan always forgets that I cook bacon for him on special occasions.  I was able to surprise him once again with a bacon, egg, and mashed potato breakfast in bed.

(side bar:  Dan here.  I don't ALWAYS forget.  One time I remembered!......I think). 

We exchanged anniversary cards, both giving each other vintage cards that are playful, tender, and loving.

Dan gave me a totally awesome cup coffee cup celebrating the life that we have created in all our years of camping and hiking and discovering such beauty together out in our grasslands and deserts. 

I was able to find Dan a very special wine cup from Horse Heaven Hills....our favorite area on our favorite bike ride.  It is in Eastern Washington, an area high on a plateau in farming and wine growing country.  We cycle eight miles up Weber Canyon to reach this plateau. 

It is hard cycling which make it even more rewarding and spectacular when we reach the top!  One year we did this ride against a 25-mph headwind.  It was grueling and wonderful!

Some of Dan’s favorite red wines are grown and bottled on the Horse Heaven Hills plateau. 

The wine cups have wild horses embossed on them which I think is especially cool as I have loved everything about horses since I was a child and have owned one for 31 years during my life, up until I was 60 years old.  Dan is a cowboy at heart and I am a cowgirl!

We had a surprise visit today on our anniversary.....for the very first time here at Nuestra Casa we saw our beloved Western Tanager.  We had often enjoyed the brightly colored Western Tanagers at our Whidbey Island home.  We believe Mr. Tanager came by to wish us a “Happy Anniversary!”  Thank you.

We celebrated our years together with our traditional fondue dinner. 

Dan gave me another gift straight from his heart.

We danced to our beautiful music in the activity room in our home, Nuestra Amarosa Casa.  Dan put together a dance list of “our” songs, each of which has a special meaning and is part of our history together.  I put on my red dress.  The dress that I wore on the night that Dan asked me to marry him.

We had ice cream for desert...just like children, we ate to our heart’s content.

Dan and I have been keeping a diary our our life together and with our family......our blog.  This year we decided to have our blog made into books so we could sit down together (like in the olden days before computers) and open a book to see and read about our life.  Books that will include stories and pictures of wonderful events in our life, but even more importantly, they will also include small, seemingly unimportant everyday events and thoughts that are often forgotten as time goes on, as the years pass.  

These books are our anniversary present to each other this year....our life.  We have twelve books.  Every year we will make a new book of our adventures, our family, our grandchildren, of us.  These books are our treasured possessions because they are our memories, our history.  When we are too old to go out in our beloved deserts to camp and hike and make new discoveries and have adventures, Dan and I will sit together and look through our books of our life and we will smile and laugh and we will cry.  And we will dance together every year on our anniversary.

Tonight we will watch our favorite “happily ever after” movie....Brigadoon.

Loving parents.....baby granddaughters

A photo is worth a thousand words....

Alison & Aryana

Milla & Hannah

Calvin & Aryana

Milla & Hannah

Alison, Aryana, & Calvin

Our Life...dancing together

There are many wonderful activities that Dan and I do together, but our very favorite and most meaningful is dancing.  We met at a dance and since that time have danced all over the USA.

We have danced on Whidbey Island and throughout the Seattle area at several dance halls and danced countless times in our lovely island home set in the middle of five acres of woods.

We did a dance performance in front of about 250 people to big band tunes for a old fashioned 1946 Radio Show. It was a benefit for the local public radio station.

We danced on our engagement weekend in Seattle when Dan asked me to marry him in the lush garden under the Space Needle.

We danced in Mom and Dad’s assisted living home at The Springs in East Mesa, where Dad married us and Mom sang at our wedding.  We danced on our wedding night at our favorite restaurant, Serrano’s, as Mom and Dad watched us.

We danced in my childhood home in Normandy Park and my parents joined in and danced with us.

We danced on our honeymoon at Disney World in the streets at Downtown Disney, and when we went to Savannah with Emily we danced in a quaint restaurant courtyard.  We danced on a riverboat in New Orleans on a cruise up the Mississippi River.  We danced several times on a lovely dinner dance cruise in Seattle’s Elliot Bay and watched the sun set behind the Olympic Mountains as we danced.

We danced every night in the ballroom during our fifth anniversary trip on the cruise ship from Seattle to Alaska and back home again.  We had the dance floor to ourselves and this was the highlight of our Alaskan cruise!  At our request the One Love Band played “I’m Yours” and “Lady in Red”.  Then they played a song we had never heard, and we danced to one of our now all time favorite songs, “I Want to Wake Up With You.”

On our anniversary one year we rented the Bayview Grange Hall.  This is where we had met at a dance. I wore the same dress and pink sweater that I had worn to that dance when Dan first saw me.  We had the whole ballroom to ourselves, and we danced and danced.

We danced at the celebration for Ian after our grandson became a Bar Mitzvah.

There are so many places we danced together while we were on a one of our many trips with our beautiful music amplified from our slide-in camper that sits on the bed of our pickup---the Everglades in Florida, Death Valley National Park, the Mojave National Preserve, several dance halls in Mesa, Montana de Oro in California, Bears Ears National Monument and Valley of the Gods in Utah, Granite Mountain Desert Training Center, Wikieup Arizona, Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, Fort Collins Colorado at Dan's 50th High School reunion, 29 Palms RV Resort near Joshua Tree National Park and in the Sheephole Mountains.

We have danced in the large ballrooms in our community and at Leisure World dances. We danced every Tuesday morning this last fall and winter at the Leisure World Big Band practice sessions (one of our favorite bands).

When we bought our Mesa home, Nuestra Armorosa Casa, we immediately decided that the room off the kitchen would be our “activity room."  So we had the rug removed and had a dance floor installed and left this room empty of furniture.  This is where our ping pong table lives.  We play ping pong there, and we repair our bicycles and use our activity room as a staging area for our beloved desert camping and hiking trips.  

And we dance in this special activity room that has no furniture except the Hoosier cabinet that Dan restored many many years ago (one of our heirlooms that we treasure).  Every Sunday this summer Dan has put together a beautiful, moving playlist of our music, I put on a pretty flowing skirt, we put on our dance shoes, and we dance! 

It is beautiful.  We forget that we are over 70 years old and I float in Dan’s arms and we feel young.  Maybe it’s not really surprising, but we actually move and dance like we are in our 20’s again.  We are dancers and we feel beautiful and young.

Dancing is part of our life and we intend to take each other in our arms and dance all our life together.