Christmas has a long tradition in our household and Christmas decorations are important to the festive mood. For those of you who saw our most recent house in Apple Valley or the one previous in Rancho Cucamonga (or for those of you who have known us for years … the places in Eagle Rock, Topeka, Dodge City, Colorado Springs, Denver, Woodland Park, Manassas, Fitchberg, etc. …) you know that while we aren’t much on decorating the outside of the place … the inside is turned into a winter wonderland. Christmas in 2010 saw a modest five trees in various rooms accompanied by the colossal scene under the tree complete with trains and lighted houses, etc.
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| 2010 Christmas Tree |
This year, we came full circle and decorated our small and humble tree with the same hand-painted primitive ornaments that we had labored over and completed during our first couple of years of marriage. It turned out to be a wonderful tree that we thoroughly enjoyed and made us reflect on the true meaning of Christmas.
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| Our tree sitting on one end of the dining table |
Our tree normally goes up the weekend following Thanksgiving, but we were in the middle of a couple of moves and it didn’t make it up until we arrived in Yuma.
Wikipedia notes that “according to the
Guinness Book of World Records, Yuma is the sunniest place on earth. Of the possible 4,456 hours of daylight each year, the sun shines in Yuma for roughly 4,174 hours, or about 94% of the time. The near perfect flying weather year round attracts military interest in training their pilots here. On average Yuma receives about 3 inches of rain annually.”
That was why we headed to Yuma …
sunshine and warm weather!
What we got was the whole load of 3” of rain annually in two days and fog that grounded everything, including us!
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| The fog rolls in in Yuma |
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| The rain left a lake next to our home ... our house is the brown RV! |
Happily leaving the drenched desert of Yuma we pushed on for Palm Springs. On the way we traveled through Glamis, CA, known for its beautiful dunes, boondocking and off road toys. We arrived in Palm Desert (yes the thousand trails Palm Springs Resort is actually in the town of Palm Desert about 15 miles from Palm Springs) on December 17 and were greeted by relatively good weather (a bit chilly at night, but 70s during the day).
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| Dunes at Glamis |
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| More Dunes at Glamis, showing tires marks |
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A few days of shopping was followed by Christmas Eve with one of our sons and Christmas day with the other. Our daughter Charity and her daughter Willow, newly relocated to Branson, MO were sorely missed. We won’t dwell on all the fun we had, but here are a few pictures of our grandchildren (all but Willow)
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| Oldest Granddaughter Nina and her husband Brain |
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| Kaitlyn Turns 18 in January and graduates HS this year |
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| Amber and her beau ... she turns 18 this year and graduates in May |
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| From left: Conner age 3 & brother Aedyn age 4 |
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| Brayden age 4 |
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| Brynn age 2 (Brayden's sister) |
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The week following Christmas we rested, caught up on some cleaning and watched a few balloons flying over our resort.
To all of our readers … we trust your Christmas was as Merry as ours and we wish you a very Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!
Love the blog. Your tree in your RV looks great!
ReplyDeleteBoo for the fog... although we'd love some over here in NE ;)
& hooray for your grandchildren! All 9 of us are so lucky to have you guys as grandparents.
Love You.