My dad turned 75 on February 28th. I was blessed to be able to travel to Houston to help him celebrate! I spent a week in the Houston/Cypress area and got to have a lot of fun spending time with my parents and my brother and his family. I got to go to two of my nephew’s basketball games (which my brother is the coach), and got to watch my sister-in-law, Mayra, and Craig down several pounds of crawfish, as they are in season right now. My parents successfully ordered a new mattress for their bed…I am sure there is film footage somewhere of my mom lying on a mattress in the furniture store and me bouncing up and down on the other side to see if she can feel the movement. (insert heavy sigh and eye roll here) I was super blessed to be able to see, hug in person, and go galivanting into the Texas countryside with my Scottish friend, Finona. I knew her in Norway, and she was my cancer buddy throughout the last 2+ years. Fiona is such a support to me…I don’t think she will ever understand how much our friendship has meant to me over the last couple of years. It is so much easier to open up to someone who is in the same place as you are. We were both bald together….sick and in pain together…and now both healthier but still living with that cancer cloud over our heads. We haven’t been able to connect the last few times I have been down here so this was a very special treat for me.

The highlight of my dad’s birthday was several calls from family as well as a mysterious knock on the door around 8:30 p.m. My brother, Craig, is a lieutenant in the volunteer fire department here in Cypress, Texas. He was on duty Monday night and decided to bring his firetruck and three crew members over to my parents’ house for ice cream and cake. When they left, they put on the lights and gave the siren a low whine before pulling out to go back to the station. I am sure the neighbors’ tongues were waggling the next day!

Here are a few pictures from my phone from this last week. As always, I had a great time!

I flew down Thursday to Houston to spend a week with my parents. It has been cold and rainy. The sun finally peeped out on Sunday and the temps are starting to regulate, although still below normal for here. I am having a blast spending time with my brother and his family. I already got to see my nephew play basketball, and will see one more game of his before I fly back on Wednesday. I was hoping to have wonderful basketball photos of Alex for my Week #8 photo, but I was called to be the scorekeeper in a pinch. Maybe for Week #9! I realized I needed to get some photos done and with limited lenses available to me and the weather being icky, I decided to give you a taste of my parents’ home. My mom is an avid quilter and you can tell that immediately. She has quilts on every bed, small lap quilts on the backs of couches and chairs, quilted wall hangings…quilted table runners, and extra quilts in every bedroom closet. Then my dad. His mind is failing so quickly now…but when I think of my dad, I think of his nearly 30 years of military service. His dress greens are hanging in the closet of the bedroom I am staying in. I took off the plastic and took a photo of his uniform…and also a small section of the quilt hanging on the wall in the room I am staying in. This is the taste of home for me….things that makes me think of my home where my parents live…quilts and uniforms. The photo I am choosing for Week #8 is the ranger tab photo.

I have been doing spring deep cleaning in my office….it has felt like spring here though I know it won’t in another 24-48 hours as the normal winter cold plus a bit more sweep in. However, it is currently 64 degrees and I spent several hours on the back deck enjoying the sunshine and taking some photos of this dashing guy. The first photo is the one I have selected for my week #7 photo. He kept cocking his head to the side as I was tempting him to sit pretty by talking to him about bubbles….his favorite pastime. The last one is the one I am going to use for the photo of Week #7. He has loved being outside in the warm sunshine today. I took out his bowtie this afternoon as he loves looking so dashing.

I was all set to do this challenge of a photo per week and my world was dumped upside down with a LOT of travel. Luckily I was driving and all the camera gear could come with me! I am playing catch up now. I had too many photos to choose from! Anyhow, I realize I only had put week one in….and we are in week seven now. So here are weeks 2-6! Eeks! It is already Friday and I need to get a photo done for this week! Okey Dokey! Gotta brainstorm a bit on this one!

