The photo below is an evening bag made from one silk necktie. It was a 2 hour project today and it turned out pretty darned good. Since Larry no longer wears ties and got rid of all his ties, he went to the local thrift shop and purchased a colorful tie for my project.



Below is a photo of a gift box made from a greeting card. Couldn't resist the polar bears.

Raindrops Keep Falling

On January 12th we went to see Vickie Lawrence and her show was great. She just comes out and tells stories about herself and her life and some of the incidents she's been involved in, especially funny about some of the times on the Carol Burnett Show. She sang her medley of her one hit "When the Lights Went Out in Georgia" that her 1st husband wrote. The last 1/3rd of her show was in character as "Mama". What a grand time she has dressed as an old lady. She pretty much says anything she wants and really pokes fun at the seniors. We loved every minute of it as did the rest of the audience.

This is our fifth day of rain and we're starting to have webs between our toes! Last night there were even tornado watches/warnings around the county with 3 spotted out in the surrounding area. I haven't paid too much attention to the weather reports today so don't think there were any injuries or deaths. The annual antique car auction is this weekend and the autos were being held in large tents and some of them received damages because the tents collapsed on the cars. Most of the auto owners aren't real happy about it! Can't imagine why. We do have a little sunshine today but another storm will roll in Sunday. At least we're not close to Flagstaff as they have had 3' (yes, that is 3 feet) of really heavy snowfall with more coming down all the time.

We were scheduled to go to Quartzite, AZ on the 18th but rain prevented that side trip - sure didn't want to be at an outdoor RV show in the rain, especially after driving 150 miles one way to get there.

Larry has been playing poker 2-3 times a week and has been holding his own. It's a nickle, dime, quarter game so not much money is involved. One of the guys that plays regularly is 91 and Larry says he's a pretty good poker player.

I stay busy playing bridge 3 times a week, pinochle and cribbage. Also started Mah Jongg and Scrabble once a week. My skills at Scrabble are not up to par as I haven't played in a very long time but one of the players loaded a Hasbro Scrabble game on my computer that has about 10 levels of play on it so I can sharpen up my game. These players are mostly Canadian and play a very tough, competitive game. They like to win! My game is very laid back compared to theirs.

All of the outdoor activity has been temporarily suspended because everything is under 3 feet of water - tennis, racket ball, pickle ball, shuffleboard, boccie, etc. So there are a lot of die-hard athletes doing a lot of hanging around. Patio activities have been moved into the main events hall so that involves more work for us because we do the set up for them. Over 300 people moved to the hall yesterday afternoon for the Manager's monthly party - live music, free food & beer. It kept a lot of Seniors off the streets in bad driving conditions anyway.

Hope the weather is better where you are and that all is going good so far into 2010. We've had some sad news about two of our friends. One of my classmate's husband passed away on New Years Day (Jan was a bridesmaid at our wedding 50 years ago). They had been married 35 years. My former boss in NM banking remarried about 3 years ago after being divorced close to 25 years and her husband passed away in December. Both are going to be greatly missed. Enjoy your loved ones and give them a hug whenever possible because we never know what tomorrow brings.

Photo Op

Here are some of the photos that we promised of the Christmas Party.

This is the decorated hat that won 1st over my creation.

We got to tell Santa Ron our wishes for Christmas. Ron is a Workamper like we are and is from Delaware. The man at the organ in the background is a member of the Grand Old Opry and has done backup keyboard for some big name stars. He was with the Elvis Presley musicians at the time of Elvis's death. Needless to say, he can play.

Santa Ron was showing off his cowboy boots to go with his Santa short pants for our AZ weather. Today it's 77 degrees and are we ever enoying it.

New Beginnings 2010

Whew! The Holidays are over and we begin another year. The "Blue Moon" was so gorgeous last night and we hope you all got a look at it. All the Christmas celebrations are over and we rang in the New year at the Resorts big Gala event here in Mesa. About 450 guests attended the Starry Night feat with the Saguaro Sunset Band playing fabulous dancing music. The Resort had hot and cold hors d'ourves served during the entire evening. Only drawback was you had to BYOB (and that doesn't mean bring your own blond!). We both danced until our feet hurt -we're not used to having an evening out dancing anymore. Can you believe that after all of the dancing we've done since High School?

