It's *supposed* to be a hummingbird feeder!!!

We put out our hummingbird feeder a few days ago. While we *have* seen a hummingbird or two there, we're also seeing others using it:

One of the birds eyeing it from the palm tree...

... yep! It's a good place for a snack!

Not sure what this little one was -- he wasn't much bigger than a humming bird!

The hummingbirds are so quick that I haven't gotten a picture of any of them.

I wonder if the other birds are looking for water as much as the sweetness of it... maybe we should have a bird bath or something for them...

Our mail arrived!!!

I posted a few days ago about the saga of our mail's travels from Livingston, TX to Mesa, AZ (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/10/where-is-our-mail.html)... in our last installment, it was in Massachusetts -- here's the rest of the tracking information -- remember, read from the bottom...

Amazing, it went from Middlesex-Essex Massachusetts on Monday evening all the way to Phoenix in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday -- I don't think it could have come by truck that quickly, so they must have put it on an airplane. It also made no documented stops on its way across the country -- since we are missing Kentucky and Colorado on our "visited states" map, we were considering checking them off if our mail stopped there for a significant amount of time! It then only took 9 more hours to get to our Post Office box -- except, it wasn't in the box (it was too large), so we had to be sure to go to the Post Office (located within Venture Out) during the single hour each day (M-Sa) that the Post Office is open!

We managed to get to the Post Office on Wednesday, pick up our package notification tag from our box, *and* get our well-traveled package of mail.

We even managed to process through *most* of it by Thursday late morning! Whoo hoo!!!

A family visit

This time, we had family come to visit *us*!!!!

Carl's oldest son, Scott, had let us know that he had a business trip to the Phoenix area scheduled in October, and asked if we might be able to host him at the "Casa" -- we were excited to be able to have our first guest for this season (daughter Kim and her two girls had come in the spring, so they were actually our first Casa visitors).

One evening, Carl and Scott went out on our e-bikes to tour the community (Venture Out) where we live.

Another evening we went to Organ Stop Pizza for dinner and to hear the organ music -- before we went inside, Carl took Scott to see the huge pipes that can be seen through the windows on the outside of the building.

Inside Organ Stop Pizza

We sat very near the stage so had a good view of Brett Valliant as he played "the world's largest Wurlitzer Organ"!

After we finished eating, we decided to check out the view from the balcony seats...

We decided that we liked the view from the balcony even better...

... and it seemed that the sound quality was better too!

The organist not only plays the organ, but also controls the lighting -- it is quite an enjoyable show -- and included with the price of your dinner, which is decent pizza at a reasonable price!

Check it out at https://organstoppizza.com/

We were sad to see Scott leave on Wednesday morning -- it has been great to have family come to visit.

The Casa is currently not booked again until the first weekend in December -- anyone want to come visit during November?!?!? Please let us know!!!

Pole raising

Since we're going to be at Venture Out a while (we think!), we are putting things up and out that we might not do otherwise -- specifically, 

... we've put our flag up -- we actually have a new one -- the wind really tears up the flags here. The pole has a light that shines down from the top so we can leave it up day and night. Carl also has put one of his ham radio antennas up -- he plans to put at least one additional one up, but it will be attached to some other items on our lots. (Note: the satellite dish is on a park model home that is on the street behind us -- our lots are very close together here at Venture Out.)

We have the flag and the current antenna attached to the ladder on the back of Gracie. We have flag / pole mounting brackets called "Flag Pole Buddy"(https://flagpolebuddy.com/). It is a system that allows us to put a pole up without needing to climb the ladder -- a good idea to stay on the ground as much as we can!

Oktoberfest street dance

Our resort had an Oktoberfest street dance last week... some people dressed up in German "Oktoberfest" garb... we went to listen to the music and dance!

Dancing outside

Nice patio area, though the surface is rather rough to be used as a dance floor

Music provided by "Uncorked, the Band" -- they are also booked to do our New Years Eve Dance at Venture Out

Line dancing during band break

We had a good time!

Where is our mail?!?!?!?

