What Happened with us in 2003....

Christmas this year was kinda' quiet - the first one without any of our kids!! We had planned on meeting Pam, Tracy & Jonathon in Port Aransas TX for Christmas, but because of medical tests Bev had to have, our trip was delayed until we just didn't feel right about making it. Don had to be home to start teaching classes at CCU on January 13, and he still had studying to do..... So, we stayed home! Christmas Eve was spent with Bev's sister and family here at our house. We were invited to Roy's cousin's for Christmas dinner, but Bev came down with a bad sinus headache so we didn't go there.

We left home Sept 4 and headed north visiting the Dinosaur National Monument in northwestern CO. It was an interesting visit.....they certainly do have a mass of bones in that area! After touring the Monument and seeing all the fossils, petroglyphs, and a homestead farm, we spent the night in Vernal UT.

From there, we went to Pocatello ID for the next night. Then, we went on up to Bozeman MT for a reunion of a group of us who were in a Bible Study together in the 1960's back when we all lived in Boulder. One member was unable to join us this year, but we did catch him on a conference call for our Bible Study time. We had a wonderful time of visiting, catching up and even got in some sightseeing. We found this wooly mammouth, "Wooly Willy" on one of our ventures out, in Pony MT!

From Bozeman, we headed east to Rapid City SD, stopping for the night in Buffalo WY. Our laptop computer crashed so we spent the first morning in Rapid City in a computer repair shop where he was able to salvage our files and put them on a CD. Then, we went to Mt Rushmore, did some hiking there and then drove down to see the Crazy Horse monument. However, they wanted more admission than we cared to spend, so we took a distant photo and moved on. We drove thru Custer State Park and saw more wildlife than we have ever seen in one area! We saw buffalo, deer, mountain goat, turkey, antelope, and big horn sheep. It was a beautiful drive.

We spent two nights in Rapid City and then headed east again. We stopped at the famous Wall Drug in SD and wandered thru it (and, of course, spent some $$'s there!) and then went on to drive thru the Badlands. It was a rather windy day, but the scenery was beautiful! We had been there once before, many years ago, but it was near dusk and wasn't as pretty as it was this time.

Our next night was spent in Chamberlain SD and the next day, we toured the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD. That is quite a sight! They change the whole outside of the building each fall. They draw the murals on black plastic and then it is sort of "paint by corn" as they use different colors of corn (and some other grains) to create the murals inside and outside of the building. Their theme for this next year is Lewis & Clark, celebrating the 200th anniversary of their expedition.

From there, it was on the Missouri City IA where we spent the next night and visited the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge. There were not a lot of birds there, but lots of turtles!!

Then, it was on to Chariton IA. We spent the night there and visited the cemetery in Melrose where Bev's GGGrandfather is buried. We did some research in Albia on the Rockwell family, but did not find much new information there. So, we headed on to Kirksville MO where we spent a couple of nights and some genealogy research on Don's side of the family.

Finishing there, we went on south to St Peters MO for a week's visit with Cindy, Ed, Becca, Aimee, and Sam, two more reunions and catching up with old friends. The first reunion was the Saturday after we arrived, September 20, and was a group from our church in St Charles, before it grew to a huge church. We had a great time visiting and catching up with everyone there. For a slide show of this reunion, go here.

We spent the next week visiting with friends in the area and spending time with our daughter, son-in-law and grandkids, who are growing up way too fast!! We were even able to attend a couple of soccer games - one of Sam's and one of Aimee's and got in a few games of Sequence with Cindy & Ed in the evenings.

September 25th, Don had a reunion of people he used to work with at McDonnell Douglas at the St Charles plant. We headed home on Sept 26, stopping for a couple of nights in Topeka where we did some genealogy work in the library there and had a chance to visit with Bev's (distant) cousin. We met them for dinner Saturday evening and went to church with them Sunday morning before heading on west to Colby KS where we spent the night. Then it was on to Parker CO and our daughter and son-in-law's for the night before visiting him in his office and getting some dental work done on Tuesday. Then, it was on home so Don could get ready for class at CCU on Wednesday night.

My, how this year is flying by!! We just got back from a week in Denver visiting Pam and family. Cindy and her 3 little ones were at Pam's for about a week and our visits overlapped a couple days so we got to visit with them also. We had a nice visit and good weather for our trips across the mountains.

Other than this trip, we have kept busy at home. We did take a one-day trip up on Grand Mesa and home via Marble and Glenwood with Gordon & Jane. We had planned a hike up to Hanging Lake, but the 100� weather made us decide to postpone that trip until October!

I have started a baby quilt - a string quilt done in pinks. I would love to have two or three baby quilts on hand for when I need them rather than having to make them up quickly at the last minute.

Don got our end tables done and they look VERY NICE in the family room! That was quite a project for him and they turned out great!

Wow! How can it be mid-May already???? It certainly does look like spring around here though! The lilacs are about finished blooming, the snowballs are in full bloom and things are really greening up.

We have started a business designing web pages and are keeping fairly busy. That, with our database work, keeps us at the computers quite a bit of the time. I (Bev) have found some time for quilting and have taken a couple of classes. The last one was making a flannel quilted jacket, which I still have to finish. Don tries to spend some time in his workshop and is making a couple of oak end tables for us.

We took a couple days last week and took a short trip with Jane & Gordon over back roads to Moab UT. We hiked up to see some petroglyphs which were quite impressive. Fortunately, they are well hidden from those who would deface them! The cactus were in bloom and were gorgeous!

Then, we visited an abandoned copper mine, way off the beaten track. Jane & Gordon's daughter, Brenda lives in the area and she & her husband have done a lot of exporing so they knew these neat places to go!. We stopped at their house and they went with us to show us the petroglyphs and the mine, then they headed back home.

Then, from Moab, the next day, we drove up a canyon west of town and hiked up to see Corona Arch. It was quite a hike uphill and I managed to make it most of the way, but after about a mile - when you had to climb up the face of a rock (they did have footholes and a cable to hold onto!!) and then up a ladder to get up to a path taking you to the arch - I quit! Jane waited with me while the guys went on up and got good pictures of the arch! We had great weather and a very enjoyable trip.

Our yard is looking quite nice, our rock garden is filling in and we even got a couple of plants for the pond. Now to get rid of the cosmos which are coming up like a blanket! We decided they grow too tall (at about 8') for our small yard but getting rid of them may prove to be quite a challenge!

Well, Christmas has come and gone and we are well into the new year! We took the train to Denver for Christmas at Pam & Tracy's home in Parker. We had a wonderful week there and had a houseful. Cindy, Ed & kids were there for nearly a week and Bev's sister, Diana, & husband, Roy, were there for a couple of nights. Christmas Day, Chris, Carol, Josh & Megan joined us for dinner and the afternoon as did Marc & Norma (Bev's nephew & his wife), so we had quite a crowd.

We enjoyed our trip home on the train and spotted 21 bald eagles along the way! That was a great way to travel!!