Week#6 A bald eagle watching the world go by from his perch on a tree…taken in Omaha, NE

So my husband, as a former Air Force pilot, really loves bald eagles. He can spot them so easily and I have more than once nearly gotten whiplash when he has slammed on the brakes to see if that clump in the trees is actually a bald eagle. Nine out of ten, it is. He has eagle eyes. (see what I did there…) Nebraska actually has a large population of migratory eagles. There are a lot of eagles that nest here in our cold winters (which I guess they prefer). Who knew? There are places in the Omaha metro that you can spot bald eagles. You can also choose to travel to locations with dams especially, that eagles like to hang out at in large groups this time of year. So below I have some photos of bald eagles. Some don’t look like bald eagles because they are fledglings…teenagers. They don’t get their classical look of a white head and tail feathers until they are about 4 years old. Some of these photos were taken locally and many were taken at the Gavin’s Point Dam in Yankton, SD, on the border of Nebraska. All of them were taken in the bitter cold, because that’s when they like to be out and active. I have a very strong telephoto lens that I use for these shots. Obviously it is easier when they are sitting still versus flying!

We have been to Moab before….traveling from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas and back for Black Belt Seminars with karate. However, that was a long time ago and in the heat of the summer…with two active elementary school boys that I had to keep my eyes on or they would fall off a cliff or climb up something they couldn’t get down. Honestly, this was the first 15 years of motherhood with those two. A lot of fun and adventure…heavy on the adventure…and a lot of it a blur. This time it was just Rich and me. It was January. Not the time of year that most people venture out to National Parks. However, I am beginning to be a big fan of winter visits to parks. Although we have a National Parks pass, most of these parks are not manned during the winter. There is just not enough traffic to warrant the man hours. It wasn’t that cold. If you are from Florida, it may have been chilly, but Nebraska weather makes you hearty. We rarely even wore jackets. I didn’t have to wait for people to get out of my shots. That is huge. I do have some people in some of my photos of arches, but I did this by design to show the size of the arch. We stayed for a day and a half and hit Arches a few times (that is where I took the astrophotography photos) and also Canyonlands National Park, which I had never heard of. Both of them have gorgeous vistas and the red rocks with snow on them were particularly stunning, I thought. Of course, I am a winter person! The sunsets were amazing. The first day was crystal clear skies and the second had clouds…so I had a lot of God’s wonderful creation to work with. If you don’t know my husband, Rich, he is a big kid in a 53 year old’s body. He is always up for an adventure and something that makes my heart leap into my throat. On this trip, I met him challenge for challenge of sitting out on a ledge over a several hundred foot drop. I am not fond of heights, but was not going to let him out-do me this time. We were lucky enough to bump into another couple at a gorgeous arch and have them take our picture together. Funny enough, we had met two couples while in Moab and it was so deserted that we bumped into both couples in town and in both parks. If you want a little less stress with a National Park visit, go in the winter! Just make sure the roads are open! Moab is such a great place to go…I felt like we were on another planet a lot of the time.

We quickly stopped in Las Vegas. It was on the way and we could put Lily on a plane to fly back to Nebraska directly so she wouldn’t miss any more school. Rich played in a couple of poker tournaments and Lily and I went for a 6 mile jaunt down the strip and back people watching. We happened on an open mall and they were all decorated for Chinese New Year, so that was a wonderful find. I didn’t carry my camera with me, so most of these were from my phone. We had a good time and were able to put some miles on our legs after being in the car for so many hours. So Lily hopped on a plane headed for home and Rich and I kept driving…on to Moab, Utah for our next stop.

