Sharing Thanksgiving With Extended Family

This Thanksgiving we were invited to the home of Jen's "best friend in the whole wide world" for dinner. We accepted only if we could participate in the cooking. Jen was in charge of appetizers, and I was in charge of stuffing. The turkey was barbecued "unstuffed" so I didn't have to get there to stuff the bird. We did our cooking yesterday so we had a relaxed morning and left the house at 11:30 a.m. so we could pick up Mom by 12:30 p.m. in order to arrive at our hosts' home by 1:oo p.m. Mom was anxiously waiting for us when we got to her place. She had a great time being with family paying lots of attention to her, and loving her to bits.

When we arrived we sat in front of a giant-screened TV and she and I decided to place a $1 bet on the football game. I told her who was planing and she chose the NY Jets to win, so that meant I had the Dallas Cowboys. As you may know the Cowboys won 34 to 3. However, Dodie changed her mind in the third quarter and insisted that she had the Cowboys all the time. I just cracked up inside and paid her the buck. It was too funny, and so what? It was well worth a buck to watch a football game with my mom on Thanksgiving.

We had a great time and she didn't really want to leave, even though there were quite a few yawns coming from her by 5 p.m. so she thanked everyone for inviting her and claimed she had such a nice time. We were so blessed to have her with us. We are really looking forward to her moving closer to us soon, so we can spend more happy times with her!

Here we are enjoying the Cowboys vs. the Jets football game.

What a wonderful family to spend Thanksgiving with.

Mom enjoyed conversation with the other "gramma" present.

JD loves his drumstick. When his father arrived, he enjoyed the other drumstick. I guess you call this "like father, like son!"

The boys had a great time laughing and jumping on the trampoline.

And the girls enjoyed just being girls!

Here's Mom accepting her prize money!

Mom and Ken enjoying a laugh together.

Mom enjoyed host's cute little dog, and said "I miss my Daisy!"

Our three-generation-picture for 2007.

Best Friends in the Whole Wide World!

Life is Good . . .
spending Thanksgiving with Family!

Meet Mr. T

We were excited to meet Jen and the kids at her new house this afternoon. Sitting out at poolside Ken noticed a Tarantula crawling out from the edge of the pool, like he had been trying to figure out how to get a drink of water. He mentioned it to the boys who immediately were fascinated by the giant spider. They had seen the last blog and hadn't thought about them actually being so close to one. Well . . . they played with "Mr. T." for a good forty-five minutes, and would check on him several times throughout the rest of the afternoon. KL came to see it and she wasn't one bit interested to get anywhere near it, and was quite content to head back up to the barn where she dreams of having a horse to spend time with someday.

CD was first to see it. He loves watching and caring for any insect. He wanted to find a jar to keep it in. We advised him to just enjoy it in its natural habitat because it is a bit big to keep housed in a jar. CD was satisfied with that answer and loved just watching it. He got brave after watching his brother with what they lovingly called "Mr. T." for, of course, "Mr. Tarantula."

These spiders crack me up. When they get a bit agitated they make themselves look real big by straightening up their legs and standing tall. That hairy part which looks like his rump sticking up in the air is actually his abdomen. See notes below as to why it's bald!

Some interesting facts about these creatures:
• Tarantulas are harmless to humans and can be trained as pets.
• The Tarantula spins no web but catches its prey by pursuit.
• They have eight eyes all clustered together.
• There are more than 800 species of Tarantulas.
• In the Fall, males locate a receptive female by the scent she leaves on the silk of her burrow, and after performing a courtship dance, mates.
• Males usually die a few months after mating, but females may live and produce eggs for 25 years or more. It may die a natural death or be eaten by the female, sometimes even before mating can occur.
•The tarantula is a nocturnal hunter. It does not spin a web to capture its prey, but catches food by speed. It will virtually eat anything of the right size that moves within range, but feeds primarily on small insects like grasshoppers, beetles, sow bugs, other small spiders, and sometimes small lizards.
• A conspicuous bald spot seen on the abdomen of many tarantulas (notice Mr. T's bald spot) results from the spider's defensive behavior against its vertebrate enemies. When confronted, the spider will rub its hind legs over its body, brushing off irritating hairs into an enemies eyes. These hairs are replaced during each successive molt.

