The Frozen Northland; Rodeo Champs

We are back from the frozen north land, also known as Seattle. More on that in a minute...but first, I HAVE TO BRAG! (Hey, I am a Grandma, I have those rights!) The young lady in the picture is our grand daughter Lori, age 13, who, we just found out, won the Reserve All Around Champion, Jr. Rodeo Association, Willamette Valley, Oregon! Lori is our youngest grand child and boy is she ever a horse person! She and her dad are breaking a horse right now, however, the one it the picture is Cassy...which she broke as well. Lori rides in the American Thunder Drill Team, this past year carrying sponsor flags and the POW Drill, next year she hopes to ride in the rodeo drills. We are SOOOOOOOOOO PROUD OF HER! Her brother, Victor, is a bull rider....so between the two of them they keep their parents busy with rodeo's in the summer.

Very icy roads! Lots of slip and slide!












As I said before, we are back in Tucson after our trip to Seattle...which I froze most of the time. I had not brought enough heavy, warm clothes (I don't own enough clothes to keep me warm in Seattle!!) so I wound up wearing one of Jennifer's sweatshirt most of the time and good friend Kathy loaned me a heavy coat. Without those I would have been one frozen person. When we landed on Friday, the pilot announced that it was a whopping 20 degrees.....I was ready to stay on the plane and go right back to Arizona, which, for the record, wasn't much warmer! Our stay in Seattle was short, but we did enjoy it. We stayed with Jennifer and I am sure her heating bill will be outragous, but we were warm! And I remembered how to drive in snow and ice! Funny how those types of things are ingrained in a person! It was Minot, ND all over again! I actually had fun driving in it, however, most people have no clue how to drive in the snow and ice....I think it must mean to them to go faster and slam on the brakes! We saw several spin outs....oops!
This picture is taken as we were leaving Jennifer's house in Lynnwood early Tuesday morning...those white spots, incase you don't recognize them, are SNOW FLAKES! HUGE, SNOWFLAKES!

The memorial service for Bill Amble was beautiful...Beverly did a wonderful job arranging the services. After the service in the church there was a reception at Anthony's Restaurant in Edmonds...what a nice thing to do. The food was great and it gave everyone a chance to visit. Sad occasion, but very well done.

It also gave us a chance to visit with four of our grand children. Stephen, who lives in New York City was there, as well as Sarah who lives in St. Charles, Missouri and Natasha, our great grand daughter. We haven't seen Stephen in a couple of years and we had a short, but good visit with him. Sarah looks so good...as Al said, she looked happy and very pretty. Natasha is just a hoot...at 7 years old she is a whirlwind of activity and way to smart for us! She was selling me Girl Scout cookies and she said "Grammy, do you want to buy some cookies? They are $3.00 a box and NO CREDIT!" I laughed so hard at that! What a character. We also got to see Ashley and Cammie. Ashley is attending North Seattle Community College and seems to be happy with it. She had dyed her hair black (normal blond) and the black hair really looked nice on her. Cammie is a Junior in High School and very, very pretty. She is tall, slim and looks like a model. We are so proud of all of our grand children. And to keep you up to date on the rest, David is living and working in Kansas City and Danny is in the Army currently stationed in Germany (and we hope he stays there, and not bound for Iraq!...this worries the gramma!) And we were able to visit with friends Kathy and Rowland while we were there and see their son Jesse for the first time in a few years....very good looking young man! What I want to know is who gave all of these kids the right to grow up???? I certainly am not any older....much! We are so proud of all of our children and grand children...they have all turned out so well.

Now we are back in not so warm Tucson. It was 25 last night and we are hoping for some more rain. It does warm up to mid 50's to 60's during the day, so I am really not complaining. Compared to the rest of the nation, we are very, very lucky!

We have both shaken the cold/flu we had and feeling good again. I have plenty of things to do around the house to keep me busy for a few weeks. However, Gary and Jeannette are here for a month (they have a motorhome and are staying at the Voyager RV Resort) so we will be busy playing with them while they are in town...much more fun than working around the house. And we have a trip planned to Sedona at the end of the month, so we will be wroamin' soom.

So until next time.....we are unwroamin'...at least for a few days.