Spring Break in Mesa

March 22nd Suzy, William and Bill arrived in Mesa after traveling by Greyhound from Albuquerque. They said the bus was full and the trip not "too bad". On Tuesday we celebrated Suzy's birthday. First time in many years that we all have been together on her birthday. We took them to Organ Pizza Stop in Mesa so they could see the famous Wurlitzer Organ that we blogged about earlier this year.

Wednesday evening we drove to Glendale, about an hour drive from Mesa through heavy traffic at 4 in the afternoon, to have dinner at Larry's niece Lori's place. Larry's brother John, his wife Del and another niece Ann and her family were there. Had a really nice evening, but no one took any photos - you're probably glad to hear that!

The above photo shows Maurice "Mo" Cole, William and Bill sitting out on the patio talking music. Mo has had a very illustrious career playing keyboard/organ for the past 50+ years. Some of his famous gigs have been with the one and only Elvis, and many stars at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville. He is a member of the Opry. Mo plays organ on the patio here at Mesa Regal a couple times a week and our Workamper group moves his equipment ($7,500 organ & sound paraphanallia) in place for him. He hooks up all of his own speakers and sound boards because he knows exactly where everything goes. He can play just about anything you request.

This is William, our grandson, age 15 with his new shades! Of course he is way taller than me, which isn't saying much because I'm short. He's 5'6" now, even taller than Suzy. Grandparents have bragging rights so here goes: He gets A's and is on honor roll, plays violin in the high school orchestra and the North Coast Symphany, and just made the high school golf team. This summer the golf team is going to Seattle, WA with their coach to assist at the Senior Open golf tournament. The golf coach's mom is a travel agent in Seattle and is arranging a trip for the team to Ireland next summer so there will be lots of fund raisers for the trip between now and then. The big goal the next week or so is to complete his driving requirements to get his drivers license.

We sure had a wonderful time with them here visiting. We had rain one day but then it warmed up into the 80's so they got to swim one afternoon at least.

Mesa-Phoenix City Tour

We got on tour bus at 8:30 am and headed to downtown Phoenix to the Capital Museum. This photo shows the building. Note the White Pegasus weather vane at the top center of the building. It is completely functional and will be 100 years old in 2012. The Museum tour director told us that it recently had been refurbished and several bullet holes were discovered in it. Apparently the old west cowboys used to do some target practice on it!


Couldn't resist this photo because it shows a partner's desk with a wax figure of the first Arizona Governor. Don't much care for the likeness of the governor, but our daughter and son-in-law have a partner's desk in their office similar to this one.


This photo shows the entrance to the Biltmore in Phoenix. It is built on the original site of Barry Goldwater's home. Note the shrubs in the front are sculpted to read Arizona Biltmore (in this photo only Biltmore shows). Above one of the hills behind the Biltmore is one of the Wrigley homes. It was not on the tour so we didn't get to go inside it. All of the homes in this area start at one million+ and include owners like Alice Cooper and The Shaq. They are so huge they look like hotels.

We had about an hour on this stop so we ambled around the interior and then outside to the central grounds. Next to the main dining room was this huge walk in wine cooler. What a way to go! Average cost of 1 night here is around $250/night and can go as high as $1,500 a night for the VIP/presidential suite. They have a golf course, fine dining and many convention rooms. There are several retail stores on the premises also and many of the prices were very reasonable on the clothing.

The photo below shows the center green area with beautiful landscaping and fountain. Staff was setting up an outdoor buffet while we were there. We were curious about cost but no one ventured over to inquire about the cost.

We then continued on through Paradise Valley, population 15,000, covering 15 square miles. Covenents require 1 acre of land per home with a minimum of 6,000 sq. feet. It was really mindboggling to see some of these homes. The Hormel family owns 2 homes in this area, AZ sports team owner lives here, and can't remember the list of other wealthy owners living here.

We continued on to Scottsdale for lunch and had quite a bit of time to look in the retail shops. There are really high dollar shops and lots of tourist shops. Average cost of individual pizza was $9.00 and an old-fashioned hamburger was about the same price. We opted for Schlotzkys - can beat a rueben on dark rye bun.

Anyway it was a really wonderful tour. Learned more history than I can remember.

Abundant Sunshine All Around

We've been enjoying wonderful weather here while watching most of the weather throughout the USA getting snow. Today is 76 degrees and for the next 7 days the temps should remain about the same.

It's been pretty quiet around the Resort. Larry is catching up on all of his list of "To Do" things like shampooing living & bedroom carpets, washing windows, etc.
I've made 3 more evening bags from ties and thought I was through but Larry was at the thrift store again and brought me 3 more ties. And, our grandson doesn't see how an evening bag can be made out of one tie so he is going to bring me a tie next month when they visit us.

Tomorrow is the City tour of Phoenix area. I will be leaving on the bus tour at 8:30am, lunch stop in old Scottsdale, and then return to resort around 3:45 pm. Should be interesting and will see lots of things we haven't been able to get to yet. Full report & photos later.

Be sure and check out our daughter's Blog http://www.brooksfamilydoings.blogspot.com because our grandson's Winter Ball photos are posted on it. You can just click on the link to the left and it should take you to their Blog.

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.