To break up the drive a bit heading back to Nebraska, we stopped at Sequoia National Park (then realized due to a recent snowfall that only 6 miles were open to the public!) and then went on to King’s Canyon National Park to see if we could actually see some giant sequoia trees. We had a great time and although the parks are actually connected, due to snow-packed roads, we couldn’t pass through. We decided the nearly 2 hour drive would be worth it and spent time in both parks. The second day, they had opened Sequoia National Park further, so we went through there again before heading out. Here are some of our photos from those parks and the motel we stayed at. They had sheep and goats and lots of hummingbirds as well as a beautiful hiking path that made me feel like I was in Scotland with all the boulders sticking out of the ground. The weather was pleasant and although we had a lot of fog when we were off the mountains, it really made for some cool photos. We even got to see the sun set above the clouds on our last day, which was absolutely gorgeous. I am a sucker for old barn photos and there were several on our way back and forth between parks. Tons of fruit and nut tree orchards as well. Interesting fact….we found HUGE pinecones and figured they were from the giant sequoia trees. Nope! They have small, tight cones. The large cone from the smaller sugar pine. The redwood trees actually have even tinier pinecones than the sequoias. I have a photo of Lily holding a sequoia cone. Sorry for the amount of photos…but know for each one, there is 5-10 I am not showing you. I had such a marvelous time!

My youngest son, Tim, has really been on the move the last two years! 18 months ago Rich and Lily dropped him off in Fort Collins, CO. He was there for a year before we moved him to Morgantown, West Virginia. Six months later, he is on the move again to California. Each time I leave him off at a new place where he knows no one…and doesn’t know his way around, etc., it makes my heart squeeze for him. I have done that so many times in my life, but I usually had family with me to help ease the awkwardness of moving to a new place. He does not, and although I know he is doing what he loves, I always have that hopeful momma voice in me, hoping he’ll quickly make connections and get into a routine that will allow him to start to feel at home faster.

Tim had been doing a lot of work online trying to sublet his apartment in West Virginia (his lease isn’t up until July) and then finding a place he could afford near Stanford University. That was the real kicker. Do you know how expensive it is to live in towns around Stanford University? Think basic studio apartment…now think of a cost in your mind….living two towns away…a 20-30 minute drive was $2500. Yikes. Not in the budget! He managed to find a website where he could apply to rent a room in a house…and found one in East Palo Alto (about a 15 minute drive to his building on campus) He is paying $1000/month to rent a room in this beautiful home. He really isn’t there much as he has settled into a routine of leaving around 5:15 each morning and returning home around 6:30 or 7:00 each evening. He has some free time in the afternoons but tends to use that time to take a walk or work out so he doesn’t have to leave the campus. Gas is expensive too…as high as $5.29/gallon which is INSANE. We got him settled in his new digs and then drove to Stanford University to get a look at the campus. It is very old and very big. It is also very beautiful. Tim purchased a Stanford U shirt to wear for his first day of work the next day. Since he was hitting the ground running the next day, and we couldn’t find an inexpensive place to stay, we rounded out the day building a daybed frame and bookshelves and helping him unpack most of his belongings. We had dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Caribbean food place nearby which was SO YUMMY once we finally found it! We then took off for our next stop near Sequoiah and Kings Canyon National Parks. Here are some photos of Stanford plus a few coming into the area on our drive in the fog.

I told you before that after Tim and I took a 2-day break and let a snow storm pass by, we gathered up Lily and Rich and then tag-teamed it to Park City, Utah. That was another long drive…13 hours. We stayed the next day to allow Rich and Tim to ski and Lily and I went to the Ice Castle nearby and to photograph some places nearby I had heard about. One is the White Barn (or McPolin barn) and then nearer to the ice castle, Tate Barn. I had a great day tootling around the area with Lily. We ate at a little hole in the wall place that had an entire wall of painted chalk board filled with all the sandwich selections. I tried something different. It isn’t something that I would make at home necessarily, but it was different. Take a slice of brown whole wheat bread, put some thinly sliced turkey on it, top with thinly sliced green Granny Smith apples (raw) and top it with provolone cheese and put it in a toaster oven until the cheese is all melty. Very interesting taste and texture. Not bad…just different. We all had a great day and a much-needed break from the car! The first few shots are from our drive from Nebraska to Utah.