Thanksgiving with the Walsh Family

We arrived a bit late as usual. I don’t think we were the last ones to get there..
You could see how much Jim & Shirley had done to get this all together! They have this lovely barn, yes barn.. It is great! Loft is a studio apartment, decorated so cute!! Downstairs is 3 different areas.. One area is garage for vehicles, however is easily converted into sitting area and bar with a wood stove for making those cool nights cozy. Next room was our eating area. Stove with oven, sink and long tables for seating and floors carpeted also with wood stove!
The next room is a “shop”. Jim is a “retired” carpenter/general contractor. Retired isn’t quite, he loves tinkering..
We were so excited to finally meet Jim & Shirley’s kids.. Kelley and husband William with their two kids, Danielle and Lacey from North Carolina! We also met Jim jr.. And a cousin as well. Al & Betty from our group at the Philosophers group were also guests. What a great time we all had! Wonderful dinner! A group effort for sure!! Kelley and William are taking dancing lessons and they are such a pleasure to watch!! Now we want to do dance lessons, but here at Clearlake?? Probably NOT! DANG!
After dancing we did Pictionary.. Oh lord I am awful! But fun to watch everyone else..
Great people Kelley & William, we had so much fun with them! Their girls are fun too! They even like us “older” folks!
Of course you know the “older” folks crashed early.. I am not sure but I am sure hit was like about 930ish when we decided to turn in.. We stayed the night.. This is getting to be a habit.. 2 Thursdays in a row..
A group effort was made for breakfast the next morning.. So fun!! Thank you everyone for a great time!! What a great Thanksgiving it was!!
Have a wonderful Merry Christmas & Happy New Years!!!

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Happy Thanksgiving to You All!!

 

Pre-Thanksgiving/My birthday/ Fix the Roof dinner :)

Ok the way all this started was we asked Gayle and Rob over for dinner last week and to come Tuesday night.. Then saw Lee & Laura and said would you like to come for dinner on Tuesday, etc.. Gayle and Rob have us over for their birthday, so thought I would have them over for mine..  
In the meantime I was working at the Moose on Saturday and we asked Doc if he could help Ev with the roof and a good day to do that would be Tuesday .. So now the dinner became Pre-thanksgiving/my birthday/fix the roof party!!
I can always find a reason to have a party!!
We cooked up ribs/trout/rosemary potatoes and Pam brought the salad and Gayle brought the Walnut Pie.. uumm soo good!! It was a really nice evening!!

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John & Bette Come for a short lived Visit

We met John & Bette back in 2002. We were on a maiden voyage with our then new trailer. We were at the San Simeon Campground.. That evening we spent together would be the start of a long time friendship. Our friendship has proved to be more of a long distance type of friendship. However, before we continued on our journey they told us they would be getting married in 6 weeks at the Carson Valley Inn at Carson City, NV. We surprised them and came to their wedding.
We are email/fb buddies. We haven’t ever lost track of one another.
John & Bette live in Copperopolis, CA (you probably don’t know where that is?, over by Sonora some place). We haven’t made it over there yet. 
Long story short.. Bette called me one day a couple of weeks ago and told me they were going to be in our area and could we all get together? Of course I said yes!! And told her that they were welcome to stay here with us.. She said that would be great!
Bette is an Ambulance driver and she moonlights as a partylite consultant. She had a partylite party in Ukiah on that Friday when they arrived.
I knew we weren’t going to able to have dinner due to the partylite party that evening. So I prepared some clam chowder and we had bbq hamburgers.. It was nice visiting and catching up.. So great to see them!
I drove us over and back that evening to Ukiah.. It was a nice time for Bette and I to catch up..
They stayed the night and were off to another party in Ukiah on Saturday, not before having a nice breakfast before they left.. And Ev & I were on our way to the Moose to wait tables for the Thanksgiving dinner.

My Birthday Celebration 11/21/13

We arrived at Jim & Shirley’s about 11:30 and they were all ready and waiting for us!! We started out with some crackers and cheese and a cocktail of course.. Soon we were on our way to a new adventure! And we all know I am always up for a new adventure!!
Jim drove, Ev sat up front with Jim and Shirley and I sat in the back seat. Jim turned right out of their driveway heading toward Pope Valley and then we took the road that would lead us to St Helena. Never been on that road before.. Before you knew it we were in Rutherford (out skirts of St Helena). There is this marvelous restaurant there!! “Rutherford's Grill”. No reservations, first come first serve. Fortunately Jim & Shirley packed up a couple bottles of wine (no corkage fee). We put our name in and sat outside on the patio and drank some wine. Beautiful day. Rutherford's was packed and it was Thursday about 2pm.. Can you imagine? We waited maybe about 20 to 30 minutes before they called us. It was nice sitting out on the patio chatting and doing some people watching..

