2008 Golf Bags Christmas Party

Today was the annual "Golf Bags" Christmas party, which was so graciously hosted by Claudia Speer. I didn't get to play much golf this year but they were gracious enough to let me attend the party anyway. BUT, they said next year I have to play golf or I'm banned from any celebrations at Christmas time in 2009. So, now I have an ultimatum and I'll just have to make time to play because I don't want to miss this event next year!

Attendees were most of the regular Tuesday golfing group. Starting left to right...
Back row: Janet, Sharon, Marly, Linda, Elaine, Darlene
Middle row: Sherry, Carol, MaryLou, Rita, Sherry, Donna
Front row: Chips, Claudia, June, Rita


Everyone brought a salad or dessert and we had a lovely buffett. It was an awesome variety of scrumptious delights.

It was a very cold but beautiful sunny day and the views from Claudia's deck were fabulous.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Wenatchee Senior Center Christmas Tea

Las Friday my friend, June Dorner, invited me to attend the Senior Center Christmas tea with her. We had tea and coffee and all kinds of goodies.

And we had quite the guest list... Santa, Father Christmas (yes they are different), the local youth Nutcracker dancers and even the Grinch.

The Barn... Or Is That a Chalet?

On our way home from the beach yesterday, we stopped for a quick visit with Clair & Beverly in Corbett. Clair met us at the front door wanting to know if we wanted to go see his new barn. Didn't ask if we need a drink or to go potty... just wanted to show off his barn.


Well, that barn is one big honker! It's taller than two giraffes standing one on top of the other. I'm not sure actually how tall it is, but it's tall. If you take a look at the picture, the two doors are each 12 feet high, so that can give you some perspective of the size. The picture at the end of this paragraph is taken from the steps to the loft. I'm not even on the top step or I would have had to use the telephoto lens.


This barn (or is that a chalet with a garage underneath) has a loft, with French doors, for Beverly's art studio where she can paint and write and practice her violin.


Clair did make us a very nice turkey noodle soup for lunch and we visited for a couple hours before getting back on the road. We got home about 8:15 Sunday night.

Below are pictures of the original old tractor from when Clair and Beverly first got their berry farm going (many moons ago) AND the new tractor, both of which now have a comfy new home in the Chalet... I mean the barn.











Happy Holiday Season...

Love,

CarolWilliams@charter.net

A Drive to Depoe Bay

Friday morning we drove the 12 miles south to Depoe Bay thinking we would get a bowl of chowder at the Sea Hag, our favorite chowder restaurant. But, we arrived too early and had to eat breakfast instead which was fine because now we have an excuse to go back. The picture here is of Max, Gracie the Sea Hag and her hunk.

Then we came back to Lincoln City and hit a couple of gift shops where we got a surprise for Shelley's kids.

Will report more fun later.
Love,
Carol & Max

Thanksgiving at the Beach

Since we didn't have any kids or other company coming for Thanksgiving, we decided on a whim a couple days ago to take a mini excursion to Lincoln City, Oregon. We were lucky enough to score an oceanfront studio condo and arrived here about 4:30 this afternoon. This is a picture looking north (up the beach) from our patio. The stairs to the beach is right in front of our room. Awesome!


Being a holiday, the choices for places to eat were skimpy but we ended up at an unpretentious place called Maxwell's. They had a full turkey dinner and they were very generous with their portions.

It was very good and we had plenty leftover to bring home for snacks. We also brought home the pumpkin pie that came with dinner.


Here's hoping everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!


Love,
Carol & Max

Happy Holiday Season

I am one of the people who hates the early retail attempts to sell Christmas stuff. I just hate it (and threaten boycott) when I see Christmas decorations come out in September (or even October for that matter).

Today is the first day I woke up and felt inclined to use a seasonal mug for my morning coffee. As the last Saturday before Thanksgiving (and the winter nip in the air) I can now be happy and accepting that the holiday season is upon us.

That being said, we don't really have any particular holiday plans. With Max Jr in Iraq (second tour of duty) and the other kids spread out, we don't have any guests coming that we know of yet. But, we're still open if someone decides they want to make the trek for a good old fashioned home cooked meal with turkey and all the trimmings.

