There were good times of course with a good trip with Jerry and Bev to Sacramento for Hazel's 80th birthday.
We enjoyed our new house and Dick immediately had great plans for the yard which was just a dustbowl with a couple of drooping trees.
But the move did show how much Dick had weakened. Thank goodness I was in pretty good shape then as I basically had to do the packing and unpacking myself.
The day we were moving, the front door was open at our home while the truck was being loaded and Scruffy ran into the road and was hit by a car. His eyes were rolled back and blood was pouring out of his mouth and we really believed that this was the end of our beautiful little dog. It was a Saturday and I couldn't find a vet open, but went to the kennels that had watched Scruffy for me when Dick was in the hospital and they called the vet that serviced their kennel and he opened up his office for me in Ardmore. Scruffy had a broken left front leg, and severely damaged lungs. Needless to say the journey to Arizona was not the easiest with Scruffy very much the invalid, and we had a delay in getting into our house because of a screwup on the paperwork. But we made it in and slowly but surely Scruffy's leg healed. But he never has regained his breathing ability - he tires easily if he runs at all.
Shortly after her birthday, we lost our beloved Hazel, and Jerry, Bev, Dick and I made another trip to Sacramento and stayed with Leslie and Elmer.
We were pleased that Marie and Mindy (with Kody) came and Debbie, Blake and Amber came up from Fresno.
Things continued to fall apart at our properties in Falconhead. We had sold our condo and the buyer was making payments to us. At this point she was very good and never missed. But that wasn't the case for the two townhouses. It was one disaster after each other. We were the absent landlords and we were royally taken by everyone we rented to. Our three bedroom home was badly destroyed and these people never paid a dime past the first rent. We had a hard time getting them out and had to go back to clean the place up and try to rent it out again. Either Dick and I were very bad judges of character or we were really on the bad vibes, for every renter took us, by not paying rent, not taking care of the property, and one even stealing our golf cart. The net result was that by the end of the year we were down $10,000, as we had continued to pay the two mortgages, insurance, taxes and Association dues on both properties.
On the way home, we stayed in a motel half way, and after a couple of days at home, both Dick and I had bites all over us - yes, you guessed it - bed bugs! We called an exterminator. The going rate was $3,500 (which we didn't have) and no guarantees that it would work. I was fortunate to talk to one who was honest and told me that he wouldn't even give a bid, because the treatments almost never worked and he suggested I go on the internet and follow one of the recommendations there. So I did. Two bags of diatemaceous (have no idea if I spelled that correctly) earth sprinkled over the beds, couches, chairs and carpets, washed all the bedding and dried them on the highest heat, put all pillows and cushions in the dryer at top heat. The cleanup was horrendous, BUT it worked.
Louise and Cheyenne came for Christmas and we had Christmas dinner at our house. Jerry and Bev came, as did Tricia and Penny, and Doug with his two sons Justin and Ian. It was very nice. Debbie and Evan came after Christmas for a few days, so the year ended up on better note (except for Falconhead).
By the end of the year, we were realizing that there was something definitely wrong with Dick - he could barely do anything without having to sit down and rest, we had to do something about it.
On a lighter note, I just had to add my favorite photo of the year:
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