Robyn S. - Renee's Wedding

This is a picture of Robyn Sandoval and one of Renee's cousins. Robyn is my granddaughter. Isn't she beautiful? :)The nice thing about going to a family wedding is that you get to see family that you don't get to see very often. It was great seeing Robyn and catching up on her family news. We sat at the same table at the reception after the wedding. I found out that Shiloh was visiting her for a couple of days so he could look for a summer job in Vegas. He is going to college in Cedar City, and is planning on going into nursing. Good for you Shiloh. Also I found out that Shannon is planning on doing the same thing, that is going into nursing. He will stay in South Dakota to finish his schooling there, which surprised me as he told me that he hated the cold winters there. Wonder if that cute girlfirend of his has anything to do with this decision? :) Good job Shannon! Good luck to both of you boys. I used to baby sit both of these boys when they were babies, and it is so hard to believe that they are young men now. Where does the time go?

Renee & Jason Overbeck Wedding

Sunday evening we went to our (Granddaughter) Renee & Jason's wedding in Las Vegas. The setting was beautiful as it was at The Lakes in Las Vegas, right next to the lake. We were the first ones there and it was fun watching the people in their boats and canoes, and also watching the ducks swimming by. The weather was perfect, and the wedding ceremony was really nice. There was a reception afterwards at the same place and they had a delicious dinner for all. Then Jason & Renee had their first dance as husband & Wife. After that dance it was time for the Father and Bride dance. Then it was time for all to dance. I got talked into dancing with my son, Bret and it was a fast dance. I would dance a while and then try to return to the table and everyone cheered me on to go back and dance some more so I did. When it was over I could barely walk back to the table as I was so out of breath. It was really fun dancing with my son. We used to dance together in our trophy room a long time ago. Pictures above are of course Renee & Jason, and Renee's mom Sherry off to the side. Jamie and her Mom Verna, Bret & Sierra, and Frank & Me. Jamie and Renee were best of friends all through school, and Jamie is my adopted Granddaughter. Robyn Sandoval was there with us too and I will post a picture of her later. It is in Frank's camera. We wish Renee and Jason a happy long life together. We love them dearly.

TAMING OF THE SHREW

Last night I went to Taming of the Shrew to see Sierra play Vincentia. Sierra was made up to look older and Laura, Sierra's Mom, was the makeup artist for all actors. Even thought there wasn't a sound system, the play was really good and the kids did a fantastic job. Most of the kids in the play are home schooled and belong to an organization called the NorthStar Commonwealth. This is the second year they have put on a Shakespearian production. The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy and the kids really pulled it off as the audience was laughing and all had a good time. Sierra is quite the actress. She was home schooled 6th through 8th grade and started her Freshman year at Moapa Valley High School. She is taking Drama and has been in a high school play. She is really talented, and I admire her especially since she had to learn the Shakesperian language besides all the memorization of her lines. I can't even remember my best friends name sometimes. Hats off to you Sierra!

Monday's Disaster

Mondays are my big cleaning day, changing sheets, vacuuming, dusting, you know all of that stuff. If there was a picture to post it would be of me cleaning up a brand new bottle of White Shoulders, my favorite perfume that was given to me as a Christmas gift. I was getting out the clean sheets for our bed and as I was doing this I bumped the bottle of perfume and it hit our tile floor and broken glass and perfume went everywhere. I knew this would be a bad day at that point. So after I cleaned that up I was getting Downy ready to put into the washer and had forgot that I had a half cap full that I didn't use on the first load so I ended up dumping Downy all over me shelves, floor, etc. at that point I felt like sitting down and crying and was afraid of what would happen next. Sherry came over later and I told her what had happened and she said "well at least it is all good smells." My house will smell like White Shoulders for a few days. I guess that is the good outcome of the bad. I have to admit the rest of the day went well and no more accidents. Thank Heavens! I was able to clean off our patio, and get our little water fountain going and that was great as that was a job I had been wanting to get done. Now if I can just get my office organized and junk thrown away I will be able to start on my next project of making my daughter Sherry a scrapbook. I had made Bret & Garen one a long time ago, but didn't get
Sherry one made and I have felt guilty for a long time so hopefully I can start that soon. I bought a Cricut and I hope to put it to good use on this project.