I am busy, busy, busy and having fun, fun, fun with my new real estate company. Shelley and I are so blessed to be doing well when so many other agents have taken second jobs to supplement their income during tough times. We were lucky (or extremely wise) to expand heavily into Property Management as a steady source of income for us. The real estate crisis seems to have enhanced the demand for rentals as people just can't buy right now for various reasons. That has been good for us.

Well, Max is taking a nap and I'm off to an appointment so will sign of for now.

Happy Holidays...

Love,

Get Me To The Church On Time

Lana's been visiting for a few weeks and she came by this morning and took Max to church.

Max loves an excuse to dress up and is still the best looking guy in town (whether he is in a suit or not)!

When they got back home we took a little walk to the rose garden to take in the beauty of the last roses before the freezing temps kill them completely.



We've all been loving the fabulous Fall colors the last few weeks are are sad to see the leaves starting to wilt and Fall. Fall has always been my personal favorite time of year here. I love Spring for the burst of new life but I love the Fall even more for the fabulous variety of yellows, oranges and reds.


A Fall drive to Leavenworth and up the Tumwater Canyon is an annual tradition with Max and me. Our drive a couple weeks ago uncovered a home in Leavenworth with residents sharing their Halloween spirit with all passers by. I just stopped by the side of the road and took this pic out the car window. Click on the image to enlarge and enjoy!

Stay Warm!

Love,

Would love to hear from you!
CarolWilliams@charter.net

More Anniversary Pictures

A few days ago I posted a picture of my husband Max and me having dinner at Applebees on our 25th anniversary.

Last night we went out to dinner with our friends June & Roger Dorner (at left) who were celebrating their 54th anniversary. There were married in 1954!



We were pretty proud of ourselves at 25, but we have a loooong way to go to catch up with June and Roger!

Congratulations to them. They were prolific home builders in Wenatchee for many years but are enjoying retirement now. They are an amazing couple and we're proud to be good friends.

Life is good!

It's The Silver (And the Diamonds)

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. A pretty nice milestone for us.

Here is our picture while at Applebee's for dinner tonight.

Willinger Real Estate Is Born

Whew... what a whirlwind I (Carol) have been in. Finally, the new business Shelley and I have been planning for many months has been born! After much ado and a mountain of legal forms Thursday, August 14th, was the official "birthday".

Our new company is Willinger Real Estate (a combination of our two last names (Williams and Granger). We are so excited about our new venture in spite of the fact it's going to be a lot of work. But, then, the real estate business is a lot of work any way you look at it. We will serve the entire Wenatchee real estate market working primarily with single family houses, multi-plexes (and other non-commercial investor properties) as well as doing Wenatchee property management... including HOA's.

We have one additional agent who has already joined us, Candy Armstrong. Candy has had her real estate license since 1979 (two years longer than me) but she has been focusing full time on her appraisal business for about 20 years. She will be a good addition to our group.

We don't want to become a BIG company but we're willing to take on a few, select, agents. I have no desire to get so mired in administration that I don't have time to do the fun stuff... spending time with our clients.

So, now you have some idea of why my blog entries have been so scarce. Now that the company is formed and launched I can take a deep breath and refocus. I will try to do better about keeping up.

We'd love to hear from you. Our direct e-mail is: CarolWilliams@charter.net or if you have an AOL e-mail address for us that works too!

Happy Summer!

Oh My Gosh!

I knew it had been a long time since I posted here but now I realize it's been over 2 months! Whew, it's not like we haven't had anything to write about... just no time I guess.

Our most recent foray was a mini-vacation to the Oregon coast. Click on that highlighted link to go to the photo album. When you get into the album click on the first photo to enlarge it, then you can scroll through the entire album one at a time.

My cousin Shirley and her friend Richard accompanied us and we all shared an ocean front condo at Florence. It was awesome. The feature photo here is of me and Shirley ready for our cherry pit spitting contest from the deck of the condo. We laughed so hard we nearly wet out pants! It is an understatement to say Shirley is very competitive. She pretended not to see my pits that went further than hers... but at least Richard was an honest soul. Finally, Shirley did admit that I won BUT only because I'm full of hot air.

