Resident Christmas Party

Monday night was the Venture Out Resident Christmas Concert & Memorial Walk. 

The Activities Office makes luminaries in memory of the residents who have passed away in the past year... 

I posted last year about helping to celebrate the birthday of a fellow resident who was turning 90 (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-significant-birthday.html) -- it turned out that he passed away just a couple of weeks later in January. His family was so appreciative that we had made the effort to celebrate him on his birthday that turned out to be his last.

Our friend, Lesa's husband, Lyle, passed away about a year ago, just before Christmas. We had met up with them in North Dakota back in the summer of 2024 on our way to our Alaska caravan (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/07/continuing-west-and-even-more-friends.html)

The concert was performed by The Mesa Academy School Band. They did several "chamber music" selections (small groups of 3-6 playing various songs - mostly Christmas music), and then the full band played a few selections. The school is made up of 4th-8th grade (https://academy.mpsaz.org/o/academy/page/about).

In watching them, specifically watching one young tuba player whose tuba was at least as large as he was, and with which he had quite a struggle to move it around the stage to get to the side area where the chamber music performances were done -- it occurred to me that, had I ever been in band, I think I would have chosen to learn the clarinet or something lightweight and easy to carry! Alas, I was never in band!

Carl *did* play with his elementary school orchestra -- violin and then flute. He shared that, even though they were relatively lightweight and easy to carry, each of them had physical challenges in playing them -- the violin having to be held under your chin and then the two arms having to be held out to the side, and the flute requiring both arms to be held out to the side as well. 

Then there's the requirement that you have to actually *learn* to play the instrument!

These young people did a great job and were very enthusiastic. In addition to playing the chamber music pieces, one member of each small group identified (using the microphone) the piece the group would be playing, and, in some cases, introduced all the members of the group. I think that's a lot for a young person to do in front of a group of old folks that they don't know in an auditorium! Kudos to them!

Additional storage

As much storage as we thought our park model had when we looked at it, we are finding that it doesn't have as much as we thought it might, and that it doesn't have storage where we feel it is needed. 

Specifically, one area where storage is lacking is in our bathroom, so we got an over-the-toilet wall cabinet...

Carl installing the wall mounts...

Hopefully it is well secured!

Finished installation!

We are finding that in some respects, we have more storage in Gracie than in the park model! In the bathroom area, Gracie has a lot of storage in the medicine cabinets (we have two large medicine cabinets, one over the sink in the lavatory and one over the sink in the hall/shower area), plus a pretty deep storage cabinet over the toilet. In the kitchen, the cabinets are double the depth that most houses have -- we could put two stacks of dinner plates one behind the other -- so there's lots of storage *behind* whatever is in the front. It might be difficult to access, but we've learned how to make it work with creative use of baskets to hold the things in front so we can quickly remove and access the baskets in the back when needed. We're figuring out where we need additional storage and trying to add things that will work for us!

Christmas decorations

We have not done much for Christmas decorations at our new house, but I found a small wreath in the items left by the previous owners...

... so Miss Kitty is decorated for Christmas!

"Mom! Do you mind?!?!? Take this thing *off* of me, and I mean NOW!!!"

Gingerbread house

Another activity that Chef Arthur leads with the residents is the creation of the gingerbread house each December...

It is quite a magnificent creation!

Residents are free to come as help as they have time and interest.

Mediterranean Cooking Class with Chef Arthur

I had gotten Carl a ticket to participate in the Mediterranean cooking class with our community's chef, Chef Arthur.

Chef Arthur welcomed the participants to the class held outside at the BBQ area.

The menu was to include Amalfi Coast Salad, Focaccia and Naan, Eggplant Rolatini, and Paella with Saffron Infused Rice!

Carl told me that he was one of only two men participating in the class (with 18 ladies).