Bret & Laura celebrated their 23rd anniversary on the 18th, and Bret wanted to surprise Laura by taking her to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He made reservations at a new hotel at Jacobs Lake and they found the hotel to be really nice, but at the same time found out the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was closed and won't be open until some time in May. Maybe that is why they were the only guests there. So they ended up staying one night at Jacob's Lake and then went on to the South Rim the next day. What was supposed to be a short trip became a long trip, but they really enjoyed it. Sierra & Merrit came over to stay with me as early Saturday morning, I had to take Merritt up to the high school so he could go on his Senior class trip. Sierra had play practice for over 4 hours Saturday. Talk about busy teens. It was fun visiting with Sierra and hearing about all of her friends and the funny things they do. Wow! to be young again and have all of their energy.

FRANK'S TORCHER CHAMBER

Frank Started his physical therapy two weeks ago. He goes three times a week and by the time he gets home 1 1/2 hours later he is a hurting man. He took a pain pill and as I am writing this he is in his lounge chair sleeping. He says that It does get better every day. They add something new each time he goes. The one that hurts him the most is when Rob, the Physical Therapist holds his leg on his shoulder and pushes down on it. I really thought that when the picture was taken Frank would be screaming or at least have a painful look on his face. I had Frank take my camera with him today and he had the office girl take the above pictures. We both will be so glad when the pain goes away and we sure are hoping by Summer he will be ready to travel. I see that the date stamp in my camera still isn't working right. I tried to change it again and thought I had it fixed. Can't figure that one out. These pictures were taken on April 16th 2009

Easter Sunday 2009

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday with Bret & Laura and Laura's family. Lots of good food, barbecue chicken, Dean's (Laura's Dad) famous french bread, salad bar, funeral potatoes, potato salad, fruit salad, and then all the cholocate deserts. We ate out on Bret's huge cement slab behind his house, and the weather was perfect. We had lots of fun visiting, laughing, and the little ones hunted Easter eggs and shared them with all. I love being with family on special days.

The above pictures: (1)Daniel Allen, Sierra & Laura Staley in backgroud, (2) Dean & Erwin Allen, (3)Verlene Allen, (4)Donna & Frank, (bad hair day for Donna. I need to get into Renee for a hair cut & color) (5)Group picture Elizabeth Allen, Merritt Staley & his girlfirend Marissa, Sierra Staley,Bret Staley and dog Lassie,(6) Pops & Bret,(7) Sierra Staley,(8 & 9) Baby Catherine Allen, (10) Merritt Staley & Miressa, (11) Merritt Staley. Woops, don't pay any attention to the date stamp on the pictures. I thought I had changed it but I guess I didn't get the job done right. I changed it again in hopes the next pictures will have the right date.

Frank's Surgery

After we had our scare with a possible blood clot or infection, Frank was told to keep his knee raised and ice it down. So we had to borrow our old recliner back from our neighbor as it would allow Frank to lay back and get his knee above his heart with the help of pillows. I see I haven't changed the date on my camera. Guess I had better do that little chore. I hate taking the time to learn how to use all these new electronic gagdets.

I have to tell you about Frank's hot flashes, yes, I am telling you hot flashes. I know it wasn't nice but I had to laugh as now he knows what I have gone through and still do at times. We really don't know what has caused them except that his leg was really hot. We found out that they had to put a tourniquet around his upper leg and used 300 lbs. pressure. Wow that's a lot of pressure. We are thinking that maybe he was bleeding. He was badly burised in this area and this is where he has had most of his pain. Any way it was a hot spot too and we think it may have contributed to the hot flashes. So guys, menapause is real. LOL

I am glad to report that Frank is up and doing well. Yesterday we went to the Clark County Fair and Frank wouldn't let me get him a wheel chair. So we slowly walked around. First to the barbecue tent and had barbecue while watching The Priate singers. We were really disappointed in the food this year as it just wasn't as good. I think it was because they didn't have the usual dutch oven potatoes.

