Nettie's Place, Wikieup AZ 11/17/09 - 12/01/09

This is a "guess what and where" picture. You know, like the ones that are in the newspapers and you are supposed to guess what it is and where it is taken. !


Well, I expect Emilee (Stokes) to be a winner! I know that she hoped we wouldn't find any "rat-infested" outhouses in Wikieup, but as you can see, we did. Here it is, Emilee, if you get a chance to read our BLOG. It was almost as bad as the first time we went back to Wikieup after my Mom died in 2005. The last three years we have left enough rat poison to discourage them, but they must have gotten immune to the rat poison!


Well, it really didn't take too much time to get it spic and span again. I have always told our kids and their families that the outhouse is probably cleaner than the bathroom in the house, I use so much disinfectant and sanitizer out there! After we got it all cleaned up, we opened the lid on the seat and found that the rats had filled the hole with dirt, clear up to the floor line! We knew that we would be digging a new outhouse hole soon, but didn't know it would be this year! Oh, well, hopefully the smell of the cleaners will discourage the pack-rats until we get ready to move it over the new hole!

Thank goodness we were able to park our RV's down by the old washhouse where there is a septic tank, since the outhouse is out of commission. It has worked out really well, with Ron and Alice next to us. We both hooked up to water (from the neighbor's artisan well) and we share the sewer hookup. With each of us having a generator for electricity, we are sitting pretty good!

We share a satellite TV system with my sister back in Emmett. It came with a promotional RV package that we carry with us for our Condo. It came with a tripod and also a permanent base, which we hooked up to Mom's. After a phone call or two to Direct TV, we got it to work on the old TV in Mom's house. We had to run it through a VCR because there was no place to hook the receiver into the TV. But, it works and we can now get the BYU station and the Hallmark station--hurray!

There are always the repairs that need to be done each time we get to Wikieup. This year it wasn't too bad. The wind must have blown pretty hard at some point, because a big section of the carport roof had bent back and all of the 2 x 4's were all splintered. But, Terry is so good at taking on projects and working at them until he finds a solution. With a few bent nails and some bailing wire, he got the roof back together again! The Arizona sun has been beating on those boards for a lot of years and they just break in splinters.

We finally had to break down and buy new batteries for the solar system this year. The last time we were here, we could only use the electricity for maybe a couple of hours in the evening before the batteries would be drained. It is so nice to have several lights on, the computer running, and the TV going in the evenings and not have to worry about running out of electricity. Terry and I spend a lot of our day at the house, and Ron and Alice come up in the evenings. We sleep in the Condo. Walking back and forth from the Condo and the house gives us a little exercise!

We all went to Payson, AZ, where our sons Travis and Ryan live with their families, for Thanksgiving. We had such a good time. Wednesday night we all went to Travis' and had ham and little smokies and played pinochle. Pinochle seems to be the pastime when the Howards get together, with the spouses being patient as they are still learning to play. It was fun to watch some of the older grandkids hanging over our shoulders wanting to learn so they can play with the adults. Our kids all learned to play at an early age, sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace on Sunday evenings. They never thought it was quite right that they weren't invited to play with Terry's family when the brothers and sisters and grandparents kgo together and played.

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Ryan's, with Lori's specialty pies and rolls! We ate and ate, then we rested and ate some more. . .

. . then we played pinochle and ate some more. I can't believe we ate most of seven pies in one day!

Ryan's kids, Chaz, Wesley, and Riley, got a little bored hanging out with the adults, so they spent some time playing the computer together.

Later that evening, as we were making plans as to who wanted to get up at 4:00 the next morning to go to shopping on Black Friday, Terry and I decided to go get all of our stuff from Travis's where we were staying (Travis and his family went to Mesa to spend Thanksgiving Day and night with Shannon's family), and just sleep on Ryan's couch so we could all get up early together. Well, I didn't end up going shopping.

Well, clumsy me, I tripped on a loose block in Ryan's walkway outside, coming back into the house, and landed on my thumb, knee, shoulder, and smacked my face! This picture was taken several days afterwards when I was healing pretty good. Later, Wesley asked me if I was glad that his dad was a "doctor guy" and had taken good care of me! I sure was. He had ice and wraps all done up on me and I am sure that is why I healed so fast. I am sure that I must have cracked a bone in my cheek because when I first put ice on it with a little pressure, it would pop. And now, even more than a week later, when I touch my face below my eye, it makes me feel like I have a toothache in my jaw. It will need a little more time to heal.

Terry and I had been asked to talk in Church in Wikieup, since we were going home on Friday. I thought I would be able to get out of talking bcause of falling, but it is hard to find anyone to take your place in a small little Branch, so we showed up. Besides, we thought there might not be very many people there because of the holiday. In Terry's talk, he said he wouldn't have went ahead and talked in my condition, so he had a new nickname for me. He said he was going to call me "Timex" because I had tak'n a lick'n and kept on tick'n. Not many in the audience laughted, but I thought it was hilarious! It tells you how old we are! Anyway, these talks should keep us off of the Branch President's list for this year.

If you have been following our BLOG the last several years, and seen pictures of Nettie's Place, this picture is a little different than the last one you saw. Also, I put this picture in for my brothers and sister so they can see that we finally got someone to come in and clean up along the driveway into the house. Dad had torn down an old house and put a lot of the remenents along the drive way, plus a lot of his other treasures. Well, after sitting out in the Arizona weather for so many years, the "treasures" turned into junk. Anyway, it looks really good now!

One of the reasons we were able to talk this guy into hauling away all of the junk was to give him this old car of Dad's. It was probably worth a little money if you found the right person, but it was worth it to us to just get things cleaned up. The last time this car was licensed was in 1996, and I am sure it was running then. Now, they had to haul it off on a trailer.

Today is December 1 and we went and did laundry. Trying to save a few quarters at the laundromat, and because I kind of enjoy hanging out the laundry, I did just that. It was a nice sunny day, around 80 degrees, and we now have very fresh-smelling clothes!