Tag Archives: Walks

Like a Bird Flying South…

Dear and I boarded a flight at Seatac Airport on Sunday afternoon to LAX with very little Security issues and once again made the comment …
“Flying out of Seattle is so nice compared to other airports”!! I got this shot of Rainier before everything clouded over!

Then we talked to our seating companion who flew out of Canada to the U.S. and told us he had to go through 4 security screenings and then had to have a full body search. He couldn’t have anything under the seat in front of him except for a size restricted personal bag, no carry on luggage.  So flying into the U.S. is a bit tough right now…

We arrived in L.A. and made it back to the condo in great time hardly ever needing to use our brakes which is a good thing because our brake lights were not working! Thank you to my sister Kathy and our BIL Len being brave enough to deliver that car without brake lights to us at the airport.

Dear caught a icky bug and is under the weather so I had to pick him up from work early today. I was able to pick up the part we needed for the car and it’s working beautifully now so I’ll make a visit to the CHP tomorrow and have them OK the repair so we don’t have to pay a fine. Oh right I forgot to tell you that over the Christmas break my brother from Dallas was using our car and got a ticket for not having brake lights. Ouch! We had no idea the brake lights weren’t working when we loaned him the car…

Today I’ve enjoyed the lovely winter skies here in Camarillo. Sunny and warm with great clouds. Tomorrow Willow and I will resume our walks! Yippee! So much to catch up on. Dear cleaned the condo real nice before he came north so I don’t have much to do around here. Hope you all are getting in the swing of things in 2010!

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The Turkey is Out of the Oven…

Over the years we have learned to adapt to whatever comes our way during the major holidays. Sometimes I make a turkey on Thanksgiving sometimes not. This year I made my turkey today, Tuesday with all the trimmings. My daughter and I very unceremoniously had a plate full of comfort at about 5 pm. After 9pm I’m headed to the airport to pick up Dear and my brother and his wife for the extended weekend. If they are hungry they’ll have a turkey snack before we retire.

On Thursday we are invited to friends for our Thanksgiving Day meal. I’ll bring my yams and an appetizer. Every other year all the married kids have their meal with the in-laws. This is the year that all the married kids will be together with the rest of us so we’re expecting 39 for dinner. My family contributes 9 bodies to the table this year.

On Saturday our oldest son and I will fly to New Mexico to attend our middle son’s graduation from Academy. We will be gone till Tuesday.

So all this to say ellen b. won’t be doing her usual visiting and posting. I do have a couple auto-posts ready but my fingers won’t be hitting the keyboards until next Wednesday.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving extended weekend or regular weekend if you live outside the U.S.  May God richly bless all your comings and goings…

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Ruby Tuesday ~ Raspberries

 

Taken last week in Camarillo, California on a Raspberry Ranch. To see more Ruby please visit the lovely Mary at Work of the Poet!

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Friday’s Fave Five ~ Walks-Relationships-Food

My favorites can always be narrowed down to these three…a nice long walk, peaceful relationships, and good food. A fulfilling walk is one shared with someone who I have a good relationship with or am building a relationship with. Food, sitting around a table, is always better if it’s shared with someone. My past week has been rich with walks, relationships, and good food.

Visit our kind hostess Susanne at Living to Tell the Story to join in with your favorites from this past week…

 

1. Early Saturday morning Dear and I walked at Emma Wood State Beach and enjoyed the cool crisp air. We usually will stop at our favorite breakfast spot in Ventura after these walks. Allison’s has the best hot out of the oven baked biscuits and fresh raspberry jam. Oh they serve eggs and stuff, too.

 

2. Saturday evening we met my brother Steve and his wife Kelly at Tam O’ Shanter in Glendale for a birthday dinner. Kelly is celebrating a milestone birthday and we wanted to treat her at our favorite spot for prime rib. The chocolate souffle and C.C. Brown’s hot fudge were pretty good, too. Oh, right about now you are probably wondering how my healthy weight loss program is going, aren’t ya? Well with these habits of mine it’s going slow but I am losing instead of gaining. So far I’ve lost 4 pounds.

 

3. For Willow and my walk this week we met up at Joy’s Blueberry ranch and then walked through a neighboring ranch or two. Instead of going past rows of blueberries we walked through an avocado grove and past rows and rows of raspberries. Joy told us we could pick some raspberries even though it wasn’t her property. Those ranchers are all like family :0) I still felt guilty for picking and eating…

 

Here’s the great variety of growing goodness we’ve spotted on our ranch walks…

4. On Tuesday afternoon I drove across town to my parent’s apartment for a meal with four of my nieces, my three sisters, one of my SIL’s, two nephews, my grand nephew and grand niece. Would you believe I didn’t take one photo? It gets a little crazy when we all cram into that little apartment for a meal. It was good to see everyone and to get caught up a little. I was happy to get to spend some time with my folks before I head North for the rest of the year.

5. On Wednesday I decided to go to a regular kind of store instead of a thrift store and I was able to buy 4 shirts and 2 pairs of pants for Dear and 2 tops for myself for $150 with $30.00 cash coupon back to spend next week. I was pleased with the experience and now I won’t have to go back to a regular store for a long time. We aren’t your fashionista/fashionisto.

