Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

I seem to have come to a ‘writers block’🤔

when I lapse posting on the blog, WordPress changes the rules. I get a little confused, intimidated, and then mad 🤬(where are you Ray?) if I start on my tablet, save it, and then go to the computer to work on it everything is gone. It’s easier to put text in on the computer but it won’t insert pictures now. So I have to do that on the tablet. I guess I have some studying to do.

Anyway, I have enjoyed every minute of showing some of our travels over the past years. We traveled the whole United States, west coast to east coast several times including the northern border and southern border, and everything in between. Jerry kept the coach running and I kept the ideas flowing. It was a hard decision to pass the keys down to Hannah and Javie. But time marches on, and we must embrace the changes.

We’ve taken Amtrak on a few local trips when a company with three restored 1950’s rail cars, a lounge, a sleeper, and a dining car, were allowed to hook up their trains to Amtrak. We loved it. When a trip came up going to New York to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Grand Central Station we immediately booked the lounge car that had a bedroom for us. The group of people that took that trip was small and we all got along great. It was so much fun. Too bad that post got deleted from the blog😢and too bad Amtrak won’t allow that anymore.

Another trip with Martha and Ray to New York, this time in an Amtrak room, was so enjoyable traveling with our cousins that we called dear friends. Their son who lived there treated us like royalty showing us all the sites and favorite restaurants. We had a blast. A trip of a lifetime. That post is still up😉September 25-October 11, 2018. (I need to get those labeled as to what they are)

Train travel is a nice alternative to the coach, if you get a room that is. All meals are included and are really pretty good. You can even have them delivered to your room, but it’s more fun to eat in the dining car. You sit four people to a table, so you get to sit with and meet new people every meal. Kind of like a Bed and Breakfast which we like.

We had six meals going up and six meals coming home so we got to sample the whole menu. One of the highlights was the butter cake for dessert at dinner.

The train gives Jerry a chance to see the scenery, instead of keeping his eyes on the road for a change. The observation car is a good place to do that. We sit, relax, have a beer as the world goes by.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures while relaxing on the trip up. It’s hard to take pictures from a speeding train. I took a video of our walk to the dining car, bumping into walls, opening doors, but couldn’t post them here. I have to get an upgrade which I will do when I finish this post. I can’t take any chances of losing this now.

Javie’s mom picked us up from the train station and took us up to our Airbnb when we reached Tacoma. It was our first experience using one. It was really nice but probably too big for us. We have a lot to learn or maybe just stay in hotels.

And finally we got to see the great granddaughters the next day. What a delight!

Melody, what a smart little cookie, and so cute. She can talk your ear off at 2 1/2. Hannah and Javie had to interpret some of her words for us though.

and Scarlett, so smart and sweet, this is literally her first look at Jerry. She was quiet and very inquisitive as she checked us out that day.

and this one of Melody meeting Jerry

I hope I can figure this out so it doesn’t take so long to get one posted

so stay tuned

💗jilly

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day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year; life can be beautiful- and then it can get ugly.
It can be happy and then it gets sad, it can be pleasant and then turn awful; in the blink of an eye. But somehow we get through it. Slowly, until it happens again.

Losing family and friends is unbearable, and we all experience it our own way and not always in the same time frame. It’s a pain that really hurts, bad. It seems like it will never go away. I guess it never really does. We just learn to accept it and go on, it takes time, and it takes its toll.

I mentioned in an earlier post of our dear cousin Ray that fell one day and started getting unsettling symptoms. Unfortunately cancer in the brain was diagnosed, and then it spread. He fought hard but lost the battle and never got to go home as he wanted, passing in the hospital. Then only a few months later, one of my closest friends, Joni, lost her husband to complicated heart problems. He was rushed to the hospital, but he sadly never made it home again either. It’s been rough for Joni and Martha. My heart goes out to them. We are sorry for the loss of your husbands.

They say these things happen in threes. My mind went where it shouldn’t have, and thoughts crossed my mind of my husband. But then we got the call that my brother fell and damaged his pelvis. Along with heart problems, he spent a month in the hospital and a month in rehab. He didn’t improve so was sent home to have 24 hour hospice care. Jerry and I were there to greet him. We met the caregivers and Ted seemed to like them. He went to bed that night and was never able to get out of bed, never walking again. We made trips to Reno as he needed us. Unfortunately he also passed peacefully within six weeks. At least he got to go home. Probate is almost finalized, the house sold in March, his taxes were done on time, we paid bills as they came in and still do. I’ll miss our visits with him, not hearing his voice on phone calls, not getting his quirky letters.