We walked around after that and saw a few exhibits, and then I just had to have some yummy funnel cakes. The Fair is not the Fair without funnel cakes. Frank had to have some fried zucchini and was disappointed as it was way too thick. We were able to sit and watch a couple of the entertainment shows at the Plazza stage. We really enjoyed the hypnotist. There were some real characters that were brave enough to get up on the stage and be hypnotized and do crazy things. It was nice to have a good laugh.

I have to end this by saying sorry about the bird (Cami) story being so messed up, but I copied it from my word program and it didn't copy out the way it was typed, but I wanted to put it into the blog. We have had such a horrible time getting over her death. We were so attached to her and was surprised at how much we miss her.

Cami our Baby Girl

Picture taken 1998

CAMI’S STORY

Cami became a part of our lives in October of 1998. I had several birds over the years starting at a young age. I have had several parakeets one of them being called Bird. He was unique and our

family had many fun times having him chase a shiny button around the table from family member to family member. After Bird died my son Garen and I bought a Cockatiel from a local lady and his name was Klutz as he could never fly and would fall off from his perch for no reason. He wasn’t as friendly as Bird and he lived to be 15 years old.

I had decided that I didn’t want any more birds as I did feel sad when Klutz died, but after a few years that changed and I started wanting a parrot again. Only this time I wanted a big parrot. So Frank & I started shopping around the bird shops looking at the different kinds of birds. This was a process that took a few months.

We were in St. George, UT and discovered a bird shop there. While in the shop looking at birds I was fascinated with this beautiful white Umbrella Cockatoo and the owner let me hold him. He cuddled right into my chest and cooed sweet sounds to me. I couldn’t believe that a bird could be so loving and I said “this is the kind of bird I want.” The bird was being boarded and was not for sell, but the owner said his sister had just hatched out some babies and I could buy one of them.

We went back to the pet store a couple of weeks later and the owner had the new babies in a warm box. They were the ugliest things I had ever seen. They were in pin feathers and bare skin was all you could see with these funny pin feathers everywhere. We were able to pick one out when they were a little older and had feathers. We had already decided on a name for a female and that was Cami.




We didn’t know what sex the bird was that we had picked out and was anxious to find out, so the owner had her sexed by sending a clipping of her toenail to a place that sexed birds. We anxiously waited to receive the results.

When the results came to the shop owner, he called us and told us we had a female. We were excited as now we could officially name her Cami. Cami had to stay at the bird shop until she was winged and soon it became apparent that was going to take a long time so I had the shop owner show me how to feed her and we brought her home. We had a small bird stand that Cami would sit on as from the very beginning; we let Cami out of her cage as soon as we were up in the mornings. She would sit there very quiet and when she would see me with her feeding tube she would get very excited and start flapping her wings and doing the baby bird thing by opening her mouth and waiting for the tube to be put down her throat and fill her crop with the warm formula. Then she would be content and a happy bird.

I took Cami everywhere with me in the house even when I took a bath and she would watch me and as she got older flap her wings as I sprayed a little water on her. Then one day she jumped right into the tub with me and sat on my belly and played in the water. She loved to get under the covers with me and she would chew on my pajamas and I had a lot of holes in my tops. Frank would come home from work and find me with Cami on the arm of my chair petting her and talking to her. The first words that she learned were “love you.” She then added love you baby, and when she was older she added Papa, Mama, hello baby girl, and one of the last things she started to say was “Hello Sherry.” This really surprised us as she wasn’t around Sherry that much and would torment Sherry when she was at our house. Sherry found out that when Cami was sitting with Frank she couldn’t go over and give him a hug or kiss goodbye when she was leaving to go back to Vegas after her weekend home. Cami soon learned that Sherry was fun to tease and would go after her in attack mode and so there was an ongoing game with Sherry. Cami knew that Sherry was afraid of her so we think that is why she would try and get the best of her.




