Nelson

Hmmm . . . Pink huh?

Well, I guess I can deal with it for a little while. After all, my brother in law Michael wears pink shirts to family events and I still like him. I don't have to deal with pink very often.

Then again, flamingos are pink and . . . well, they're kinda weird.

Oh well. I'm trying to be more open-minded and trying the pink is probably a good thing.

I'm I'm cool with leaving it this way for a little while.

One last thing . . . I want to say congratulations to my very good friend Chet Lepinski, who completed his last day of work today. The guy is now officially retired. How cool is that? Even cooler, how neat is this. Chet called me this morning at 7:50 (Arizona time, which was 6:50 his time). He was making his final 90-minute commute from Richland, Wash., to Ephrata, Wash., for work. The cool part? His kids (Jackie, Brian and Brenda) all chipped in and rented a stretch limo that took him to and from work today, his final day. I thought that was really neat of them, and Chet was thrilled. I could tell just by the tone of his voice in my voice mail.

Tomorrow morning around 10 or so, we're off to Flagstaff. We'll be staying there for a few days. On Sunday we'll visit Sedona, Arizona based on lots of recommendations from people, and Monday we'll drive up to the Grand Canyon. We agreed that we'd kick ourselves if we spent three months in Arizona and never made it to the Grand Canyon. So we're making a point to do that, even though it was only 39 degrees for a high up there today.

That's it for today. Talk to you all again soon!

Dawn

Sorry Nelson, I was messing around and somehow changed this to pink. I like it, although I'm sure you wont. My advice to you..."Put on your big girl panties and deal with it", lol. Or figure out how to change it back... I love you.

White Trash.

Dawn

Well, we've decided to leave Mesa a day early . Nelson got notified today that Pennisula Light in Gig Harbor wants him back to give his media training seminar to the board of directors on April 13th. Therefore we're leaving here on Saturday instead of Sunday. I'll miss this place. We've had a lot of good memories here. There are other places we've been that we like better, so we may not come back here to Mesa, which is kind of sad.

I am very much looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon. And Sedona is suppossed to be really nice. Brooke says she's heard that Santa Fe is really nice, so that will be fun. And I have a feeling that we're going to love San Diego. We have a lot to look forward to.

Steph is looking for a new job if anyone knows of anything, let us know. She needs more hours than what she's getting.

Does anyone know how to file an extension on your taxes? Can you do it online?

We'll keep you posted of our adventures. Bye!

Nelson tells you guys that he works all day. But honestly, this is how I usually find him.

Nelson

So you already know that we spent Sunday afternoon at Rawhide, which was totally fun. Other than going out for lunch with Mick and Ligaya on Monday before they left to go home, our lives have slowed down again. Back to the everyday life thing. That's not bad by any means, but it does mean that we're finding ourselves in the RV a lot more lately.

I've been working on some promotional pieces for my business -- brochures mostly -- talking about some of the services I offer, especially the ones that I really want to do (media relations training, and event planning and management). I've pitched my media relations training courses to the Pac-10, to the Greek Olympic Team, and to Auburn University's athletic department. No confirmations yet, but there's reason to hope that some of them will come through. We'll see.

As we've mentioned, we're working on planning the next leg of our journey . . . which will take us to see more parts of the Southwest, which we're both really looking forward to.

Last Saturday, we not only made it to Cracker Barrel for dinner, but we also went to downtown Chandler for the Wine & Jazz Festival that we'd referred to on a past post . . . and we'd questioned whether or not there really was an event scheduled. It turned out there was, but it was a marketing gig at a small winery in Old Town Chandler . . . which turned out to be really cute. We were disappointed, though, because the music sounded good, but they wanted people to pay 10 bucks to get in, then buy stuff in the gift shop and buy food. So instead, we just walked around Old Town. It really was neat. It was our favorite of the "Old Towns" that we'd visited down here. We even found a locally-owned little Mexican restaurant where we had chips & salsa, sopapillas, and a couple of beers to take in the atmosphere.

Anyway . . . right now, we're taking a break from work and off to do more laundry. And run a few errands. We'll check in with you all again later.

