Another day in the life of a Snowbird!

I can't believe we have been here for more than 3 weeks now. Time sure flies when you're having fun. The weather has remained so warm and sunny. We are about 10 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year and loving it! Most days are between 80 - 86 degrees. Just perfect for our outdoor life although it can get pretty warm mid-afternoon. That is where the pool comes in handy for a cool off!

 We went for our first ATV ride last week. Doug was pleased at how quickly the ATV started after being stored in our utility trailer all summer! Here I was think it was going to be cool driving along the trails so I started out with a sweatshirt on but that didn't last long! Within 10 minutes I was roasting so off it came!

 It was really quiet wildlife wise out in the desert except for the hawks. We saw so many of them, I guess maybe they are eating all the jack rabbits and little critters! This is a Black Hawk.

 Ann and I are stopping for a rest break, she is still wearing her sweatshirt which I will never understand! It was blazing hot and I hated even having to wear jeans even though you need them to protect your legs from all the thorny bushes and cacti.

 If you look carefully you will see another hawk sitting on the top of the tallest arm of the saguaro cactus. This is a Goshawk I think.

 This one is for Catherine! The canvas top to our ATV is in at a Canvas shop as they are making us a new one. Catherine our darling daughter shredded ours last season when she whipped through a wash with low hanging shrubs of the thorn type! Her reply to me last week was "put it on my tab!" Doug and Trent's version of this picture is we road so hard we road the tires right off! Actually, the tires were removed to bring into the Yamaha dealer to get new ones. They were so thread bare we had absolutely no traction left! By the time all is sad and done, we'll have new parts nearly throughout as Doug changed spark plugs, air and fuel filters, our muffler had a crack in it so he had that welded and he did an oil change. At some point all will be well!

 The painting is all done for this year! Kind of hard to tell by the pictures but the wall is a pale blue and I think it looks great with the light brown of the contrasting walls.

 I did the blue on one wall in the dining room and into the kitchen.

 The blue continued down the hall to the bedrooms

 I also did 2 walls in the laundry room so it has both the brown and blue walls in it.

 This one is for my sister Kathleen and her husband Brad. They gave me this solar ball for a birthday present in October and it is beautiful. This is it during the day.

This is it at night. It looks incredible. Just love it!!

Doug had to take a picture of me in the pool! This is a daily occurrence when the weather is so warm! I have now also started to go to water aerobics Monday to Thursday at the pool. They are at 0700 hrs in the morning so takes a bit of discipline but I am enjoying it. I am also going to a weights, stretch band and aerobics class run by a personal trainer at our sister park a mile down the road, 2 days a week so hope to keep fit over the winter. Doug is busy puttering as I am off doing my thing!

Next comes decorating the outside of our house for Christmas. As we won the decorating contest last year, we can't enter this year but a little bird has told us we might be asked to judge the entries this year - yikes! That could be on the dangerous side!

We have three couples coming for dinner Saturday and then we are off to the Apache Junction Christmas parade so there  will be more pictures to come. We are also going for another ATV ride tomorrow to test out all the work Doug has done on the ATV and make sure it is running properly. We are also going out into the desert Wednesday afternoon late for our monthly full moon campfire and wiener roast. We have a fun and full week ahead.

We are settling in to our Arizona Home

We had a lovely trip from BC to Arizona. We had a quick visit with Brian in Victoria before we arrived at the ferry terminal.

  Brian is wearing glasses now and I think they look particularly handsome on him!
 We seemed to be right ahead of the bad weather which everyone was worried we were having to deal with! When we got off the Blackball Ferry in Port Angeles, Customs pulled us over and did a very thorough search of our truck and trailer. Of course they never found anything of concern so it really was no big deal. Doug and I figured we were due for a check anyway!

 When we arrived in Nevada, the weather was so gorgeous, we decided to spend a couple of days camping in one of our favorite State parks: Valley of the Fire, it is about 20 miles north of Las Vegas. We have a favorite camping spot and we were lucky again it was vacant. Our little toy hauler trailer we bought last spring in Tucson it working out perfectly for us. It was such a pleasure to camp the whole way down. I just have a thing about motels and the potential for bed bugs!!

 What a pleasure to get up the next morning and have coffee outside in just shorts and a tank top. I was in seventh heaven!

 I spent a good part of the first day we were there just soaking up the sun and reading a book. Both Doug and I were pretty tired after all the work of closing up the Brown's Bay house and then 3 days of driving.

 The second day we did our touring around of the park and hiking in to the various rock formations. It is an absolutely gorgeous state park with tons of hiking trails and opportunities for fantastic pictures.

 Of course I had to have the requisite picture behind the park sign!

 The little finches were so cute in the mesquite bushes around our campsite. Every time you came outside with food, they were immediately there waiting for handouts. There would be so many on the little bush, it looked like a Christmas tree covered in ornaments.