Chef preparing and instructing

Amalfi Coast Salad

Sherbert to cleanse pallet

Cooking area

Chef cooking shrimp

Chef's assistant for these demonstrations

Paella with Saffron Infused Rice

Carl enjoyed the class -- Chef is quite a character! "Butter is your friend!" as he put slab after slab into the pan! Chef also shared about what Extra Virgin Olive Oil is (the first pressing of the olives) -- which is best for high heat cooking, with a mild flavor and high smoke point. Chef said that, with other olive oils (not extra virgin), companies may put oils from other seeds to increase the volume -- not a good thing. Always much to learn!

Signing up for bocce ball winter league

We attended the first bocce ball club meeting for the season in order to sign up so we could participate in the winter league starting in January...

We got there a little early, but not early enough as the room was already full! ("10 minutes early is 15 minutes late" is the saying around here!) We found two seats up at a front table.

Social Director Kimberly told us about some of the work being done on the courts -- all of the courts have been redone (and are now level), and they are putting up some shade fabric.

After the meeting, we visited the courts -- all but one is completed and available for us to begin practicing on.

We are signed up for the same Friday afternoon league that we were on last season. We're looking forward to playing again this season!

Potluck and entertainment

There is a potluck supper every Tuesday evening during the "season", and often there is entertainment brought in from outside the park. 

Our friends Don and Linda invited us to join them last Tuesday when the "East Valley Children's Theater" would entertain us. We brought a dish to share and our table service and after eating...

... we enjoyed a performance by some of the young players from this theater company who performed a set of skits that they themselves had created with a starting premise of "The worst day in school ever" -- acting out a series of what each had come up with as what they imagined would be the worst experiences in school. It was cute and funny and they were good performers.

We enjoy these "free" events in our park (cheap seniors as we are!).

New car - dead battery?

I blogged about needing to replace the battery in the Jeep before going to Mexico (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/11/more-battery-news.html).

I also blogged about our new car purchase (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/12/weve-done-thing.html). 

I left Carl "unsupervised" while I was volunteering in the Activities Office on Tuesday... and he was in the new CR-V trying out different things with the car in accessory mode in our driveway. He started getting odd messages on the on-board screen in the car, and then it died. He realized that the starting battery must have run out of juice. As I was driving the golf cart back home after my volunteer activity, he met me walking toward Gracie to get the jump box and battery charger. He told me that he had killed the new car, and I thought he was kidding! Nope, he had killed the new car!

He took the golf cart back to Gracie and got the jump box and battery charger... 

He got the battery charger hooked up to the battery in the new CR-V.

Now, you may be thinking (as we were) -- it is a brand new car! How could the battery die with just 1-1.5 hours of powering electronic stuff in the car? 

We figured, however, that the car has not been driven much (it only had 31 miles on it when we bought it), and the alternator would only charge the battery if the gasoline engine was on. If he had turned the engine to "on", the electric motor would have only run a little while, but when the system determined that the start battery needed charging, it would have started the gasoline engine (or that's what we hope!). Since it was in accessory mode, the use of the electronics were enough to discharge the battery. We could have called Honda Care and they would have dealt with it, but since Carl had the equipment to re-charge the battery, we did it ourselves.

We have a plan for a longer road trip that will require the gasoline engine more so hopefully all will go as designed and we'll have no more unexpected behavior! 

AireBeam - part 2

I shared a couple of weeks ago that AireBeam is implementing fiber in our RV park / condo resort (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/11/airebeam-fiber.html):

This week, they came to install the external box on our park model:

The external box - this is attached (under the ground) to the "flower pot" that is in our front yard which is then attached to the pedestal located in another resident's front yard on our street, which is then attached to the signal coming in to the park.

We were thinking that they would come at another time this week to do the installation inside our park model, but they have not yet done that part.

We've done a thing...

We have been concerned about the projected lifespan of the Jeep for a while... it has developed a number of noises (a distinct "clunk" when turning hard at a slow speed, a really annoying creak when opening/closing the driver's side door) and the paint finish has been getting worse and worse. None of those seemed to affect the functionality of the Jee-rage, but when we went to Mexico, the brakes started making a really awful noise. We thought it might just be sand or salt spray...

Carl tried using brake cleaner, but it did not seem to make an appreciable difference.