We made it to the "Cracker Barrel". When you are waiting for your table, you can wait ouside under the covered front porch that is lined with rocking chairs. We played checkers (sort of ) while we waited. Neither one of us could really remember how to play.

Yesterday we went with my cousin Lauri and her girls to a place called "Rawhide". It was a remake of an old western town. We had a great time. That's the last time we'll see those guys for awhile. It was comforting to us to have family in town when we're so far away from home.

Isabella liked it in jail. She is so adorable.

Dawn, Nelson and my cousins Adriana-16, Isabella-2 & Lauri...in jail.

Dree and Isabella rode the camel. As soon as Bella saw the camel, she couldn't take her eyes off of it. She's only 2 and she's a lttle spitfire. I don't think she's afraid of anything.

Dree and Isabella at the petting zoo. This was one of those miniature ponies. So cute.

I bought Isabella her first candy necklace. She walked around with it in her mouth for hours. It was really cute and really messy, sorry Lauri!

These are real covered wagons. They were really cool.

This is the inside of an authentic covered wagon. It was so much smaller than I imagined. It seems impossible that they could fit a years worth of provisions along with all of their possessions.

Dree rides a mechanical bull.

Dree falling off the bull. She actually stayed on quite awile.

Isabella and Lauri.

Here we are eating rattlesnake for the first time. It was actually pretty good.

I know, this is disgusting... I tried "Rocky Mountain Oysters", lol. I would tell you that Nelson tried them too...but I promised I wouldn't.

Nelson

So far today, it's been a pretty good day for just kind of catching up on stuff. Dawn got a chance to talk to both of the girls on the phone, I worked a little on planning the next leg of our trip, as we've got a couple of free weeks between Mesa and San Diego, beginning on April 2.

This afternoon, we're going to try and find this Wine and Jazz Festival in Chandler. Problem is, when Dawn found it a month or so ago, it looked like it was pretty clearly going to happen. Now there's misleading information on the web, so we're unsure if it's really happening or not. Either way, I think we'll go explore a little and see if it's there or not. If not, I'm sure we'll come up with something else that's fun to do.

Our last week in Mesa starts tomorrow already. We can't believe how quickly March has gone by. But when you think about it, we worked long days all through the first week of the month at the World Baseball Classic, then we took five days to do a few things and get ourselves caught back up with life again, and before we knew it, we were on our way to San Diego for the championship round of the Classic. That kept us busy for six days (travel included), and one day later our friends Mick and Ligaya were in town. We've had a lot of fun with them the last couple of days . . . antique shopping in Historic Downtown Glendale, drinks and appetizers in Old Town Scottsdale, and a Mariners spring training game over two days.

Last night, I spoiled my beautiful wife and treated her to a fancy dinner at the Waffle House. It was interesting and fun at the same time. If you've never been to Arizona or the south, you probably don't know about the Waffle House. It's pretty much a short-order restaurant with a, shall we say, reputation as being great if you're 1) out late partying and want food, 2) a trucker with long hours and just need a quick, just-off-the-freeway place to eat, or 3) fallen on hard times. We weren't really any of the above, but eating at the Waffle House was one of the things we wanted to do in Arizona that we hadn't yet done. The food was good, but nothing special. And it was exactly as I'd remembered it being in Atlanta. But we had fun people-watching. The final bill, for both of us? A whopping 12 bucks. I know, I know . . . I'm a big spender. lol

Other things on our "to-do" list before leaving Arizona include the Rawhide experience in Chandler. Looks like we'll do that with Lauri, Ron, Dri and Bella tomorrow. Should be loads of fun, there's lots to do in a place that looks like a true "Western experience". Everything from a petting zoo and mechanical bull riding to a recreated shootout and steakhouse. On Monday, we're going to go to lunch with Mick and Ligaya before they head home to the rain. We'll probably go to a little sports bar next to Mesa Spirit that we had lunch in when we first moved to Mesa in January, and haven't been back to since. We also will eat at the Cracker Barrel (another so-called national chain that hasn't yet made it to California, Oregon or Washington). For those familiar with Cousins (in The Dalles, Ore.), or the Country Cousin (in Centralia, Wash.), that's a similar type place to the Cracker Barrel. We might try to go to a Chicago Cubs spring training game this week, but the team leaves town on Thursday to head home for the regular season. The Cubs and Mariners are the top-two draws in the Cactus League (Arizona's spring training teams), and the Cubs are right here in Mesa vs. 50 minutes across town in Peoria (where the Mariners are).

