Sunday, November 15
We started a cold, rainy morning by whipping up one of Barbara’s chicken salad recipes to take over to Bill and Doris Van Wyhe after church. Then, after getting cleaned up and dressed, we headed off to First Baptist Church of Liberal for Sunday school and the morning service.
We have always loved the Sunday school class at this church. We are a mixture of backgrounds and church affiliations and each person in the group brings very special insights to scriptures and lessons and how they apply to us as individuals.
Don Witzke, our esteemed teacher, was out of town this weekend, but the class moved right ahead with one of the members filling in.
After Sunday school, we moved downstairs to the sanctuary and visited with those folks that we remembered (and who remembered us) and then settled in for a great sermon by David Bagwell. David is a wonderful preacher and pastor and we have missed hearing him. He has tendered his resignation to the church effective January, 2010, and is searching for a new community and church…we wish him every success as he and his family go to their next place of ministry.
Before returning home, we stopped by Bill and Doris’s house to drop off the food and let Bill know that we were planning to leave tomorrow morning and probably wouldn’t see him again until the next time we visited Liberal.
We had lunch with Leah and Ryan, rested for awhile, and then went off visiting since Leah and Ryan were meeting with a pastor of a church they are considering attending. Our favorite photo of the kids from this trip is below.
Our first stop was at the home of Mr. & Mrs. George and Livesy.
From the Georges, we drove south of town to the home of Danny and Charlene Plett. We have both written about the Pletts and their boys, Chance and Spencer, another wonderful family that we have been blessed to know and work with.
One of Danny’s passions is rebuilding and restoring old cars. He has been working for a couple of years on a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, and before we left tonight, he took us out to his shop to show us what he had accomplished. Danny is a great mechanic and has done a beautiful job with this particular restoration.
The painting on the wall in the picture of Danny and Charlene is one that Barbara painted years ago and gave to Charlene when we retired.
When we had said most of what we had to say, we said our goodbyes and returned to the house to visit with Leah and Ryan until we all decided we’d better head for bed if we were to get up early tomorrow.
Monday, November 16
Happy Birthday today to son-in-law Ryan McQuitty in Liberal, Kansas, and sister-in-law Billee Little in Mineola, Texas!!!
Everyone was up and around early this morning. Leah had to go to school, Ryan to Halliburton for another shift, and we had a long day of travel ahead of us.
The rest of the day was just drive, drive, and drive some more. It’s 435 miles from downtown Liberal to our pad in Artesia, and today they were all there. We did stop in Amarillo to check out a different calling plan at Sprint (didn’t find what we needed at the time) and at Joe’s Boots in Clovis (did find what I wanted this time); also, we made the traditional stop at Pat’s in Portales for malts. Pat’s, not much more than a shack on a corner, has been in the same location since I went to school at ENMU beginning in 1962, and still prepares the richest, thickest malts anyone could ever want.
We ran by Cal and Carol’s house in Roswell just long enough to say, “Hi,” and to pick up an early birthday present for Barbara and then went out to Happy Jack’s to get another load of used books. By the time we finished there, it was dark, so we just headed straight for home, arriving a little after 5:30.
We had Big V opened up and everything put away by 6:30, then went over to see Jean and get caught up on the latest information. It didn’t take much sitting and talking for us to realize how tired we were, so we said goodnight to Jean and returned to Big V to crash for the night.
Tuesday, November 17
Birthday greetings go out today to granddaughter Randi who turned the big 15 in San Antonio and niece Brandi in Cleburne, Texas!!!
We didn’t accomplish much of anything today…just piddled around Big V and started making plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas travels…we did venture out during the afternoon to go to Walmart and get things to restock the pantry and refrigerator.
I went out for about an hour before sundown and collected another big bucket of pecans. The cold night temperatures and the wind that they had here while we were gone brought down quite a few and I would like to gather and sack as many as possible before we leave here next week.
Barbara fixed a new dessert recipe, tonight, Sopapilla Pie. It was a recipe that Ernie and Billee sent to us…hardly any calories in it since it used only a stick of butter, a cup and a half of sugar, and three packages of cream cheese. I’m sure it won’t be found in the recipe section of Cardiologists Monthly, but we enjoyed it very much!
Wednesday, November 18
Neither of us slept well last night; Barbara was up at 2:00 a.m. and I followed around 4:00. We spent the time checking email and playing computer games (not much else to do around here before sunrise) and then we went back to bed and slept until 9:00.
Since we were so far off schedule, it took us the rest of the morning to take care of the daily chores around Big V and then get cleaned up and dressed to meet the family at Chaos for our weekly “lunch bunch.”
We stopped at Walmart on the way home from Chaos to look for a couple of things (and to make it an official day). As we were leaving, Barbara spotted Connie and Teresa, her two nieces who live in Loco Hills, coming into the parking lot. We ended up standing in the lot and talking with them for about 45 minutes…it was a good thing the weather was nice. That whole bit was strange since we had just commented to Cal and Carol the other day that we haven’t seen the girls since we got back to Artesia a couple of months ago.
When we got back to the place, I went out to harvest pecans until dark and Barbara started making preparations for supper. Around 5:30 Barbara called Jean to see if she wanted to share the meal with us and that’s when we found that Jean was still at the doctor’s office due to high blood pressure (she went in at 2:30 for something else!). It was already dark, so we offered to come to the office and wait until she was finished and I would drive her home while Barbara finished preparing the meal.
