Dancing, Camping, Cycling, & Hiking on our Public Lands....living in the valley of love and delight
3:00 a.m. in the (brrrrrrrrr) cold and dark we did it. (high 40s; two days before it was 68 at 3:00 a.m., and it will be again tomorrow). But we were determined to cross this milestone today, so we rode despite the cold.....all bundled up.
Here we are arriving home, all happy.
Our little granddaughter, Aryana, is no longer a baby. She is now crawling, sitting, standing, starting to talk, and definitely interacting with us when we talk to her on Google Duo. She is an active little girl, a toddler, with a spunky, mischievous, and sweet personality.
We made a blog post filled with pictures of her first six months.
Here are several pictures our darling Aryana during her second six months. No words can describe this precious granddaughter of ours, only pictures.
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We got a good price, for a couple of reasons. One was that it was small. The other was that it had not been remodeled. It was an "unrestored original." For several years it had been a rental. And while this meant that a lot of upkeep wasn't done, it also meant that it hadn't been ruined for us. We could decorate it how we wanted, instead of paying for someone else's redecorating (that, given what we saw when we looked at houses here, we probably wouldn't have liked very well).
Because my parents had owned here for 20 years we knew some of what to look for. Mainly we wanted to be on a golf course. But more than that, we wanted to be at the end of a fairway. My parents were, and I learned you had much more open space than if you were along the side of a fairway. We also wanted a tile roof.
Because our Whidbey Island home was practically all windows, we also knew we wanted a home with a lot of windows. On the golf course side of our little Nuestra Casa were three large sliders. And two smaller doors. In other words, the back side of the house is practically all windows, giving us a wonderful sense of the outdoors.
One of Vicky's life-long hobbies has been gardening. So she set about improving the outdoor areas of our home--i.e., creating gardens.
Here are some photos of what it looked like when we purchased our home--pretty plain.
A year ago we wrote a blog post about how she remade the back yard into a garden. Looking back at the photos on the post we can hardly believe the difference. Back yard garden creation.
Vicky took over, and has made a complete transformation of the front and back. In the back she took part of our lawn and created an entire desert flower garden. She did this a year ago, and it is really beautiful.
People frequently stop by in their golf carts and tell us how much they enjoy both our front and back garden areas. In fact, right after publishing this blog entry. someone else stopped by to tell us how much she liked our gardens. When I hear these compliments I always give credit to Vicky.
Gardening is one of Vicky's hobbies. She has created a wonderful desert plant, desert cactus, and flowering bushes garden. She does all of the work herself, with the exception of the heavy lifting that I do for her.
Arizona set records this summer for heat and lack of rain. This meant that she worked extra hard to make sure all of the plants were watered. She lost a few, but has replanted those. Several times over the summer I walked out and asked her if she's OK in the heat. It can fool you, especially when you love doing something. I'm always willing to help out, of course, but it is her hobby and she enjoys it. Our gardens are her creation.
Leisure World maintains plants if you want them to. However, what this means is that they basically scalp the flowering bushes. So this means that she has to cut bushes back, trim, edge, get rid of weeds, etc.
Even in the dark. You've got to love something to do this:
Vicky likes to create and experience beauty. She knits every day, sews, makes jewelry, gardens, and travels and hikes in our beautiful natural areas. She cooks, and loves that as well (that is the subject of a later blog post I will write).
We enjoy these gardens every day. One important reason is her planning--she planted shrubs, trees, and vines that blossom all year round here in the Arizona desert sun. We also have a pair of creosote plants that when we do get the occasional rain have the sweetest smell on the planet. A treat for all of our senses.
In summer, when it is too hot to be outside, we spend much of our days sitting on the couch, doing our activities, and looking out of our large sliders at her gardens. They bring us both a lot of pleasure.
This is what we see--down the fairway from our living room:
Although we have been unable to hold our little granddaughter, Aryana, we have been able to “watch” her grow from a newborn into a eleven month-old baby. When she was very young. Alison and Calvin asked if we could “talk” to Aryana so she could get to know her grandparents. We, uh, said "YES!!!"
We downloaded Google Duo and have been talking to Aryana (and her parents) ever since.
We have been having such fun talking to her, listening to her “talk," and watching her play. Most important of all is that even in the middle of a pandemic, we are not missing out on seeing this little precious girl grow, develop, and be in her baby stage. And last week we got to see Aryana as she crawled for the first time!
Here are some photos of Aryana “talking” to her loving, adoring grandparents:
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One morning our cell phone rang just as we were finishing our 4 mile walk around the ponds and golf courses in our neighborhood. The sun hadn’t even started to rise over the desert mountains, but a baby doesn’t necessarily wait until daylight to stand up for the first time.
Aryana wanted to show us how she could pull herself up and stand....and fall....and stand....and fall, over and over again. At least 10 times she stood up and fell over and every time she stood up, she grinned at us! It was simply delightful.
On October 11th, Aryana waved to Grandma and Grandpa and we actually, REALLY heard her say, “bye, bye”!