The above photo was taken at the Workamper's Christmas dinner. My hat creation got 2nd prize - first prize was a black knit cap with colored fur sewn up the middle so it looked like a Mohawk! Go figure. I took some Hershey kisses off my hat to bribe the judges and it almost got a first prize. Anyway it was fun. Always dislike photos of myself, now I know why as the lens is not too kind about all of my wrinkles, etc.


We'll have more photos coming as soon as some of the other Workampers forward them to us.


Larry and our neighbors Doug & Tami took CoCo and their dog Baxter (Chocolate Lab) out to the pet park so they could run and play. Larry said there were over 100 dogs at the park so they both had a good workout. CoCo also had a bath after playing in the shampoo area at the park. He really needed it badly as I sure do hate the dog smell!


We go back to work on Saturday and then get back to a schedule again. We've been off since before Christmas so we're feeling a little lazy.

Happy Holidays

We want to wish all of you and your families the Happiest Holiday ever. Stay safe if you are traveling, even if it's just across the street!

We'll catch up with after the holidays.

Dee & Larry

The Big Scene

Tonight we had an outing with about 40 other Workampers for dinner at Mesa's famous Organ Pizza Stop. This restaurant boasts the largest and finest Theater Organ in the world today! Its nearly 6,000 pipes, numerous percussion instruments and countless traps are masterfully presented along with electrical light accompaniment (featuring laser lights, kaleidoscope, disco ball and numerous colored spots). In the postcard photo (we forgot our camera!) you can see a xylophone mounted from the ceiling, bell chimes from the ceiling, drums mounted on the west wall, cymbals, bells, gongs, and on and on. Trumpets are at the rear of balcony out of the photo. Behind the curtain above the Wurlitzer 4 puppet cats tap dance to lively tunes. You can see the organ pipes behind the 8 louvered openings along the back wall.

The closeup photo shows the high gloss ebony and real gold leaf of the Wurlitzer "French" console. It is the largest and most elaborate design ever created by the company, containing 276 keys and 976 controls. Needless to say the organists have their hands and feet full when playing the most memorable songs - over 10,000 upon request.

As a side note, the pizza was okay.


Saturday evening First Street residents had their annual Christmas potluck and karaoke. About 114 people attending the event. Always nice to meet our neighbors up and down the street.
There are 2 more Christmas parties, one on the 22nd and one Christmas night.


This will be our first full week scheduled for work. We have been assigned to the Setup/breakdown crew along with 4 other couples and we each work 12 hours a week Thursday through Sunday. We set up the room for Thursday bingo, Friday morning Kountry Store, Friday night dance, and Saturday special events and then Sunday church services. The Large meeting room has a capacity of 1,000 and the small meeting room has a capacity of 300. It's a lot of banquet table and chairs to set up and take down but it goes really fast with 10-12 people working on it.

Roses are in Bloom

The photo shows the entrance to Mesa Regal Resort where we are staying until April 1st. Roses are absolutely gorgeous. We will be Workamping here @ 12 hours a week each. Starting Thursday we will be working with 5 other couples doing the set ups for all of the events held in the park, i.e. dances on Friday evenings, bingo, church services on Sunday, etc. The men set up tables and ladies handle the chairs. Pretty easy as far as we are concerned.

Our trip out went really well even though we had a rough start getting to I-10 from Alpine. We drove through snow flurries for about 30 miles on Hwy 90 and then stayed overnight in Van Horn at junction of I-10 because road was closed into El Paso due to snow & ice and a whole bunch of wrecks. By Wednesday around noon the interstate was open and the roads were clear. No further weather-related problems were incurred.

CoCo loves it here too as he has lots of buddies to play with, most of whom are way bigger than he is but that doesn't stop him from running after them and playing with them.

Today we put up Christmas lights (on our grapefruit tree no less!) and inside the MH on the dashboard. Our whole street is decorated to the max because a committee is judging to see who has done the best job. Most everyone has a wooden chimney display with a dog peeking out of it to indicate that we are in a pet friendly area. Decorations around the Clubhouse, Gazebo at the pool and the ballrooms are decorated to the max and are just gorgeous. It's taken volunteers almost 2 weeks to get the trees up and all the light put up. Lots and lots of work for everyone. I'll get a picture of some of the decorations and post them for you to see.

Lots of activities planned this month - 1st Street Xmas Potluck is Saturday evening and over 100 people will be attending. On Dec. 25th there will be a Christmas potluck and Chinese gift exchange. And of course there are always bridge, pinochle, cribbage and coffees to attend. Don't know when we'll have time to work!