BACK IN THE USA

2010-09-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

Here is the entry to Cindys race

2010-09-14T09:01:00.001-07:00

Hope you can attend!!!!

So much has happened

2010-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

since I last posted, it seems its just easier to post on facebook. First, my sister Cindy died after her 6 year battle with melanoma in July of this year. Isn't she beautiful?

I had a nice vacation in Colorado with my buds and their hubby's. Pics are here.

I have a wonderful SO who was a big support in my sisters last weeks.

And I am going on another trip to New Mexico in a couple of weeks. The spots are all doing great! TTYL!!

pics of Sprinkles, Rockyspot Dal puppy

2009-09-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

The rest of her pics are here

So Blaine is here for a month

2009-08-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

My adorable great nephew Blaine is here for a month while his dad is in training in San Diego.

Blaine is all growed up now! He has reached the age of 4 when he knows about everything. Here are a couple of pics.

Thellie has megaesophagus

2009-07-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

She has to eat all her meals blended like a shake and she has to eat sitting up or she regurgitates everything. Here is a site on canine megaesophagus. And here she is in her Bailey chair made by my friend Jack White and decorated by me.

Lake Evelyn and more

2009-07-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

On Friday we drove more than 100 miles to do the Lake Evelyn hike! This is a hike none of us had done before and was only a 4 mile hike. It was an adventure getting to the trailhead, the road was horrendous. The hike was very nice and the lake was quite charming. The rest of the pics of the hike are here. (After the Bowen Lake hike pics) A video of Ola and Buckwheat can be found here.

Foxy and Bowen Lake hike

2009-07-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

I lost my internet connection so had to wait until we got home to finish up the Colorado blog.I divided the pics onto 2 galleries. This is the beginning of the second gallery. The first few pics are of Foxy, the fox who hangs at Ola's house. The rest are pics of Bowen Lake and Lake Evelyn. On Th.we hiked to Bowen Lake. It is a beautiful lake pretty high up, lots of snow and part of the hike was above tree line. This was a 7 mile round trip hike with gorgeous views on the way up. You can see the rest of the pics here

Another Moose Day!

2009-07-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Ola, Buckwheat and I (GiGi) took a no hike day. We kayaked this morning and had a bit of adventure when another kayaker had his kayak overturn. We were paddling to try to assist him, (don't know what we would have done)but then a motor boat came and fished him out of the lake and put his kayak on the boat. We decided to kayak into the channel and saw 2 moose at Point Park, right next to the channel. On the way back to the cabin we stopped and I got a couple of pretty good pics of the moose, nmaed Inspector Mooseau and Inspector Gadget. I think Buckwheat will have some better ones, but she forgot her card reader. We had a nice lunch at the golf course and then did some shopping. Tonight is "All Shook Up" at the theatre. The rest of my pics are here.

kayaking with the moose and the hike

2009-07-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

We have seen a lot of moose this year. Monday night we saw a moose loose in the neighborhood (along with 2 deer). Tues am we had a great kayak, we got out of our boats and not a minute later Buckwheat and I heard Ola yell "there is moose swimming in the lake!" Sure nuff, he was swimming really close to where we had been kayaking! Way cool! If we had staying in another minute we would have been kayakin with the moose!
After kayaking for 1.5 hours we decided to go hiking. What started out as a nice hike turned into the hike from hell! We hiked first to Cascade Falls and had lunch, which was 3.5 miles in, the falls were beautiful. Then we hiked another 1.5 miles to Big Pool, it cooled down, clouded up and we thought we would have a great hike back, but somehow I fell down twice, BW fell once, and Ola got big blisters. We all got very tired and had nature calls. We did see 2 more moose though! See if you can find them in my pics. We were very glad to see the end of the trail and then we grilled steaks and had some wine to celebrate my benign results on my biopsy. The rest of our pics are here.

We're in Colorado!

2009-07-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

We spent the first night in a great place in Green Montain Falls, Co. thanks to my BIL's brother Rob. Then on to Grand Lake. We had a great cookout with our friend Aurel last night and then a hike with Cindy, Aurel and me today. I snagged some good early morning foggy pics over the lake this am. The rest of my pics so far are here.

The birthday girls video is up!

2009-07-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

Thelma Lou and Dixie Lees video is up here .
They had a great day today. I can't believe they are 12!

This N That

2009-07-01T18:11:00.001-07:00

Please keep my sister Cindy in your thoughts and prayers as she goes to Houston to get chemo tomorrow. And I am going in for a surgical biopsy for a lymph node on my neck. I am sure it is fine, but keep me in your thoughts and prayers also.

