Christmas with Bob's Family

Henderson, NV: Wake up time was 7:00 a.m. Laura was already up making stuffing and getting the turkey ready for the oven. Bob filled stockings and went for a walk.

Laura, Christy and I made breakfast around 9:30 a.m. I cooked the scrambled eggs, Christy made turkey and pork bacon, Laura made cinnamon rolls with orange icing.

After breakfast we opened some of the gifts, but waited until the rest of the family arrived to open the remainder of the presents.

Around 3:00 p.m., Janice and James arrived with their families. Some of us worked on a jigsaw puzzle while others talked. We had a large turkey and ham dinner with mashed potatoes, roasted yams, fresh veggies, biscuits, stuffing, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce.

Dinner settings for 16!

Christy and Emily

Christmas decor.

Louise with 2012 quilt calendar.

Emily, James & Jayce with Legos.

Rich and Shay intently puzzled.

Susan reading "Falling Up" by Shel Silverstein to Emily. Christy reflected in mirror.

The remainder of the presents were opened after dinner and the jigsaw puzzle finished. Dessert consisted of either cheesecake or pumpkin pie.

"Tooniverse" puzzle completed. 550 pieces.

Aaron, Emily, Bob

Me

Louise and Aaron hugging goodbye. Christy saying goodbye to someone out of photo range.

Brothers--Aaron & Bob.

By the time dishes were done and everyone headed home, it was about 9:30 p.m.

Bedtime rolled around and we were faced with "the air bed." It started out nice and firm. By four a.m., I couldn't stay on my side of the bed and kept rolling toward Bob. By morning, both of us were like hot dogs in the bottom of the "bun." The bed had rolled up around us. I wish I had taken a photo!

Water in the Desert

Sparks to Las Vegas, NV: Reservoirs, lakes, streams, canals...who would have thought there was so much water in the desert? I didn't. For eight hours, we drove from Sparks, NV to Henderson, NV, and saw Carson Lake, Walker Lake, a reservoir, and a couple of rivers. Seeing the blue water after miles upon miles of brown sagebrush was a welcome sight.

At the south end of Walker Lake, I saw odd structures in the distance. As we drove closer, we could see row after row of large buildings, and mounded dirt structures. Turns out it was the Hawthorne Army Depot: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/hawthorne.htm. On our way back, we plan to stop at the Hawthorne Ordnance Museum to see ammunition from the past.


At Tonopah, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant for a very good lunch. We started seeing yucca trees south of Tonopah and saw a large sand dune area called "Big Dune."


We arrived in Henderson around 5:00 p.m. Bob's mom and sister had spaghetti dinner cooking. Bob's brother, Aaron; niece, Emily, and brother's girlfriend, Christy were visiting from Kentucky and joined us for dinner. It was a very good dinner.


Around 9:30 pm our evening wound down. Bob and I stayed in the guest bedroom in a double-sized air bed. When we went to sleep everything was fine, air bed was firm. By morning, I was falling into Bob as the air bed had lost air overnight. It was very hard to roll over. I ended up rolling out of the air bed onto the floor to get out of bed.