Wedding and Rain

Attended an interesting wedding this weekend.  My brother Chris has a nice young man working for him doing gardening and such.  Phillip got married this weekend.  He's 20 and probably doesn't really understand what he's getting into.  His bride is about the same age and since they decided quickly that they wanted to get married, the usual premarital counseling that pastor's usually require was skipped.

 The pastor at the Cowboy church in Tombstone agreed to marry them in "The Barn" at Cochise Terrace RV Resort.

 

Chris, Elijah and Lorraine at the Wedding

So the interesting thing about this wedding was that this pastor gave a crash course on the reality of marriage while he was "marrying" this young couple.  

Some memorable quotes:  "Men require respect"  " Women need love".  Paraphrasing Ephesians scripture that Paul said "Husband love your wives as Christ loved the church and wives respect your husbands".  Pastor said that women know how to love instinctively, men really don't; what they require is respect from their families and the outside world.  He also said that men need to be willing to die for their wives as Christ died for the world.  No woman can resist that kind of a guy so the respect will come automatically. 

I'll see if I can get the script of his marriage ceremony.  Real words to chew on....In other words he prepared them for how hard marriage it's going to be and how forgiveness is always the key.

The other big news of the weekend was that we had a downpour in Benson.  How wonderful to smell the desert after the rain.  I remember that smell from the first time I stepped off of a plane in Tucson on my first visit to this area of the country.  It's intoxicating.  

 

 

It's been a hot one....

"Like seven inches from the midday sun".....these days remind me of the Santana song.  Great song, better beat.

We are waiting for the rains.  It promises to be a great show here from the heights in Benson.  We walked in the desert today.  Even the cactus are looking for shade these days.

The RV Parks are like ghost towns here in the city.  Looks like the rapture happened and they all got taken.  If only.....

The mornings and evenings are the best right now.  The sky is always different.  It's like a wonderful free light show every morning.  Bear is still exploring the desert.  We still have not seen one snake!

Here the sunset is making these Yucca plants come alive.

This area is down the hill from our house.  It's a vast wash with lots of gully's and mesquite trees along with prickly pear and barrel cacti.  I'm running around with my camera taking pictures of the Dragoons for the website I'm working on.  It's lots of fun because you never know how the light be that day.  I'm learning a lot exploring more.  

Working from home

I always envied those gals who could walk 5 steps to their office in the mornings.  Well here it is, the view from my office.

I have everything I need, server, laptop, printers, scanner and of course Direct TV for now.  That's actually for Artur to keep him occupied when I'm working.  

I love the large windows in our house.  They make them large in case of fire so that you can step out of the window.  Great idea!  

So I'm working on my first big job, updating a website for an RV Resort in Benson.  I would not have attempted this except their site was really outdated so anything we come up with will be better than what they have.  My 13 years hanging out at CCAD have given me an eye for what's junk and what a professional website should include.  The first things that now catches my eye are the fonts or should I say the jumble of fonts.  Another thing is too many colors and not a specific color scheme.  So I'm stepping out of my MacLady comfort zone and jumping right into the fire so to speak.

Artur is working on our new gate for the courtyard.  It's the first step of a lot of improvements we would like to make to the house.  The previous owners were a loving Italian family who loved pink.  I love piggy's and especially since Cyenna and I always watched Babe, but Chris has already teased me about the "little piggy" house color.  We going with beige and brown.  Earth tones fit so beautifully into this desert garden with an accent of Santa Fe blue.  We'll wait until it's cooler in Sept, Oct before we start "washing" the walls.  

I'm loving the openness of the kitchen and the easy care tile floors of the house.  It's our little oasis now.

In our new hometown...

Here is Arizona they say, "where the hell is Benson".  Well, we know and we love the small town feel and quiet street where we ended up.  The name of our street is Si Tengo, which means, "I have it" in Spanish.   So I guess we do....

Monday we packed up our things in St. David and with the help of some of Chris's helpers we hauled a 20 foot UHaul 10 miles down Hwy. 80 to Benson, twice.  It took us a week but we have family pictures up and I'm starting to plan the layout of my courtyard in the back of the house.  It's about 1/10 of the yard area we had in Ohio but for us it's plenty.   I was up this morning looking out over the valley and took this shot...

I'm luring the neighborhood birds into my courtyard.

We hung some pictures and put up the beer steins.  We even found a place for the German bench.

Now to find a bed for the guest room so that Cyenna can come and visit soon.  Oh and it was great to finally have internet again.  Time to get back to work.  Artur is liking Direct TV, we'll see how long he gets to keep it.  ;-)

Moving to Benson

We cleared out the garage in St. David where half of our "stuff" was stored and filled up a 20' UHaul.
Most of it was tools from Artur's shop and some furniture that we were not using in the house.

I'm smiling because it finally rained after 3 months of nothing.  The smell after the rain is hard to describe.  It's like desert incense. I think these mesquite blossoms and the creosote bushes have something to do with that.

 Sunday morning walk was glorious with the smell after the rain and the clear view of the mountains.  This was our last Sunday in St. David.  The vista's will be different in Benson but just as beautiful.

Tomorrow we take the truck to Si Tango and start unloading.  New adventures await.....

Rains are acomin.....

