Moving Day!

I spent last week clearing our stuff out of the little house, so we could move Mom in. Dingus stayed close to me as things disappeared out of the house. He didn't want to be left behind.

Some of our stuff had to go into our storage trailer. It has a great view at sunrise! Lately I've been getting an early start on every day -- Sam's new school bus driver job necessitates leaving the house at 4 a.m., so my day starts soon thereafter.

Once I got all our stuff moved to the 5th wheel, the cats were next. I think they were relieved to find all of our furniture and familiar smells.

Every nook and cranny was inspected.

Until they finally settled down on our familiar bed.

Moving day finally arrived last Friday! It was a busy day, so I didn't get many photos. Ma and I packed boxes in her car and headed out to the ranch to await the arrival of the furniture.

What a welcome sight!

Juan and Becky did the majority of the move in their truck and a U-Haul trailer.

Uncle Henry called at the perfect time to keep Mom occupied!

While Juan did all the heavy lifting, Becky and I took the smaller items. Their dog Domino spent a lot of time exploring, as well as "helping".

A couple hours later, all Mom's things were in.

And by the following day, I had emptied most of the boxes. Ma is definitely not a hoarder and one of her favorite things is to go through her closet or desk and throw away or give away whatever she hasn't used in awhile.

My Mom and Dad lived here 5 years ago before Pa passed away, so it feels like home to Ma.

Now it's time for a walk in the country!

Birthday celebrations

Somebody here turned 52 a few days ago! What a handsome dude. We had some shopping to do at Home Depot, and Starbucks sent Sam a free drink on his app (plus we had giftcards from Christmas; thanks, Tim!), so we headed to Sierra Vista for a breakfast burrito, shopping, laundry, more browsing at a thrift store for the birthday boy, and lunch. It was a fun day!

Over the weekend was the lunar eclipse, and I'm sure many of you watched it. Earlier in the day, we had some clouds, but by nightfall the skies were clear.

Sam set up his telescope (which he found a few years ago . . . at a thrift store!).

He's taught himself how to use it and guided me as I turned the knobs. I have no idea how these things work.

With patience, Sam was able to take some good photos through the lens.

We could see a bit of the red moon with our naked eye, but it didn't show up on camera. We had a lot of fun, though! Sam especially is enamored with astronomy and many other scientific and technical subjects.

I'll leave you with a couple of sunrise shots. Back at work, Sam leaves the house at 4 a.m., 3 hours before sunrise. I've been getting up early, too, so I can get things done. We moved the furniture to the 5th wheel over the weekend, and now I'm moving all the little stuff box by box. It's about 40 steps from one house to the other. Lots of trips, lots of organizing, and good exercise.

Have a good week, everyone!

Finally!

On my way to Benson today, this cow seemed lost or lonely and looking for a friend. We don't always see them along our road, but part of it goes through land used by the Double X Ranch, so they're around. Do you always point them out when you see cows? We still do!

Earlier in the week, not much was happening on the PPR, but that has changed. We finally got the electric wires pulled through the underground conduit.

I was pulling and Sam was greasing. It worked like a champ!

Next, Sam attached the new wires to the existing electric box.

And installed a new service disconnect box for the mini-split system. Have I told you how amazing he is?!

Our final step was to call in an air conditioning guy to charge the system with refrigerant. And we're finally up and running! Such a relief.

Sam immediately jumped into another wiring job in the house and got our ceiling fan and lights working again.

And I sterilized the water hose on the 5th wheel and vacuumed inside and cleaned kitchen cabinets. We're hoping to move in this weekend.

Meanwhile, Dingus Magee was hard at work, as well.

In other news, Sam's new job is going well. He's in training for another week, and one of his stops is right out at the end of our dirt road! (What a hunk, eh?)

Looks like he's a star pupil! The rambunctious kids sometimes throw him a loop, but he's handling it fine.

Finally, a huge thanks to our friends Gord and Linda for their help during this and past weeks. You have no idea how much we appreciate you!

Hope you have a great weekend, everyone!

Animals and adventures

It's been awhile since I spent time outdoors on anything but work projects, so this morning I went for a walk, looking for beauty in the winter landscape. There's always some to find.

One thing we have around here is rocks, and I found our original pile of colorful rocks that we collected when we first bought the land and nothing was here except natural beauty. We had hoped to use them in building our house someday.

There's still snow on the distant north-facing slopes of the Santa Rita mountains.

The mesquite trees have lost almost all their leaves, which means spring isn't far away. They only go dormant for a few weeks!

The creosote are still green. They're an evergreen bush.

The ocotillo, in the foreground, are barren, but the yucca are still green. Those ocotillo thorns are sure healthy, aren't they?

One of my last stops was at the base of the largest mesquite tree on the ranch. It's down closer to the road, and it's where we buried Sylvie and Pumpkin, our two former cats. When we moved here in June, Sam encouraged me to go down and tell them we were here for good now. It's kind of emotional, because when they were with us, we promised they would live at the PPR someday. And in a way, they are.

Speaking of critters, we had a few adventures this week. Last weekend we smelled skunk from inside the house several times, and figured there might be one taking shelter inside the flooring insulation. Sam borrowed a trap from our good friends, Dennis and Joni, and set it up under the deck. Fortunately, no skunk so far, and we're rather relieved!

Meanwhile, we're moving ahead with the mini-split installation.

Sam and I both experienced the adventure of crawling under the house to run refrigerant and electric lines. What a joy!

Then last night we tried pulling new electric wires through 60 feet of conduit buried several feet underground. We had some success, but ended up spending the night without electricity, and will finish the job another day. This morning Sam was able to temporarily hook up the electric again, so our refrigerator could be turned on and our food won't spoil. We have priorities!

I hope your weekend turns out as well!

I'm a few days behind

A few days ago I posted photos of our snowstorm on January 1st, when Sam had trouble using the window scraper. What a funny guy. Well, all of that snow melted by sundown. Then the next morning, we woke up to brand new snow four times deeper!

It was real pretty, but we had lots of work planned!

The 18 degree temperatures changed our minds pretty fast. It would have been a cold, wet day working outdoors.

We were a little leery of driving on slushy and possibly frozen roads, but we made it to Tucson just fine. This was at Houghton Road on the eastern edge of town. We ran errands all day and the snow was mostly gone by the following afternoon.

The past couple days have been spent working on projects. Here, Sam is running lines for the mini-split heat and A/C system.

We took off the skirting on the little house to run them underneath, with clamps holding them up under the flooring.

Then today (as well as a few nights ago), Sam installed a new radiator and fixed the cooling system on the truck.

We've had a load of stuff in the back of the truck for a week, trying to get it running so we could take it to the town dump. Some weeks just don't go smoothly, but it sure has been nice having Sam off work the past two weeks. We've gotten a lot done!