A view of the exterior of the Jee-rage -- this doesn't actually show how ugly the finish is in places -- mainly the clearcoat is coming off -- just the ravages of being towed behind a motorhome and sitting outside all the time.

When we got married, Carl and I both had toads that we had been using with each of our respective motorhomes. At that time, we sold his CR-V and kept my Jeep -- I pointed out to him that it is sometimes good to have a "beater" vehicle because then you don't worry about each little ding. He had thought that we'd keep it a year or two, but here it is almost 6 years later. He had been doing research on vehicles we might be interested in getting; Carl was particularly interested in getting a hybrid. We were wanting something that we could tow behind the motorhome, though we both knew that it would be hard for us to tow a new vehicle as we know how beat up the vehicle's appearance can get.

He had narrowed his search down to a Ford Maverick pickup truck. Our friends, Steve and Nancy, got one this past summer and are towing it and are pleased with it. He had also researched at a couple of vehicles that are not flat towable (Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4). We went out on Black Friday to look at vehicles. We stopped by the Honda dealership and looked at the 2025 and 2026 CR-Vs that they had in stock, but we were kind of set on getting something we could tow. At the Ford dealership, we wanted to do a test drive in a Maverick Hybrid. Although online we had seen that they had 2026 Maverick Hybrids in stock, they did not, and the sales person we got was rather arrogant and pushy. We did sit in the cab of the gas Maverick and were not impressed with the vehicle -- it just felt "cheap" to us -- and it wasn't cheap in price! (As I understand it, Ford was looking to create a low-cost entry point model, but they added features to the pickup and the price went up, but the design point was still for low-cost.) Anyway, our plans were now askew.

So, over the weekend, we discussed what to do, and by Monday, decided to go back to the Honda dealership to do a test drive on the 2026 CR-V Hybrid. 

The one we liked was also red (like the Jeep). Carl says that he isn't all that fond of red vehicles, but I have pointed out to him how much easier it is to find a red vehicle in the parking lot surrounded by all the other white and black vehicles.

We weren't really planning to buy a vehicle on Monday, so we had not cleared everything out of the Jee-rage...

... but we cleared everything out of the Jee-rage... took our last pictures of our faithful toad vehicle...

... and signed the papers to purchase a 2026 Red Honda CR-V Hybrid (Carl preparing to get into the CR-V and you can see the Jee-rage just behind him).

We're not exactly sure what we're going to do about towing -- for now, our plans are to take shorter RV trips, and we can just drive the RV and car separately. We're not particularly happy about that -- we love the miles on the road together when we can talk and enjoy seeing scenery together... but we are detecting that maybe our days of long road trips are coming to a close, and that maybe a future will be coming which will have us RVing differently than we are now. We haven't made any decisions, but we're considering a lot of alternatives!

And for now, the alternative includes having a much more comfortable car to drive around town or on road trips! 

Thanksgiving Dinner at the Williams' house

We had decided that we did not want to cook a turkey this year... but... one jumped into our grocery cart at Winco on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so we set Sunday as the day to cook...

It went pretty easily -- we did less than we've done in the past - just turkey, cranberry relish (already made and in the freezer, left over from last year), green bean casserole minus the onions (just french cut green beans and cream of mushroom soup), poultry gravy (we also had this in the freezer from previous meals), and boiled potatoes with herb seasoning. We are "watching" our carb intake, and, while some of this was not low carb (e.g. potatoes), it wasn't a huge cheat.

We had the turkey wrapped in foil in the baking pan, but a little turkey "juice" ended up in the pan and Miss Kitty cleaned it up for us.

We enjoy having turkey leftovers, and making turkey soup. I made the soup on Wednesday, and cleared a lot of leftover stuff in the freezer, including a couple of kinds of kale, collard green "juice", liquid from some Southern-style green beans, and some chopped onion. I also had leftover zucchini/yellow squash in the refrigerator from a pot luck on Tuesday, and put some carrots and celery into the broth with the turkey. The soup is very green and has a distinct collard/kale taste, which we find to be okay, but which, I am sure, would not be to many people's taste!

