The Ouseys in Victoria Page

We were pleasantly surprised by the arrival in Cocopah of Andy and Kathie. They drove straight down leaving Christmas eve. They are in Cocopah for two nights which includes tonight and will celebrate with us, the Kirkwoods and their friends the Schulers.

Kathie and Andy leave for Pilot Mound BLM tomorrow. They only have a month so they won't be down very long. But it is nice to see them.

So Happy New Years everyong.

We are back in Arizona. We flew back yesterday and the trip, though long, was pretty much on schedule.

It was a trying couple of weeks and I still can't believe Dennis' is no longer with us. I still expect to see a notice of his blog pop up. I will miss him and his daily dose of humour with the occasional rant.

The service was great and many family and friends who loved him will miss him too.

Catherine and family did a fabulous job with his service. We have much to thank them for. Margot and Joel were of great help and solace to her. Carolyn did a fine job with the food as well.

Catherine's offer to continue to look after Mother is of great comfort to Jack and myself.

Miss you Dennis, if you're listening, will miss you anyway even if you are not.

Ta ta all.

We had a wonderful day and Christmas dinner at Catherines yesterday. Today we checked back into the Guest suite at the Manor and then spent a nice afternoon visiting at Carolyn's cousins Betty's place. Betty's oldest Gordon, Sharon and family were there. Merle was extremely pleased with the family book that Gordon and Sharon had put together, it was professonally bound and in a fine wooden case. We got a copy from them before we left back around Dec 1st. It was a big secret as Merle was not to know until Christmas. It contains much work and genealogy. We were also so very pleased with it. We had contributed some of the info. It is a work in progress as well, so anything else we have or any of the family have, send it to him and he will add it.

Tomorrow is our last day here and Mom was quite sad when Jack left yesterday. Her two boys remaining are the ones that live away from Winnipeg. However, she has Catherine who has reminded us all that she is more than willing to continue helping Mom as she had in the past. Which is a big relief to us all.

Well, next blog will be from Yuma again, after our red eye flight tomorrow night.

Happy New Year all, if I don't get around to it before then.

We have just finished a wonderful Christmas eve dinner at Catherines. At the moment we are all glassy eyed and stuffed.

We have spent the last couple of days squiring my Mom around doing errands and some shopping.

Tomorrow we will be up early and back at Catherines. I may not have mentioned it but Carolyn and I are staying in the guest suite at Lions Manor. This turned out to be excellent as we are just one floor and a couple of doors away from Mom this whole time. So it was easy to check in on her.

Unfortunately someone else had it booked for one day and that is tomorrow, so we have to check out for one day then check back in on the 26th for two more nights. It really worked out really well. So we will be up early, check out and come over to Catherines for Christmas day.

Catherine decided to quickly get back to normal and wanted everyone over for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. The tree is up and it looks very festive here. Good on her, life goes on.

Just enjoyed the Christmas blogs of Kirkwoods and Robinsons. Looks like they are all having a great time.

Merry Christmas all and a Happy New Year too.

Dennis' service was held last night and a fine service it was. It was held at the Western Canada Air Museum where he was a member and volunteer. He would have been very pleased with the location for his service. Several of the 100 plus attending spoke including myself (who also spoke on behalf of Mother and Brother Jack), and daughter Margot. Friends Al, Paul, Pat spoke as well as others from WCAM, Bristol Aerospace, and the Humanist Association of which he and Catherine were members. After the service a PowerPoint presentation, produced by Jack was shown to the music of John Lennon and Imagine, there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

It was a moving evening, with everyone remembering Dennis' humour and humanity.

Carolyn and I are staying through Christmas and will be returning to Yuma on the 28th of December.

Thanks to all who sent their thoughts, flowers and prayers.

Dennis has passed on. He died peacefully Dec 16th. The following link is his obituary that appeared today in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Dennis Neil Ousey

He was loved and he will be sorely missed by all.

I made it to Winnipeg after a long (200) mile drive to Phoenix and several hours in Denver. It is good to see Dennis. He does look peaked to say the least, groggy most of the time, but he is aware and though he may look asleep answer most questions put to him. Still has his sense of Ha Ha. Some carollers came by this evening, and though he looked asleep his head started bobbing in time with Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Not much news on the plan to proceed, but he does have an appointment with the main surgeon tomorrow morning, bright and early. Hopefully, we will finally get a plan of action. Mom, Catherine and Margot are all dealing with everything admirably, particularly Catherine and Margot, a couple of regular nurses them two. He has gotten lots of Cards, Emails, balloons and Flowers, thanks to all.