Today Thelma Lou and Dixie Lee celebrated their 12th birthdays! They have celebrated all their birthdays together except for when they turned 1. They had a grand time and were joined by Oliver, D'Leo,and my friend Janes new Dal, Sabrina. Ollie, D'Leo, and Sabrina are all from JLS Dals and are all related, so all of our Dals are related. I will have a video of their birthday uploaded soon.

Saturday I leave for Colorado with my friend Cindy. We will be gone for a week, but I have a petsitter living at my house! So if anyone sees my blog and wants to break in, the alarm will be set and the petsitter and my neighbors will be watching you!!

Cindy's Party

2009-06-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

Cindy's party was a huge success! I know she had a great time! Here is a vimeo slideshow of her pics. If you click the 4 arrow white thing on the right bottom you can see the video in full screen. I did a setting wrong or something because some heads are almost chopped off!! I have gotten feedback from a couple of people that they could not get the slide show to run so I put it on Smugmug also. You should have no problem with smugmug.

Light a candle for my sister

2009-06-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

Cindy is at MD Anderson for chemo now. If you don't know about her candle page check it out and light a candle for her. She will be back for her birthday bash on Sunday.

The "we're not going to kayak" kayak

2009-06-10T19:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the lake to kayak with my friends Jack and Camilla. Actually we went to the lake to NOT kayak. We had all loaded our yaks and then decided it was way to windy to yak but decided to just go sit at the lake and visit. The OKC kayak group was there for their social kayak, they had 65 people out! Anyway, when we got there the wind had died way down and we decided to go ahead and go out. Good thing we did, it turned out to be a great night!! Jack took some super pics and we saw one of the best sunsets I have ever seen. Check out Jack's video of the night. If you watch the whole video you will see the awesome sunset pics.
Au revoir for now!

Au revoir France!

2009-05-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem possible that my trip is over and I leave for the States tomorrow. I am totally in love with this part of France and love my wonderful hosts Randy and JM who took me all over the place, cooked my meals, gave me all kinds of historical info and were both the nicest people you can meet. I will surely miss them, France and Shmoo! I am getting teary eyed just writing this post. I hope everyone enjoyed my pics as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Get together for English speaking guests

2009-05-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday JM and Randy had a get together for me and invited several English speaking guests! We had a great time visiting, but I did not take any pics! This post should be below the Carcassone post as the get together was Sunday night.

Carcassone

2009-05-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

Well today we are off to Carcasssone, I found a nice website even with a little video here. You can see the rest of my pics here. Basically old Carcassone is a walled city with the castle overlooking the new Carcassone. People actually live in the walled city, there are lots of restaurants, shops, hotels, et. Wikipedia says this about Carcassone "

First signs of settlement in this region have been dated to about 3500 BC, but the hill site of Carsac – a Celtic place-name that has been retained at other sites in the south – became an important trading place in the 6th century BC. The Volcae Tectosages fortified the oppidum.

Carcassonne became strategically identified when Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC and eventually made it the colonia of Julia Carsaco, later Carcasum (the process of swapping consonant is a metathesis). The main part of the lower courses of the northern ramparts dates from Gallo-Roman times. In 462 the Romans officially ceded Septimania to the Visigothic king Theodoric II who had held Carcassonne since 453; he built more fortifications at Carcassonne, which was a frontier post on the northern marches: traces of them still stand. Theodoric is thought to have begun the predecessor of the basilica that is now dedicated to Saint Nazaire. In 508 the Visigoths successfully foiled attacks by the Frankish king Clovis. Saracens from Barcelona took Carcassonne in 725, but King Pippin the Younger drove them away in 759-60; though he took most of the south of France, he was unable to penetrate the impregnable fortress of Carcassonne."

Randy can do anything and a walk

2009-05-23T02:44:00.000-07:00

I had a major computer problem regarding my LAN connection. Some setting had magically changed on its own, but Randy quickly went into places I did not know existed on the computer and it works again!!! We are staying in the village today, the market is here and also the fete is still going on all over France. I just returned from a long walk along the trail where the old railroad once was. The rest of the pics from the walk are here. Amazing that you can see all of this in just a few kilometres!

Port Vendre sur la cote vermeille

2009-05-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

Most of the pics are online here. The first few pics are from various flowers I took on one of our walks through the gardens of Chalabre. Then there are a few of the fete in Chalabre. It is a 4 day holiday celebrating the Ascension. Then we headed to the Cote Vermeille which you can read about here. We passed beautiful scenery of the mountains and grape fields on the way, also going through the Gorge of St George. We arrived at the Cote Vermeille and found a nice little sidewalk cafe where we had a lovely lunch. We drove up the coast a bit and I snapped a few more pics, stopped at a nice wine stand where I had to taste several varieties of local wine to find one dry enough for my liking!! We then had a nice drive back and stopped where I could take a nice pics of the old walled village of Carcossane which you can read about here.

