Thursday, February 28, 2008

2007 Visitors - Aunt Joy & Uncle Dan

Aunt Joy & Uncle Dan drove down from Indiana to visit while Dad was in town, August 2007. Joy has beautiful gardens around her home, and brought me many clippings to get me started on my own yard. Unfortunately, Dad and I found out we have Poison Ivy growing in the brush along the gully! We had a miserable couple of very itchy weeks after trying to clear out the brush to get ready for the planting! As you can see from the following pics, our region was in the midst of a drought and this made difficult digging in the hard-as-cement soil. Despite the heat and hard work, Joy & her "baby brother" seem to have had a good time landscaping our yard.





Joy and Dan have a time-share near us. We had dinner with them one night and took advantage of the pool for a nice swim.





Rob and I enjoyed our visitors and look forward to learning more about plants & birds from my Aunty. Dan, Dad, and Joy seem to have enjoyed their visit very much too from their smiles. :}

Sunday, February 17, 2008

2007 Visitors -Captain Joe



In August 2007 Dad left his sailboat Jubilee behind in Ecuador for a month to visit us and other family here in the States. He's not one to be idle, and we kept him pretty busy with lots of home repairs. We also enjoyed many walks together: around the neighborhood, along the riverside, and in the Warner Park woods. Dad likes to eat good food, and cooked many meals for us to enjoy together. Here we are having a leftover smorgasbord one afternoon of salad, cheese, bread, and fruit. Yum!




We also played many games together, one of our favorites being FLUXX, where the rules keep changing as you play.



I won this round with my favorite goal card "Squishy Chocolate" (combination of Sunshine & Chocolate).



Dad won the next round with the goal card "Winning the Lottery" (combination of Dreams and Money).






One of our favorite local restaurants is The Loveless Cafe, which has the best biscuits around served with old-timey Southern gravy. I think of Dad every time I eat there because this is one of his favorite "comfort food" breakfasts. Here we are enjoying Dad's homemade Biscuits & Gravy for breakfast. Yum!




This is the morning Dad flew back to his floating home, I had to go to work at the clinic and so Rob drove him to the airport. We really enjoyed having The Captain under our roof (and not just because he's so handy with home repairs!). We wish we lived closer together or could visit more often. It's hard to have family all over the globe. Though we know he's happy to be back in the warm weather in Ecuador!