I Love Y'all!

If the New Year 2011 is as great as our New Year's Eve day was—I say, "Bring it on! I can't wait!"

Early Friday morning, right before sunup, Tony took Rick with him to the Old Timer to drink coffee with his friends, while Leisa slept with Squirt in my writing cabin, and I slept with Mama and Toto. 

I got out of bed around seven o'clock, put the dogs outside, made some coffee, fed the dogs and then I started cooking my semi-famous, "Cousin Nancy's Huevos Rancheros," while visiting with Leisa.

There really isn't anything special about how I cook my huevos rancheros, except I add one secret ingredient, which I cannot divulge at this time, because I am thinking seriously about doing a cookbook with y'all, in the very near future—to benefit our rescue ranch.

When our "Medina-coffee-drinkin' men" returned home, I served breakfast and they all loved it and cleaned their plates while begging me for my recipe, but my lips were sealed and I never revealed my secret ingredient. 

Following breakfast, Tony and Rick went outside, so Tone could feed the dogs and Rick could clean their pens. Leisa and her precious dog Squirt returned to my cabin, so she could get some work done on the Internet and that's when I decided to walk off a couple of the seven miles left to go with Leslie Sansone, to complete my 2010 New Year's resolution of walking 1,825 miles with her.

Three miles later I stopped walking even though I still had four miles to walk, when the dogs outside started barking to let me know that something was going on. 

Twenty minutes later after I had cleaned up, I was outside having a hen party with our friends and super volunteers: Sharon Griswold, the incredible dog trainer of "Rover Misbehaving," June Hartley and her friend, Lisa, Ellen Jackson, and Eileen Gotke, while Jim McMahon was out walking a couple of our lucky dogs, while Paul Emerson visited with Tony, Leisa and Rick, after they had unloaded his pickup full-of-free-dog-food for our dogs. Needless to say there was non-stop laughter. Here is a picture that I took of "the girls" and Paul before they left to go home and spend New Year's Eve with their families. 

Left to right: Sharon, Ellen, June, Lisa and Eileen

I love these people as much or more, as our dogs do—they're the best—the cream of the crop and I want to say, "Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for making our rescue ranch great! We couldn't have done it without y'all."

After they went home, we ate lunch and then Ben Welch arrived, while I was cleaning up the kitchen, and we had a fun visit with him! Then after he left to go back over to the Lodge to visit with Kinky, Marcie and Frank, Patty Kearns, our dear Floridian friend, showed up with a gift for me—the new Elton John / Leon Russell CD—"The Union!" And it is fantastic!

After a brief visit here we jumped into Buttermilk and took off for the Lodge to go visit with Kinky, Marcie, Frank and Ben. Here are a few pictures over there. I took this one.

Left to right: Rick, T. and Ben 

Ben took this one. Left to right: Leisa, Patty, Marcie and me.

An hour later, after Patty had gone back to Kerrville, to be with her Dad and Peggy, Rick started fixin' us dinner that he and Leisa had bought, and that is when I decided to try to walk-off the remaining four miles and things got pretty funny and hairy. 

As I walked off the miles with Leslie, wearing my jeans and Justin Gypsy pink boots, with the volume turned down, so we could visit—Rick had us laughing non-stop! In the final minutes left, before I was done walking, he decided to walk with me, but Squirt disagreed.

Every time that Rick tried to walk behind me—she'd growl and then attack his feet—without biting—as we roared with laughter! This is a picture that T. took of Rick and me when I completed the seventh mile. As you can tell—I was thrilled with myself that I had actually walked 1,825 miles with Sansone in 2010!

On that New Year's Eve—Leisa and Rick went to bed at eight o'clock—Tony at eight-thirty and I hit the sack before nine-thirty.

New Year's Day was great, because Mercury was no longer in retrograde! While the four of us ate breakfast together, we laughed non-stop as we watched "Vernon, Florida," a great documentary. An hour or so later, Leisa and Rick took off for San Antonio to visit relatives before heading back down to Port Aransas and I spent the rest of the day and today making this nine minute video, using the pictures from my 2010 blog and I hope that you enjoy it and will check it out. And Mari, please don't get your feelings hurt that there are no pictures of the RockBox, even though we loved it—I had no pictures. And I want to thank everyone for supporting our rescue ranch over the past year and the only reason that you may not be in the video is because I had no pictures. Happy New Year to all! I love y'all and I did it—I actually walked 1,825 miles with Les!

Y'all have a great evening and the best New Year ever! And thank you, for making mine so great!