Dad's New Car

I emailed most of you with info on my new replacement car for the aged Maxima. The Maxima served us well, but it was getting tired.

The new car is a 2011 KIA Optima.

Some folks mistaken it for looking like a Lexus. No kidding. Love, Dad B.

Blomquist Backyard - San Jose, CA

Sunday was a day of yard work for all of us.

I/Dad got the lawns mowed and edged, and did a little weeding too.

Melissa worked in the backyard weeding, pulling out massive roots of unwanted bushes, and making thing look very nice.

Logan even helped a little, but has to watch lifting things for awhile after his apendix surgery. By the way, he's doing pretty well. As of this Monday he hasn't asked for any pain medicine.

Me Dad still am fighting this lung/cough thing, and am taking a pretty powerful antibiotic. I'm to see the doc on Friday for a recheck.

Mom/Linda spent the day washing/cleaning all different things. She took down blinds and drapes and cleaned them, and washed some bedding.

Even little Lavender helped Mommy in the yard.

Lavender is fighting virus/cold thing too.

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Our Spring like temps went South or somewhere, as today/Monday is very windy and the temp is barely in the 60's. We've got a rain coming tonight, and into Tuesday with a chance of thundershowers. Looks like unseasonable cool and semi-wet weather throughout the week until the weekend. This plays havoc with Ben's work.

Also these windy Aprils sure raise havoc with the sinuses too.

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Our Kitties In Interesting Poses

Bentley found a nice snuggy shoe box on our kitchen counter to take a nap in, and Teddy our outside kitty, and senior citizen found a nice snuggily box for himself. Most of you know that Teddy isn't a small kitty, and he really filled-out that box.

Love, Dad Blomquist

Spring Has Sprung........Kinda

Well it's a Tuesday, and I'm sitting in the office waiting for the auto-glass man to show up and replace Mom's Mazda van's windshield.

A rock hit her windshield on the way home from work last week and put a sizeable crack in it. Thank God, we had a zero deductible on window breakage replacement on all our vehicles.

Juan, from A-1 Glass just showed up, and actually he/they are replacing the glass they installed on Saturday. The installation didn't meet our expectations. Juan had a helper, and I think he messed it up. Juan came by himself this time.

Well, Easter went nicely. It started out with a very nice morning at church. We enjoyed a pancake breakfast/feed at church and then had a very good Easter sermon to finish-off the morning.

After getting home Melissa's brother Jonathan, wife-Berth, and 10 month old son Caleb came over around 2PM for Easter Day visit and dinner with us.

We had bought a big old Prime Rib roast for Ben's birthday from Costco, and cut it in half and roasted it for the birthday. We thawed the other half and roasted it for Easter. It was yummy!

Easter evening turned into a cold rainy downpour outside, but we burned lots of our Oak logs in the fireplace to add a nice comfy touch to the day and evening.

Yep, while you folks back East are basking in the warmth, our daytime temps for the last week have barely reached 60 degrees, and some days it only goes up to the 50's!

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Had to prune the living daylights out of the peach tree. It basically has three main limbs and just a few branches. The poor peach had outdone itself giving us great croops each year, but last summer it yielded a big crop of small peaches that caused many branches to split/break from the weight of the fruit. So these split branches died back and we ended up with a lot of dead limbs at pruning time.

I hope that dear old tree survives my major surgery. It has a few new leaves sprouting, but that darn old "curly leaf" disease is messing up the leaves. Usually the tree grows out of the curly leaf, but I don't know how things will go this year. The peach dates back to the days before Costco was around here. We bought it at the Price Club on Lawrence Expressway in Santa Clara. That place became a Costco.

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After a dreadful virus attack on our P.C., we are now living with a healthy computer again. It took about a week of Norton/Symantec remote support from India to get rid of this nasty thing.

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Mother's Day: We are taking the travel trailer to the Willits, CA KOA trailer/camping park on that weekend, starting Friday. This KOA is one heck of a fun place for folks with or without kids...grandparents, whatever. There's a petting zoo, water park, ice cream socials, pancake breakfasts, music/dance evenings, the Skunk train stops at the KOA on it's way too and from Fort Bragg to Willits.

Last Labor Day weekend Ben and family and Mom and me went there, and the kids had a ball. Logan claims he re-learned how to swim at the KOA pool. Oh, I forgot....They have a minature golf course there, horse shoes, hot tubs......and of course Willits is right in the heart of California wine country too...........and some Indian casinos too.

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Well, we are all relatively well now........There was a nasty old cold virus going around that seem to hang on for several weeks.