Thanksgiving Dinner at Venture Out

We had signed up to participate in the Thanksgiving Day Dinner at Venture Out...

Our friend, Linda, was MC for the event.

We were assigned a table with others from our community. There were about 10 tables of 20 people each participating.

Carl's plate - yum!

Our friends (and across-the-street neighbors from our RV lot and casa), Don and Linda.

We are so blessed!

Getting the casa ready for rental tenants

We have rental tenants coming to stay in the casa (the older park model next to our RV lot) on 12/1, so we need to finish up tasks there so it is ready for their arrival. 

Before we went to Mexico, we had picked up a free washer and dryer from a fellow resident in Venture Out and left them on the patio until we returned. 

We wanted to get rid of the existing units -- we would have to pay a fee to put them into the community dumpster, so we decided to see if we could "re-home" them (i.e. give them away to someone).

I took pictures of the washer... 

 and of the dryer:

I put them on Freecycle.org to give away, but after posting them, I looked at the amount of activity on the site, and there weren't many items listed.

Carl suggested I try Facebook Marketplace, so I did -- wow, immediately lots of people wanting them. I picked the first guy who responded, and within a couple of hours, he was there picking them up. It seems that he gets the units to use for parts -- I would have preferred that they go to someone who needed a washer and dryer, but... they both had their issues (the washer control knob would not pull out so when you wanted to start a cycle, you had to turn it with your fingers and it would start and stop cycles as you turned it; and the dryer made a noise like it had tennis shoes in it when it tumbled -- the previous owners of the casa said it had made that noise since they purchased that park model 10 years previously (the washer and dryer came with the park model when they bought it), and it did not seem to hinder the drying capability). We didn't want a renting tenant to be disappointed with not-quite-working-right washer and dryer.

After we got the old units out of the shed / laundry room, we moved the washer and dryer from the other VO resident into the shed. The washer is hooked up, but we need a part (dryer adapter cord) before we can get it finished. We hope to have it all finished before the tenants arrive!

Day 7 - leaving Mexico

Monday ended our week in Mexico and we packed up and headed out...

I took a closer look at the front of Gracie after the wash and wax... it is better, but not great -- still a lot of bug residue, now waxed onto the front! Oh well!

As we were back on route 8 heading toward Sonoyta, I saw Barb's Dog Rescue...

Close-up on info about Barb's Dog Rescue

As we continued northeast, we saw mountains on the north side of the road...

... they were really pretty!

I think they were part of Schuk Toak Museo (here's a link I found that Google has translated).

We continued on toward the border...

...where we came to a stop just 1/2 mile from the border.

Nancy and Steve were just in front of us and said that they saw something going on at the border.

Nancy found some information that indicated that Mexican farmers were protesting... (https://mexicosolidarity.com/mexican-farmers-occupy-us-border-crossing-protesting-agricultural-policy/).

After about 1.5 hours of waiting,

... we started moving -- they consolidated two lanes into one (so two cars got between Steve/Nancy and us -- and the guy directing traffic told the second car that he was *not* supposed to have merged yet!).

Steve started working his way through the barricade vehicles.

They all look like John Deeres! Or, is that Juan Dears?!?

We heard from other sources that they were blocking the border for 2 hours (not letting anyone in or out) and then opening for one hour.

The hand-written sign on the front of the tractor says, "The Farmers united for the countryside of Mexico".

"Sonoyta International Crossing"

We followed Steve into the lane for RVs...

... when we got to the booth, they just asked for our passports, asked no questions, and waved us through. Other than the wait to get to the border, it was a super easy crossing! Unfortunately, the wait made us significantly later getting to Mesa, so it was close to sunset when we arrived. We had planned to park in front of our new-to-us park model and unload food from the refrigerator and other things into the house... but instead, we parked in our RV space, plugged in electricity, and then we collapsed. It is always a little stressful when we're traveling -- more so when we are in another country -- and even more so when we're not sure we're going to make it out! Thankful to be back in the US!