Bonus!! My #6 is a looking forward to…

 

spending lots of time with these peeps and my kids over Thanksgiving!!

Blessings everyone! Looking forward to seeing your favorites…

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Bittersweet…

It’s always bittersweet to get on a plane and fly away from the Condo to our home in Seattle. I’ll be separated from Dear which is always hard but reunited with my children which is always good. I’ll miss our favorite early morning walks at Emma Wood. We haven’t established an early morning walk in Washington yet because duty calls when we are there. Here are some scenes I’ll miss…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great Thursday everyone!

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Good Saturday Morning!

 

It’s still morning on the West Coast. I took this this morning during our walk at Emma Wood State Beach. It was a crisp beautiful morning. I don’t feel like a half stuffed limpy scarecrow anymore. Hope you all have a great weekend.

In the morning, O LORD, You will hear my voice;
In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.

Psalm 5:3 (NASB)

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Mosaics With Blue Confessions…

 

It’s the time of year for scenes like these. Confession #1: All these scenes are from last October.

 

These shots are from this year, this past Saturday. Getting closer to Blue here. Confession #2: I’ve started a weight/exercise regimen. I wasn’t going to share this at all because every time in the last year I’ve “tried” something and shared it I end up gaining weight and I’m a little embarrassed about that. So the program I’m trying gives me one day a week to eat whatever I want. That day was Saturday so Dear and I were up early as usual and decided to make a 3 mile roundtrip walk to a donut shop. I sense some skeptics out there shaking their heads and thinking poor ellen b. she’s doomed to failure again. I’ll try to keep you posted on how good or bad I do.  :0)

 

Finally I’ve gotten to the blue for Blue Monday. These shots are from Saturday also and this was a great new Mexican spot we enjoyed in Ventura, California called Taqueria Tepatitlan. Remember this is my eat anything day and I didn’t take photos to show you what I had for dinner! Look real hard at the window and Corona sign and you’ll see the blue. Confession #3: Since there was so little actual blue in my shots I added the blue background to trick you into thinking this qualifies as a Blue Monday Post.

Now make sure and visit Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday and visit Sally at Smiling Sally for Blue Monday!

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Friday’s Fave Five ~ October #3

It’s time for Friday’s Fave Five hosted by the lovely Susanne at Living to Tell the Story. Click over to join in. It’s a good exercise of looking back and remembering favorites, blessings, good things that have happened.

This has been a different kind of week for me and come to think of it the last 3 weeks have been “different”. I’m in the midst of changes to my usual routine around the condo and out and about. One major change that a psychologist could probably run with is the fact that I haven’t purchased anything from a thrift store in the last 3 weeks. Hmmm.  On to my favorites…

 

1. On Saturday I met up with 9 of the gals in my family for a tea. It wasn’t one of the best tea rooms we’ve been to but it was fun to get together and enjoy time together. And yes I did have a hat on most of the time till it fell off…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

 

2. I’ve challenged myself to get moving every day instead of just the day Willow and I can get together for our walk. It has felt good to get out at 7:00 three days a week to get my heart rate going before breakfast. The other 3 days I’m trying a simple weight training routine with dumb bells.

 

3. There used to be a huge dirt and weed filled area behind our condominium complex. It is now a Sports Complex with 4 baseball diamonds and several full soccer fields with lots of parking and restrooms, etc. This week they laid all the grass and it will be nice to have less dust flying around here. I’m waiting for the complex to be opened up so I can get some better photos.

 

4. Yippee our Seattle Sounders won their game against Kansas City on Saturday so we are in the playoffs. I might even be able to go to a playoff game since it sounds like at least one of the games will be in the L.A. area and better yet my kids might come down here for that game!

 

5. I’m excited that my oldest son and I made arrangements this week to go to my middle son’s graduation from Academy the end of November. It wasn’t easy to find flights to get to this little town out in the middle of nowhere. I was sad that no one would be there to see Dan graduate and am relieved now that it is possible. God is good.

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Outdoor Wednesday ~ Cloudy Walks

 

Early Saturday morning Dear and I had a cool cloudy walk at Emma Wood State Beach in Ventura, California. Then on Tuesday morning Willow and I joined 3 gals for a walk at the Blueberry Farm.

 

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday Willow and I walked on her friend’s Blueberry Farm and the Skies were clear and blue. This Tuesday we walked the Blueberry Fields again this time hurrying before the rains came down.

 

There’s Willow way back there. We had a fun little crowd walking this day.

 

I thought this mushroom was very cool…

 

At the end of our walk we tasted 3 or 4 different varieties of Blueberries. Yum!

To see more of the Outdoors visit Susan at A Southern DayDreamer!

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Back to Emma Wood!

 

We realized it’s been about 4 months since our last walk at Emma Wood State Beach in Ventura, California. This morning we arrived shortly before dawn to revisit our favorite beach walk. The tide was low but not low enough for us to walk along the sand for long.

 

As the light increased I enjoyed the subtle pastel colors in the sky and the iridescent colors on the water. Wish I could capture that iridescence in my photos.

 

 

You have to look closely to see the cute beach birds (Sanderlings) on the rocks…

 

Clearly this guy can’t read!

Hope your weekend is going well…

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.