Thunderheads and lightening showed up in the middle of the day yesterday.  We closed on our Benson house yesterday and backed the UHaul up to the garage.  Artur drove to the house with the truck right after signing the papers and cut the big Mesquite tree limb down, stuffed all the branches into the truck and we burnt them in Tom's fire pit this morning.  Tom is finishing up Monika's wall in front of her restaurant this morning.  Chris and Artur drove to Tucson this morning to get some 2 buck Chuck and look for some real German food ;-)

Happy Father's Day to all.

Here's Jim and Gina's house with real gray clouds overhead.  Maybe we will get some real rain soon.

Mid Afternoon June 14th 2013

Hopefully our last move.......

Apricots from the tree along the irrigation ditch made a nice streusel cake

The Grand niece and nephew

Nowhere are there two more different children in the same family.  Alana is the lively girl that doesn't stop moving around.  She's going to be a mover and shaker someday...

Then there the little one, Aaron.  He's still a pudgy almost 2 year old with the interesting eyes.

It's nice to be getting to know the extended Arizona family.

Early

Early will I seek Thee

Early will I bless Thy name

Early will I come before Thee with thanksgiving, for Thou hast redeemed me Thou hast shown me Thy love.

Early will I praise and bless thy name.

5:30 in the morning, June 13th.  Sunrise over the Dragoon Mountains.  Enchanting!

Community Pie

Gina gave me the frozen cranberries from Minnesota, the crust is from WalMart and the streusel are from me.

Yellow Flowers flourishing in the desert with their morning watering

Enduring June

I'm getting lots of computer work done this month.  Today it's 102 daytime temp and 68 nighttime.
I just happened to look up Delaware, Ohio temps and it's daytime 86 and nighttime 70.  The desert nights do cool off nicely so that you can open the windows at night and take walks in the morning that don't wear you out immediately.

Today's temperatures in the area:
Phoenix: 109
Tucson: 108
Benson: 102
St. David: 102

I never thought I'd say this......looking forward to Fall and Winter!!!

The Great Wall Project

This was one of the most interesting projects we have worked on (or I should say, Artur) since we arrived here in Arizona.  In anticipation of the monsoon rains coming in July which almost washed away our neighbors house last year, Tom and Jim proposed that they build a "soil cement" wall to hold the earth in place and keep his yard from being filled up with 6 ft. of dirt.  The project was started in May and took most of 3 weeks.  Of course, Jim and Gina who are from Minnesota and always flee the heat and go back up North in June, don't believe there is ever water in these washes.  I can't fathom it either because I have only seen 4 drops of rain since we arrived in March.  All the neighbors say that I will become a believer in July..........I'm still a skeptic.  

Arizona, Tomatoes and more

Today Chris came for breakfast with a friend and after we walked over to his place to see the amazing crop of tomatoes he has managed to grow in his greenhouse here in Arizona.  I thought we left the tomato capital of the world (Reynoldsburg, Ohio) but I was only this successful once in Ohio.  So brother John, the competition for largest tomato is off and running.  Chris waters them 3 times a day so for all the thirsty people here in the Southwest, especially in June.....eat lots of tomatoes because they are mostly water.

That's Jason and his son who work with Chris to create this awesome crop.

This week we are still waiting for our bank to give us the OK on a closing date for our house in Benson.  In the meantime, I'm doing a refresher on Dreamweaver and updating my webpage: mspiess.com in case you want to catch up on family history.  I also saw some very interesting posts on facebook today shared by one of my former colleagues in Ohio.  This is controversial but very thought provoking.   It's definitely worth listening to if you want to be awakened from spiritual sleep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AfFcAmx-Ro

March 2013

We arrived in Arizona on Palm Sunday 2013.  The blue skies welcomed us on the border of Arizona and New Mexico.  We stopped at the first roadside rest and Bear wondered where the grass was.  It wasn't comfortable to do his business in the granite gravel yard.

When we came to 1766 Christenson in St. David, Jim and Gina our new neighbors were still cleaning up the yard and the mobile home which would be our home for the next 3 months.  They, along with Chris and Tom helped us unpack all our earthly belongings from the 26ft. Penske truck.  Jim turned out to be our entertainment for the next few months.  Artur just loved sitting and drinking beer with him in the cool evening breezes and I would take Gina to Bisbee and Sierra Vista and also to Monika's so that Jim could get a break and I could get a break from Artur ;-)

Chris started his morning routine right away when we arrived.  Breakfast at 6AM which forced me to get up every morning since I've been here at 5:30.  It was good to stay in a routine.  After breakfast we took Bear for a walk and I'd go and water the plants on mom's old house which Tom is now renting to Bridgitte and Carl-Linda.  Chris lets me come over and swim in his pool and brings us tomatoes every morning now.  He's busy watching his 3 grandchildren every day while Felicia works at the nursing home.  I admire Chris and Lorraine so much for dedicating their lives to those children.  They will surely reap the reward of that patience.  Alana, the middle child is the most active and curious.  We started inviting them over on Friday's for pizza but all she wants to eat is ice cream.  I'm sure she'll grow out of that.

This next week, we will finally close on a house in Benson and start a new chapter.  It's been fun camping here for 3 months but I'm ready to get all my stuff out of boxes and resume a normal life.