Vacation Update

The vacation to Colorado started on Friday, October 7 with us leaving Oklahoma City at roughly 9:00pm and arriving at Canon City, Colorado at about 10:00am the next morning. Yep, it was an all-nighter with only about a 1 hour stop for a short nap. Our son, Eric, and I switched off on driving.

While we were actually about a week late for the best autumn colors, they still weren’t bad, and some of the trees at the lower elevations were actually at a good stage. Roxie, Jo’s sister, spoke of the description of mountains in fall where it appears that they are on fire. That is because many aspens will turn colors with the leaves at the tops of the trees being red and the lower leaves being yellow. When they are “blanketed” across the mountain’s sides, the leaves seem to give the effect of fire.

While we saw aspens with red tops, they were not blanketing an area, so we didn’t have the same effect as Roxie saw the week before. However, as I mentioned, we still got to see some great colors in the trees as well as quite a bit of snow at higher elevations and sheltered places.

On our first day there at Canon City, as far as sight-seeing, we only went out of town a ways to the Royal Gorge. This is a sight that Eric has never seen. There was also another sight that we saw that even I have never seen. How is this for an RV?

In addition to the mention of snow, in all the years that we have traveled to the Colorado areas, we’ve never been there this late in the year. Thus, we have never seen the Spanish Peaks in SW Colorado with snow on them. So it was a real treat to view this image between Trinidad and Walsenburg, Colorado. Needless to say, even without seeing the autumn colors yet, I was getting excited.

After that first day of arrival on the 8^th, our week had four days of driving around different areas of Colorado taking pictures and seeing the sights. We have always had the good fortune of having relatives that love to take us around to see all the sights. So, I must offer my sincere thanks to our hosts, Roxie and Richard, with special thanks to Richard for doing all the driving and stopping when we wished.

Since it is fairly late right now, having had a busy day of preparing the Mobile Suites for our trip on Monday to the SOITC Central Region rally in Grove, Oklahoma, I will not write much, but I will promise more to come in the days to come as I give “reviews” of what it was we got to see.

So, until I have the time to really do any writing, all I can do is tease with a photo or two. Since I took over 2500 photos in the last week, all you will get to see are a few of them anyway. I just hope I pick some good ones to show you.

So, here is a bit of color:

And, a critter or two:

So, until I have better opportunities to write, I’ll just have to tease.  I’m still trying to decide whether to write entries for each day, of for each excursion area where we went.  Likely, it will be the latter as it will be easier to cover what we did and saw.

So, please stay tuned, and I really hope it is worth the wait.

Autumn Anticipation

Considering I am distinctly anticipating our vacation in Colorado this month, mostly because of the possibilities of some good autumn colors, I thought I would start October off with some more photos of my mother’s paintings. This group will be the last ones that I have images of, and I won’t have others until I happen to visit my sister and have an opportunity to take photos of some more of them.

Coincidentally, some of these paintings are of autumn scenes as well. That should help to get me to REALLY anticipating our trip.

First, to the western theme and one of the more rare paintings that she did with figures in them, this is one that includes a cowboy on a horse. It is also blessed with a good vista as a background.

Next is one that has the autumn colors in a portrait format instead of the more normal landscape type painting of mother’s. I would like to think that the trees are Aspens, again anticipating the Colorado trip, but I really think these are Birch trees. But, since I could be wrong, I’ll leave the possibility that they are odd Aspens.

I think this next one was painted for an old friend who passed away before Mother, but I can’t be sure. I do know that he liked the sight of western windmills because he grew up in the Oklahoma Panhandle and windmills were a staple of the ranches of that time. Kenny was “Cowboy to the Core.” (I will have to explain that sometime in another post. That may give you something to anticipate.)

Autumn colors once again are present in this next painting. If I remember correctly, this one was a smaller version of one that Mother had painted for Jo’s parents to put over their fireplace. I liked it so much that she painted a smaller “copy” for Jo and me. If nothing else, Mother was generous and accommodating.