Sadly this trip was instigated by and combined with a last visit my very ill Aunt Marian (who has since passed on). We were very glad to have had this last chance to visit with her and talk about the olden days. She was telling us about a time in the 1950's when there was a gathering at my Mom & Dad's house on Ash Street in Portland. Apparently my Mom made a rather memorable potato salad that included radishes. Marian says it was the first time she had ever tasted radishes in a potato salad. I wonder if they came out of my Dad's garden?

Will try to be better about posting in the future.... but can't make any promises. Life doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Will fill you in on more later.

Hugs...
Max & Carol

There's No Keeping Up Now

The race is on between me and the rose garden. I did some serious pruning in the roses this week-end, but the untrained eye would never know. the 96 gallon garbage can knows!

The rose bushes were to the point where you couldn't even get between the bushes and there was no way to get to the back row for harvesting OR pruning !

Anyway, in spite of the pruning, it's still prolific and we'll have a hard time keeping up with the crop. We have been cutting bouquets of roses all week-end and I probably pruned away ten times that many. Now that I have the bushes themselves somewhat under control, I can actually get around the garden to do some leaf clean-up from last year and weeding from this year. I am hoping to hire someone to do the actual weeding. I did enough of that this week-end to know that I prefer to use my brain over my brawn.

These rose bushes are getting old and we may have to seriously consider a new design for this space sometime in the next year or two. Might be fun to try a new look.

We did our part for reducing the nation's dependence on oil by staying home ALL week-end. The longest trip we took was to East Wenatchee for Chinese food for dinner tonight.



In addition to the roses, we are grpwomg a new crop of tomatoes planted on April 6th. This is our second crop in the Aero-Garden that Max got for Christmas. I just love watching these plants grow. We have two Red tomato plants and one Golden tomato plant. They are currently 9 inches tall, but I've done a lot of pruning to keep them compact and so they don't get gangly. According to the instructions, this establishes a stronger main stem to support the big crop.

On another subject, we have found a great day respite care center for Max to go to when I am out running about for business. It is at the Grace Lutheran church and they are open Monday - Thursday from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon. It's a good change atmosphere for Max... and a welcome relief for me not to worry about him when I am not home. He loves to work in the yard, but his balance is not good and he has taken a couple of tumbles. Fortunately, he hasn't hurt himself and we'd like to keep it that way. The church has two or three people on duty at all times and they visit and have lunch and play games... and nap whenever they want! Sounds like a schedule I would like! :-)

We're adjusting to life changes. I'm wearing many more hats but Max has been a gem about accepting his increasing limitations. As much as he hates not being able to work in the yard and do other jobs around the house, he does understand the risk involved. I feel very grateful for that. There is nothing worse than having to argue to protect the ones you love.

Well, that's the report from the Williams house. Would love to hear what's up in YOUR life.

Love,

The Good News and The Bad News

The good news is: J.R. and his girlfriend, Janice, (pronouced Ja-neece) came up this week-end and gave us the news they are getting married. We really like Janice and will be happy to have her in the family. The bad news is, it sounds like they will wait until J.R. gets back from Iraq... his second deployment. He will return in August of 2009, so not sure when the wedding will take place after that.


In the background of the pictures, of course, is one of JR's restoration projects. These pictures were taken just before they took Max out to the car storage to "visit" Max's two classic cars. They took the red convertible out for a spin up to Lake Chelan and back. Next month when J.R. comes back for his last visit before going to Iraq, he promised to take Max out in the blue Buick Riviera. Max will love that.













Also, they presented me with a really beautiful bouquet of delayed Mother's Day flowers. I like this Janice... she's having a very good influence on J.R.!!!

Remember: You can always click on any photo to enlarge.

We're Alive !

It's about time I stopped working long enough to make a post... at least to let everyone know we're still alive! I have never, ever, ever gone this long without posting to the blog. So, I'm going to make up for it with several subject in this "catch-up" post.

Here I am, sipping a birthday Sangria, with friends June Dorner and DiAnn Heath. The husbands were sitting on the other side of the table.

And, here is Max hanging out with an old car. Even though he can't do the actual restoration work anymore, he still loves to look. Instead of going to the BIG Apple Blossom Parade, we headed over to the Douglas County Park where the Classy Chassis cars were on display. Max still has two classic cars of his own, which he lovingly keeps safely stored. Whenever J.R. comes up to visit, they usually get them out of storage and take them for a carbon-burning spin.