Then again, while still in Reno, we got a call from Linda that Midas had been hit by a car and didn’t survive. I was devastated, no that can’t be. I wasn’t with him. It’s not fair. I can’t believe it.

You all know Midas was a street cat for 15 years. He knew the ropes, he was street smart. He never wanted to come in the house, no matter how we bribed him. He had a nice cozy porch to protect him. Then we got that hard rain one year, an atmospheric river they called it, we opened the door and he ran in this time. But outside still beckoned him to come out. So we reluctantly granted his wishes. He was happy staying in most of the day, but outside was where he could roll in the sand, get a bite of fresh catnip, check out HIS neighborhood.

We came home to an empty house that trip from Reno. Very sad. We loved him so much and miss him terribly. The house isn’t the same without him.

But like I said life goes on. We adjust. We deal with it, but it still hurts and takes it toll😥

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On a happy note 🙂 we leave next Tuesday on Amtrak to Washington to see Hannah and Javier and those two precious great granddaughters. Then drive to Portland to see Jessica, and we get to meet her boyfriend, Carter. Then back on Amtrak heading home. We have a lot of plans while there and I’m looking forward to posting on the blog again.

so stayed tuned for lots of pictures

💗jilly

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Midas has given us cause for concern for a while now. He’s had ups and downs with fatigue, throwing up, losing, weight, to name a few. He’s just not acting like himself. Of course he is 16 going on 17, so we all know what that means- he’s getting old

but one thing he does well, is sleep

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Tracy gave me this card years ago. I loved receiving it as she knows I love Mark Twain.

haven’t read that one yet

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And…….

I may be one of the only people you know that didn’t watch the debate

I did this instead

💗jilly

ps.thanks for your 1st comment Ted-I may have lost Ray’s😥but I gained yours 😄 Perfect timing!

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Global warming?

the above picture was taken July 15 of last year⬆️

the picture below is July 16 of this year⬇️same number of seeds put out, same number of days watered, same amount of love put in.

There are so many theories as to the dilemma of the earths weather changing and the effects it’s causing. We all read or watch the news, have conservations with friends and family, and feel the effects of the weather. It just feels different, whether we did it, or a natural phenomenon? I guess my generation will never know the exact reason.

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Most of you know how much we love Ian Bagg, 😂 the runner up on ‘Last Comic Standing’.

⬇️this photo was on his website. Look who’s on the right side of the stage. That’s us at the Hollywood Improv.

You can’t take pictures during the show at the comic and magic comedy club. Well that goes for any comedian performance. So I took this one before it started

we got the apricot glazed chicken that night💗oh so good, and a heart to boot!

We love to laugh, and the best medicine we know is laughter. So Ian is a great way to get to laugh out loud. He can be dirty but not in a dirty or demeaning way. So if you don’t like that don’t check him out. But if that doesn’t bother you, watch ‘You can’t say that’ on youtube. He is talking to me on the right through the whole show. He always responds when I raise my hand😂

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We had some great clouds last week, I googled and they’re called buttermilk clouds.

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My thrift store sewing puzzle had a missing a piece☹️

then Celia gave me another similar thrift store sewing puzzle, no pieces missing😊

Both were fun and challenging. It doesn’t bother me to have a missing piece cause you don’t know until the end. Jerry will always check the floor, and he has found many of those wayward pieces .

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One last entry. Since Jerry and I both have high blood pressure, there’s a new service that our doctor ordered that provides a blood pressure monitor to you so you can take your pressure at home and it is sent to “Dr. Kumo”, whoever that is, automatically and it keeps track better than at a doctors visit where the white coat syndrome comes into play. They don’t always follow these guidelines at the drs. office. They want to take it as soon as you sit down, feet dangling from that high exam table.

I always let them know to comeback in a few minutes.

