Boxing day, 2014.  Connecting with friends and family has been somewhat difficult.  We still don't have internet at our house.  Nothing moves fast around here.  Once we are hooked up then we won't have to do it again, thank goodness.  Lets hope it all works.  I just tried to send an imessage with my iphone.  For some reason the imessage is not working.  It keeps disconnecting, then I get the message "waiting for activation" and nothing happens.  I'm ready to upgrade to an iphone 5 or 6.  I would be interested on comments regarding the newer iphones.  Mine is a 4, not even a 4S, so it is an older model.  However, down here in Quartzsite, things are not noted for being technologically advanced. 

We are enjoying our time out here in the desert.  We love taking the dogs out for walks.  We look for interesting rocks and the dogs love the freedom to follow different smells.  I suppose they scent jack rabbits and coyotes, both of which are plentiful, although we have never seen them ourselves.  We hear coyotes howling and barking at night though.  Recently we had one barking very close to the house.  Close enough to get the dogs up and bark back. 

Here are some pictures near our house:

 Sunsets like this are very common.  I think the desert dust in the air adds to the colour.

 This is in the wash behind our house.  You can see the quad trail.  This one is called Tyson Wash.  It has been known to flood and go over the top.  That is why we had to have an engineer do an elevation siting prior to us moving the house onto the property.  We had to raise the base by about a foot. 

 Here you can see were the water came to last summer.  This was Tammy's ramp to access the wash.  Each year the ramps usually have to be rebuilt.  Luckily, Tammy has a back hoe.

More pictures of the wash, same area, different perspective.

 

 The fence that Dennis built!  A lot of pounding and prying to get those posts in to the gravel!

 The fence, looking from our place to Mike and Delcy's place. 

 The road approaching our house.  This road only accesses the five lots that Tammy subdivided.  Her place is on a dead end, so we don't get any traffic. 

 Enjoying a break from working on the house.  The dogs are ever ready though, hoping for a stick or ball throw.

This picture is of our trail down to the wash.  We don't have quads, yet, so a foot trail gets us down to the wash to give the dogs a good walk.  Now that the fence is finished, we don't take the dogs down there since we don't have gates yet.  It is a nice place to walk in the evening.             

 

The latest update on the house:  We have water inside!  Dennis had to repair a lot of pipes but we have cold running water in all the taps, except the bath tub.  We are not sure why that has no water, but at this point, it doesn't matter, since we have no hot water yet.  The hot water tank is gas and is located outside.  We are waiting to contact the gas company to come and hook it all up.  We wanted to make sure we actually had water first.

 

Living on the desert requires a person to tolerate dust and sand, both of which I have had a very low tolerance for!  But, it is a small compromise in order to enjoy the warmth of the desert sun through the winter.  Last night it did freeze though.  -1 degree over night.  Again, not bad, since it warms up to the high teens during the day and there is no snow to shovel or ice to deal with.  Actually, I had more sand on the door mat at home during the winter than I do here!  The grit from dealing with the icy paths and walkways was far worse than what I deal with here. 

 

Time to go.  I now have use of a laptop so will be able to upload pictures. 

 

I hope everyone had a very happy Christmas.  Ours was certainly different. It was our first without family.  Plus it was our first Christmas out of Canada.  I don't miss the snow, but I do miss my family.  Well, maybe next year some of them will make it!

 

bye for now.