The week-end before the BIG parade was the annual Youth Parade. My friend, and business partner, Shelley (waving in the pic) headed up the committee in charge of the John Newbery Elementary School float. I think it was the most fun and colorful entry of the year.

Yesterday, I took the time to stop by and visit my friend Amy Greenhalgh and her 8-month old baby, Shelby. I had not seen the baby since before we left for California so she has grown A LOT. I've got to get out more often!









Amy's Mom, Patti, was visiting from Las Vegas so it was fun seeing her again too.






Grandma Patti was enjoying spending time with the baby while Amy got to work in the yard. I can't believe Amy was doing this dirty job by herself while Troy was at work. I would have definitely been looking for some professional help! But, Amy used to be a Park Ranger, so I think she likes a good excuse to get dirty.

My Latest New Gadget

I've always loved gadgets and new technology... like being one of the first in Wenatchee with a Fax machine, and cell phone. That was when Fax's used thermal paper and cell phones were really two-way radio transmitters and receivers. Today I fed my lust for a new gadget.

This morning Max and I went for a random drive around the area, stopped at our favorite little donut shop then headed to the Roger Dunn Golf Store where I chose the newest SG5Golf Caddie. It's not much bigger than a cell phone and will be so cool. I wish everyone had one of these because it's a time saver on the golf course. No more looking for yardage markers on sprinkler heads, or wondering how far the hazards are. The only bad thing, of course, is it won't actually stop the golf ball from going into a hazard, it will only tell me where and how far away they are.

Now, I just have toarrange a game of golf to test it out.

Stay tuned...

Carol

Lunch With Lowell and Mary Jo

One of the highlights of our annual trip to Palm Springs is getting together for lunch with Max's cousin and his wife. Lowell's Dad and Max's Dad were brothers so Max and Lowell grew up together in Cardston.

Lowell & MaryJo live in Edmonton, Alberta and also have a home in Palm Desert, where they spend 6 months of the year. We try to get together for lunch at the Olive Garden once a week while we're here.

Today they had us over to their condo for lunch and dessert. The upper left picture is Lo & Jo cutting the Apple Pie and dishing up the ice cream. YUMMO!

And here is Max and Lowell sitting on the sofa discussing an article that was printed in the Cardston newspaper about Lowell recently. Lowell has been an avid athlete all of his life and was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame of Edmonton's Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton on his 80th birthday last September. He was quite the runner and basketball player as a youth... got into squash as an adult, but in later years seemed to focus on tennis which he became very good at, has won many trophies, and still plays regularly.

Remember: You can click on any of the pictures in this post or the entire blog to enlarge the image.

Beautiful Day On The Course

Our golfing friends, Carl & Mary Lou Lattimer, from Wenatchee are down here for 3 weeks. Last night we got together for dinner at the (Cathedral Canyon Country Club) clubhouse with Bud & Dorothy McIntire (who live here). Bud and Dorothy used to live in Wenatchee but moved down here several years ago and love it. They usually go back to Wenatchee for a few weeks in the summer (when it's soooo darn hot here) to visit family and friends.

Above, clockwise: Max, Bud, Willy, Dorothy, Mary Lou, Carl.

Today Carl & Mary Lou invited me to play golf with them. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Here is a picture of Carl, Max and Mary Lou while we were waiting for our turn on a par 3.

Max rode with me for the first nine then I ran him back to the condo for a nap while I finished the back nine with Carl and Mary Lou. My game didn't start out so great but I finished pretty strong. I shot a 49 on the front, 40 on the back, to break 90. Yay! I was particularly proud of the back nine 40 because it was the "Lake" nine, which (IMHO) is the most difficult on the course. There is not only LOTS of water but plenty of sand too.

I love Palm trees! I'm not sure why, but I find myself fascinated by them. No matter where I am, I find myself gawking around looking at Palm trees. Whether they are tall or short, they seem so graceful. The first picture above is three TALL palms behind the pool near our condo. Orange, lemon and grapefruit trees line the pathway to the pool.

The second set of palms was taken on the golf course today. What you can't see is the BIG lake on the left and the BIG sandtrap on the right.