Family

Happy Birthday Alex!

Happy eighth birthday to our great-grandson Alex! Born on this date in 2014, Alex is the eldest of our four great grandkids. He is a good kid with a great personality and is very smart.

We sent a “Birthday Box” to his Sonoma County residence in California. In the box are many goodies and interesting things for a kid that age. The box weighed in at 28 pounds and measured 19x17x14 inches — a good sized shipping carton filled with very cool stuff for an 8 year old kid.

So, here’s wishing Alex a wonderful birthday and blessings for the coming year. Happy Birthday again, li’l dude!

Our 24th Wedding Anniversary

Cutting the Wedding Cake

Today we’re celebrating the twenty-fourth anniversary of our wedding. This is a photo taken at our wedding reception which was held in Avalon, on Catalina Island, at the Blue Parrot Restaurant and Bar adjacent to the Hotel Metropole on Crescent Avenue, the main drag along the shore of Avalon Harbor. The Blue Parrot is now gone, having been converted to additional hotel spaces for the Metropole. We revisited the island for several years around the time of our anniversaries and finally, as we mentioned last year, we stopped going back.

This year was the year of Tanzanite and Verna got several small, but pretty, jewelry items made from it. Next year, we will be having our quadranscentennial anniversary, and we look ahead to celebrating the Silver Jubilee.

Tucker’s Cuteness

I decided to try and upload a video to YouTube as an experiment to replace the videos I used to upload to the blog using Flash™ animations which have no more support from most browsers. So this is a video I captured in my Android Phone a couple of weeks ago. It is now embedded in this post.

Tucker, our little Chihuahua mix pup begs to get up into Verna’s lap in this 30 second video.

UPDATE: A close-up of the little guy (click to enlarge):

Meet Tucker

As we mentioned in our comments from last month’s post about losing Bay Bay, we were going to look for another dog to rescue. Well, today the Humane Society of Wickenburg had an adoption event at our local Tractor Supply store and just like that, we adopted Mr. Tuxedo whom we will call Tuck Tuck for short. He is a long haired Chihuahua with mostly black fur and a bit of white here and there. He is about a year old and was found wandering around in Wittman, about 20 miles southeast of Wickenburg.

He has only been “home” for a couple of hours, but is fitting in nicely with our activities and with the other dog. He is a very affectionate little guy and seems to demand a little attention which we happily have given. He has a good appetite, can be frisky at times, is leash trained and mostly housebroken. We are looking forward to taking care of him for a long time. In the (clickable) image above, Verna posed with him in the courtyard. Just now, as I was typing in the story, he came into the office jumped into my lap and is resting as I finish this. I think we’re all happy about our new mutual relationship.

UPDATE 03-16-22: Since the adoption last week, we decided to dump the “Tuxedo” name and just call him “Tucker.” He is already recognizing and answering to the new moniker.

So Long, Beethoven

“Beethoven” A.K.A. “Bay Bay,” sadly, is no longer with us. He passed last evening (Valentine’s Day) at the Vet who performed the euthanasia. The poor little guy had acute kidney failure and had lost most of his appetite and finally stopped eating last week and he stopped hydrating on Sunday. We had little choice but to take him in for the procedure. He had lost nearly half of his body weight since a month ago. Verna and I are devastated and miss him terribly.

We adopted him when he was a year and a half old on September 29, 2011 and he had been our constant companion for over ten years, so we can’t complain about having been with him for quite a long time, as dogs go. Bay Bay’s 12th birthday would have been in a couple of weeks on March 2nd.

So Long, Little Buddy – See you on the other side …

Mom and Dad’s 83rd Wedding Anniversary

  

These two were married on December 17th of 1938 and were together for most of their years until Dad passed in June of 1982. Dad’s absence, like many young men in the early 1940’s, was due to being called away to serve in World War II. They were together for over 43 years and now are in God’s care together again.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad.