Starting our Winter stay in Arizona

We are now here enjoying all that the area has to offer.  It has been nearly a month now since we left Pleasant Grove and drove here.  Our plans are to stay until after Brooke graduates from High School, which is scheduled for the 19th of May.  (Incidentally, we are still running on the tank of gas that we got when we were in Kingman, AZ on the way down!  Love our Sonata.)

After we got settled in, on the 16th of January, after a rather uneventful drive down, we began our regular routine here.  On the way down, however, we did stop in Hurricane and visit with the Andersens, who were former missionaries with us at Heber Valley Camp.  Sister Andersen (Nina) was the camp secretary while Don was Operations Manager so we came to know her very well.  Brother Andersen (Soren) was over the Priesthood Service groups who came to camp to do service projects.

They sold their property in Lindon and another house in Hurricane and now have a gorgeous home there.  It has 4 bedrooms and 4.5 Baths (one for each bedroom and off the bedrooms so it is a great "guest house" for them.  They invited us to come and stay for a few days anytime we would like.  Really nice of them to offer.  We may just take them up on it!

Last Saturday, we went to a citrus farm not far from Stuart's and picked some fresh citrus.  We got two kinds of oranges and one kind of grapefruit.  They sure taste good just off the tree.' There are 42 acres of fruit on this farm!

We attended the new Phoenix Temple on Tuesday this week and it was wonderful.  Beautiful temple. They, during the week days, only have 3 sessions in the morning and 3 in the evenings.  On Friday and Saturday they go all day every 1 1/2 hours.  When you go in, they give you a "chip" with the session time on it and when they are gone, they are gone.  You turn the chips in as you go into the session room from the waiting room.  We went to the 10:30 session and it was full +1!  There were 71 total.

(Something was acting strange with the iPhone camera and exposures were not too good.  Of course things are not out full green here yet.)

The temple is about 30 minutes from Stuart's house but there is a lot of construction between here and there, where they are working on the 303 freeway.  We have to go 45 mph max most of the way and then there are a lot of slow downs as well.

Our routine here is to do pretty much what we do at home, along with a few new things.  We attend the Willow Canyon ward and we were welcomed back as old friends, since we had been here last year as well.  And, though Tuesday was our first temple session since arriving here, we hope to go at least every other week.  We also want to cross the valley and attend the Gilbert Temple but that is an hour drive away.  We usually try to combine trips there with a visit with my Brother Kent and his wife Kristine who live in Gilbert.

We try to walk each day somewhere.  There is a real nice series of trails through the green belts/retaining ponds here which allow us some of the feeling of being in the "wilderness!"  See the included picture.  They are really well cared for and sure don't look like winter.  We try for 1.5 to 2 miles per walk.  Today we walked to Fry's Marketplace, a Kroeger store, where we often get groceries. 

Lois continues to work on her "project" of sharing the stories of their ancestors with our children and grandchildren.  We hope she gets it done by the "Millennium!"  But she is coming along quite well and hopes to have it is finished by our 50th Anniversary in April.  It is quite a work.

Don has set up a radio station (Ham) here at Stuarts and gets on the radio for a little time each day.  Yesterday, Wednesday, he made contact with a station on Navassa Island in the Caribbean, which has not been on the air for 20 years!  It the most sought after contact in the world because of it's rarity.  When these stations are on, there are huge "pile ups" of people trying to call.  Don got the contact on his very first call! This is group of 15 hams from the US who travelled there and set up 7 stations on different bands, mostly with sponsor donated equipment.  Quite an undertaking and has been in the works for over 5 years.  It is a fun hobby.  Don read today on their website that in the 2 weeks they have been there they have made more than 200,000 contacts worldwide!

Well, that should do it for now.  We will try to blog at least monthly, so will need to keep more careful track of what we do.