Chapter 286

This weekend has been so nice, it's almost like

is here!

Every year on the girl's birthday Bob brings me flowers. This has been happening twice a year since 1984 and a couple of time before that after Kyanne was born. Twice a year since 1984 and a couple of time before that after Kyanne was born I forget he does this and the flowers are always a wonderful surprise. Thanks for being so thoughtful when you could have gotten away with doing nothing and I would have been none the wiser!

Our little grocery store on the hill here serves a wide ethnic base of customers so there is always something interesting there for me to look at. I like to buy food I don't recognize and give it a try. I've met some interesting foods this way and some stuff I never want to cross paths with again. When I went to get stuff for our Super Bowl party, this can caught my attention as it has each time I pass it. I finally gave in and bought it. 

Basically it's SPAM but with larger chunks of pork. It tastes about the same. Not bad. Full-flavored and not as salty as SPAM I was thinking this stuff was A-OK. Then I read the label. Pork, OK. Seasonings, OK. Pork skin. Definitely NOT ok. I'm sure I eat it in American food too, but I just don't want to see it listed in the ingredients. Let's hope I don't have to eat rations with the Polish Army anytime soon.

No only are we feeding an incredibly hungry, and increasingly expensive, flock of birds in our yard, we inadvertently feed the squirrels too. After a bit of stolen bird food, the squirrel bellies up to the water bowl and has himself a nice fresh drink of water to wash down all that expensive bird seed.

And another thank you to Kyanne for taking Mary and me to the Chinese acrobat show last fall. She thoughtfully remembered I wanted to see Shen Yun long after I had dismissed the idea as folly. I thoroughly enjoyed the show even though we had to brave the pouring rain to do so.

Since Bob is the Rally Master for our club's Spring Thing Rally, we went out Saturday and drove the route Bob had mapped. Afterwards we met the Walkers in Ruston for lunch. The Tacoma waterfront was packed with runners, walkers (not those mentioned above), dog strollers and dogs in strollers, and folks doing whatever they could to be outside in the fresh air enjoying our early summer.

What a beautiful day on the Tacoma waterfront.

A seagull looking closely at all the pedestrians hoping they will drop them a snack.

A ferry boat of some sort?

Since it wasn't a very interesting week, I am going to submit you to another round of vacation photos. This week it will be Sedona. As with the rest of the trip, we had wonderful weather.

It's such a pretty little town in a beautiful valley. The rock formations on the surrounding hills are breathtaking.

As with our entire vacation, Bob was always on the lookout for penny machines. He could find them before my phone app could.

This is Bell Rock. We could see it from our hotel room. We stayed in the cheap seats a few miles from Sedona so we had a chance to look at the landscape each time we drove to town. We hiked around the base of this rock.

Look at this beautiful stone. The tiny white spot in the center is someone climbing the rock.

While we were hiking, we saw this sign for Llama Trail. It made us think of Carissa and her love of llama and alpaca.

Check out how this cactus has grown across the hillside so that it can trap water as it runs downhill. It's amazing how something without a brain can figure stuff like this out. I like how the middle arm is perpendicular to the hillside so it doesn't divert any water from the main plant base.

I was wearing Polarized sunglasses while we were hiking and it sure brought out the colors of the rock. This trick works great for taking pictures of things in the water. Here I let the camera look through my glasses.

This is Courthouse Rock. God put it right next to Bell Rock to make a nice Five-mile hike for us when we came to visit Sedona. You can see how huge it is by the dwarfed size of the cars in the lot in front of it.

We started out just walking around the parking area, then took a short trail, then around Bell Rock, then the next thing we knew we were making the full hike around both rocks. On the postcard I traced our path around both rocks to show how Indiana Jones-ish we were feeling.

Since I can't find shoes that fit my size 13 tootsies properly, I wear flip-flops for everything I do, including hiking in the desert. I don't think, however, the maid back in our hotel room appreciated me needing to wash my feet after the hike.

A pretty arrangment of sun-bleached wood, yucca, rocks, and me during our hike.

Dome Rock. Wonder where they came up with that name?

Just us and a few of our close friends watching the sunset at a park overlooking Sedona. This is about the only picture of it I got that didn't involve someone's raised hands and camera in my shot. At least this isn't the selfie-stick crowd we ran into at Grand Canyon. They were a tough crowd to shoot around too.

 Last but not least, here's pictures of Reagan.

Grampa wanted to get her her first Jaguar, which Carissa named "E" as in E-Type Jaguar. She loves her E.

It was love at first sight when she opened the gift at Christmas. She definitely looks like Chris here.

Reagan's "skullet" is growing out enough that she can wear a bow in the long part towards the back. Here she's holding her Zoo Pass as they wait to go into the Point Defiance Zoo.

New riding toy, probably from Aunt JoAnn. 

One of the toys in the cousin-me-down box was a handmade pelican Bob's mom bought at a bazaar. Carissa played with it as a child. There are little fish that can be zipped into the pelican's beak.

The Walker's have survived the first 9 months as a family!

Reagan is all dressed and ready for her swim lessons. She sure looks like Chris' father in this picture. 

Have a good week, Everyone!