Summertime, and the livin is crazy

It seems like I've been in a car more than anywhere else in the past 2 months.

On June 6 I flew to Albuquerque, NM to visit my sister Pam who lives in Zuni, NM. She is employed in the school system in New Mexico. After a visit with my cousin's daughter Marissa and friend Cher, we took off for Zuni. It started raining as we left to drive the 2 hour drive to Zuni and the rain seemed to follow us the entire summer. The picture at the left is a short distance from Pam's home. Very pretty. Reminds me of the Black Hills.

After a tour of the area, very short, we decided to hit the road for South Dakota. First stop was Santa Fe which we found to be quite beautiful, although we were up at 6 am and nothing opened until 10 am. We decided not to stick around and traveled north. We stopped in Las Vegas, NM at a little coffee shop and enjoyed the local gestapo enjoying pulling someone over every 20 minutes for over an hour. At least we weren't one of the lucky ones, although I'm not sure how we avoided it because there wasn't that much traffic.

Traveled on to Boulder, CO and Pam spent the night with her son Jason and my son-in-law Destry came and picked me up to take me to Longmont for the night. Very short visit with Jason as he had to leave for school, got to see his sons and wife and enjoyed the short visit. Couple of cute kids and so well behaved.

Got to Angie's and she was at boot camp. She recently moved and after a tour of the house we visited, it was so good to see her and Destry and the house is just what they needed, very comfortable. This was also a very short visit as we had to meet Pam around noon the next day to continue on to SD. Oh, and it rained while we were there.

When we finally got to SD we headed to Blackhawk to spend the night with Pam's son Paul and family. Got to meet all the kids and they had a nice spaghetti supper for us. Haven, Paul's 7 year old daughter and I were outside hitting the ball and guess what, it started raining. Once again. Oh, by the way, Paul's kids are all adorable, so darn cute, especially Soyer, the 7 month old, what a smile.

The next day we visited a friend of Pam's who I must say was very colorful and seemed to be having a bit of drama in her life. Originally Pam had planned to stay with her for a night, but plans change. While we were there it started raining.

Left for Rapid to spend the night with our Aunt Mary Bernadette and Uncle Ken. Really had a nice visit, a little wine and dined on tacos if I remember right.

We got to have lunch with sister-in-law Nancy and her granddaughter Chloe while in Rapid. Pam, Toni and I met them at Olive Garden, it was a great meal and we laughed so hard Pam had a slight accident, at least I think that was when it started.

She really needs to get some depends or a sling or something. (Actually we had laughed so hard at times on our trip that the depends thing would have come in handy many times.) Nancy still looks like she did in high school, not a day older, and Chloe, what a beautiful girl. And talk about personality, WOW!!!!! Does she get that from her mother??? I remember Marie being pretty quiet and shy, anyway we had a wonderful lunch and again, lots of laughs. And we learned to act surprised when we got our pix taken, so I tried it the rest of the trip and I don't think the look on our faces on most of the pix would be considered surprise, not sure what I would call it, more like "oops I just passed a little gas" but certainly not flattering. SURPRISE PAM!!!!!! Her camera didn't work most of the time but mine was always ready for a shot.

Off to Toni's for the night. Kaia was busy getting ready to go spend the month with her dad. It's just amazing what a beautiful family we have. All so wonderful and attractive and fun and unique. And so far we'd only seen about 1/4 the family we would eventually encounter on this trip. We spent a night a Toni's and visited with Jason's oldest daughter Hailee, and I haven't seen her since she was about 10 maybe, not ten anymore. Almost grown up now and I really enjoyed visiting with her. Had a great supper with Hailee, Toni and Dakota and something sweet and fattening for breakfast. Thanks for the wonderful time Toni, Mary B and Ken, Paul, Ang and Jason so far.

Back to Mary B's for a short visit and then off to pick up a 7 foot table (to the left) because apparently we didn't have enough stuff in the vehicle, it barely fit but it managed to make it back to Zuni eventually, and it really was pretty.

More on the crazy summer and the rain and more relatives and more relatives and more pictures and lots laughs and then let's get serious, but not really. Just a little bit more of a storm to add to our summer.

by the way......

There's much more to come. Watch for more pictures of the crazy summer on my photostream