The View At Lethbridge

The beginning of September Carl and I moved to the View at Lethbridge, a beautiful lodge build just at the edge of the City of Lethbridge on top of the coulees. It filled up very quickly with 140 wonderful people living here together as one big family. There are so many fun activities planned every day, carpet bowling, exercises 3 times a week, yoga, singing, crafts, movies, board and card games, bingo, entertainment, shopping, etc. The manager let us bring with us our Christmas tree and ornaments and I had fun to decorating it. All the downstairs is decorated so nicely for Christmas and Dr. Koegler has started to play Christmas songs. The meals are very good and we always have several different meals to choose from. The big meal is served at lunch time with fresh home-made bread and at supper time they always serve home-made soup before the main meal. The building is nicely decorated with many beautiful paintings and vintage furniture and silk bouquets of flowers and plants. But it is the people who make it such a wonderful place to be. You will never see anyone sit by him or herself. Very few sit with the same friends, the others sit with someone different every meal - a wonderful way to get to know each other. Carl had a heart attach in June and still feels very tired. I have had fun painting, making Christmas cards the scrapbook way, doing puzzles on our floor, and visiting with neighbors. One couple across from us and a lady down the hall speak German, it is so nice to visit with them once in a while. Last weekend I sold two of my new paintings, one was a batik, watercolor on a special rice paper and the other an abstract oil painting on a canvas. Together with a friend we taught a workshop in batik. Everyone had such good comments about the workshop that we decided to do another one in the Spring. I was also asked to teach a class here at the View. It will be fun to do.

One of the beautiful sights on my holidays last April with my brother Peter and wife Brigitte. While it was very cold in Germany, we enjoyed swimming and diving through the waves in the ocean for 17 days. It was fabulous! Looking at the mountains in the photo, my brother drove on a narrow road high up in these mountains along the north side of this island. Little scary at times, but luckily there was very little uncoming traffic, I don't know what Peter would have done, if it had been a large bus! Towards the centre of the island, we saw lemon trees, fig trees, banana trees and hundreds of greenhouses and flowers and colorful shrubs everywhere. We visited two parks, both very different, but very interesting, one near Brigitta, I believe was the name of the little village. We took long walks on the beach with a camera in one pocket and a water bottle in the other. We even got lost one day and ended up in a private resort place. The Hotel we stayed at was fantastic, all rooms faced the ocean and at night the sound of the waves rolling to shore would put you to sleep. We ate fish almost every day, lots of salads, and my favorite was small potatoes cooked in ocean water, but they served them only twice. Some days they would special food like Chinese, Italian or German. We tried to stay away from all the fantastic pastry and eat fruit instead. Some days it worked, some days not! We took a couple of bus trips, one to a very beautiful fishing village on the West coast, there were paper flowers around every corner. I could go on and on ... these will always be my best memories.

Christmas 2006

We had a very nice Christmas this year, on Christmas Eve we went to Church and listened to beautiful music by a choir and wished friends a Merry Christmas at Church and later by phone. It was nice to visit with old friends from many years ago. Christmas morning Joel, Carol's youngest boy was so excited about Christmas that he was not feeling well, but soon felt better and we all had breakfast and then opened presents. Carol always finds something special for everyone, one of my presents was a very soft housecoat, which I will enjoy very much. Carol and John's house was decorated so nicely with different nativity displays, candles and a beautiful Christmas tree. We made a wonderful Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings, including sweet potatoes with pecans, parsnips and peach pie. The missionaries enjoyed being with us and brought a special spirit with them.