Christmas Eve Service

We joined our church family here in Mesa for Christmas Eve services...

The musicians led us in song.

The pastor shared about things that he could live without in the Christmas celebrations (glitter, ugly sweaters, fruitcake) and things he loved about Christmas (family gatherings, anticipation, celebration of the coming of the Christ child).

We participated in candle lighting...

... and the service closed with singing "Silent Night".

We enjoyed celebrating Christmas Eve with our church family at Broadway Christian Church.

And, yes, I know that I'm posting this on New Year's Eve -- Happy 2026 Y'all! 

Christmas present from Airebeam

A couple of days before Christmas, the fiber internet provider in the park, Airebeam, came to install fiber internet to our house.

It is great to see the Airebeam installer!

They first needed to add our service to the pedestal in another neighbor's yard.

The machine that splices the fiber

Shrink sealing the splice

The pedestal has the capacity to supply service for 16 properties.

The fiber goes through this box on the outside of our house through the small white plastic pipe to the inside.

The installer then capped off the ingress pipe so no bugs or dirt could get in.

Fiber pushed through to the inside of the house

Technician hooking up the fiber modem and router

We have the new fiber internet, and we've done speed tests, and, via our phones, we can see that we are getting the higher speed internet service. However, the wifi connections on our computers and cannot deliver to our computers the full speed that the fiber is giving us. It is still significantly faster than what we were receiving from our Verizon Home device. 

 

Carl has plans to provide hardwire connections (via CAT6 cabling) to most devices in our house which should enable us to get the faster service even on our older laptops. Of course, they still have older processors and drives so we may not see amazing speed! 

Friends and neighbors!

Friends Jan and Dan had a "theme" going for this Christmas:

Christmas and pickup trucks!

On the Sunday before Christmas, Cameron Martin, from Sunshine Acres, was the pastor bringing the message at Venture Out church...

... so we were privileged to hear the youngsters from Sunshine Acres sharing with us in song!

They did a really great job singing and doing hand motions with the songs.

It was a blessing to get to see and hear them!

Sunshine Acres provides a loving, wholesome, Christian home for children who are separated from their parents and helps them establish long-term relationships with stable parental figures, preparing them for success in adult life. (https://sunshineacres.org/)

Each week at the Venture Out church service, a pastor comes in from outside the community to share and often they represent a ministry that serves those who are around us. We appreciate being exposed to these valuable ministries! 

New transfer switch

You may remember that I indicated that our transfer switch got "fried" when we were in Mexico (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/11/day-2-in-mexico.html)...

Carl had ordered a replacement and wanted to be sure to get it installed before we go to Quartzsite in January (as the failing component would not allow us to power the coach from the generator).

We had put the slide in which made it a little easier to access the compartment where the transfer switch is located. We also have the cord reel out as it also failed (and was part of the issue that caused the transfer switch to become fried).

"Before" picture (I can't really see anything that looks fried, but based on the timestamp on the picture, I am pretty sure this is the old transfer switch!).

New transfer switch installed!

We frequently talk about how repair projects seem to take much longer than the anticipated time to accomplish... For this project, before we started, Carl and I prayed for wisdom and safety -- and the project took less time that we anticipated! Praise God!

Bocce Ball Christmas Dinner

We joined with other Bocce Ball players for the Christmas Dinner...

A good crowd came out!

We have heard that the Bocce Ball club is the second largest club in the park (second to Pickleball).

Quite a spread -- we all brought a dish for the pot luck, and the meat (ham) was provided by the club.

Our table at the dinner -- our team mates for the league we play on, Lonnie and Cleo, were at the same table (Lonnie in a salmon colored shirt, and Cleo with a salmon colored sweater).

After dinners, volunteers (voluntolds!) were invited up to the stage to perform various "games" -- we quickly realized that the club had saved money on hiring entertainment and that *we* were providing the entertainment! It wasn't too bad -- though the rules seemed to change as we participated!

We are looking forward to the leagues starting in January on the newly re-surfaced courts!

Some views around our community

We've seen some interesting sights around our community...

Beautiful sunset one evening

The home across the street from our park model has a Santa-hat decorations on the cactus in her yard!

One afternoon, we saw sun dogs on each side of the sun -- this one was to the right (north) side of the sun (you should be able to see a streak of red with lighter colors to the right of it)...

