Life Is Wonderful

Well I didn't manage to get by without catching the dreaded cold going around. It was definitely a cold and not allergies like the last one. It was a nasty head cold and even taking cold medicine my noise continually ran. After a few days of blowing my nose I decided to take an allergy pill because it has antihistamine in it to dry up my sinus'. It worked. Thank goodness. I got a little cough but was able to get that under control right away. We had neighbors that were on a trip when our gate guards wife had her birthday so when they returned they threw her a small party with just the few of us in the neighborhood. I didn't go as I was still sick, but Dave went and took the macaroni salad I made. They were serving hamburgers and each one of us made a side dish. Dave brought me back a piece of chocolate cake so that made things all better. Ha!! I've been told that chocolate is one of the 4 basic food groups!!!!! Well if it isn't it should be!! Heheheh. Well I discovered the other day I couldn't find my immigration card. It is to tell the officials I am a permanent resident. I looked and looked every where for it and didn't find it. I think it probably was in the wallet I lost in December. Bummer. Now we HAVE to go to Ensenada to immigration and apply for another one. We needed to change where we live as when we got our cards we still had the boat in Santa Rosalia. We needed to change it from there to Bahia de los Angeles. We contacted a man who helps with immigration things that lives in Ensenada, and he said we needed to come up and meet with him. So we did and what happens is we hire him to fill out all the paper work and deal with immigration as we don't speak the language well enough. We met with him and explained what happened to the card and we also had to change the address on our cards. Through all this process Dave found out that the name on his resident card was wrong. They had put his middle name first then his name then last name. It was supposed to be first name, middle then last. No one noticed it until now. So Dave will need to apply for a new card too but not now. It is a process so he wants to get the address change done and me another card then he will deal with his card later. We went the next day to get my picture taken then on to the immigration office. Arturo signs in once we get there and talks to the people there and answers all their questions and fills out all the paperwork. All we did was sign on the dotted line. Well after waiting around for a couple hours or so, as immigration isn't the fastest operating office around, we finally got things taken care of and I got a letter saying I needed to show up on Monday the 13th for an interview for my card. So that meant we would leave on a Thursday, which is the 9th, and return 3 days later. It takes 7 hours travel time between Ensenada and home. The road on Hwy 1 is terrible and filled with pot holes and some of them pretty severe. We wanted to go a different way but that way is still under construction and it had rained a lot so we didn't want to go through a bunch of mud. So we took hwy 1. It is a pretty drive but is slow because we go through several small towns and usually end up behind the work buses. When we returned home we were dreading going back up again in a couple days, but have no choice. We were to watch for an email immigration would send us and when we received it, not open it but tell Arturo. He then would go to the immigration office and do what he needed to do. Sunday the 12th we left again for Ensenada and arrived at the hotel mid afternoon. We decided to stay at a different hotel this time which isn't far from Santo Tomas where we usually stay. We had stopped in to see the hotel on our last trip and we were impressed and I loved the décor as it was what I consider the Mexican style. So were able to get a room over looking the pool with a queen bed. Very nice and clean. They also had an exercise room so I checked that out. All we needed to do was go to the bank to get money and we got some rum so the rest of the time was doing whatever we wanted to do. I worked on my blog and then I went to walk on the tread mill and do my stretching exercises. When I got back I took a shower and relaxed. Monday morning we went to the immigration office and Arturo met us there. He had a terrible cold but without him there we would have had a rough time getting things done. He actually translated my story about losing my resident card. So when my statement was typed up and Arturo read it over and approved, papers were signed and that was it. So next trip is to do fingerprinting. Yesh!!!!! We thanked Arturo and told him to get well and we did some running around and went back to the hotel. It was a beautiful day. There is a restaurant attached to the hotel so we decided to try it out. It didn't start out to be a Valentine celebration, but being the day before Valentine's Day, we kind of splurged. We bought a bottle of red wine to go with dinner and the dinner was wonderful. A little on the pricy side but we hadn't done that in a long time so we said, “what the heck”!!!! We even shared a dessert even though we were stuffed!!!! It was flan so we couldn't resist. This place reminded me so much of our time share in San Jose Del Cabo. It made me long to go back and enjoy being pampered!!! When we get our bills payed we are looking forward to going down there again. We have tried to rent it and sell it and haven't had any luck so I think it was meant for us to hang on to it. Well after our wonderful dinner we went back to our room and watched TV then went to bed. We were up at 6:00am the next morning and on the road by 6:30am. We are driving all the way home. We didn't have a bad trip just really stressing for Dave to try and miss all the pot holes. He did hit one and we had to stop and make sure our tire was OK. It was and we made it home safely and without any snaffoos. Now we wait until we hear from Arturo again for the fingerprinting. Today is our grandson Ethan birthday. He is 22 now. Well back to our regular routine with laundry and grocery shopping and I am working on craft stuff. I made a hanger for lightweight items with a Whale Shark painted on the wood and it reads, Bahia de los Angeles. It is for the show in November. I had bought 4 hooks for it so Dave put those on and it actually turned out great. Then I made a candle holder from shells and sea glass. I wasn't sure how it would turn out but in the end I think it turned out great. I know the one picture looks funny but I wanted to show what it looked like from above. I do plan on making another one but will wait because I have to start on making fabric stuffed fish. I have Seattle Sounder Soccer and Seattle Sea Hawk material to made fish out of. The first fish I made looks sad. Dave said it should be because they didn't do so well in the season. Ha. The next one was a soccer one and it turned out pretty good. Then I made a different Sea Hawk fish and he is a little strange but interesting. I now am starting on the fish patterns I cut out last summer. I am planning on making football and ball shapes out of the Sea Hawk and Soccer fabric for a couple of the grandkids. Today is my step daughters birthday and she is 42 and our grandson Brody is 9. Brody is playing basketball right now and doing well. He does well in all sports. He hasn't played football yet thought. Still too young. He had his birthday party at Wolf's Lodge in Everette, Washington. I guess it was a blast. It is so kool to be able to see pictures of the kids on Facebook. It helps me stay connected to my family and friends. The weather is still on the cool side but we are supposed to have some really nice weather coming. Warmer temperatures and less wind. That will be nice. One day it was pretty windy to be walking on the beach so I decided to walk up an arroyo and explore toward the hills. What a great walk it turned out to be. The desert is in bloom and the cactus are full of water and green. I walked to the hill behind out house and studies the rock formations and just enjoyed the scenery. Sorry. I didn't take my camera with me. Maybe next time. I wanted to go further up the arroyo toward the mountain but decided not to push my back anymore. It was starting to give me sharp pains. So I will come back and maybe Dave will come with me and we can explore further up the arroyo. We are always on the lookout for gold as we know there is still a lot of it in the mountains. Dave will bring his tools to crack open some rocks and even if we don't discover any gold it will be fun. Here is a picture I took walking on the beach toward our little community where we live. Those are the hills I have been hiking to. We live in such a beautiful place!!!! We are blessed.