This next one is not necessarily a favorite of mine because it doesn’t seem to have quite the defined detail that a lot of Mother’s paintings had. If you recall an earlier post (if you have even read it), she used to “dab” her brush against the canvas to create the leaves on trees. That “dabbing” technique tended to put just a wee bit of a third dimension to her paintings.

This next one is also a favorite, plus I think it is one that my online friend, Richard, might appreciate, considering that he is part Native American. And, since he and his wife have recently sold their home in Santa Fe, they will likely become nomadic like the subjects of this painting.

Until I get the opportunity to photograph more of Mother’s paintings, any I show in the near future will have been done by others who were students of Mother, including Jo. Jo doesn’t seem to appreciate her paintings as much as I do, so those will probably be shown in the next posting about paintings.

Along the same theme of the American Indian culture, here is a photo I took at Mesa Verde near Cortex, Colorado.  We spent the whole day touring that park, so I got a lot of photos, all of which will not be able to be included in an upcoming review of a vacation.  I normally don’t like to get such photos with people in them, but considering the popularity of Mesa Verde, especially in good weather, they cannot be avoided.

Setting a Precedent and More On Genny

There has been a saying that I like to quote, one that almost always causes the listeners who hear it to be taken aback and have to ask for clarification. I was once told that it is a quote by someone else. However, after I have done pretty diligent searching with the use of two or three different search engines, I have been unable to find another source of the quote by anyone else that is searchable via internet search engines.

Since my blog lists that photos that I have taken and ‘most’ of the text written by me has the ‘rights’ reserved by me, I will thus put it here where it has a ‘presence’ on the internet and written by myself. The quote goes as this:

“I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know, therefore, I DO know it all.”

Having thus now been written and posted upon my blog, any further uses of that quote must include my name as the source. Otherwise, anyone using that quote without my permission will be subject to punishment. You know….. something like being flogged with a dry feather.

My work day was really a long one today. Since I don’t have a lot of vacation days built up, I don’t want to use what I have up and mess up the vacations that we want to take. So, I had to work the whole day instead of going to see Genny.

I was able to retrieve the photos on Photobucket on my computer at work, and everything looked normal. So, I sent those from my work e-mail to our home e-mail account with the hope that everything worked from that source. Those were also elongated as well. So, I decided that it was our default image viewer that was messing up.

I can retrieve them with Adobe Photoshop Elements and they looked fine, so I created another folder and saved them there from Photoshop. Now they all should work, so I’ll now post some pictures for those that don’t want to follow links.

Moira has been wanting to hold Genny, and today she tried to pick her up.  Surprisingly, in her attempts, she was trying very hard to get her hands just right and also support Genny’s head as well.  While no photos were taken of that attempt, we do suspect that Moira will “mother” her little sister.  When Moira first got to meet Genny yesterday, she kept wanting to kiss her and put her hands on her.

Until we download some more of Jo’s pictures of Genny, this is the best that we have.  It was taken with Kevin’s cell phone and sent to me at work.

Here is the one with all four grandkids that I linked to yesterday.

I can’t wait to start taking them all camping.

Introducing a New Little Angel

Our oldest son and his wife have just had the 4^th, and probably their last, child. So, God delivered to them, and to us as grandparents, a new little angel by the name of Genevieve Ruth. I know God delivered them because Nate, their oldest boy told his parents that he had seen the hand of God in the hallway of the hospital.

They had a 5:00am appointment to be at the hospital so that they could induce labor. And, along with Prissy, the maid in Gone With The Wind, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies.” You see, two or three days ago, Amy was having contractions about 3 minutes apart. But rather than allow the birth to go as what I would call natural, they chose to give Amy morphine to delay the arrival of the baby for two more days so she would have a full 39 weeks of development.

Excuse me, but could someone tell me what two days difference would have been?

Anyway, Jo was at the hospital during all this and when she first called me, she said that they were taking Amy in for an emergency Caesarian because they “had lost the heartbeat” of the baby. Needless to say, I immediately choked up for fear of losing this little baby before she really had a chance of life. I was so choked up, that I couldn’t even explain to my co-workers what was happening.

All I could do was sit at my desk with my head in my hands and offer prayers to God to help this little one. Some of the words of my prayer went like “please put your hand around this little babe” so that she could give us the joy we expected and that we could provide some joy to her as well.