... and this one was to the left (south) side of the sun - again a streak of red toward the sun (I didn't take a picture with the sun in the frame).

We were surprised to see sun dogs as we understood that they are caused by ice crystals in the air and we thought that they would only be seen in cold climates.

Info from Wikepedia on sun dogs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog 

Sun dogs are commonly caused by the refraction and scattering of light from horizontally oriented plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals either suspended in high and cold cirrus or cirrostratus clouds, or drifting in freezing moist air at low levels as diamond dust. The crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. As the crystals gently float downwards with their large hexagonal faces almost horizontal, sunlight is refracted horizontally, and sun dogs are seen to the left and right of the Sun. Larger plates wobble more, and thus produce taller sun dogs.

Sun dogs are red-colored at the side nearest the Sun; farther out the colors grade through oranges to blue. The colors overlap considerably and are muted, never pure or saturated. The colors of the sun dog finally merge into the white of the parhelic circle (if the latter is visible).

I guess there can be ice crystals in the atmosphere even when the ground temperature is 70F+. 

Interesting things to see! 

A Christmas Village in the park

One of our fellow Venture Out residents sets up a Christmas village each year in front of their home -- it is quite extensive!!!

Each year when we admire it, we wonder how long it takes to set it up -- *and* where all the components are stored through the remainder of the year!

Merry Christmas!!! 

Fox hunt

The Venture Out Ham Radio Club had its Fox Hunt a couple of Saturdays ago...

I drove the golf cart and another couple who are in the Ham Radio Club, Nick and Jeanne, went with us...

We eventually spotted the fox up on a porch in our community!

The fellow who placed it actually chose a house that is owned by a family with a last name of "Fox"!

Back at the starting point, we got our pictures taken with Carl's homemade Yagi directional antenna.

We weren't the first team to find the fox, but we weren't the last either!

An update on yesterday's blog

Yesterday I posted a picture of a car that we saw at Denny's in Prescott Valley...

I had mentioned that I thought it may have been a hearse because there were no back doors -- do you want to hear "the rest of the story"????

My brother is the car aficionado in our family (I just think older well-kept cars are "pretty"). I was surprised to receive an email from him -- and so full of information!!! (He is not a typist, so I don't know how he put this into an email.) I haven't requested nor received permission to share this with my other blog readers... but I think y'all will appreciate this information from my brother, Jimmy, and I hope he doesn't mind!

... the car you show in the blog, is a 1955 Chevy 2dr. 5 window station wagon. Probably a model 210. They were available in models 150, 210 and Nomad. The straight post at the rear of the front means it is a 150 or 210, the Nomad had a slanted or almost Z shaped ‘b’ post. The models denoted different trim levels with Nomad being the classiest. Many times you will see a Nomad built as a surfer wagon because they have a sportier look. Also, these wagons don’t have rear doors instead they have a rear window that lifts, akin to a camper shell on a pick-up and a tail gate similar to a pick-up. This may be more than you wanted to know, but it’s kind of my thing and you poked the bear. I enjoy seeing these pictures and I know the desert southwest is where to see them. 

Aren't y'all happy that I "poked the bear" and you also got to benefit from his knowledge?!?!?

Thank you, Jimmy!!! 

Heading back to Mesa

We left Prescott on Friday morning, stopping for breakfast at Denny's...

... where we saw this interesting vehicle -- I guess a hearse since it looked like a station wagon but had no back passenger doors.

Carl's mug had an interesting saying on the side!

View on the drive back south on I-17

We enjoyed our visit to Prescott and plan to spend a couple of months in the summer in that area, a little higher elevation than Mesa (and thus 15-20 degrees cooler!).

Gingerbread Village

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped off at Prescott Resort to look at their Gingerbread Village. What creative people there are around this area!

This was done by a school that works with autistic kids. The various materials used to make the beach scene were truly inventive -- striped candy roll-ups for the beach towels, mini-wheats for the roof, gummy sharks in the water...

Old Tucson movie studios backlot

Rectangular pink bubble gum bricks!

Nativity scene

Candy pumpkins and candy corn growing in the garden in front of the house, peeps green and pink, conversation hearts on the roof

Christmas at the Courthouse 1908

This one reminded me of St Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow.

It seems that different community members and groups purchase "lots" to build their creations: https://prescott-now.com/event/33rd-annual-gingerbread-village-info/

There were entries from schools, businesses, families, and other community groups. What fun!