my adorable parents 1949

On New Year's Eve they will be celebrating their 60th Wedding Anniversary!

December 31, 1949 - December 31, 2009

WOW!

Christmas Eve - Florida style

Lobster, clams, corn and potatoes! Yummy!

Many thanks to our new friends for inviting us!

2009

Sending you some Christmas Cheer, Boy we’ve had a crazy year!
January with Em and Beth, Mexico house a happy mess.
February we bought boogie boards, while in the northwest it just poured.
In March the Primavera’s bloomed, going home, all too soon.
April back in Oregon, seemed like we were never gone.
The month of May left little doubt, what spring flowers are about.
It was June that changed our life, Florida real estate in strife.
We thought in July, why not southern US try.
In August we went back, to foreclosures beat a track.
The right house came in September, trust the universe: remember!
October was at the crazy most, leave our belov'd west coast?
November dawned and it was clear, return to Florida was quite near.
Gifts of December almost here, one blessed grandchild will appear.
This holiday season we are extremely grateful, for life, love, family and friends ever faithful.
And we want to let you know, the guest room is painted and ready to go……

Love,

Deborah and Willie

Card Art - Elizabeth Daubner Davis

this winters night

Light is returning

Even though this is the darkest hour
No one can hold back the dawn

Let's keep it burning
Let's keep the light of hope alive
Make safe our journey through the storm


One planet is turning
Circles on her path around the Sun
Earth Mother is calling her children home

"Light Is Returning" Lyrics by: Charlie Murphy Tune: original Date: 1984 Source: Recorded on: "Canticles of Light," Charlie Murphy, Jami Sieber and the Total Experience Choir (Out Front Music, P.O. Box 12188, Seattle, WA 98102).

Happy Winter Solstice!

wow - I left you way back in October, and now it is almost December. Well, a lot has happened! I didn't tell you that we visited Beth and Emily at their new apartment and went to Emily's schools fundraiser - the Medieval Festival of Courage in October.

Miss Em is in the middle, her class performed at the castle stage.

Beth helped at the class booth.

After Beth's we went down to Willie's parent's in Sacramento for a few day visit and then home to pack for Florida! But wait, we did not go straight to Florida, we stopped in Albuquerque to see our best friends.

I loved Albuquerque! It was gorgeous, huge blue sky and it seemed you could see forever. Our friends house has this awesome view from the kitchen, dining and living room! Here's Lana, making Pizza Friday night at her "job".

Lana is so cool, we love her.

We were there for Halloween and wow, there is a street in Albuquerque that goes all out, every house was decorated for Halloween!The dead were coming out of the ground......

That's Zoe and Willa - Russian nesting dolls of course! And Zoe the rest are coming..

These guys were especially scary....

We got our kicks, on Route 66.

Ww arrived in southwest Florida about 4 weeks ago, spend a few nights with Mom and Dad and then headed out to Englewood, an hour north.

Bed on the floor. Worked for a while.

We went to garage sales the day after we arrived and I scored this, our first piece of furniture for $25! I love it!

Some holiday lights perked up the dining room.

We were pretty happy to find that what we thought was a palm, bloomed and it was a Bird of Paradise. That is how I feel, a bird of paradise. Or would that be in paradise?

That at least catches us up. Since, we have bought a truck, put in a mailbox, cleared the trees from the wires, got Internet installed, you get the idea. Also we have been cleaning, painting, cleaning, gardening, did I say cleaning?
Next installment - photos of progress! Thanks for listening, I love you and please comment!

I love this photo! We saw a documentary about this guy, the Bear Man of Kamchatka: Charlie Russell. Check out his site at http://cloudline.org/ He calls his work the Pacific Rim Grizzly Bear Co-Existence study. It is fascinating. His theory is that grizzly bears have gotten a bum rap and that they are not aggressive or a threat to humans. The photography in the documentary was awesome and his interaction with bears amazing.

We had a visit from Beth and Emily a few week-ends ago. Emily made pumpkin pie for us. Here she is making the crust from stratch under the watchful eye of her mom.

The pie turned out great! The crust was awesome and that is the hard part.

Happy eaters.




The girls had just rented an apartment and came for the week-end to load up with furniture from the store of mom and pop.

It couldn't get much higher.....

We loved seeing our girls.

It was sad to see them go.....

Though it is a good feeling to know that they have nice apartment for the winter and that now they have furniture for it.

....while we were in Florida we looked for an affordable (for us) house, real estate market was low, Florida had way over built, there were lots of foreclosures.

First, we bought this one, before we even got to Florida - 4 bedrooms, 2 fireplaces, one block from the Calosahatchee River......$24,000. We thought we could rent it, fix the garage into an apartment for us when we came down to see my parents.

Sweet, except when we got there we realized we didn't just want to just stay in Florida a few months to help my mom and dad, we wanted to spend more time in Florida and this house was not where we wanted to be......... not near the beach.

So, we went up to the Venice Beach area, about 50 miles north, an area we had liked before, targeted the little town of Englewood and looked at houses,

First one, near old town Englewood, nice palm, but too small of a lot.

This one was adorable, but the foundation was post and pier and being eaten (devored) by termites.....

This one was small and needed a lot of work. Also no privacy in the small yard.

This one had possibilities, nice palm.

We put an offer in on this one, only to find that 3 other offers were ahead of us. No shade anyway.

This was one of my favorites, the old Florida plantation. It was not for sale. It sits on 20 acres. Who ever bought it paid over a million dollars for it in 06. Now it's value is 1/4 of that.....

It too needed some work.

We spent many hours in our "office" discussing the possibilities.

We finally agreed on Catalan Street, near the edge of town, with-in walking distance to Myyaka State Forest, an 8,000 acre plus wild zone, with trails and camping.

The house is not glamorous from the front. Actually it is not really glamorous from any side. But it is a CBS - for concrete block construction - take that you termites.

There is a nice palm and a couple huge shade trees.

There is this interesting rock ("there are no rocks in Florida....") spa that we hope to get working.

Also an interesting rock water garden....I like the jungle feel of it.

There is a, you guessed it, a rock firepit, for my favorite chef!

One of the best parts is that it is a few miles to this beautiful swimable beach.

The other best part, that I am extremely grateful for, is that we put the first house up for sale on craigslist, and sold it the next week for $30,000. It would have been a rental for us at best and the house on Catalan might now become a home.

It has been a long and crazy ride. Now we have a project in Florida, while we are there helping my parents. It is awesome how it has all worked out so far :) We are spending the winter in Florida instead of Mexico - that is a big change right there. Though there is a lot of Spanish spoken in Florida and we found a great Mexican resturant! Not quite the same but it will do.

Florida. 5 weeks in the summer.

Englewood Beach at Dawn.

Tropical paradise where the water is 90 degrees, small waves lap the shore and the sand is sugar white and filled with shells.

Everything around is green and jungly.

The water is sky blue.

This particular morning we saw the dolphins swim by. Leaping and diving as they traveled north along the beach. My camera was not good enough to bring you photos. We were lucky to have binoculars and saw a great dolphin show.

Also out at dawn are the sea turtle patrol, just finishing checking the nests, on the beach. The nests are clearly marked and dated and any "molestation" carries a severe fine.

I didn't see any babies except for tracks leading to the water.

We saw lots of wildlife; gopher turtles, birds all kinds, and yes, lots of biting things.....saw one bright orange snake, not my favorite.

But what we saw the most and photographed the most was houses, and that will be my next post!