We had a nice corner booth for the 4 of us. The wait person opened our second bottle of wine and took our order. 

Considering how busy the restaurant was I was surprised that we got our food so quickly! The service was impeccable!
The food was so delicious, I can’t even tell you! Ev, Shirley and I had the “prime rib” French dip, OMG to die for!! Jim had the rotisserie  1/2 chicken.. Everything was delicious!
Soon we would be on our way up through St Helena where we stopped at Lolo’s consignment store.. Boy did we find some good buys!! I found these wonderful “red shoes”.. Love them!
Because is a consignment store if the product has been there for any length of time they reduce the original price to a lower price.. So I offered $15 on the shoes that were marked $22!! The lady behind the counter said how about $11??!! Can you imagine going even lower?? Well as it turned out they were all ready on sale at 1/2 off, I didn’t see the sign!! LOL oh well.. I got the shoes!!

Ev found a deal also for a birthday gift for me. We all know how much I love Christmas?? Well there was this set of these just adorable animated Mr & Mrs, Claus.. Couldn’t pass them up!! Mr & Mrs Clause $38, not a bad price at all.. they originally probably sold for $38 each.. They were boxed perfectly and they work wonderfully!!

Truly the funniest thing happened as we walked back to the car after shopping.. We were all admiring my “new” shoes and we were at the intersection and this man in a work truck was giving us the “thumbs up” sign.. he liked the shoes too!!

We were now on our way to Happy Hour/bar hopping in Calistoga to round off this most adventurous fun day!! With two absolutely wonderful friends! All of us were having a great time laughing and talking.. Perfect day..
Our first stop in Calistoga was Barolo’s Restaurant & Bar..Happy Hour here.. We had a couple of drinks here and visited with some of the regulars. From here we went down to Susie’s Bar and had our last drink of the evening before heading back over the hill.
On our way back to Jim & Shirley’s we made our final stop at the Twin Pines Casino. We all tried our luck, no one really won.. On our way once again, now it was only a short drive back to Jim & Shirley’s.
Shirley had baked a rum cake for the grand finale of the evening.. uumm and it was delicious! We had a little ice cream with it..  
Jim & Shirley were the most gracious hosts! They even had a bed ready for us to stay the night.. So sweet! We retired about 10pm. What a day! One of the best birthdays I have ever had! Thank you..
In the morning I could smell bacon cooking.. OMG Jim & Shirley were now cooking us breakfast!! Can you believe it?
Wonderful, wonderful…
We got home about 9:30 Friday morning..

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Gwen’s visit for my birthday :)

My friend for many years at a distance. We try a couple of times of year together usually at our birthdays.. We are pretty good email buddies but even life gets in the way of that sometimes. Met Gwen and her husband Charles probably about 10 years ago in Lakeport at a parade. Ev had his Corvette at that time and Charles has his love of Vettes and we were all in the parade.. And that is where we all met.. It’s a long distance friendship but it works.. I am supposing we will be friends forever and always..  
Gwen came over today from Willits with her wonderful baked goods.. love them!! Apple pie and Zucchini bread.. and some awfully nice birthday gifts..
I made up some Clam Chowder this morning, so it went well on this winter wet day. However while we were having lunch we did see the sun briefly.. We had a short visit and memorable. Happy you arrived home safely my dear!!

Decorations are up!

Seemed like it was long time trying to get this all done this year.. One thing for sure is our pre-lit “TREE”, wasn’t pre-lighting up!!!! So I spent about 8 or 9 hours cutting those dang lights off! Never again will I buy a pre-lit tree!
There are 500 new lights on the tree that are all different colors.. Nice warm colors..
I still have a few things to do before our party in Dec.. some things are maintenance issue stuff.. ick.. but over all it is done! Looks lovely if I do say so myself..

