Christmas in the sun!

Oro Valley (Tucson), Arizona

(seeing relatives and friends)

December 18, 2016 - January 2, 2016

From the Phoenix area we headed to the Tucson area so we could celebrate Christmas with my mom who lives in Oro Valley, a community on the NW border of Tucson. Although she turned 92 last August she had the house pretty much all decorated for the holidays.  We helped with some outdoor lights but that was about all.  Before we knew it, Christmas day was upon us.

Great Blue Heron statues decked out for the holidays!

Mom had invited two friends for Christmas dinner and arranged through Safeway to get the entire dinner - all we had to do was go pick it up. In my mind I pictured picking up a hot roasted turkey and all the trimmings (ready to eat potatoes, dressing, and gravy along with cranberry sauce, etc.).  Our first indication that something was wrong was when they couldn't find my mom's name on their list and suggested that perhaps someone had already picked up the food!  No, we explained - that couldn't have happened.  I looked through the list of orders and found mom's name on it but it had a question mark in front of it and had been crossed off in heavy black marker.  I'm now thinking - what the heck are we going to do? We have guests coming! The lady behind the counter didn't miss a beat however, saying she would fix us up.  She went back to the area behind the deli and soon appeared with a big shrink wrapped turkey which she placed on the counter with a THUMP!  I thought she was giving us a frozen turkey but it turned out to be a cold but fully cooked turkey - just add heat.  Next she came out from behind the counter and went to the nearby deli island where she grabbed 2 packages each of Reisers mashed potatoes, Reisers corn meal stuffing, Reisers prepared gravy, Reisers broccoli au gratin and one package of Reisers cranberry sauce.  I'm sort of stunned at this point - quietly saying to my mom "We could have done this ourselves without Safeway's help!"  With everything placed in a large bag we headed for the checkout stand - trying to keep from laughing at the difference between our expectations and the reality of our Christmas dinner.  When we got home we heated everything up and with a little doctoring from Laura the dinner passed muster.  Even our guests had a laugh about it. We still don't know if everyone else who ordered Christmas dinner from Safeway got the same food we did or if this was truly a fall back back position, cleverly handled by the deli worker.

A terrible picture of our Christmas dinner guests!
Nobody tell them I posted this,

One of my mom's friends could only be described as a Christmas fanatic.  She decorates her apartment to the max and loves to have people come by to see it. I think you can see from the pictures below that she has an amazing collection.  Every single room has something to see and I believe she has well over 300 Santa Claus's throughout the collection.

Lots of lighted buildings in her collection.
Her grandson fixed it up so she can turn everything on with one switch!

Some of her many Santa's on the floor in the living room.

Mom and I in her living room.

While in the Oro Valley area we've stayed at several places.  The nicest being Catalina State Park where the views of the north side of the Santa Catalina mountains are fantastic.

Saguaro cactus are plentiful in the park - and these two are huge.

Barrel cacti are also plentiful.

We saw several coyotes in the park.
They don't seem to be spooked by the RV's or the people.
There are lot's of jack rabbits and cottontail rabbits around so I think they eat pretty well.
This one certainly looks quite healthy. 

Sunset on the Catalina mountains as the moon rises.

Late afternoon light on the Catalina's.

The subtle colors of sunset.

Beautiful clouds over the Catalina mountains.

Catalina State Park is so popular, it gets booked up quickly when the snowbirds start arriving - making it difficult to get a spot for more than one day.  You could probably move to a different spot everyday and manage to stay for quite awhile but that gets frustrating so we moved up to the town of Catalina and stayed at the Wishing Well RV Park.  It's a bit run down but the people are very friendly and nice.  

The "Wishing Well"

On Friday nights we went with mom to play Mexican Train with "the girls."
The stakes were a bit high - $.25 for the whole night and the lucky winner gets about $1.50!

On Tuesday nights we played BINGO with a big group of people.
There the stakes are even higher.  $1.00 per card!
If you win a game you might take home $3.00!

Splendido (where my mom lives) furnishes cookies, water and lemonade for these types of functions.