We have been settling in to our new desert home. This prickly pear cactus is in our yard.

One of our pleasures is to sit on our back patio in the mornings and watch the wildlife.

The lizards stroll by – sometimes they do pushups!  

We see and hear a variety of birds.  Randy is partial to northern mockingbirds and I like cactus wrens.

The quail have been so much fun to watch.  We are impressed with the way one parent is always vigilant while the family is feeding.  We see families with three to sixteen babies several times a day.   Obviously the turtle in the picture is stone, but the real critters move around the yard with little concern for the others.  They all just share the space.

I try really hard not to get too attached to the cute bunnies hanging around the yard because…

….we also have coyotes in the area.   We haven’t seen one in our yard yet and hope we don’t.

There was very little that needed to be done to the house but we found a few things.  Randy had the garage floor finished with a high gloss epoxy treatment – all the better for those new wheels you’ll soon read about!

Our big project is upcoming.  In August we will have pavers placed and a solid patio cover extending from one end to the other along the back of the house.  We have a south facing back patio and, except for those few morning hours, it is basically not usable this time of year. 

All the wheels are in place in our three car, extra deep garage.

It took way longer than we thought it would to find my new wheels – like three months!  I wanted a newer used Audi convertible with navigation, back up camera, and without a black interior or exterior.  It was the no black interior that was the problem.   We searched in four states, bid on a car on Ebay twice, put a deposit on one in Salt Lake City, and finally decided on a 2015 Mercedes Benz E400 right here in the Phoenix area. It isn’t an Audi but we like it very much.

In contrast, we bought our 2017 E-Z-Go golf cart on our first day of seriously looking.  Randy did preparatory research and had things narrowed down to two manufacturers. He decided he wanted a cart with a maintenance free lithium battery so then our choice was between new and a golf course rebuild. We opted for the less expensive rebuild.   We both liked the idea of yellow, harkening us back to Randy’s little yellow BMW roadster (that my mother still owns).   We made choices for accessories and upholstery quite quickly.  Yes, I realize the “interior” is black!   The battery was the big thing.

It was very bittersweet (think a few choked back tears) to leave our trailer in covered storage at the end of May.   It had been our home for five years and we wondered if it would feel abandoned or was glad to finally get a break after continuous use.

Six weeks later Randy picked it up for a “spa day”  and the 2012 trailer batteries were also dead.  Off to the battery store one more time.  We have definitely learned that heat is deadly to batteries, most don’t last longer than two years in this area.

And yet another battery story!  Batteries expand when left exposed in the truck when the truck is in the sun.  This is our navigation GPS and it still works, even with a puffed out back.