I had read that when Cockatoos learned someone was afraid of them they would take advantage of it and torment the person. Cami stared calling me Sherry, maybe that is because Sherry and I have the same kind of a voice. Sometimes I think Cami thought I was Sherry as she tried the attack mode on me, but I let her know that she wasn’t going to get away with attacking me.

When Frank retired he had no peace when it came to Cami as she would want to be with him as soon as he was in the house. Frank would just automatically pick her up when he was going to his lounge chair and he and Cami would take a nap together. Cami would sit on his chest and put her beak almost in his mouth she would be so close to him. She must have liked his warmth and warm breath. She would also get down in his lap and take his shirt in her beak and use her foot to lift Frank’s shirt up and then she would crawl underneath and go to sleep and would stay there until something spooked her or she was ready to come out after a little nap. She would also grab his shirt with her beak and start a scratching routine, and we figured she was trying to build a nest. She would do this for sometimes up to an hour. We finally had to get a towel for Frank to put over his shirt as she was putting holes in all of his good shirts.

She also would sit behind Frank’s computer and hiss at me when I came into the computer room. When I heard the can of air duster blasting, I knew that Cami was getting into mischief on Frank’s desk. When I came into the computer room to work on my computer, Cami would fly over to the back of my chair and put her head down for me to preen. She loved sitting on the back of my chair as I would sit and preen her while working on my computer.

We had a tree stand out on our patio and a bird hanging swing. When Frank mowed the lawn I would take Cami out to her tree stand and she would jump onto the hanging swing and hang upside down flapping her wings the whole time Frank was moving. It was fun to watch.





We bought a fifth-wheel travel trailer and Cami traveled all the way to Oregon with us. We had a plastic dishpan with a cement perch in it and that is where she would sit between Frank and I and she seemed to enjoy traveling with us close by her. When we had a condo she would travel with us in the truck or car and I had a cage for her at our condo. She didn’t like to travel at night due to her night vision and would make both Frank and I miserable with her running all over him and me. So we quickly learned that when she traveled with us we had better get to our destination before nightfall.

Cami entertained us with her tricks as she would jump up and down on the counter with her top feathers up, running back and forth whistling and saying “hello baby girl.” We taught her to lift her foot and say hello. She would show off and do this for friends, family, and the neighbor kids. She also did the Cockatoo dance as we called it, and would do it when I cued her with my finger going up and down. She would dance to music too.

Sometimes Cami’s screaming would get to Frank and he would chase her around her cage, on the floor, and all around the room with a flyswatter. Cami loved this as she though of it as a game. When it was over she would make it up to Frank by looking at him lovingly with those brown black eyes saying to him “Hello baby girl.” She would also greet him with the same phrase.

She spent the summer of 2008 with us in Ely, NV and I would sit outside with her. She loved being outside and would draw the attention of every passerby. We met a lot of people, and a lot of children because of Cami. They would come over to see her, talk to her, and pet her. When we were stopped at a gas station, or getting something to eat, or just driving down the road, people would be fascinated with her.

In the spring of 2008, Cami laid her first egg and ended up laying her fourth or fifth egg in Ely. I knew that this was very hard on her, and had started to give her calcium on her food. She had been having seizures and after I started giving her calcium, the seizures stopped. I knew that we had been told bad information about letting Cami eat anything we ate and off from our plates.



I started putting her in her bedroom cage when we ate, but soon she was back to eating out of our plates, even though I tried to only let her eat the good stuff we ate. In my heart I knew that Cami wouldn’t live to her full age because of the bad diet and the seizures she had. There were times I would look Cami in the eye and felt like she was telling me that she wouldn’t be around with us much longer.

I felt that with the medicines and extra things that I was giving Cami was bringing her back to good health. Her feathers were looking good, and she had stopped pulling her feathers out. So I was feeling pretty good about her health.

