It is the day after Christmas and Kim turns 67 tomorrow, a birthday we didn't think we would get to share.  We are enjoying the fruit in Brownsville, just not the wind. 

We found some huge delicious grapefruit, 2 for $1.   Oh yeah, we seem to only have one red shirt apiece.

We visited the Sable Palm Wildlife Sancturay.  We are here where they have bird feeders so you can see the birds.  Many birds in this area only come as far north as Brownsville.  This Sanctuary is 557 acres.  The Sabal Palm forest used to be 60,000 acres. 

This is a green jay at the feeder.  The photo does not do him justice.  They also put out oranges also to attract the birds.

A pretty butterfly at the same sanctuary. 

November 23, 2014

Kay says it is my turn to write this blog posting. 

It's hard to believe we have been in Texas over three weeks.  We have heard all about the snow and the cold back home.  We truly miss all our friends and family, but we are just fine with the weather we have here.

Last Friday, we celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary. We didn't do anything to fancy, just a nice dinner, and enjoying being with the sweetest girl in the world.  But perhaps the anniversary of more significance was the one we celebrated the next day, Saturday.  It was that day three years ago that we sat in the doctor's office and were given the standard ALS sentence.  We have not only left the 1 year prognosis in the dust, but we continue, not only to hold our own against this vicious desease, but are yet continuing to improve.  Life is good.  But we have much work to do, as our community of PALS (People with ALS) continues to expand.  We are making friends that will last a lifetime.

We are staying in a retirement park appropriately named Winter Haven, here in Brownsville, Texas.  We had a nice little bike ride around the park this afternoon.

There are water ways (called resacas) that run throughout the park.  I really wish we could swim in them, but not only are they quite shallow, they are inhabited with snakes, so we are told.  We will take their word for it.

Let us intnroduce you to a couple new freinds we made this afternoon.  We couldn't see any name tags, but Molly and Lucy sounds good.

This is King Trent, wishing us well at our early Thanksgiving Dinner last month.  It was just a bit non traditional, as Nanette made us gluten free pizza.  I highly recommend it.

King Trent again, with his Dad, after a hard day at work. Trent had just learned to crawl, and it was exhausting. My, he is changing and growing so quickly.

It is these kinds of new friends that have impacted our lives these past three years.  Scott Douglas and Tish Tamowski (husband and wife) spent a couple days with us the first of this week, as they continue their work on a documentary about those of us that have beaten ALS.  We are proud to be associated with this project, and appreciate so many of you close friends that have contributed to it.


At this Thanksgiving time of the year, we are truly grateful for so many blessings; not the least of these are the many friendships that we treasure.  We are greatful for family, and we are grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that plays such a crucial part in our lives.  We are especially grateful for the many new PALS that are also now part of our family.

May God bless you all until we see you again.

Much Love,

Kim & Kay

 

We were invited by this lovely, radiant young lady, Jessica LaRosa, to attend a football game in San Antonio Texas.  We were going to be in San Antonio that evening - Halloween.  She is with Round Rock Christian Academy and they were playing a team from San Antonio.  It was six man football.  We had never seen such a game.  But the best part was watching this lovely cheerleader at work.  Round Rock won the game about 54-0.

Jessica with Kim and Kay. Believe it or not, we were both that young once.  

Jessica at work.  She is the top one.  We are so priviledged to have had a chance to meet her.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Dear Family and Friends

We made it to Brownsville!  The weather was nice and warm to greet us when we got here, in the 80s.  That was so thoughtful.  

We send our love to all family and friends.  We even send love to our enemies if we have any.  May God's blessing be with each of you. 

Kim and Kay

This photo is looking to the east up the canyon.  You can see the river in this photo.  Dinner was gluten free pasta, spinach salad, some special yellow tomatoes we grew and some of the applesauce Mother made just before we left home from her apple trees.  The owner of the RV park said we had quite a climb head of us going across I-70 toward Denver.  Boy was he right about that.  Kim chose to go I-70 because it is so much prettier than I-80.  He was right about that but getting our RV to climb those mouontain passes was quite a trick.  We were singing - I think I can, I think I can - to the motor home all the way across the mountains.

When we got to Glenwood Springs on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, it was nice enough to eat dinner outside, but just barely nice enough.  This photo is taken looking west down the canyon.  The canyon was absolutely beautiful and just wide enough for a river, the railroad track and the freeway. 

Cute picture of Trent with his Mom, Pear. She had to cut her hair shorter because he loved to pull her hair.

Dad and Mom would not let us bring Trent with us to Brownsville, but they at least sent us a picture of him showing off his first tooth.

October 8, 2014

The leaves are starting to fall and we are trying to get things ready to go south again before long.  Kim's neice, Niki, visited from southern California this summer.  Since she is a wonderful photographer and her kids all run at the site of her camera, we had her take some photos of Trent.  He is now sitting up and scooting across the floor with his butterfly stroke.  We will so miss seeing him when we are south.

Sleeping in the hammock on the front porch.

Niki's photo. He must be getting ready to fly.

He loves to chew on soft stuff.  This is his favorite monkey from Aunt Nini.

August 11, 2014

Oh, how time flies when you are busy.  Sometimes you even need a rest.  The ground breaking for the Meridian Idaho Temple will be in 12 days, August 23, 2014.  The temple will just be 7 miles from our house.  Amazing. 

In June we went to the Manti Pagaent in Manti Utah.  We even got in a few rounds of golf at the Paradise State Park just south of Manti.

So this is the 4th hole at Paradise St Park golf course.  You have to shoot from the forward green and hit the green on the other side of the deep gully.  Kim did it!