All turned out well and we got back home and fed. I stayed with Jean for a while and watched through the third quarter of the Spurs/Mavericks basketball game before returning to Big V and calling it a night.
Thursday, November 19
We received word this morning that Doris’s battle with cancer had finished and now she’s with the Lord. The funeral will be held on Monday, the 23rd, so prayers for the family would certainly be appreciated.
Since time seems to be moving on and we’re leaving here on Monday, Barbara decided to spend the morning cleaning out and straightening the underneath bins while I whipped us up a French toast brunch.
The rest of the day for both of us was spent doing odd preparation chores for relocating for the winter months.
Around 3:30 I decided to get serious about the upcoming move and went to the small barn to get Jerry’s air compressor so I could check and air up our tires. This is no small matter, since we have 15 tires to deal with when we travel like this – 6 on Big V, 4 on the Vibe, and 4 plus a spare on the trailer. The rear duals on Big V are usually a problem, but all went well today and I didn’t even have skinned knuckles when it was over.
The rest of the evening was typical…Barbara fixed soft tacos and we went over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her…watched a little football and then returned to Big V to work on the journal and watch a DVD. I’ve started reading Flags of Our Fathers (should be required reading for every high school student) and somewhere along the line in my reading it reminded me that I hadn’t finished watching all the episodes of Victory at Sea, a set I bought last year. So, I got out the DVD’s and watched the episode dealing with the Battle of Iwo Jima and the placement of the American Flag at the peak of Mount Suribachi.
Friday, November 20
Another early morning for Barbara while I snoozed until the alarm went off at 6:00. Fridays are my morning to join the men of 1st Methodist (Jerry and Nancy’s church) for the weekly prayer breakfast. It’s a time I enjoy greatly. Barbara says that she accomplished absolutely nothing during the time I was gone.
When I returned, we both got busy with more chores to get everything ready to move back to our lake home in East Texas. After a bit, we (mostly Barbara) had gone through every cabinet in the living room and kitchen and rearranged (or threw away) the contents.
A trip to town to drop off some mail and donate 64 books to the Artesia Public Library finished the morning’s work. We then returned to Big V and had lunch.
I spent the afternoon gathering pecans while Barbara stayed inside and played Susie Homemaker.
Tonight we went on a “real” date, something very unusual for us. We already had tickets for the community theater production of Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue for Saturday night, but decided we’d attend tonight just to have something to do and to support Becky (who played Sister Harriet Ann, one of the Las Vegas nuns) and Jerry (double bass player in the pit orchestra).
Dressed and fresh, we went out for dinner at Kwan Den (a very good Chinese restaurant) and then headed for the Ocotillo Theater for an evening of fun and entertainment. Nunsensations was a real hoot of a show; definitely not a production for high school kids, but still funny and (mostly) clean. Becky did a great job of presenting her character and Jerry was a lot of fun to watch and hear a he thumped away on the bull fiddle in the orchestra.
Saturday, November 21
We began the morning (a little later than usual) with a trip to the laundromat to get caught up on our washing; then, when we returned to Big V, (after a mandatory stop at Walmart) we sorted through clothes one more time and packed our “summer” wardrobes to leave in the barn for the next three months.
Nancy and Jerry had invited us to dinner at their place tonight and had requested that I bake some bread, so I got the trusty bread maker cranked up and then went out to the trees to gather more pecans while the weather was halfway decent while Barbara continued to sort out Big V’s interior…sort of like a spring cleaning in November!
Barbara: Stopping to check my email, I found that Whitney and Jim had sent Halloween photos of Little Jimmy, who for the occasion dressed as a shark…definitely the cutest shark we’ve ever seen! Of course that meant I had to make a collage so I could add Jimmy’s photos to our journal.
These journals are a part of our legacy and history of our retirement life through travel, visits, thoughts, and memories.
Finally, we decided that if we were going to be half-way decent company tonight, we’d better grab a short nap which we readily were prepared for!
Before we knew it, the clock warned us that we needed to start preparations for our night out with the clan.
I am so glad that Jim and I chose to see this production twice because tonight, I could spend even more time watching Becky and Jerry. Since we’ve seen Becky act before, I knew what she could do and wasn’t surprised at her poise and talent. However, any time I’ve been to “see” Jerry, I’ve really only been able to hear…not see him. For this show, though, the orchestra was not down in the pit so I could actually observe a different side of Jerry that is so often hidden in his everyday life. With intensity, precision, and an oneness with the bull fiddle, Jerry contributed greatly to the success of the performances and he received his share of attention with an occasional interaction with the nuns.
After another great performance, their last, everyone hooked up again over at Nancy and Jerry’s for chocolate cake and ice cream where we shared one last “family” get-together…this time even Sister Harriet aka Becky could join us!
During our post-show dessert, Jerry and Nancy and Jean presented us with early birthday and Christmas gifts. Jean gave us a Walmart gift card (she knows that no day is official until we’ve been to Walmart), and Jerry and Nancy gave us each a pair of knitted footies to wear in Big V during the cold winter days and nights. They also gave us a DVD with four complete Benji movies to help us recall our babysitting days with their Benji…I will be just like having movies of a family member!
What an awesome night to conclude our last 2009 visit with the Terpening/Francis clan!
Thanks for the memories! – Bob Hope (and us, with grateful hearts)
From our last weekend of the year 2009 in Artesia,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