Lac de Montbelle and Chateau de Montsegur

2009-05-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

To see the link to all my pics from today click here. We started the day with Randy and me doing a bit of village shopping, then off to Lac de Montbelle and then Chateau de Montsegr
r, up in the mountains. Here is more info on the lac and here is more on the Chateau. If you click a link you should get the page in English. Since lakes and mountains are my 2 favorite things I took a lot of pics. We had a picnic lunch in the mountains down from the Chateau. Then I attempted to hike a little bit towards the chateau but did not make it very far!! We will have fair dinner in the village tonight and hopefully to the Emerald Coast tomorrow. What a lovely place the south of France is!!

Laid back day

2009-05-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Today was laid back stay in the village day. We began the day with a dog walk with Shmoo on the old railroad trail. Then got pics and blog caught up. Suddenly it was lunch time! After a superb meal of chicken and out of this world mac and cheese, it was time for another dog walk with JM and Shmoo, this time by the gardens and river. It was absolutely gorgeous today, so I sat out and read.
Then Randy and I did a little village shopping and checking out the progress of the village fair which starts tomorrow. I bought this darling chapeau that I am modeling. Its the only pic of the day. We'll have a nice dinner and then another dog walk and then some tv time and see what tomorrow brings. Oh, and I did introduce myself to several villagers in my Okie French. They acted like they understand me!

Lourdes today!

2009-05-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

Click here for the rest of my Lourdes pics on Smugmug.
It was a lovely but very long day. Lourdes is a very beautiful place with the river running through it. Shmoo went too and Randy and JM were great to take me there. I got water and lit a candle for my sister Cindy. If you would like to read more about Lourdes click here.

I'm here!!!

2009-05-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Click here
here for the rest of the pics. One of my first blog pic is not from France, many of you will recognize my new friend I met at the airport in OKC. But now back to France! What wonderful hosts I have in Randy and JM!! I am exhausted but in awe of the beauty here. Today I started the day with a bakery visit with Randy. Then JM took me on a tour of the village. Then a quick trip to the market in Mirapoix, then back home for lunch, then a trip to a local winery for some grape juice. And I can drink wine tonight! My pics are finally here!

I leave tomorrow!

2009-05-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'll try to update everyday. I may just have time for a quick summary and couple of pics, but I'll get all pics online when I get back.

The Cote Vermeille and Cadaqués

2009-04-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

From About.com:

The magnificent vistas of the Côte Vermeille have inspired some of the world’s most famous artists—indeed, they sparked an entire style of painting. It’s easy to see why.

As you stand at one of several overlooks, the Mediterranean crashes several stories below. Craggy mountains pierce the sea. Steeply sloping vineyards speckle the landscape and crowd the coastline. Spain’s rugged shore can be spotted just to the south.

I stole the pic above from Randys blog. Please take a peek at it and read about these two places.

From Wikipedia: Cadaqués is a town in the Alt Empordà comarca, in Girona province, Catalonia, Spain. It is on a bay near the Cap de Creus peninsula, on the Costa Brava of the Mediterranean Sea.

THE HAUTE VALLEE

2009-04-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

winefields
A view of the Pyrénnées.

Right off the bat, I'll confess, this post is from Randy's blog. The scenery is just so fantastic and she already has pics up! The Haute Vallée of the Aude if that small, hilly region located between Chalabre to the west on the one hand and Limoux and Couiza to the east on the other.

Lac de Montbel

2009-04-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Lac de Montbel is a reservoir 5 minutes from Chalabre, which is a great location for watersports and swimming. It is located at the border between the Ariège and Aude départements of southwestern France. The mountains of the Pyrenees are visible in the background.

la boulangerie

2009-04-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pics that Randy took for me of goodies in la boulangerie which really close to Randys house. You can read more about la boulangerie here. Don' these look too good to eat!!

Chateau de Montsegur

2009-03-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Randy says we will probably go to see the Chateau de Montsegur.
Here is some info: from Wikipedia. I am hoping I can make it to the top! It is supposed to be a 45 minute hike up. There are also some great pics here

Where is Chalabre? Where will I be staying?

2009-03-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Chalabre is about 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Toulouse. It is in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is close to the northern border of Spain and west the Mediterranean Sea.

Randy has a nice link to her house.

Bonjour for now!

Getting ready for France

2009-03-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a blog to document my upcoming trip to France. My cyber friend Randy has graciously invited me to share her (and JM's) home and to be my tour guide. Randy lives in the south of France near the France/Spain border in a small, quaint, centuries old village called Chalabre. You can read more on the village of Chalabre on Randy's Our Life in Chalabre site. She has wonderful stories, posts and pics. I will probably be posting some of her pics later on. My tickets are bought, my petsitter booked, and I've applied for my passport!

While you're at it, check out Randy and Raven's children's book.

Bonjour for now!!