Sorry to say we won't be eating at home much the next few days, but we're trying to make sure we get to the places we've been wanting to get to.

Remember when it rained so hard here a couple of weeks ago? Well, it snowed in some of the mountains that weekend. In this picture, you can see snow on the top of the Superstition Mountains. This was a couple of days after the snow fell, from the top of our RV. There was more snow on the mountains right after the storm.

Another angle of Superstition Mountains with snow on them.

Look closely on the horizon and you can see some real snow on the mountains to the north and east of the Mesa and Scottsdale area. I think they're up around Payson, Arizona.

The puppies on the left are Ginger and Gus, my mom and grandma's new puppies. They were born on St. Patrick's Day. There's a third puppy, too, and as my mom said, it looks like the third is kind of a momma's girl (if you look carefully at the mom, you'll see why). They're small Yorkies, like Molly, so it'll be fun to have more little dogs in the family!

This is Ligaya. The four of us went antique shopping in Old Town Glendale.

Ligaya, Mick and Nelson at "The Grapevine".

Mick at "The Grapevine" in Old Town Scottsdale on an absolutely beautiful evening.

Ligaya at the Mariners game.

Mick at the Mariners game.

Nelson, Ligaya and Mick at the Mariners spring training game.

Molly and Bubs snuggling in Grandma's/moms lap. I had a great weekend with Brooke and the puppy dogs.

Bubs and Lucy share the space in front of the heater.

Bubby will sit like this for a long time, like a half hour. He thinks he's human and wants to sit on his butt just like everyone else...he's so cute...aaahhh.

The view from our hotel room. My favorite part of staying in this hotel was the fact that I got to wash my hair AND shave my legs in the same shower! Our hot water heater in the RV is so small, it's one or the other, lol.

This was taken at our very fancy dinner at Croce's in Gastown in San Diego.

This is Francisco and Nelson at the street party.

This is the band at the street party.

This is way too dark but it was on our way home from the street party. A guy on a bike pulling this little cart took us back to our hotel. It was fun.

This is a picture of Petco stadium in San Diego. This is long after the final game between Japan and Cuba. It really is pretty cool to look out at the field and the stands. It's eerily quiet.

Dawn

Hi all. Boy it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. I’ve been trying to post pictures for the last couple of nights, but my dial up connection just won’t let me. So, I’ll talk to you instead. I’m defragmenting right now too, so maybe I’ll be able to post my pictures in a little while.

First of all...HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIM!! (My father in law).

Well, last week I was able to go and stay with Brooke again for a couple of nights. Nelson and I went to the “World Baseball Classic” in San Diego and needed Brooke to watch the dogs, so I just stayed for a couple of nights and hung out. Luka was out of town to Washington DC for a Moot Court competition, so it was just us girls. We had a great time. We watched “Walk the Line” and “Junebug” and I watched the “McDonalds” documentary before she got home from work. They were all good. We just chilled all weekend. It was fun. Then I took the train on Saturday night from LA to San Diego. The first time I’d been on a train, it was fun. We actually left Brooke’s house over an hour early for the train station, but 2 hours later in LA traffic, I missed the train and had to wait for the next one. But all turned out ok.

The hotel in San Diego (that was paid for by “Major League Baseball”) was beautiful. It was “The Omni”. Right next door to the stadium. After being charged $24.00 per day to park in their parking lot, the room cost over $300.00 per night. We were there for 4 nights. Very cool.

Nelson again worked very hard but loved every minute of it. We met some awesome people. They put me to work on the night of the final game between Japan and Cuba. It was so crazy in the media areas/press box. There were a lot more media there than they expected. I helped in the copy room. I was glad that I could help, to kind of say thank you for all of the free stuff.