About 10 or 15 minutes later, Jo called to tell me that both mother and baby were just fine. Genevieve Ruth, to be called Genny in the future, had a knot in her umbilical cord and it was also wrapped twice around her neck.

So, did Nate see the hand of God that I had prayed for? I don’t know about all of you, but I think he did. I have one other little note about Nate. Prior to Moira’s birth, Amy and Kevin were using a midwife service for her birth. About a week prior to her birth, the midwife was asking Nate if he had any ideas as to when “the baby would be born and whether it would be a boy or a girl.” Nate’s answer was that it would be Saturday and it would be a girl. It was a cute prediction from a 3-year-old boy for a baby.

Kevin and Amy had chosen to not know from ultrasounds as to what the baby’s gender would be as they wanted this one to be a surprise. So, the next Saturday, September 13, 2009, Moira was born. Nate had hit two for two. So, anyone want to doubt a 3 year old? I won’t anymore.

Thus, please allow me to introduce the world to Genevieve Ruth, born the morning of September 29, 2011, weighing 7 pounds and 1 ounce and measuring 19 ½ inches long.

Well, much to my chagrin, the photos I had Jo download to Photobucket and that I then copied to my computer from that account all came out s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d and really un-viewable, so I will have to post a link to start with and will add pictures to a later posting.

This image is of a hospital person, Genny, and her three siblings.  Nate is to the left, Liam is in the center, and Moira is to the right.  (Note that they are all beautiful kids…..must be my genes.)

http://s1190.photobucket.com/albums/z458/TerryandJo/Grandkids/?action=view&current=_DSC4702.jpg

Preview of Coming Event

Hey, I remember that phrase being used to announce an upcoming movie. However, it isn’t in this case. Instead, this is an announcement that I am working on a review for an RV park near Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

We stayed at Sportsman’s Campground in August of 2009 for two weeks when we still had our 26-foot Rockwood fifth wheel. It is a nice place in that it is way out of town. It is about 18 miles out of town, in fact.

Since I have a number of pictures from that two week vacation, I have to decide on which ones I want to use for the review. I’ve also considered doing reviews of some of the places we went, such as Mesa Verde, the Durango/Silverton Railroad, and a few other places.

I guess I am making this little announcement to see if I will get any comments from anyone asking for certain ones first or whether you want reviews of the attractions or not. So, if you have a preference, or another idea, leave me a comment.

Heh, heh.  I imagine a comment I might receive would be something to the effect that it would be better than religion or politics.  Sorry, Folks.  You get to have it all.

Horrific Events in Progress

OK. Sorry, this one will be somewhat political, but it is being written more as an alert for those who read my comments. The news lately has been a horrendous example of a media that is bereft in their responsibilities. At least they are bereft in the responsibilities that I think they should be embracing.

Sadly, with the arrival of the presidency of a man with socialist tendencies, certain elements of our society have emerged from the darkness in which they hid to try to advance their agendas. Because I really believe that much of the media shares those agendas, they are not reporting what is occurring.

Just today, the news is out that the Governor of North Carolina, one Beverly Perdue has made a speech at a local Rotary Club event, in which she stated that she thought there ought to be a suspension of elections for Congress until after the 2012 elections. Her staff has stated that she was “just joking,” but the reality is that no one at that event laughed or clapped. In addition, she said that he hoped she could find someone to agree with her. That doesn’t sound like joking to me.

The story with an audio clip is at this link:

http://tinyurl.com/3k5ovum

There are also protests occurring on Wall Street by a number of people who have been planning such an event, and one of the leaders, Cornel West who is a professor at a college, has openly called for revolution. That video can be seen at this site:

http://tinyurl.com/44ey7re

Incidentally, that second one with Mr. West is found at a website called “The Blaze” which is made up of journalists who are out there finding news stories, audio clips and video clips that the rest of the media is ignoring. As an example, has anyone seen a story about the professor at the protests in any other media? The Blaze is a website that is associated with Glenn Beck, but a lot of stories there won’t be found in the main-stream media.

