New license plates

The license plates that we applied for when we were in Livingston were shipped to our mail forwarding service box and they came in our last request to forward our mail. Carl put them on our two vehicles:

So we are now legal front-and-back times two! And with an easy to remember license plate if you are an amateur radio buff! 

p.s. we were debating whether it was okay to post this with our license plate numbers, but... since they are publicly available whenever we are out and about, we decided that it was okay!

Pets read "The Night Before Christmas"

We saw this last year, but enjoyed it again this year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDHTyzBRvAQ 

Hope you enjoy it too!

Blessed Christmas!

We went out for dinner on Christmas Eve and then drove out to look at Christmas lights.

One of the Williams' family traditions was to go out for steak on Christmas Eve...

... so we went to Longhorn Steakhouse...

The wall-mounted Longhorn had a mask on!

One of our friends here at Venture Out had recommended some Christmas lights in the north part of Mesa -- we weren't exactly sure where they were, so I looked at the internet for popular lighting sites in Mesa and found one that was highly recommended:

It was a townhouse that had nearly every inch lit with Christmas lights!

Since I had not found anything about a neighborhood in the Recker/202 area that our Venture Out neighbor had told us about, we decided to just drive up Recker. When we got there, we immediately saw the lights at the northeast corner of Recker and 202:

The Red Mountain Community Church had a wonderful light display with a broadcast on an FM radio station that you could listen to as you drove through.

The trunks of the trees were lit and then there were large clusters of lights in the trees as well.

There were various lit up displays and the radio broadcast gave the meanings behind the displays.

Then there was another area that we could walk through...

Lots of lights created a snowflake-like display.

Lots and lots and LOTS of lights created a light waterfall!

The video is a short part of the lights and music that played while we were in the walk-through part of the lights display.

When we got back to Venture Out, we stopped to take pictures at the entrance.

It is really pretty!

The resort had posted "official" pictures of the entrance on Facebook a few days ago:

I don't know if this is a picture from 2020 or a previous year's decorations.

Our "Christmas tree" and presents - you may notice that "Santie Claws" left a can of cat food for Miss Kitty.

We've had a great day -- our Christmas dinner came out well -- a little bit easier than Thanksgiving. Carl said that if we make this dinner 40 more times this year, we might know exactly how to make it without any problems!

Happy Christmas Eve!

We are looking forward to a quiet Christmas day tomorrow -- a few pictures from our past few days:

Behind one of the lots, we saw this decoration -- the homeowners must have a tall ladder to get those Santa hats on that cactus!

Several years ago, I took a picture with my camera through our spotting scope of a Bighorn Sheep in Yellowstone and it came out pretty good. This week, I tried taking a picture of Saturn and Jupiter aligning through the spotting scope - do you see them? No? Neither do I!!!

When we were out driving this week, the signs that usually tell of traffic issues had a different message...

If you like fruitcake, is this a confusing message?

We wanted to make cookies for Christmas, and we had a couple of boxes of Krustees Snickerdoodles, so we decided to make them.

Carl did the mixing and the making of the balls. Patti rolled them in the cinnamon and sugar...

... and put them on the pans and took them off. Lest you think those look awfully dark, we tried a variant from the back of the box for *Chocolate* Snickerdoodles. It was easy - just adding 2T cocoa to the mix. They are very tasty!

We made half "regular" Snickerdoodles...

... and half Chocolate. They are all good!

After our pretty successful Thanksgiving feast, we are trying it again for Christmas. We both like turkey, and especially like turkey noodle soup, so we like having leftovers and broth. Turkeys aren't available year-round (not the whole ones that are good if you want to make bone broth) -- so we decided that we would go ahead and cook again -- and this time, we have 50A power and we are hooked up to be able to dump our tanks as much as we need to -- both of which we were missing back in November! So we are looking forward to a little less stressful dinner-making tomorrow than we had for Thanksgiving.

We hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas!

Lunch and glasses

We enjoyed lunch with friends Wayne and Nancy at Olive Garden on Tuesday -- no pictures though, but we had a good visit with them!

When we left lunch, Carl checked with LensCrafters and they said that both of our glasses were completed and available for us to pick up. So, we stopped by there on our way back home...

Are we stylin' in our new glasses/shades?

Carl has not worn glasses other than readers, and he has a bad habit of taking them off without even thinking about it, so we put a sports strap on them so he at least has to think about it if he wants to take them off. He is also trying to get used to the progressive lenses... he isn't sure that they are going to work for him, and he may switch to bifocals. We're going to give them a couple of weeks of use before making that decision, though.

We're both enjoying the transitions lenses (I've had them for a while) in the bright Arizona sunshine!

Biking

We enjoy biking around Venture Out...

The Administration building, also the Sales Office

You will note that there are only pictures of Patti riding -- that is because Carl is adept at taking pictures and riding his bike, and Patti is intent on staying upright on her bike with both hands on the handlebars!

Christmas decorations around the park

On our bicycle ride the other day, we specifically looked for how people have decorated for Christmas here:

A stone turtle with reindeer antler headband!

Santa hats on the cactus

More Santa hats on cactus, and other yard decorations

Golf cart decorations - the wrapped package was part of the decoration, as well as the wreath, and you may be able to see the 'snow' on the fenders.

Extra large lights around the roof -- I don't know if they light up or not!

Well, this one isn't decorated specifically for Christmas, but the red is very festive!

This isn't decorated for Christmas either, but it is a pretty red and green. This is a metal cactus, not a real one.

 

Some of the blocks in Venture Out have multiple homes with the same decoration -- this street has reindeer heads made from palm tree pieces...

 

... here's a closeup - I don't know what the part of the palm tree that the decoration is made from is called -- I don't think it is the "frond".

 

Reindeer heads on a citrus tree

Closeup of the reindeer head on the citrus tree

One more house on that particular block that had the reindeer head. On our block, several houses have a wooden drummer boy. I think that when the occupants of a block are trying to win the decoration award, the whole block will try to have the same decoration, and then folks will use them in following years too. It makes the block look cohesive.

We had seen this yard when we were looking at Christmas lights, but pictures just don't do it justice. They have 10-12 tables of Christmas nativity sets, village scenes, just lots and lots of stuff! The couple happened to be outside when we stopped to take a picture so we got to chat with them for a few minutes (at a careful social distance, of course!).

I think that this yard won first place (for a corner lot) this year.

Carl took a picture of our lot with the "night vision" setting on his camera (and supporting the camera on a railing across the street to minimize blur). It is neat how it got the lights in the palm tree to the right of our lot (those are from the "Sparkle Magic" light from our lot), the moving lights on the side of Gracie, and the down light on the flag pole (lighting the flag at night). The string of colored lights in the front windshield look like a line of white.

We also got the spotting scope out last night and were able to get a nice view of Saturn and Jupiter. We had to zoom it in all the way to get a good clear view of them, and then they moved out of the field of view of the telescope very quickly with the earth's rotation. But it was neat to see them!