On Sunday, Rich Perleman (the head guy) took about 15 of us to a really nice dinner at Croce’s, which is owned by Jim Croce’s widow. I had Sea Bass encrusted with macadamia nuts. It really was one of the best meals I’ve ever had...it was sooooo good. After that “Major League Baseball” was putting on a big street party. Invitation only. We heard they had to cash out all of the restaurants on like a 2 or 3 block area so that they could close the streets off for this party. Free drinks, free food, a band, it was really fun. And obviously no expense was spared. I have come to the conclusion that MLB makes too much money. If they could pay for these awesome hotel rooms and so many other things for this entire event...they just have too much money. We met some really awesome people that night. One of the people we met was working with team Cuba. He has worked at like 15 Olympics. We loved him. He was telling us so many things about Cuba. He said that the athletes in Cuba were celebrities over there. He said that they even got to have a car and a tv. Just think, they now know that their baseball team is better than team USA and our players make millions and their players are lucky because they get a tv and a car. And to think that they don’t necessarily want to defect to here because they would miss their families, and they are happy with the extras they get there...unbelievable, huh? I guess at the Puerto Rico games, there were Cuban/Americans that were flying over the fields with signs with an 800 number to call if they wanted to stay in America. But Castro wouldn’t worry about them wanting to do that because they had such status in Cuba. And they wouldn’t want to leave their families. I can relate to that sort of. I am sure that I will end up back in Portland rain, because I want to be with my family. AND PORTLAND RAIN SUCKS!!!

Now we are back in Mesa. We only have another week here. Then we are going to move around for 2 weeks before we end up in San Diego for our last month here before we come home for the summer. For that 2 weeks, I think we are going to go up to the Grand Canyon and then over to Albuqurquee(sp?) and then down to El Paso then to Yuma then to San Diego. We’re going to do a kind of loop to see some places that we wanted to see that we havent’ gotten to see yet.

I have total mixed feelings about coming home. I will be VERY happy to see family and friends, but at the same time sad that our trip may be over. We are just going to play it by ear. If Nelson gets a good job offer in Portland/Vancouver we will definitely not pass it up and will be glad to move home. But at the same time we are loving the traveling and the weather and will be happy to do this every year, as long as we come home for the summer. We just figure whatever happens, happens.

I have been keeping in touch with my friend Lou, who I have worked with for 20 years. She has had a terrible time with her operation. They had to operate twice. She lost a lot of blood. She got really sick when they put her on hormones. She is just now barely able to get out of bed and walk around...Poor Lou. And my other friend I worked with for 20 years, Bonnie...NEVER WRITES ME BACK!!!

Our friends Mick and Ligaya came to town today. Which is awesome. We don’t have many friends here, so it was kind of weird to have plans with friends today. I am so hooked on watching “Judging Amy” every day on TNT from 10:00 to noon, which I am so totally hooked on. It is now my favorite show.( I never once watched it when it was actually on.) It was weird to be up and dressed with plans by 10:30 in the morning.
We went antique shopping in Old Town Glendale and then went to Old Town Scottsdale and sat on an outdoor patio with drinks and dinner on an absolutely beautiful evening. We had a great time. We are meeting them tomorrow at 11:15 at the baseball stadium in Peoria for the Mariners Spring Training game. That will be fun too.

This next week, our last week here we’re going to try to squeeze in all of the things we’ve wanted to do. This weekend is a Wine and Jazz festival in Chandler, we’re going to try to go to. We want to go to this outdoor gunfight reenactment called the “Rawhide”. I want to go to two restaurants that are chains here that Nelson has been to, but I haven’t...The Waffle House and The Cracker Barrel. And I want to get together with my cousin Lauri and her family one more time before we leave. So we’ll be pretty busy.

Well, guys, I think I wrote enough tonight to put everyone to sleep. Maybe now you’ll quit getting on us to write more, thinking I’ll write another one like this. My computer is through defragmenting now, so I’ll try to put some pictures on too. If you don’t see any, that means I wasn’t able to get them on. See you everybody. Miss ya!

Nelson

OK, OK. Sheesh. We go away to San Diego to work four more long days at the World Baseball Classic and we get blistered by anonymous comments . . . Wow!

As Sally Field once said at an awards presentation, "You love (us). You really do!"

