Merry Christmas 2010!


A brief re-cap of the year is traditional at year end, so here goes:

In late January, I took a cruise for the first time on Holland America, voyaging from San Diego with my Cousin Helen and sister-in-law Liz. We journeyed down the west side of Central America through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean and along the Atlantic side of lower Central America before returning to port at Fort Lauderdale. It was a terrific trip, and I would cruise again anytime. The trips or excursions off the ship were wonderful, especially our trip into the interior of Guatemala. But the best was passing through the Panama Canal—it is really narrow and quite amazing how well those ships go through with only inches to spare.



Then, in March, Liz and I took my travel trailer down to sightsee around San Jose and visit my Cousin Gary and family along with Gary’s mother, my Cousin Marge. We went to Filoli Gardens, a garden show, Winchester Mystery House, and much more. The visit with Marge was especially good, as she passed away a few months later in August.

In May, Liz, laura and I went into the high country around Sierra City--the Mother's Day flowers around the Empire Mine were terrific, and it has historical ties to Filoli Gardens, which was interesting.

June was all about Lincoln Thomas Warner, born on the first day of the month.  He's a real cutie, and looks just like Chris at that age.

Then in July, Liz and I took a trip that changed directions the whole time we travelled--see the blog info for that.  One of the more interesting areas was Mono lake, pictured at right.

In August, I stayed local for a vacation with Laura and Liz, then in October, Liz and I took a quick trip up to Eureka--going along the coast west of Petrolia then dropping down into Ferndale.

In September, I had the tin barn painted--barn red, with a roof to match the old house.  Whoever paints it next, which likely won't be me, should probably just stick with barn red for the whole job, as having the roof a lighter color made for extra effort.  Then, in October/November, we began re-painting the old house downstairs--all the rooms except the kitchen.  Finally, new linoleum went in downstairs (the master bedroom still needs to be completed).  We found rot in the flooring around the door in the laundry room, and repaired that, then replaced the handmade door.  I've asked my Cousin Gary to turn the door into a bench to replace the one out by the BBQ.  My Dad would have liked that re-use.  We also ran into rot in the living room where the old wood stove used to have a pipe out the wall, and water must have entered around the pipe.  That rot was replaced and the area treated, plus we had termites in the rotted floor around the the sliding glass door, and that too was replaced and treated.  Same goes for the floor in the Pantry by the door, and the wall and flooring in the bedroom off the kitchen.  We think we've got all the structural problems downstairs now fixed, and the house is again watertight.   No more work will happen now until 2011, when the last room will be laid with linoleum, and we will begin to asses the upstairs.

Our annual San Francisco Christmas Trip was again fun, and this time Lincoln Thomas Warner joined us on his first trip to the City--his namesake made the big trip to the City in 1915 to be pushed in a stroller through the Great Exhibition.