For the benefit of anyone who has not heard me say so, and I can’t remember whether I ever wrote about it, but I get a lot of news and analysis on radio talk shows like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, and others. Unlike the normal media, those programs have a tendency to inform the listeners of both sides of the stories and then explain why one side is right or wrong.

I have tried to listen to radio talk shows with a philosophy more to the Left, but it usually doesn’t take long before I begin to discern dishonesty in their analysis. Plus, they are very quick to call people names when they begin to be challenged and they have no answers. Why else would the participants of the Tea Party movement and conservatives be called such names as “Nazis,” “homophobes,” and “racists,” just to name a few.

It is amazing what kind of education one can get by listening to them. However, I also look for other sources of information about many of the stories and commentaries that I hear. The website named above lets you see and hear the stories as does The Drudge Report. With Drudge’s site, he mostly supplies links to other media stories that inform one of what is going on with the news of the day.

Since President Obama is failing so much in his policies and in his popularity, the forces on the left are being emboldened to speak out more and try to do more to advance their agendas which would take this country into a Communist state. When I served in the military so long ago, Communism was our enemy. To me, it still is.

Now, in my older age, I find that my most effective weapon against the enemies of this country is what I have learned over the years and using my blog to help distribute messages about what is going on in our country today. Many of the things I write about are things that are either right or wrong, not necessarily of the political “Left” or “Right.”

I would hope that people would do more to further their knowledge base and sources of news, but I have friends who will state that they only listen to one network as it is there that they were told that people on the “Right” are stupid or otherwise uneducated.

In a conversation one time a co-worker and I were discussing some antic that Nancy Pelosi had done and another co-worker popped in and made a common (at that time) comment that was usually used to disparage Sarah Palin. She mistook whom it was we were talking about, but her comment sounded exactly like something that would have been reported on MSNBC, a very liberal news network, about Sarah Palin.

So, I simply ask people to be diverse in their sources of news and don’t be hung up on only one network. Believe it or not, FOX News is not a “far, right-wing” news source. Shoot, several of their contributors are liberals as well. How many conservative commentators will anyone find on the MSNBC and their like?

Mild Chastising of Online Friend

This month has seen a very minimal action on my part for writing posts for the blog. Part of the reason is that I have had something of a mental block as to what I wanted to write, and part of it is because the bandwidth on our Verizon MiFi was getting close to the 5gig capacity. If anyone anticipates what I have to say (yeah, RIGHT!), then I apologize for being lax this month.

I find myself needing to mildly chastise an online friend, one whom I’ve come to admire their writing skill and their life philosophies and lifestyle. In an attempt to not name this lady, I will try to be as vague as I can, but if she reads this, I hope she recognizes to whom I am writing.

The occasion arose that this lady left a popular site because she sensed that she was not being taken seriously. Truthfully, the opinion that I have is that she wasn’t slighted so much as there was a misunderstanding about the concerns others had for her safety. I shared in those concerns and was joyful that she came though that situation safely.

Now, I find myself needing to ask her to return, as the site does value her opinions and comments. Only recently, I began to read her blog. It is an intriguing site and her writing skills are very good, and her narration of her stories/comments is excellent. I have found the need to go back in her blog and read the entire thing.

In trying to get her to return, I would like to remind her that she is from a state where the citizens are known to be very independent. And, she is married to a gentleman whose origins are noble and even warrior-like.

So, I would like her to reconsider and return as I know the ancestry of her home state is that of determination and grit. So, with that, I will ask her to follow the example of the pioneers and circle the wagons in preparation for a fight, should it come to that. Personally, I don’t think that it will.

The following images are not meant as threatening images, but as images of the past of their places of origin. So, young lady, I ask you to take up your state’s known famous weapon

and be prepared for the fray. And your husband can take up a weapon known for his origins to join you in returning to the circle of friends who would like for you to return. Your opinions and insights are missed.

Should you wish to communicate with me, there is the private message function of that other site, or you can leave me a comment here with your e-mail address and said e-mail address will NOT be published.  Then, I will communicate with you via private e-mail addresses.

It is my sincere hope that you will return.