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The Tree

 

Pot luck with Lee & Laura

Laura called a couple of weeks ago to be sure we got this date  on our calendar 11/17/13. Pot Luck at the Orchard Shores park. I do believe it is her way of celebrating my birthday and having dinner, cause she doesn’t really like to cook.. Works great for me!!
Lee & Laura provided the nice “china” (really china) beautiful dishes and some fancy silverware for our pot luck dinner at the park.
Before going in for dinner, Laura presented me with my birthday card/present! She insisted on pictures of the 4 of us, cause it seems we don’t get many.. She is so cute..
She had someone lined up to take the photos.. She had Ev take pictures of her presenting me with my card with present inside of card! I was so surprised, THEY GOT ME A GIFT CARD FOR WHAT A FISHING LICENSE COST!! LOVE IT!!!
Bless their hearts.. so sweet.
The pot luck dinner was wonderful! Ate way to much.. Best part was having Lee & Laura with us..

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Saturday Evening out with Friends

Motown Concert at Twin Pines Casino.. Rich & Judy’s Christmas present to us was our tickets at the concert!! woo hoo had a wonderful time!!
We started out with dinner with friends Larry & Lynn and Rich & Judy. Nice dinner and reasonable priced at Twin Pines..
We saw familiar faces at the concert. We ended up sitting with Mike & Priscilla from our Philosophers. They had front row table and extra room..Put away a few drinks.. Started with 2 and 1/2 vodka martini’s at dinner.. and went from there..
It did get the body limber for dancing.. LOL oh what fun..

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French Doors

Wow.. ?? I am not exactly sure this is the appropriate word for what I am going to tell you, so you can draw your own conclusions.
About 3 week ago I called Quality Door in Lakeport (we don’t have lots of choices here at Clearlake), talked with Andy. Told him the problems with the French Doors and he told me when he was in our area he would call. About 2 weeks later I called again and talked with the receptionist whom took a message cause Andy was busy (probably at lunch). I went about my business and about 4pm I noticed I had a message, so called back, but Andy was not available (one busy guy). Receptionist said she would have him call.. In the meantime I ran to wally world and was home in a matter for a couple of hours. I checked for messages from Andy and there were none. So I called Quality Door again and this time I got “Andy”.. He proceeded to tell me, “that he was coming from Hidden Valley tried to call me and no answer so he went back to the shop! Really? I said. He then said he “might” be in my area Thursday or Friday?? And I said Ok thank you and hung up. Today is Saturday, and guess what?? Yep you guessed it, no call no Andy from Quality door in Lakeport!
It must be nice to be so independently wealthy that you don’t have to CARE about the CUSTOMER!!!! I sure hope Andy owns the shop, cause if I owned the shop? HE WOULD BE FIRED!!
Continued:
So without any further ad-do, I tried different people around the county and NO ONE DOES WEATHER STRIPPING FOR FRENCH DOORS! AND I MEAN NO ONE!
Ok so here’s the deal. Ev and I decided to do this job ourselves!! or maybe not , you can draw your own conclusions..
We started on Wednesday 11/13 (maybe the date was the problem?), we took the doors down, assessed what materials we probably would need and off to Mendo mill we went. We bought a “shoe”, we bought the roll of weather stripping with sticky stuff, caulking, silicone, masking tape, more weather stripping that fits into “grooves”. About $60 plus or so.. Got the doors off, did some work on them, like putty, sand, caulk, primer and paint. Took the “oak” threshold off and sanded it and varathaned it. Put a bead of silicone on the ledge where it goes and screwed it back down.. Looks fabulous!!
There was some dry rot in one of the doors down low, so I dug out what I could of the dry rot wood and filled with caulking, since the wood putty we bought was like dried out!
We started working on fitting the “shoes” to the bottom of the doors. They can be a bit tricky.. We did learn about the “T-Astrical”  you see the “T” that is a T-Astrical” and it is a total pain my, well you know what I mean. you see it doesn’t go all the way down to the threshold of the door, only to the bottom of the door. The “T” does however house a piece of weather striping so when both doors are closed no “weather” can get in.. oh yeah right.. besides that and moving right along..
Now we are trying to fit the “shoe” to the bottom of the doors and guess what happens? The “T-Astrical” sticks out on the outsides of one door about inch and half or so. Problem SHOE DOESN’T FIT AROUND “T-ASTRICAL”! uummm..??  here comes the creative part.. so we are looking very closely at this shoe (aluminum with rubber) and it seems we can modify the shoe by using a hack saw to make the appropriate cuts to help it fit.. awww.. “by George I do believe we have it”!! After cutting and measuring and re-cutting and more measuring we put the shoes on both doors and man they looks GREAT!!!!!!!!!! Key word here “looks”.. We put the door back on, slide the shoes on and?? shoes are fitting nicely.. however, there is “daylight”!! “Daylight” is not good, cause if we can see daylight, that means the rain can get through too!
We did slide the shoes down onto the threshold so they were as tight as we could get it.. still we saw “daylight” not in all places, but?? you get the idea.. So here we are 3 days later and really no better off than we were when we started! The French doors are wooded and about 22 years old. They too have extended gaps, wooded doors expand and contract.. They take all the weather in both summer and winter.. I guess they are just tired.. Hell they ain’t the only ones! One thing is THEY REALLY LOOKS GREAT!!!!!! So we will have to go back to the duct tape and visqueen before the rains..
Did I mention I am trying to get my Christmas Decorating done, so that has been on hold for the past few days so we could “fix” the doors.. oh well..
So the moral of this story is: T-Astrical’s suck and old wooded doors don’t like to be sealed cause they have way tooo many gaps!

