HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMIE! WISH WE WERE THERE!

Happy Birthday Emmie.... you may not know it, but you are 2....

Judy and I spent the day remembering that day, 2 years ago when I had to play hookie from RBC and Judy and I made a drive to London to visit Emmie on her first day of life. We had to drive in a bad snow storm, but that didn't matter, we made it. Thanks to Shawn and Jenn, we were able to have a Happy Birthday Skype Conference with Emmie this afternoon. Sounds like she had a big day with a party.

Today was a nice day here, not quite as nice as some of our days in Yuma, but nice overall. I spent the morning putting up our satellite internet, which only took about 15 minutes in total and then it was on to the renewed fight with Star Choice, or Shaw Direct as they want to be called now. I must have battled for 2 hours with the dish before I figured out what the problem was. The settings I was using from my computer program were wrong.... uurrrgghhhh.... They had told me the elevation was 52.4 degrees here, but in reality it was life 56 degrees. That does make a difference. Once I made the adjustment I was able to get the signal right away.... oh well, that is the life of a retired Bank Manager.... it is working fine now, and was still able to watch my Leafs lose tonight!

Well, I have a bunch of ketchup pictures for you all tonight, as we have really been offline for the past couple of nights, so hang on, get your Sunday morning coffee and here we go...

This first one I thought was funny, date stamped Jan. 28, and it is our Mexican maintenance man in Yuma cutting the grass! It was a warm day and the grass was long, and smelled like it does in Ontario after a fresh cut of grass.... loved it.

I was out on my morning walk and took a couple pics around the park to show you all some of the cactus plants....

This one was starting to flower after the rain we had...

This is a picture of a neat train set that an older man build around his Park Model Unit. He has been working on it for a long time, and as you can see, it continues into the back yard. This view is the front yard. He is elderly and just loves working on it. I talked to him for 1/2 an hour about it one day when John Morrison was with me.

This is the last row in the park, and full of Park Models.... I just love the colour of the sky here in the morning....

Well on to more exciting stuff...."Hockey".... Here we go on the bus, from Yuma to Phoenix to watch Calgary take on the Coyotes last Thursday night. The bus was great, very smooth, new, and nice TV's to watch movies on... they played the movie "Wild Hogs" on the way down, always good for a laugh... The bus was full of Alberta Fans of course... and it ended up that 3 buses had to go, to bring them all!

This is just outside the front of the Jobing.com Arena, and if you look at the Voo Dooo heads, you will see flames coming out of them...

It was a great night in Phoenix when we were there, however it rained there earlier in the day, and when we got there Judy found the rainbow. We went up to look at it further from the second floor of the building, and it was one of the few times we could see both ends of the rainbow, including the full arch of the rainbow.... don't ever recall seeing that before.... couldn't take a picture as it was simply too big....


The next four pictures are for Dr. Hollinger. As many of you know, the good Dr. is the # 1 Calgary Flames Fan in the world, (ya, I know it is hard to believe he is not a Leaf Fan...maybe one day!) Anyways, we were in line to get in and a Family from Calgary was in front of us and we were talking to them.... They were on a weeks holiday, and had flown from Calgary to Dallas, Texas to watch the Flames play the Dallas Stars on Wednesday night, a game which they lost in a shoot out! Then they flew to Phoenix for the game on Thursday, again, which the Flames lost in a shoot out.... is there a pattern here???? Anyways, this is a picture of their son who is a big Calgary Fan.... There was lots of Flames Jerseys at the game.

We had great seats for the game, only about 12 rows up from the ice. I was able to walk down and get these next few pictures of Shawn's Hero, Jerome (Igy) Inginla for him....

I like this show, it looks like Igy is getting ready to take on the Coyotes by himself...

And here is a picture of Kipper for ya Shawn...

Judy and I got a charge out of watching Dion Phaneuf, one of the the star defencemen for Calgary in the warm ups. He spent his warm up time picking up pucks and skating over the the side boards, and would point out a kid wearing a Flames Jersey and then throw the puck over the glass to him or her.... He seemed to get a bigger kick out of doing that then the kids did getting the puck! They are all just big kids, but with a big pay cheque!

We are not done yet.... next we moved over to Tucson on Friday and here are a couple early pictures of the Resort. It is very well kept and a great place to stay.... Here is the main road you drive in on.... lots of palm trees....

Some of the park model units, with some more palm trees!

This is the pool area... we found out today there are 2 hot tub areas in our park.... yipee!

This is one of them.....

This is a picture of our site. We have our own palm tree... and lots of room. No neighbour on the right side of this picture yet....

This is the view sitting on our couch, looking forward out the slide window. Judy liked that she could see the mountains in the background, lots of palm trees as well....

Our friends David and Angella have made it back to Ontario after a week in Mexico, I am sure they are glad to be home! Hope you had good weather guys! Will talk to you on skype soon!

Hope to go on a hike maybe tomorrow, we will see.... Lots to do in Tucson area!

Till tomorrow.....