Last week, Bruce "The Moose" Tenen from Perelman Pioneer, the firm handling all of the press operations for the World Baseball Classic, called me and said that I'd done such a great job at the games in Phoenix and Scottsdale that he wanted me to come work the semifinals and final in San Diego.

It truly did mean four more long days . . . starting with the five hour drive from LA to San Diego on Friday. It normally only takes about 2 hours to make that drive -- except for all the traffic in LA.

Anyway, long story short, I worked 17 hours for the semifinals on Saturday, then went to the train station to pick up my sweetie, who stayed Friday and Saturday with Brooke in LA (by the way . . . thanks for taking care of Lucy and Molly while we were gone, Brookie). Saturday probably would have been about another hour shorter if it weren't for a 45-minute rain delay during the semifinal between Japan and Korea. Hey Neil Diamond . . . What ever happened to "It never rains in California"!?

Sunday, the offday, was another long one that was filled with working on notes and stats with Rich Perelman, the venue press chief, who assigned me to be the press box manager during the championship round, and left all of the decisions and "firefighting" to me, as he trusted my expertise and knowledge. Throughout the entire weekend, I'm proud to report, thinks went very smoothly and we were able to serve the media in a manner that made them happy.

It was a great weekend.

This is "Pay Rod", otherwise known as Alex Rodriguez. He struck out against Canada.

This is the right field auxiliary press box at Chase Field. Obviously, there aren't many members of the media here right now. This picture was taken about two hours before gametime, when I wasn't all THAT busy.

The view, as Dawn has already shown, from our seats in the right field auxiliary press box at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix. This, as you can see, is Team USA vs. Canada. The Canadians upset Team USA. I should mention that the roof of Chase Field, which is supposedly a retractable roof stadium was half open the first two days. Someone said it wasn't working properly and that it was supposed to be closed during the tournament. On Thursday, the roof was fully open.

A pair of electric deep vees racing at Dobson Ranch Park in Mesa. This was the place I went to see if I could race with the guys. They go the "wrong way" around the course, but they said they'd let me have some open water if I wanted to run my boat there. I'll likely go back before long . . . especially now that my boat is back together again.

Our last night in Havasu we ate at one of our favorite spots, Chuy's. This is on their patio that overlooks the lake. The tables are like surfboards.

Our last night playing bingo in Havasu. We're actually going to miss that "down home" fun on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're going to miss Lake Havasu a lot. It has been our favorite place so far.

I drove to L.A. on Friday from Lake Havasu to surprise Brooke when she got home from work on her birthday. Bubs bought her this nice box of tennis balls for a gift. He didn't think she'd notice that those are his favorite toy, lol. We had a great weekend. Going to movies and restaurants and shopping. I then drove to Phoenix to hook back up with Nelson on Monday.

Bubs knew how much fun that Brooke would have pouring these balls out of the box for him. Isn't he thoughtful???

On Saturday we went to this restaurant called "The Counter". When you walk in they hand you a clipboard with a checklist for marking what you want on your hamburger. This is a picture of Luka's. They had bigger 1 pound hamburgers also, with many, many more ingreients available. The wait to be seated was so long that I was able to see how big these were before we ordered. I opted for a grilled cheese sandwhich with 3 different cheeses, yummy. I didn't think I'd be able to fit this in my mouth. I'm glad too. The kids felt sick by the time we left because they ate too much.

Luka, trying to fit his hamburger in his mouth. He ordered the 2nd largest size which was a 2/3 pound.

Brooke, trying to fit her hamburger into her mouth. She ordered the smallest size which was 1/3 pound.

This was from our press area at Chase field in Phoenix. I was really so lucky to not only get in free to all of the games but to have great seats. I tried to make myself available to help Nelson, but I pretty much just hung out and had fun.

This was our view from the press area at the smaller of the two fields, Scottsdale Stadium.

Teams like South Africa played at this stadium because they didn't have as many fans as USA or Mexico.

Nelson worked his butt off all week. There were sometimes two games at different stadiums in one day. He had to be there from 2 to 4 hours before the games started and had to stay long after the games were over. He was definitely in his element and got a lot of compliments from some pretty important media people. Great for his resume'!

This swimming pool and spa was available for people to rent out during games. It was at right field at Chase field. Really cool.