Easter 2014

Easter Sunday was a warm, spectacularly beautiful day. Here are Mark, Kristi, Chip and Penelope, just after the service at Plymouth.

Happy to say that the ice is officially out of Lake Calhoun completely as of mid-day Easter Sunday!

More Wildflowers

As we were leaving Fredericksburg today, we stopped at Wildseed Farms. On previous days as we were driving by, we saw their huge fields of cultivated wildflowers - flowers in rows and the huge fields of flowers from scattered seed. Their Web site says: "The farm has more than 1,000 cultivated acres in Texas and over 200 acres of wildflower fields at its Hill Country headquarters outside of Fredericksburg."

It is just breathtakingly beautiful. We parked and walked through their shops, their garden plants for sale, and then you reach the fields. As you stroll by it looks like solid color with flowers so dense you can't see the earth. They let you walk in one section of the blue bonnets, stepping carefully between the rows. 

Here are a few photos I took, which really do not do this beautiful place justice. As we continued our drive today to Bryan/College Station, we saw even more roadsides lined with color - reds, blues, yellows, pinks, white. I read somewhere once that the Texas Highway Department is the largest landscape gardener in the world. They scatter tons of wildflower seeds along the roadsides of Texas every year. It is really remarkable. 

Texas Hill Country

We have been in Fredericksburg, TX, for the past several days. This is a charming town in the heart of The Texas Hill Country. Not far from here is the Lyndon B Johnson ranch on the banks of the Pederales River, a place he and Lady Bird dearly loved. 

When we were here before people could tour the ranch, but Lady Bird was still living in the house (she outlived him by over 30 years), so it was not open. After she passed away in 2007, the house passed to the public and to the National Park Service which was what LBJ and Lady Bird always wanted. 

No photography is allowed in the house, but is allowed outdoors. We can easily see why they loved it here so much - it is beautiful property. The house is virtually unchanged from the 60's so is frozen in time. 

I snapped some photos around the property, including the main house, the house where LBJ was born (also on the ranch property), the plane he flew in to get to the ranch which has a landing strip, the River, and the cemetery where they are both buried.

LBJ birthplace

Cemetery

Today we did a long drive in the area northeast of Fredericksburg. There are blue bonnets and other wildflowers all over the place, just beautiful!  In some places we could see solid fields of blue bonnets, this in spite of the fact that it is extremely dry here. Here is one roadside display. 

We also walked in the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. We were looking for a black capped vireo and a gold cheeked warbler. Naturally we didn't see either. I am sure our friend David could have seen them!

Last Spring Training Game

I tried to post this photo at the ballpark last week but there was too much traffic on the network. 

I took this photo last week of Gary at Cubs Park in front of their iconic sign that normally displays various information. 

Past Two Weeks

The time has flown by incredibly fast. We have had a wonderful time with local family, friends and family who were/are also visiting Phoenix, and with our younger son and his family who just left today.

We have been to quite a few ballgames with visits to Cubs Park (Chicago Cubs), Salt River Fields (Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks), Phoenix Municipal Stadium (Oakland A's - their last season there - next year they will be at HoHoKum which the Cubs just vacated for their shiny new park), Scottsdale Stadium (San Francisco Giants), and Camelback Ranch at Glendale (Chicago White Sox - also home of the LA Dodgers but we didn't see them). We went to several games at Salt River Fields with friends and family. Here are some photos of a lovely evening with Gary's brother Steve and my sister-in-law Jan, my brother John and sister-in-law Nancy, friends Cammy and Rich, and my sister-in-law's husband, John (Gary's sister Mary had a cold and was unable to attend).

Two of my wonderful sisters-in-law, Nancy and Jan

Steve and Gary

The two John's - my brother looking at the camera, and my brother-in-law, the other John. Rich is in the background.  Sorry, Cammy. For some reason I didn't get a photo of you that night.....

When John and Nancy were here, we did a hike at McDowell Preserve. Here are two photos of that great hike.

Gary, John, Nancy and I also had a great walk at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve at Water Park - a water reclamation project for the city of Gilbert. This wonderful place is just loaded with migratory birds of many species over-wintering here. I run there as often as I can. Mary, Cammy and I also walked there one day. Here is John feeding the Percherons which are at a neighboring farm near the preserve. Somebody gave us some carrots to feed the horses, so John did it.

Great Blue Heron - not in the water......

And a visit just finished - a wonderful one with son Rob and daughter-in-law, Maria and our two grandchildren, Henry and Annie. Here is probably the best photo I have ever taken of Henry and Annie. The three of us were laughing at our inability to find a place to hang out in the very nice resort, The Sanctuary, while we waited for Rob to finish a phone call and for everybody else to get ready for a SF Giants night game.

Yesterday was just about non stop fun and one miracle.

We went to our second Giants game during the day at Camelback Ranch - great game in this beautiful newer stadium. BTW, the Giants did win both games we saw. 

Then we decided to drive over to the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden where there is currently an exhibit of blown glass called Chihuly in the Garden. This has been one of the hottest tickets in town this season. We wanted to see it after dark because the blown glass sculptures are lit, making the tour through the gardens a magical time. The Web site said that Saturday evening was sold out. This did not deter Maria one little bit, (who shared with us a story of how she had just talked their way onto a refurbished Thunder Mountain ride at Disneyland last weekend after the ride was maxed out that day). 

By some miracle we found one parking place in the Botanical Garden parking lot that we squeezed our two cars into.

Then we watched as Maria performed her miracle. Her secret is that you can almost always get in to a museum, garden, almost any attraction where memberships are sold. She walked up to the Membership booth with waiting staff eager to sell memberships, bought a year-long membership which admitted their family and which included two adult one-time-only passes. She paid probably less than ticket admission would have been (if we even could have bought tickets!) for all six of us. Then she found out that, while the restaurant was full, the grab-n-go food was readily available, so voila! Dinner. We could enter the grounds at 8:00pm which was exactly what we wanted. It was amazing. Gary and I were giving us all no chance of getting in. It shows what determination and persistence can do.

It is an amazing display at night, viewed with the cacti and other desert plants as part of the displays.  Here are some photo highlights:

Final photos: at the White Sox/Giants game:

Anniversary Dinner

We had dinner Friday with good friends and the family members who live in Scottsdale. Lovely time! I don't know why I didn't get a photo of everyone. Growl. I guess I was just having too much fun to remember this. But here is the dessert that surprised us, and here are the old folks enjoying every minute of our special day.

More Fun with Friends

We attended our first Spring Training baseball game last week with Sue and David Astin, and Cammy and Rich Iverson. We were at Salt River Fields and saw the Colorado Rockies crush the Arizona Diamondbacks - something like 12-0. It was a beautiful day and Salt River Fields is truly a wonderful facility. What was even more fun was seeing two of our "own" former Minnesota Twins players play for the Rockies. Michael Cuddyer has been with the Rockies for several years now, and I believe that he has done extremely well for them. He is a great guy in every way. 

But now the Rockies scored another of our star players - the much loved and respected Justin Morneau who was, sadly, traded to Pittsburgh just prior to the playoffs last year. Justin got some great play time with Pittsburgh and a run at a championship. Of course that didn't happen. But then he became a free agent and signed on with the Rockies. Lucky them. He is the starting first baseman. He got two at-bats (maybe three) but didn't get on base. We will be following him throughout our time here and beyond.

Here is our merry band at the ballpark. Once again, I am sure David has some great photos (see my previous post below), but none with him in them!!!

This was the first game of the Spring Training Season at Salt River Fields, and all team members on both teams lined up on the field prior to the National Anthem.