Forest Camperee in May

Last weekend it was time for some of the valley folks to leave the hot desert temps and head for the cool climate of RIM country. Mega planning went into the choosing the perfect location to park everyone in order for the shooters and the quadders could stay busy. The chosen site was just three miles west of Heber and 2.5 miles north of the 260. Four families were in attendance Friday night and more joined on Saturday. Brent was in his jet lag mode, having flown in the day before from London. We joined the crew each day, as we were real happy to go home each night to our comfy beddie-by!


Woody, the Beltz trailer.


Dev and Dil loaded up Dev's quad with firewood!


Time to unload some wood.

That task kept them very busy.

Another past time was to play with a container of store bought worms! Dev asked if he could buy some worms when they were at Walmart the day before. "Sure, why not?" All of the kids had fun tormenting the poor creatures, including warming them up in the fire! Who would have thunk?

The kids even built a mote to encircle the creatures but it was a little difficult to keep the precious camping water to stay. This structure was affectionately deemed "Wormopolis"!

Lunch time with Uncle Brenty.

Sunday the kids built "Birdopolis", which included raking pine needles for a nest and digging holes for each of the kids (birds) to sit in and run their little trucks and toys in the dirt.

Sorry these pictures are so dark but you can see there's lots of trees so little sunshine was available to get good pics!

Besides a little rain on Friday night, the weather was great for everyone who wanted to quad or shoot one of the many guns from the arsenal on hand. The group was introduced to "Geo caching", which I'm pretty sure you will hear more about in future posts.

Until then....toodles!

Albert, Fish, Turkey etc.

This post is a conglomeration of a bunch of different topics!


Who is this guy? Well, of course he is Albert Einstein...one of Logan's school projects. He hasn't received his grade yet but I think he certainly deserves an A.


This is our catch for one day from Willow Springs. The big one on the right was NOT caught by me but we each caught 5.

Dil loves bugs, lizards and anything that crawls. This little guy was biting his thumb and didn't let go for several minutes.

A favorite activity is to make cookies.

Note the apron- Grammy's Helper. Actually I bought this one at the Mesa flea market and two others that did not have writing. My plan is to machine embroider the two and look for more blue jean aprons to buy, embroider and sell along with my other craft wares in the winter. So far I've not been able to locate a supplier.

Time for lunch in the forest. The boys also scouted the area for "rocks" and found what may be some meteorites. They are attracted to a magnet so they may well be a find. More research will have to be done.

You're probably wondering how the turkey hunt went. Well, there's no pictures so that may give you a clue. What does three tanks of gas get you besides a debit of $225.00.......a LOOK at a turkey! Oh, I think it was actually a LOOK at two turkeys. Beth wants to add to this expense, two more tanks of gas, turkey licenses and new hunting gear. She says we could have bought alot of Butterballs for $500!

I'm finally finished with this hand embroidery project for a lady in Iowa. These are four pieces of muslin that will be made into a quilt. There will be some patchwork quilting in the middle and around the perimeter.

A close up of some of the detail. It was a big project that took over 2 and a half months. I didn't keep track of the hours of labor but probably made a nickle an hour! The lady is very happy with it and has asked me to do another project for her.

A year ago this weekend we were in Charlotte, North Carolina for the NASCAR All star race. Looks like they will have a wet weekend, just like we did last year.

And lastly, Brent is flying non-stop today to Phoenix from London. He's completed the contract on the Queen Elizabeth and will be joining the Queen Victoria in July.

That's it for now. Toodles.

April Happenings

This is a picture less synopsis of our month of April.


1. We started off with JB having to report to jury duty in Holbrook (about an hour away from Heber.) This would be the third time he's received a summons since we retired...one for Maricopa County, which was easy to get out of....and one when we were on the road, which was also easy to get out of. He had no excuse not to do his patriotic duty. His name was the last of the selected jurors, which ended his thought that he was not going to get picked. The case was several counts of sex with a minor. It wouldn't be kosher to share details. All I need to say is "GUILTY". While we were home we had a nice 6 inch layer of new snow but it quickly disappeared. Oh, by the way, he got paid $12 a day plus mileage!


2. Following the end of the jury duty time, we headed back down to the valley to get Buzz ready to come up the mountain for the summer. That also included saying goodbye to some of our friends (the smart ones who didn't leave early to encounter spring snow storms back home). Also had to bid farewell to the grand babies but the plan is to see them in 2 weeks. So.... we got Buzz back home, unloaded all the crap and situated him at the Heber RV Resort in a storage stall (since our driveway can't accommodate the beast).


3. April 17th was Brent's birthday and he called from the Bay of Biscay...does anyone know where that is...well, somewhere between Lisbon, Portugal and Southampton, England. He had 2 more days to go before he could say that he completed his and the Queen Elizabeth's inaugural world cruise. The trek around the world included over 37,000 miles, 38 ports and 23 countries. About 800 people (oh... guests) traveled the entire cruise, while many others just did specific segments. What a wonderful experience, while earning a paycheck!


4. It was time for me to sign up for Social Security this month and I didn't waste any time doing so. The first day I was eligible was the day I enrolled on line! Woo-hoo! They called me a week later and said they had received my application and everything looked good except there seemed to be a discrepancy in 1986. A corrected W-2 had been received but instead of replacing the previous, she thought they just had added it to the existing one, which doubled the amount. So she's checking that out and I should be good to go with receiving my first direct deposit on Sept 21st!

5. Now we have to talk turkey! April 25th we started to scout for those "spring turkeys that you can call in and should be easier to hunt than in the fall"! We scouted for 4 days with varied results, but one day I did see 2 lady turkeys (can't kill those). We did see some tracks at the watering holes but many roads proved worthless.

6. Now it's hunting season, Friday, April 29th. JB gets up at 4 AM, gets to his spot and calls the male guy in but he had no decoys so when the guy got there, there were no lady turkeys in sight and he was too far away to shoot at. Besides, it was only the first day of the 3 week hunt! Greg and Dev came up Friday night to participate in the hunting festivities. Saturday morning, Sunday morning and Monday morning---nada!! They did see many other forms of wildlife: many deer, elk and javelina but no darn turkeys. See, they know it's hunting season! Gotta be smarter than the hunters.

(I should add that I got up at 1 AM to watch the Royal Wedding.)

7. JB will continue in pursuit, while Greg goes home and will return in two weeks with the boys, as they hope to participate in some turkey action!

That ends the happenings for April. Oh, JB has now signed up for social security, too. Stay tuned for the turkey update in May.