On November 15, 2008, we had Cami with us on the couch and she was bouncing back and forth between Frank & I screaming, whistling, and saying “hello Sherry.” She seemed to be in a very good mood, but she had thrown up some food on Frank, but we didn’t think too much of this as this is not an unusual thing for her to do. She had gotten into some of my Glucerna (a drink for diabetics) that morning and I had noticed her poop was a little runny. I didn’t think that she had ingested very much of the Glucerna. She was in a nesting mode again with the scratching routine on Frank’s lap and when she was close to laying an egg her poop would change so that is what I thought was going on with her. In fact I had been expecting to see Cami lay another egg.

I put Cami to bed around 6 PM that night as I tried to keep her in a routine. She was so wound up, but seemed to settle down when I put her in her night time cage. We left for a while and went over to my son Bret’s home and visited for a while. We got home somewhere around 8 PM and I had gone into the computer room to work on my computer. Frank was on his way to come into the computer room when we heard the most horrible scream out of Cami. I started to run into her room and Frank was just ahead of me. She let out a couple more screams before we got into her. Frank was first to get to her cage and uncovered it only to find her on the bottom of the cage. I was right behind him and said “did she lay an egg’?




She was in the last minutes of death and we both knew it. Frank was crying, petting her and saying “no baby girl,” and other things. We picked her up and brought her to the kitchen counter and just kept touching her hoping maybe she would come to life, but we knew that she was dead. I too was crying and talking to her, and her top feathers came up and she let us know that she knew we were with her in her final state of dieing.

We put Cami in a shoe box and decided we would burry her in our back yard. Frank made her a PVC pipe box and we put her in it and he glued both ends closed and wrote her name on it. He had just had knee surgery not too long before this, but he dug her grave with a shovel, and we put her in the hole and buried her. We said our goodbyes and told her how much we loved her. We think that Cami died of being egg bound, but we will never know for sure and I will always wonder if it was something I did. Was it the Glucerna, or the bad diet, or too much calcium? All I know is that what ever it was she was in a lot of pain to scream that loud. It breaks my heart to think about it.

We could hardly function as all we could think about was our beloved Cami. It was as though we had lost a family member. We dreamed about her, heard her, found feathers to remind us of her. Today is January 24, 2009 and has been just over a couple of months since we lost her. We still come in the back door expecting to hear her holler out to us wanting us to come to her cage and let her out as that was the routine. It has gotten a little easier, but we will always miss our “Baby Girl.” I know that there is a special place for our pets to go to and I know that Frank and I will be able to see her again some day on the other side. I am sure she has let us know that she is around at times. We do know that at this time we don’t want any more pets as this has been very painful to deal with. All I can say to end this is Goodbye Baby Girl, we love you Baby Girl, and some day we will see you again.

First Day of Blogging

I decided that it would be fun to try and do a blog. This is all new to me, except for seeing other blogs. Frank & I have been more or less home bound since the 28th of January when I had surgery. I had to be in bed for two weeks, except for bathroom breaks and a few walks around the house. I found out that Frank can cook when he has to.

We have been taking turns taking care of each other. First Frank hurt his left knee bucking hay for my daughter Sherry. He had surgery in November for a torn menisca and torn cartilage. The doctor told us at that time Frank would need a knee replacement as he was bone on bone. The first surgery didn't help him at all. I waited for Frank to get better then I had my surgery on January 28th. When I went back for my six week checkup, Frank was at his doctors office to schedule his complete knee replacement surgery. He had the surgery on the 19 of March and has done really well except for one set back and that was he had to be checked for a blood clot and infection which scared us to death.

I am glad to report that there was no infection or clot and he now has started out patient therapy. We are anxiously waiting for Frank to be out of pain and back to normal. We want to do something fun. Frank brought me home from the hospital on his birthday, and we missed our Anniversary as Frank was recovering from his surgery. In fact I woke up the day after and realized we had missed our 31 year Anniversary. We had just let it slip by us. So we are going to plan something really fun to make up for it.