Just talked to Carolyn, she misses me, awwww. I miss her too. Her 200 mile drive back to Yuma went well. I was relieved.

Here is hoping for good news tomorrow. Nitey Nite

We got on our way and met up with the Kirkwoods as planned. The trip down was quick and easy. The mountain passes were clear and the Walmarts haven’t changed any. We did stay at the campground at 7 Feathers Casino and had a good meal, swim, hot tub and showers. We arrived at Cocopah on time and on the 10th and settled in.

Just as we were leaving I learned that my brother Dennis was taken to hospital with extreme nausea. He has had numbness his right side, blurred vision for some time now and the doctors had little success in figuring it all out. Later he finally got an MRI and unfortunately it was discovered he had a cancerous mass in his brain. The doctors think he is a good candidate for the Gamma Knife, and that decision will hopefully be made today.

It is such a damn shame he has this, on top of everything else. It has been a rotten year for them health-wise. He doesn’t deserve this, nor does Catherine and Margot.

I was able to make reservations to fly out of Phoenix on Tuesday to be in Winnipeg for at least a week. Carolyn will have the company of Ken and Helen until they leave early next week. If all goes well I could be back here by then. But more importantly I hope I can be of some help to them in Winnipeg.

Here is hoping, wishing and praying for a good prognosis and speedy recovery.

Well we will be on the road tomorrow so one last blog before leaving. Lewis arrived and will be staying here through Christmas. We will go out with him for dinner tonight at the Spaghetti Factory.

We are all packed, hard to believe we haven't forgotten anything, yeah right! Oh well what we need we buy. Sure been looking forward to it. We will be meeting Ken and Helen at the Walmart at Chehalis tomorrow.

To Dennis: Take care and get those test so you know what the hell is going on. In the meantime we're thinking of you and hoping all will cleared up soon. Keep us posted.

Next blog from us will be ???????? somewhere south.

Been talking to Charlene via Yahoo. Despite saying she would chew her arm off before she went back working at the clinic, she is working at the clinic, mind you under contract, this time and part time. The coffee shop has been OK but not as good as they would like. Since the job is part time she hopes to continue the coffee shop in some form or another. Now if she would only blog that I wouldn't have to. Other than that all is well, Mike is organizing bike trips, weather permitting, and Charlene and Dakota have been doing the Gym at 6:30 am, all in an effort to lose weight. Mike said he looks fatter in pictures than he feels. I reminded Charlene that they do have a digital camera and it would be nice to get a pic or two from them or, for that matter, on the blog. They upload quite easily.

Jack has blogged and it seems his cellulitis too has returned. Seems to be an annual thing. This time in his thigh, you can read about in his blog. Look to the right, yep the one that says "Jack's blog".

We pick up Lewis shortly.

Last post before leaving will be tomorrow.
nite nite all.

Just read your blog Dennis. Do take care and hope you figure out what is causing this balance problem. I am sure you will get to the bottom of it and hopfully it isn't anything serious. We will proceed with the trip, but if you need me I can fly in from where-ever we are. Keep us posted, via Email, blog or phone. We have our Cell and it will be on.

Take Care.

Hope you guys had a good day celebrating your 43rd yesterday. Did you get any of the snow we got?

Our neighbours have put up their lights and with the snow it looked kind of pretty.










Lights in the snow.

Well we just got a bunch more of the fluffy white stuff. We had better weather to leave in last year and we left at end of Dec. Managed to get 9 holes of Golf in this morning. Other than chilly it was a nice morning. Also managed to get the Motorhome out of storage and parked in Joyce's driveway before the snow got heavy. So just the final packing and house prepping to do, and that is about all we will be doing for next couple of days. We just hope most of this crappy weather blows itself out on the west coast before we make our journey south. There is supposed to be a warming trend, so getting down to Oregon should be OK. The mountain passes through the Siskyous and Grapevine is the tricky part. But we have the numbers for Highways and if it is bad any particular day, we wait a day. We can always move over to the coast highway as well, if necessary.

In any event we are anxious to get going. Carolyn was talking to Helen yesterday and they are anxious as well. We are meeting them at the Chehalis Walmart Monday afternoon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID. We were at David's last night as it was his birthday yesterday. Just a quiet evening at home enjoying the start of his last year as a pre-40 year old. Unless he stays at 39 and counting.