We had a campfire and sat out looking at the multitude of stars and all the satellites. Of course, prior to that we had a beautiful sunset.

Here I am sitting out on the patio at our Apache Junction house, having my morning coffee. The weather has been lovely since we've been here. We did have some pretty good rain showers twice but always in the evenings. It saved us from having to water all our shrubs and trees.I was amazed at how much our fruit trees and all our shrubs have grown in the 6 months we were gone. We had to get our park landscape company to come right away and manicure all the greenery as it was out of control! Everything looks lovely now. Our orange trees are loaded with oranges which should be ripe by mid to the end of December. I was disappointed to find I didn't have any lemons this year but Hector (landscape fellow) told me the type of lemon tree I have only produces every second year. The lemon tree which I planted last fall, has doubled in size though

 Much to Doug's chagrin, the first thing I did the day after we arrived was to pull down the old "90's" style curtains in the living/dining rooms. They went right to the dumpster! I can't believe I tolerated them all last winter but I just wasn't sure what my colour scheme was going to be so had to wait. I had Doug busy filling holes in the wall from the old drapery rods and installing the new.

 The place even looked better with no drapes!

 My new drapes, I just love them, we are now in the 21st century!!

 No rest for the wicked (that's Doug) around here! As soon as he finished that, I had him busy installing a central vacuum system for me. We brought it with us from home as Sears had a tremendous sale and I just couldn't refuse! With all the dust we get around here, a central vac will be a god send in keeping my allergies at bay! Of course I couldn't let Doug do all the work so I decided it was time to finish all the painting projects off now that I have chosen my colour scheme.

 My first projects were the laundry room and the main bathroom. I wanted to keep my colors fairly neutral so I went with a toasted wheat paint color. I think it looks great. Doug is still shaking his head that we have only been here 5 days and we have new curtains up, the bathroom and laundry room painted, a central vacuum installed, shrubs all trimmed and the list goes on. You would think after nearly 40 years of marriage, he would have it figured out that when I get on a roll, look out!

 This is the completed bathroom

I love the color, looks very serene. I am going to take a couple of days off as we are going ATVing with Ann & Trent on Friday and then we have garage sales on Saturday and Sunday. I need to get over to Home Depot for more pain to paint one wall in the dining room, the kitchen, bedroom hallway and one wall at the front entrance. Those pictures will come.....

I am back going to exercises twice a week but this year, the personal trainer is leading the class in our sister park just a mile down the road so it is so much closer for me. It feels so good to get back exercising with a group! Well enough for now...

The Dixon's are getting ready to leave town!

Hi everyone, the time has finally come to bid Brown's Bay goodbye and head for the warmer and sunny climate of Arizona!! We are madly finishing up the final tasks that come with closing a house for the winter. Wouldn't you know it but most days have been rainy and wet which adds another dimension to working outside - great for the skin though.

 A couple of weeks ago we got the boat out of the water, scrubbed, engines flushed and ready to take into town where we keep it in heated covered storage for the winter. We had them bring our trailer out of storage and they put the boat in its place.

 Home came the trailer and of course it was teeming down with rain so it was covered in mud by the time we got home. Sooooo out came the hose and a good scrub it got. Doug just laughs at me as he figures all that work is hopeless in this weather but I just don't like dirt! We have been slowly getting it packed ready for the trip

 This is a picture of my Christmas cactus. My sister Theresa babysits the plants for me while we are gone and I had to take it to her a week and a half ago when we were on our way to Prince George to Doug's sister's 50th wedding anniversary. Theresa lives in Parksville so it was on our way to the Nanaimo ferry. Of course it was fully loaded with flower buds when I took it to her from my tender loving care all summer! She had the decency to send me a picture of it in full flower!

 I am standing outside our truck on October 22 at Doug's brother Norm's place at Loon Lake. We were returning from Prince George and had stayed at Norm's place for the night. The snow was pretty......and pretty cold I must say. All I could say was "get me out of here, I want Arizona"

Doug had to get a couple more days of fishing in with the neighbor Terry and this was Halloween day. I say he was just dressing up pretending to be a fisherman! You wouldn't catch me going fishing in the rain and cold! They were fishing for chum and just catching and releasing the fish. We had just smoked a batch of fish yesterday to take to Arizona and didn't need anymore.

 Doug had to take this picture of a Seiner fishing along side them when they were out yesterday. You can see the wonderful weather they had!

Halloween......we had our first kids come to the door in the 4 Halloweens we have been here. The Resort owners 2 kids and their friends. Cute!
Well this will be my only posting till we arrive at our house in Apache Junction sometime around November 10 -11th. We plan on doing some camping once we get to Nevada and the temperature warms up so are going to take our time in getting to Arizona.facebook