new cars and frozen custard

I will start with some photos from one of our daily morning walks around our Anthem neighborhood.

Saguaro cactus are so interesting.  This one right here is probably over a hundred years old, based upon the number and length of its arms.  Wow!

The temperatures are actually starting to become tolerable.  I took this picture of our meetinghouse last Sunday on our way to choir practice.  The sky was particularly lovely that day.



Last Saturday, Steve and I drove up to Payson to spend the day with my sister Juli.  We arrived around lunch time and just puttered around the afternoon.  For dinner, we attended her ward choir opening social at the home of the choir director.



This home had to be worth over a milllion dollars.  It was very lovely and set right up against national forest land so this was our incredibly lovely view from the deck...



The Arizona Phoenix mission is receiving a whole lot more missionaries than they are returning so four brand new Toyota Corollas arrived at local dealerships for Steve to pick up and process.  Three came to a Peoria dealer just down the road about two miles.  I was recruited to help drive one of them back.  The fourth Corolla was sent to a dealership in Chandler.  Get out your Google maps, folks.  You will see that Chandler is fifty miles away from the mission office!  No one seems to know why it was sent to that particular dealership but that meant that Steve and I got to drive to Chandler on Tuesday to pick up the car.



Steve caught a quick bite at a Subway afterward but I was saving my calories for Andy's Frozen Custard - that midwestern store has now branched into Arizona!



He drove the "older" mission car back to Glendale while I drove the new Toyota.  Pretty nice car.
As new cars come in, he is processing "old" cars to be sold and I have also helped him shuttle these vehicles back and forth to a Pep Boys down the street from the mission office.  Nothing like entering a car in the middle of the day that has been closed up and in the Arizona sun!   And the upholstery always seems to be black!

I have been working for two weeks on some requested bibs for my sister Jerri.


I finished them Friday night and we delivered them yesterday, Saturday, after Steve and I attended the Mesa temple with Jerri's oldest son, Rob, and his wife Joanne.

Joanne, Rob, Steve, and Aunt Jeanne (Rob is only three years younger than me)

After the temple, we four had lunch at Culvers.  More frozen custard!  Mmmmmmm

A couple more shots of the temple.....
(Steve is so patient with all my picture taking)




We have now lived in this place in Anthem for a month and we JUST THIS PAST WEEK got mail!   Two Fridays ago, we finally received a mail key and was told our box was #2.  But, it took a few days for the USPS to realize that box 2 was now open for business and we got our first mail on Tuesday.  And it was the BEST MAIL DAY EVER!  Because we got money - a refund check from our CenturyLink and from University Hospital (I guess we overpaid from my bladder stone removal back in January).