Both boys were pretty anxious to pick it up and felt more comfortable trying to do so after they donned the gloves their mom brought out to them. The tarantula at first had no interest at all and moved quite quickly to get out of the way.

With their mom's gardening gloves on they were brave enough to coax Mr. T. to crawl up onto their gloved hand.

JD was quite patient because the tarantula crawled very slowly when he'd approach it with the gloved hand, and he was pretty excited when Mr. T. felt comfortable enough to crawl onto his hand.

After JD lost interest, it was CD's turn to try to get the tarantula to crawl onto his hand. I think the tarantula was just plain tuckered out by then and had no interest to do much of anything anymore!

It was loads of fun for me to stand back and watch and catch the images to share with you. There's no way I wanted to pick that thing up, that's for sure!

Life is good . . .
especially when I can share it with my grandchildren!

A Working Co-Op

Part of the privilege of having a home base in Park Sierra is the obligation to contribute to the work of the park, thus keeping our expenses down. Normally, my part is to publish the monthly newsletter, the Speak EZ. And K helps with the weed-whacking in the spring time. We are both on a Board committee which takes up a good deal of our time. Plus we do other jobs which we enjoy doing, like putting on a lunch or dinner for usually over 200 people. That said, I'm going to share with you what we chipped in to do today.

Actually I have to back up to about mid-September while we were crabbing at Winchester Bay. There was a real scare at Park Sierra—a FIRE, which started (by arsons) on the other side of the stagecoach road, a dirt road which borders our property. (It actually was the road in the days when visitors were taken by stagecoach up to Yosemite.) The fire department responded very fast with 5 engines, 20 firefighters, a helicopter, and a tanker airplane, plus a dozen inmates—all working as a team to put out the fire in 4 hours (which had burned about 6 acres). Four fire fighters even spent the night at the park, sleeping on the ground near their engine, just to make sure the fire didn’t start up again. The captain complimented our weed-whackers and brushing crew for doing such a fine job keeping our property well trimmed. It could have been such a disaster. Fortunately no rigs or structures were harmed. The brushing crew is currently hard at work clearing our neighbor’s property 100’ back from our fence-line. And they need all the help they can get. That's where today's post comes in. The work needed to be done included tree trimming and brushing. I decided to join the crew this morning just because there is so much to do plus it was a good workout!

I took these pictures to publish in the Speak EZ to show those members who are not in the park the fire damage.

We were so lucky the fire department got to us so fast.

The neighbor's property hadn't been touched in years. In the past the neighbors would not let us onto their property. I think the fire was a good scare, since we finally got permission.

K (on the left) and I spent the first two hours dragging the limbs up to the road as they were cut by the guys with the chain saws. I want to do that part next time!

Then the next hour and a half was spent feeding the chipper. There I am waiting with my branch! Those green sleeves I'm wearing were given to me by the guy running the chipper to protect my arms. I thought that was pretty sweet.

I was glad K took these pictures of me, because I'm going to use them in the next Speak EZ to get other women out to help.

After our coffee/cookie break as we were rolling down to where we were working, I noticed something moving . . .

I grabbed the camera and zoomed in on him . . . a male tarantula! This is tarantula season and we don't see them very often but we do occasionally. I think we scared this one because he just stood real still and even stood up as tall as he could so we could see how big he was . . . like he was trying to scare us with his size! They are pretty hairy as you can see. I've been told they don't bite . . . some people even keep them as pets—not something I'd ever think about!

Fall in California's Wine Country

We've been home in Coarsegold for a week. It always seems to take us a while to get back into a routine when we've been gone for so long, this time over five months. But I do have some pictures to show you from a quick field trip a few weeks ago. While we were staying at the Thousand Trails Russian River and visiting with family we took time out on our way from Cloverdale to Healdsburg to visit the Rosso and Bianco Winery, the new winery belonging to Francis Ford Coppola. It was special to us because we (meaning Fountain People) have a fountain installed at the entrance to the winery and we wanted to check out it out. But take a gander at the breath-taking grounds. Oh my gosh, it was a gorgeous day!

This fountain is quite simple but elegant— and it sparkles beautifully during the day and dances in colored lights at night.

Taken from the top of the stairs near the entrance where the fountain is located.

This is taken just at the beginning of the long driveway overlooking the vineyards. Beautiful flowers, planted as if they grow there naturally.