Also Mom went to the Dr. for her red stinging eyes. They gave her anti-biotic drops but they don't help much. We think maybe it's allergies, as there's a lot of pollen in the air from our very wet winter. After Juan finishes installing Mom's windshield, I'm going to the drug store to get some over-the-counter eye drops for Mom. She thinks that my be what she needs.

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The pictures above are from the Willits KOA and also a picture from glass beach Fort Bragg where we like to go and collect beautiful beach stones. Also some recent pictures of Grandma Dorine, Uncle Mark, Uncle Lee, and Mom that I took at Jerry Kirkpatrick's funeral. This was the get-together at the Kirkpatrick's house in Meadow Vista, Ca. near Auburn.

Love, Dad Blomquist

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Thought my son's and their families would like to see a picture of my first cousin Byron Blomquist. Pictured on the left is Byron, and on the right is his wife Gretchen Blomquist. Byron and Gretchen had a very nice home built in Cortez, Colorado a couple years ago.(Pictured above is their new home in Cortez, CO.)

Byron has a Phd. in Chemistry, works on upper atmospheric studies for the NOAA at the University of Hawaii. Gretchen has worked for the American Indian Affairs Department of the government for some years helping the tribes with engineering projects such as irrigation, and other important needs.

Both Byron and Gretchen served with the U.S. Peace Corps some years ago, and I believe both met there. Gretchen just received an opportunity to transfer to the CDC or Centers For Disease Control, and took the position. She will be stationed in Zimbabwe, Africa.

So Byron and Gretchen are putting-up their Cortez, CO home for sale and are going to set up "home" in Zimbabwe. Byron will still work about 6 months out of the year for the NOAA at the U. of Hawaii.

I had sent a Christmas card to Byron and Gretchen letting them know that we had a travel trailer, and wondered if they had room for us to come to Cortez and visit them there. They certainly have the room! Well, I guess we missed-out on that opportunity. I still want to get a chance to head out that way anyway again as me and Mom did two summers-ago. The Grand Canyon was incredible!

See yah for now, Love, Dad B.

Byron and Gretchen in Zimbabwe

Rain, Lovely Rain!

Two years of drought might be ending for us here in San Jose, California. This week(Jan 11th-22nd) are our wettest of the Winter months out here.

Our middle son, Ben, makes his living working outside in sheet metal construction, and the weather doesn't bode well for job-prospects for him. Ben is taking it in stride, never the less.

I Dad Blomquist, am sitting here in our humble little office-room on Stratford Drive, enjoying a calm, quiet day, typing my first blog entry.

News? Well, Mom Linda is heading out on a women's church retreat with our daughter in law Melissa. They leave this coming Friday(Jan 22nd), and enjoy a three day weekend with 40+ other women from our church in the beautiful seaside city of Monterey, California.

Ben will have son Logan, and daughter Lavender to care for, while Mom, & Melissa are off at the retreat. Dad/Gary/Grandpa Blomquist will do bachelor chores along with son Ben. We've got NFL play-off games this weekend to keep us occupied.

What have I done lately(Dad B.)? Well, last week I completed pruning our backyard trees. What a pile of branches I ended up with! I got out my McCulloch electric wood chipper and went to work on making those branches into wood chips for my compost pile. It took about two days to grind down all the branches. I seem to have pulled a muscle in my middle back on the right-side. It doesn't want to ease up. Mom has given me a couple hard, Swedish back rubs in the last couple days. It hurts when she does it, but in other ways it feels good. Afterwards I take two extra strength Tylenols, and off to bed, I go.

Next: Well we finally re-did our will, and it is now in the form of a estate trust/will, that is protected from probate stealing-away what we pass on to our sons. We were way overdue on completing it, but we finally did it. This indeed is a relief for Mom and I. Our old will was done via a kit that we bought, and did ourselves with no legal help.

I'm still attending Bible Study Fellowship and am in my 4th year. It as been very rewarding, and not an easy bible study. I meet with roughly 200 men once a week who come from various churches. This year we are working on the New Testament book of "John".

What's ahead so far? Well, we are planning to fly out to Ohio in late May 2010 to be at our youngest son, Thomas Blomquists', medical research thesis defense to earn a doctorate. His oldest brother Michael, wife Andrea, niece Britneigh, and newphew Andrew are planning to drive from their home in Glenwood, Iowa(700+ miles) to meet us for this special occasion.

I will be posting pictures to go along with our messages when I figure out how to use Photo Bucket.

So long for now.......Dad/Gary Blomquist