Papa and Baby Trent getting their nap.

We had to drive to Southwest Oregon to get Kim's new truck.  The western side of the Oregon drive was very green and beautiful.

More forest in Western Oregon, relatively near Crater Lake.

Kim's new truck, no speed demon.  It took 12 hours to drive 500 miles.

Dear family and frineds,

The summer flies by as we mow lawns, weed, golf, work on Sling Pitcher stuff, etc.  Our son and daughter-in-law play in a coed softball league, so we also get to go and watch the baby (Kim gets to take score for the team while Kay gets to watch the baby.)

Here we are with our little grandson that is now 5 months old.  Oh how fast they grow.

Dear Family and Friends,

We found our way back to Idaho with only a few hiccups along the way.  One motor home blown tire, 3 new tow trailer tires and two new motor home front tires.  But we got home in time for dinner. 

There and here.

Good bye Port Isabel

Our neighbors flowers on Long Island Village

The mountians east of Ogden, Utah greet us.

Papa and his new grandson, chilling out.

I forgot to do a heading, so I will just do pictures.  These are things we don't see in Idaho.  This is the Pirate's Landing Restaurant.  It look right out into the water and across to South Padre Island.

I have never seen a pirate ship in Idaho.  This one is a tourist boat adventure.

I was sitting at the desk in our bedroom and saw this big ship moving down the channel. It is an aircraft carrier on it's way to the Port of Brownsville and is set fot dismantleing.   This picture was taken at the Port of Brownsville. 

The Yucca plants are all in bloom this time of year.  They get a blossom in February and March that looks like a candle.  The one in the center of this picture is just starting to bloom.  It is kind of maroon and white at first.

This small Yucca plant is in full bloom.  The picture does not show the bright yellow of the bloom.  The blossom looks like a cluster of popcorn. There are thousands of these in bloom right now between Port Isable and Brownsville.

So I finally found a cooperative pelican that would pose for me.  He was in the channel behind our motor home.  This is the only one I have seen with a red neck. 

Hello, Friends and Family.

It is now almost the end of February.  It has been a cold winter here, jsut like most places in the country, but nothing like home in Idaho. Can you  believe it actually got into the 40s a few times, and even came close to freezing a night or two.  Those few really nasty days reminded us of why we decided to come south.  But it has warmed up quite a bit this past two weeks, and we are almost ready to crank up the old air conditioner.  We know it is tough on all of your there in the cold country, but spring is sure to come there too.

My health continues to improve even more, and  we are ever greatful for the blessings in our lives.  We are already making plans to return next winter, but honestly, we are also anxious to get  back home to all of our dear friends and family there.

We are posting some of the beautiful sites aroiund us here, in hopes we can get some of you to join us here for a bit next year.

This is a photo of  the old lighthouse here in Port Isabel. We are only parked about a mile to the south.  Behind the lighthouse is the bay and port.  There is often kids rolling down the hill you see.  We were not inclined to join them.

We took a walk up the steps to the top of the lighthouse.  Other than banging my head on a couple of low beams, the climb was no big deal.  It is amazing what a couple years can do with the proper nursing.  I happen to have the worlds most fantastic nurse, even if she is just a bit of a pain at times.  She doesn't give me much slack, though I take all I can.

This is from the lighthouse across the causeway.  It is just over two miles long, and goes to South Padre Island,which is a beautiful resort area.  The weather hasn't been conducive to much sun tanning on the beaches yet, but we still have 7 or 8 weeks to get some in.  Heaven forbid, should we come home without our tans!

We took a little fishing trip a couple weeks ago.  It was a bit cool, and we didn't do too much damage to the fish populatioin, but we did end up we enough "Whiting" to make a couple nice meals.  But I did get a fishing license, the first I've had in probably 30+ years.  If we have to live off my fishing, we're both going to be dropping a few more pounds.

This is Logan, one of the fishing guides, filleting our catch.  We could tell he had done it a few times.nd

This is our friendly Pelegan committee come to check on Logan's work. Don't they look like a nice bunch of pacifist at a church picnic?

This is now the "clean-up" committee. I wouldn't want to be in the water with them when the scraps came over the railing.
They are very interesting birds, and pretty much have the run of things.  There are flashng lights as you go over the causeway that says "Watch For Pelicans".  They have the right-of-way.

We hope you are all well and happy.  We find ourselves to be quite busy here most of the time, with a bit of work with Sling Pitcher going on, taking care of some callings in the Church here, our continued therapies, and making sure the golf courses around here have their share of divots, chuncks, and lost balls to remember me by.  The water hazards are plentiful and the wind always makes them a bit more intimidating.

We hope to see most of you in just a couple months. Please don't hesitate to call or email any time.

Much love to all,

Kim & Kay

January 19,2014

Great news in the Cherry family.  Trent was born on January 13th.  That is a new lucky day for our family.  Here he his just peeking out at the world. 

Who turned the lights on?

January 3, 2015

We are currently in Dallas for a few days.  Haven't found anything to take a picture of yet.  Big cities don't thrill me.  Here is our Christmas Day photo.  Kay

Here we are on Christmas day overlooking the canal right behind our RV.  Our neighbor owns the boat right behind us and the funny looking plant we are standing by.  The weather was calm and lovely on Christmas Day and the following Sunday.  But otherwise we have had wind and rain.  We are hoping that soon winter is gone in Port Isabel  

The plant is called a palamara plant.  Don't know if I spelled it right.  But this funny looking boomerang thing on it is the seed.  It will bloom this spring and I'll have to get another photo.