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We’re sad we didn’t get to go to Tacoma while Tracy was there but Midas is showing his age and we just couldn’t leave him. We hope he has gotten better by October and we will take the train up then. It won’t be as chaotic up there by then anyway.

so all of you stay cool and hydrated and laugh out loud whenever you get a chance 😂😂😂

and stay tuned

💗jilly

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Scarlett came quite a bit early on July 8th. Tracy got there on the 5th just in the nick of time to be there for the birth. Good timing Tracy. She’s staying a month to help and be with her granddaughters. It’s a lot of work but she’s having fun too. And she gets to visit with Jessica. She’ll still be there when we visit so we get to see her for a few days🙂

Both mom and baby are well and healthy. Javier’s mom has moved to Tacoma and is helping also, and of course Javier helps and Jessica stops by when she’s in town. Hannah is lucky to have lots of help.

Here’s sweet little Scarlett peacefully sleeping. Ahhhhhh.

this is probably gas, but you never know, she might be dreaming?

We’re looking forward to sleeping in the coach while visiting Hannah and Javier. And meeting Scarlett and the now ‘toddler Melody’. She’s growing up so fast, it seems like it happened overnight.

We’ll be there pretty soon Melody.

ok gigi, just don’t feed me any of this-

stay tuned for more updates and photos 😊

💗jilly

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I have loved our pollinator friendly garden ever since we started it many years ago. It’s so much fun to see all the butterflies and bees it brings to the yard. We finally had a butterfly chrysalis survive.

Jerry happened to notice it on the bottom of the gate to the front porch. It seemed like a very odd place, but reading more about them, it isn’t. They can attach anywhere and to any hard surface. We left the gate open to keep it from moving to often and getting knocked off.

Monarch butterflies go through four stages during one life cycle and through four generations in one year. The four stages of the monarch butterfly life cycle are the egg, the larvae (caterpillar), the pupa (chrysalis), and the adult butterfly.

While waiting patiently for that last stage we saw this in the chrysalis.

It was so interesting to see this so close up.

We also now have a carpenter bee making a hole to lay her eggs in our ‘guardian of the deck’ gate in the driveway. It’s a carved wood African tribal figure we bought in Quartzite back when we went every year. It’s supposed to protect your property from evil spirits. I think it works since we have had no evil spirits come in. Yet.

We were stumped when we sawdust ⬆️ keep showing up in the driveway. That is one days work. It lasted over a week. So Google to the rescue to tell us what it was.

This is the hole we found. It’s so precise, like a drill had done it. Jerry has seen the bee only once so far.

And the neighborhood scrub jay family that Jerry has been giving peanuts to for years have now discovered Midas’s cat food and help themselves to it. He doesn’t mind.

I finished my Mother’s Day puzzle💗Utah is in it six times?

💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

I have some very sad news. We lost our beloved cousin and dear friend Ray to cancer. He fought a hard battle and frequently got encouraging reports. But it wasn’t to be. The disease had gotten a foothold before treatment began. We are all going to miss him terribly 😢

I mention this here because of how sad it will be without him in our lives. Not only of the joy and laughter he brought us, but we were in our fourth season, of eight, of the Castle series reruns. Shame on you for leaving us, it won’t be the same without you 😟. But I know you want us to carry on with Martha, so we will.

It also means I will no longer have his witty, sometimes cryptic, comments here on the blog. I will miss that 😭if it weren’t for him I never would have found this way to share our travels. I have thanked him profusely for that.

💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

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Hope all you moms had a nice Mothers Day. I sure did.

Since we aren’t traveling in the coach anymore, I have taken to posting more of the everyday things I enjoy now. I do my best to still keep it interesting. How am I doing? 😊 You don’t have to answer that.

You know I see hearts in everyday things, they just seem to appear to me. So I will probably always share those pictures I take of them. Case in point, making my cucumber salad the other day, I see a heart.

Javier once said he wants four girls, still true Javie? You’re on your way 😊

Melody is so photogenic….. I love all the pictures Hannah sends.
“she oughta be in pictures” “she’s wonderful to see” “she oughta be in pictures” “how beautiful she would be “ so I’ll always put in pictures of her.

I will probably always put pictures of my puzzles in too. I spend so many joyful hours on piecing them together, forgetting all my troubles in the process. I finished the one from sharon, all the time dreaming of that pink wicker chair; and of course the shed too💗

Sharon said she got that puzzle for me because the lady in the picture and the things in the shed reminded her of me. Thanks again 💗

😃

Tony got me this puzzle for Mother’s Day, thinking it would remind me of our travels going to every state. It sure will and I just opened it. Looking forward to putting it together.

