Written, 7/9/2012 I am up in Flagstaff sitting on the porch watching the birds
as I type this. I came up and spent a
couple days with Faye, Javier and family.
The family consists of the 3 boys Nathan, Niko, Maceo and little Jules and
last but not least the 2 dogs.
That
makes for a fun, crazy, hectic time.
Each evening we went out on the golf course and tried to hit the golf
ball into the hole. We got a hole in
about 20 or 25. We lost balls in the
bush, but have many because the boys find them all the time. Jules would run up
and down and roll down the tees.
Every”body had fun. Jules
expressed it nicely by saying every now and then, “I am so happy!” and doing
her little happy dance (picture Snoopy from Peanuts).
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| Nathan, golf pro |
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| Maceo, notice the great form |
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The boys thought they might make money
washing and reselling the balls they found.
I told them how we gathered lost balls from the golf course in Brisbane
when I was 11. Some of them we found in
the bush, some in the pond. The golf
clubs someone left here have a gadget with a pole that extends made to lift
balls from water. So, they took that to
the nearest pond and found that the water was very murky. Niko reached in with his hands and then
Nathan saw the sign that says this is reused water which you cannot drink or
get in. Then they were totally grossed
out and that put an end to their plans.
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| Niko golfer supreme |
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| Jules rolling down the hill |
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| Me with one of my many near misses |
A nice little breeze
has just come up and there are fluffy clouds interspersed with blue, blue
sky. We got a really nice heavy rain
yesterday which was awesome. Beats Phoenix
and our 110 to 112 weather by miles! Now
I’m here by myself and am enjoying the quiet.
I’m looking at a hummingbird (Black-Chinned I think- need to get a
better look at the male), a Nuthatch, either a Hooded or Scotts Oriole, Hairy
Woodpecker, Stellar Jay, Ringed Turtle-Dove and a Blackheaded Grosbeak.
The Rufous Hummingbirds which
arrive in July aren’t here yet. Hope
they arrive before I leave on Thursday.
OMG, they just arrived as I am sitting here! They are so fun to watch with amazing swooping,
circular flying patterns. However, the
male tries to keep the other hummers away.
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| Stellar Jay |
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| Grosbeaks |
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| Male Rufous Hummingbird, on guard duty! |
I think we will get another rain today, it has started to thunder. Right after the thunder, I heard the train
whistle as it goes by just north of here.
The train is one of my favorite things about Flagstaff. It is just so pleasant a sound and
reminds me of other times, other
places. Growing up in South Phoenix, we
always had to cross the train tracks when we drove into town. There were no bridges over the tracks back
then. Sometimes we would be stuck for quite
a time (10 minutes or so I would guess) while we waited for a train to
pass. We would always count the
cars. I think that the long ones were up
to 200 cars long. Julian and I would
always take Rowan and Dilly to watch the trains go by when we were with them in
Flagstaff. They would get so excited to
see the trains.
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| Elisa and Bill playing Mexican Train Dominoes |
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My friends Elisa and Bill came up on Tuesday to take me to see Willie Nelson. He was playing at Fort Tut Hill (Coconino County Fairgrounds) at a new outside music venue in Flagstaff . The show was just awesome. He played nonstop for almost 2 hours playing song after song after song, Whiskey River, On the Road Again, Hello Walls, Always on My Mind, My Heroes Have always been Cowboys, Blue Skys, Crazy, Funny How Time Slips awaym etc. He is 79 and his "Little Sister on the keyboard" is 81. She plays a great honky tonk piano!
I want to write about our sisters reunion a few weeks ago. It started that Jacki was going to
be in town because she had to be at her yearly convention planning meeting in
San Diego. So, she convinced Diane to
come also (didn’t take much convincing-we haven’t been all together for at least
4 years). Then Kelsea (Jacki’s daughter)
and Alli (Paul’s daughter) both decided that they couldn’t miss all the fun, so
they came too. Of course Faye and her
family, Paul, Mom and Ryan live in town. Somehow we were never able to get everyone together at the same time. The boys are so busy now with all their activities and some people actually had to go to work! These 2 group pictures include everyone who was in town. 
We sang around the piano and played
games a lot. These are all things we did a lot
as children. So, we were finding the
inner child in our family so to speak.
It was really fun! Mom loved
being surrounded by all four of her children!
The only thing that we didn’t do that we did a lot in the summer was to
play outside. We are all wimps and can
no longer tolerate being outside in 110- 114 degree heat. We also perused Mom’s WWII letters. Jacki and I started scanning them. We laughed, talked, played with Jules and
Addison, and ate meals together. 
We had tea together every afternoon, getting back with our Australian roots and had
Mexican food a lot because Jacki and Diane are always craving Sonorian Mexican
food when they come. 