As many of you know, we have a mail forwarding service that we've had for many years -- our mail goes to Texas and we ask for it to be forwarded to us on an infrequent and irregular basis.

Since we're going to be at Venture Out for a while, I ordered our mail to come -- I sent the email requesting that our mail get sent on Wednesday, 10/9 -- when I realized that they had not responded on Thursday, I checked the email address. We have our mail service through Escapees, and some changes are happening with Escapees, including that the mail service email address has changed (as far as I can tell, no one has told us that the email address changed, but we have gotten emails from a new address, and I guess the old address goes to the "dead letter email department"). I had sent it to the old address; I sent to the new address, and, because there was a Monday holiday, our mail didn't get scheduled to go out until Tuesday 10/15. Oh well, that will be okay - the tracking indicated that it should come by Friday.

Well... I noticed that, although tracking still indicated it should come by Friday, on Friday morning, it was still in Memphis. Things got worse over the weekend... read this from the bottom up...

... it left Livingston, went to Houston... then (next picture)...

... reading from bottom up, it went from Houston to Georgia (seems the wrong direction to me if it is on its way to Arizona), then to Memphis, where it appeared to spend quite a bit of time (possibly on a tour of Graceland?), and then this morning, it made it to Massachusetts?!?!?

Oh my... 

At least they aren't giving me any guesses as to when it may arrive -- who knows how many other tourist stops our mail might make before it arrives!!!

We don't anticipate that there is anything critical in the mail... we get most bills and correspondence electronically. But, it would be nice to eventually receive it!

Cleaning the grass

First - apologies for the lack of postings - we have been busy doing things at our lots in Venture Out, but either we haven't gotten pictures or we just haven't done many interesting things each day.

You may remember that we had artificial grass put down at our lot last year (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/02/continued-work-on-lot.html, https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/03/more-about-grass.html). We had the opinion that this would reduce the requirements for maintenance on our yard... and, for sure, we did not have any weeds grow in our grass over the summer.

However, our grass was dirty... We called our sweet neighbor, Barb, who had gotten the fake grass before we did and asked her what was recommended to get it clean -- she let us know that she had a carpet rake in her house and invited us to borrow it. We headed out to see what we could do.

Once again, we did not get a "before" picture of our yard...

...this was after Carl had used the leaf blower to get the big stuff off our grass -- you can see what looks like browned-out grass at the edge -- that's various stuff pollen and dust and stuff collected in the edge of the grass.

Carl changed the blower to a vacuum and worked on vacuuming up the stuff that he had blown from the yard into the street...

He then came back and used the vacuum on the grass too. I had used Barb's rake to loosen up the stuff on the edges so it would be easier to pick up.

This is the "grass" in front of our park model - "before"...

... another view of "before"...

On this yard, Carl used an upright vacuum and beater-bar to try cleaning it -- he totally filled the container in the vacuum and it cut out. He also thought that it may have overheated.

Meanwhile, I was working on the edges... with a broom...

... and with Barb's carpet rake. You can see all the "stuff" that is coming out of the "grass".

This was after we were finished -- a lot better!

Now, we're only working outside about 2 hours each morning, until we get so hot and sweaty and the heat gets beyond what we are willing to work in... so we only get so much done each day...

This morning, we worked on Barb's yard -- I remembered to get a "before" picture...

... and then this is the "after". We just used the rake and a broom on her yard.

We also have worked on getting our outside spaces set up. We had all our outside patio furniture stored in the Casa next door, or on the covered patio of the Casa. We moved the appropriate furniture the each patio, and got the chair pads out of the sheds where they were stored.

Patio furniture out and patio carpet next to Gracie. We also have the awning out to keep the side of Gracie a little cooler.

The forecasts indicate that we should have cooler temperatures (90s today, 80s tomorrow, 70s Friday -Sunday). Maybe we will be able to work on outside projects even more than 2 hours in the morning!

Note that we have also been working on making the Casa ready for guests, as our first guest for the season will be arriving on Sunday! We have not yet turned on the air conditioning in the Casa, so it gets warmer as the day goes by too.