And I still like to do silly little things that make me smile too, so I’ll include those pictures also.

so I’d love for you to leave me silly little comments to make me smile😀I love to smile

I’d love 4-U-2 stay tuned also

💗jilly

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In mid-July, Hannah&Javier are expecting another daughter; granddaughter, and great granddaughter, all rolled into one little baby. WOW! Four generations are all excited for the new edition to be a part of the family. Congratulations to everyone!

We hope to go up to Washington around the first of August to meet the new little one. Tracy will be spending a month with Hannah so it would a double pleasure to spend time together. We will even get to spend time sleeping in the ‘coach’. YAY! We miss it terribly. Maybe we’ll sneak away in the middle of the night and bring it back home 😃

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Spring is happening all through our yard now. I know, you have seen our flowers many times before, but showing them is one of the great pleasures of growing them. Here are some of my favorites….

other wildflowers came up with the poppies, check out that dark flowered one, and the little daisies came up again this year in the parkway😀but the sweet peas didn’t☹️

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did any of you see the trail it left in the sky? Celia called me to let me know, she knows I like such things, and I got this shot. Cool huh?

Another cool shot in Jerry’s eyes anyway, was this. I took it for him. Do you-all know what it is?

A Lamborghini😳😲👍🏻

my newest puzzle gifted from Sharon, is of ‘my dream’ of a garden shed/greenhouse. I want that pink wicker chair💗

but wait until you see the puzzle Celia gave me.

so stay tuned,

💗jilly

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Hope you are all having a Happy Easter today. It’s raining hard here so I decided to do a short post on Midas. I take pictures constantly of him and am thankful to have this outlet to share a few of them with you.

Midas really wants to lay on my puzzle table a lot more now. Maybe the lamp keeps him warm? Of course that can spell disaster to a puzzle in progress. Especially if I have them sorted to my liking. I catch him up there pretty often. He looks a little devilish in that light doesn’t he?

Then I catch him on the chair peeking in at me through the curtains. Hmmm?

He mistakenly thinks the coast is clear.

I didn’t have the heart to move him that time. Probably a big mistake, do you think?

I finished the puzzle with 1 piece missing. Uh oh, Midas? it was a brand new puzzle? We looked and re- looked, no luck. Then jerry, who is so good at finding dropped pieces, found it, quite a ways from the table.
Uh oh, Midas?

He does have so many other places to nap,

he gets the sun here in our new chairs during the cold days,

I guess he is even sleeping there at night because I see him there in the morning looking out the window when I wake up.

Our Midas is a treasure that we ‘treasure’ every day he is with us.

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Well, the sun finally came out so the kids across the street and friends got to come out and find the hidden Easter eggs after all. It sure looked doubtful for awhile. The little girls all dressed in pink got to come out first.

I have news to share on another post

so stay tuned

💗jilly

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Hello there, did you all remember to spring forward and move your clocks ahead one hour for daylight saving time?

We usually do at least the kitchen clock before bed but it slipped our minds last night. It’s pretty easy to know what time it is though, duh. But to remedy that situation I just ordered an atomic wall clock for the kitchen. They’re inexpensive now. Hope it works.

California passed a bill in 2018 to keep daylight saving time, but it takes 2/3 vote of the assembly and senate, the governor’s signature and congress to change the rules! WOW! Well we shall see when, where and if, it will change.

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now on to other stuff…

Hope you all had a nice Valentine’s Day. We were treated to a lovely dinner at Frank and Linda’s. We are so spoiled having restaurant type meals served to us right next door. 💗

💗and the table is always set beautifully.
We had lasagna and sausage with a gorgeous salad💗

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💗and our cutie patootie Melody turned 1 on February 15th 💗My how time flies.

We sent her Mickey and Minnie stuffed dolls along with some books.

I think she liked them💗

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And here are some of my recent puzzles…

this one ⬆️ was fun and fairly easy to complete

I always love Norman Rockwell ⬇️puzzles

Frank and Linda found this one at a garage sale. They had been to that area in Bivara, Germany. Have you been to that castle Tracy? It was a major challenge to complete, but I loved 💗 finding every piece. Those trees, Whew!

And my latest one was a joy to put together💗

so…..

keep looking for them💗

oh, and my handsome brother turned 81 on the 18th

now and again, once in awhile, this is us💗

here we are at our dermatologist getting our 6th month exams

so stay tuned, if you want – that is

💗jilly

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