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Murder Mystery Play and Dinner

People started arriving about 5pm. The event was to start with hor’duerves about 5:30 at that time would also issued the first clues for the murder mystery.
Gayle was in charge of the kitchen getting everything to run smooth, did a great job! No doubt ..
In the meantime the guest were all taking their seats in anticipation of the unfolding facts started to unravel. The cast was having fun with the characters they were portraying..
In the audience approx 8 people figured out “who done it”!!

The Cast:
Melee Winery Owner-Malcolm Melee (Murdered)
Daughter-Rene Melee-Gayle Christian
Bed & Breakfast owner-Ben Breakfast-Rob Christian
Milt-Mart Owner- Stan Milton-Rich DeWolfe
Gift Shop at Melee Winery-Sue Veneer-Peggy
Cabot Winery-Carter Cabot-Charles Dean
Magazine writer-Nina Grizio-Linda Swesey
Melee Winemaker-Pierre LA Pointe-Everett Swesey
lawyer-Leelah Eagle-Sue Garret
Sheriff-Mill Garret

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Car Show at Thorn Hill Winery

Lynn & Larry invited us to go to this fun event at Thorn Hill Winery a couple of weeks ago. There were six of us that went. Rich & Judy, Larry & Lynn and us.. It was fun.. Thorn Hill served us a lunch of either tri-tip or chicken.. We browsed the cars and we even got to vote on them!! We voted for the T-Bird.. nice car..
We met some neat people while we were there! On couple in particular was Ray & Zella were so cute. They had the beautiful T-Bird….

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Philosophers on the Move..

A few weeks ago I received a call from Ellen Heath. Milton & Ellen are members of our Philosophical Society of Lake County. Our philo group try and meet once a month and most of the time we are pretty successful in meeting at the Riviera Golf & Country Club in Kelseyville. We have a total group of about 60 or so. Moving right along..
As I mentioned Ellen Heath called and invited Ev and I to join them as well as some others from our group for the ribbon cutting ceremony of their newest HUGE greenhouse! **Novavine Nursery is located in Santa Rosa, near Oakmont.
Milton & Ellen had arranged for a bus limo to take the group down for the event!
We all arrived on time to get into the bus limo and before you know it and we were off!
It was a GRAND day with the “Heath family”. How special it was to be apart of such an exciting time in this families lives! And the best part is we got to be there, we were invited to share in this very special occasion! There were about 22 of us total. While on the bus we did indulge in some wonderful wines.. Milton & Ellen were kind enough to supply the wine glasses.
When we arrived at the Nursery everyone was cheerful and excited to see all of us! Of course we weren’t the only people invited to this GRAND event. There were also representatives from many of the wineries in the area there as well.
There were appetizers galore! Wonderful Pizza, wine tasting, water, touring of the nursery, by the owner himself, Milton Heath!
After we finished touring it was time for us all to get back on the bus and now go for dinner!!  
We were all having a wonderful time on the bus! Joking and laughing all the way! Next stop the Union Hotel Restaurant in Santa Rosa (not the Union Hotel in Occidental, like I thought). Union Hotel Restaurant located on Mission and I had no idea! What a great experience. The staff was surely ready for us when we arrived. they had a nice room over looking the forest of trees for us. Lovely place. We all continued to chit chat enough each other company. We enjoyed cocktails, and wonderfully delicious meal!! We will go back there again.. ***** 5 stars..  
There is such a wonderful story behind all of what we did today. I will try and tell it at the end.
A retired couple starts a new business in the golden years and almost looses everything they worked for their whole lives! With a very happy ending!!
Thank you Milton & Ellen for sharing your life and your passion with us!

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**Novavine Nursery, supplies wineries with “root stock” or new vines/clones for growing the grapes. Probably the best explanation of what they are expert in would be to visit their website>>http://www.novavine.com/..

Story: This is the short version.
Milton & Ellen bought a Exotic plants nursery business in 1996. Soon they new that wasn’t really what they wanted to do. So they made some serious changes. They started growing “starters” vines for vineyards. They were doing ok, but they were having problems with the plants dying.. Over 50% were dying off.. Not really knowing the real reasons, they just kept trying different processes.. However it wasn’t working and this went on until there was pretty much nothing left. Soon they had to start selling off property, their home, etc..everything short of going bankrupt.. In the meantime they lived in a motorhome for awhile by their daughter and did some traveling. Their son Jay was interested in the business and it seemed he had some great ideas and an understanding of the business, so he then took charge upon the request of his parents, Milton & Ellen. I am sure Milton & Ellen were feeling pretty destitute at this time in their life. Imagine working your whole life and making a nice living and then it is all gone!! and you are 70ish by now.
Jay hired a “voodoo” man (that’s what I call him, but I am sure there is another name). He had the whole bunch of them walking around banging pans, holding smoking sage brush along with numerous other attic walking through the green houses scaring away evil spirits!! As funny as it sounds I do believe this man (a scientist of some kind) wanted to test the water to see how really interested this “Heath” family was in getting results. So between the “voodoo” scientist and Jay’s good business sense, they were on the move back into bring back an healthy nursery. It took some years, but it is back and better than ever! Their clones now have a survival rate of 99.9%. The sales are prenominal of over 3 million plants sales in a year! The nursery is expanding into Olive tress as well.
Of course this is the short story, but if you have a great imagination you can only just imagine how happy Milton & Ellen are today! CONGRATS to you both! We hope you enjoy your retirement to the fullest! Happy Ending..

Limo Full of Wenches!!!

Happy Birthday Sandy!! Happy Halloween to all you “Wenches”!!
Sandy secured the limo for the late afternoon of Halloween! She won it in an “auction”? There were six of us Wenches touring Lake County! Sandra Magnum Greta Colman, Tina Bouse, Irma Rivera, Barbara Higman and myself, Linda Swesey.
We started out at the Moose Lodge, then moving onto Lower Lake to Maynard's. We were greeted with a nice warm welcome! From there we headed up hwy 29 to Thornhill Vineyards, for a little wine tasting and to pick up a bottle or two for the long rides “in between” stops.. Shannon (server at Thornhill’s) was a delight! She loved that we all came by! She even treated us to some really yummy chocolates, white and dark chocolate!! uumm…
From here we headed over to the “Brick” in Kelseyville. It was so nice to see people in the spirit! Everyone loved that we stopped in.. It seemed we were on a pretty tight schedule, about 15 minutes per place.. not much time to get your drink and then drink it!! Just “slugged’em down’!!! and back into the Limo and off to the Clearlake Club in Lakeport! Another great place! People were cheering us and so happy to take our pictures! And moving right along to the next place was?? Oh Lord can’t remember this place?? I do remember it being very fun! The 3 men that were in there cheered as we came in!! One was the bartender.. guess it was a slow night so far!! LOL
Again we “slugged” another down.. I could see that some of the girls were having a bit of a hard time doing the “slugging” thing.. opps.. Now we were back on the road once again this time back to our home town of Clearlake Oaks. First stop the “Barn”.. Stephanie the bartender was especially happy to see us girls!! She knows all of us.. had a quickie drink there and to our final destination, the Happy Garden!! It was a wonderful and fun afternoon with some fun gals!!
Happy Birthday Sandy and Happy Halloween Ladies! Thank you all for a great time!!

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