Mesa Regal RV Resort

This past week we had our hours changed so we could all have Friday off, a nice surprise.
Sarah and Teresa maintain the costume shop and Wednesday was going to be an open house for the activity directors from the nine Cal-Am parks. Steve, Teresa’s husband, and I spent Tuesday afternoon decorating the storage unit.
A terrific job, even if I do say so myself. Sarah and Teresa dressed up in a costume from the shop.
Don’t they look great.
We strung lights on the inside also, didn’t get a picture of that but we are leaving them up to add a bit more lighting in the unit. The open house was a great success, Steve and I met one of the activity directors on Thursday, while delivering items to their facility, and she said she picked up a dress at the shop and now doesn’t have to buy one for the event she was going to. Great the shop is paying dividends already.
Thursday night was our weekly happy hour get together for our group, here are some pictures;
Our fearless leader, Mikki in the white and black top, she is a great person, very good to work with and for, her memory for where everything is stored is amazing. At any given time items can be in a number or storage units or in any of the nine resorts and she knows where it all is, I have trouble finding where I put my keys.
This is our group, we were in the ball room of the resort. I will try to have individual pictures with names later.

Thursday morning Roy Ertz and his friend Sgt Miller came by to say hi, as you may recall Roy is a cousin from Burlington.
They were in our area, Sgt Miller, lives on the east side, I believe and Roy wanted to get a picture, we both forgot to do it the last time he was here. We had a short but nice visit, we had to get ready to go to work that afternoon.
My sister Colleen and her husband Darrius invited us over to spend Christmas at their house. So we went over on Friday afternoon and came home Monday morning. Darrius’ sister Debi was there, she works for the federal prison system in Tucson, she is fun to be around and is a jewel of a person who is getting good at Bejeweled the computer game. In fact she had the highest score of any of us over the weekend.
We went to church Saturday evening at Angela, my niece, and Tyler’s church, it isn’t built yet so they meet in the auditorium. You can’t see them very well but I really liked the stain glass windows around the top of the auditorium. After church we went to Angela and Tyler’s for tenderloins. Tyler was the cook and did a masterful job, the entire meal was delicious. Their three daughters were there, Delaney goes to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Kendall and Kylie are juniors in HS, I believe there birthday is this week they will be sixteen. Ah, the joys of being sixteen, I wish I could remember them but I am sure there were some joys in there somewhere. Anyway we had a good time with them.
Sunday morning we got up early and went to Angela and Tyler’s for the gift opening. It was fun to watch the girls open their gifts. The family dog, Ginger, will help open the gifts, it is something to see her hold the box down with one paw while trying to tear the paper off the box, she is actually pretty good at it. The girls received quite a few items from Victoria Secrets, most of the items had the work Pink on them but they were pink but I am told that is the Victoria Secrets color or something like that.
We were invited to go with the kids to the movie to see the new Tom Cruise movie Mission Impossible. It wasn’t too bad, I did enjoy it, although anytime you go to this type movie it is with the realization a lot of the stunts are near impossible for us mortals. It is the first time I can remember Sarah did not have popcorn.
We all went back to Colleen’s after the movie where she prepared hors devours. Darrius prepared a prime rib, not I like prime rib and have had some very good prime rib, at least I thought it was good, but Darrius’ prime rib for Christmas dinner was the best I have ever had, it was done just the way I like it and melted in your mouth. Actually everything was great, Colleen prepare asparagus, cold, with some type of dressing on it, it was very good. To top it all off Debi bought a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, I love ice cream cake. So I did my best to eat all I could. Oh, Darius did something I thought was delicious. Colleen baked some potato's and then they cut them in half length ways and Darrius put them on the grill so they turn out to be like potato skins, I loved them. We had a great weekend and can’t thank everyone enough for including us in their Christmas.
Now it is back to the campground and we are getting the laundry done, well Sarah is doing the laundry and I am writing this, we work today Wed and Thurs and we are off again on Friday. We are getting together with our fellow workampers on Sunday for a New Years day thing so we have a busy week planned.
Until next time – Dreams Do Come True

Mesa Regal RV Resort

Another week has gone by, well actually two since I last wrote, but there really isn’t anything to write about other than work and as I said before we are having a good time working. It is the first time in years I have enjoyed going to work. One of the things that is nice here is the work is always there but our coworkers are great to work with and the work isn’t difficult, it can be crash and burn at times, but it isn’t difficult. Last Friday the company had their Christmas dinner for the employees and after the dinner the six of us working removed all of the decorations from the ballroom where the dinner was held. Now we did have some help from the great employees at Tower Point Resort, there was a lot of props to pack and load. We filled two trucks with the props and then the six of us unloaded the trucks into the designated storage facilities. Like I said we have a great crew, the morning crew actually had the more difficult task of putting up all the decorations and props. We love it and plan on returning.

We went to the Iowa Café, http://iowacafe.com/, for lunch on the 12th. This café is owned by a couple from Cedar Rapids, IA and has a lot of Iowa paraphernalia on the walls. I had a tenderloin, breaded at the café, it was very good.

Yesterday Sarah and I went shopping. I don’t like to shop but this was an important day in that we were getting Sarah a new IPod, the one she has is probably six years old, so we headed to the Apple Store. She got her new IPod and said later in the day she liked it, the pictures were much clearer and sharper. So I am happy to say she likes it. Then we headed for Penny’s, my goal was new pajamas, I thought that is what Sarah was going for but alas she just wanted to shop. I am not good at “shopping” unless it is a book store or a gadget store, so I found my new pjs and looked at all of the gadgets, now Penny’s doesn’t have that many so that didn’t take much time. Then I found myself in the shirt department and ended up with two shirts. We ended up with three items each and the check out guy said “you saved $126.00”. I asked Sarah when we got outside “I’ll bet they mark up the prices a lot so you think you are saving money”. Come on my pajamas orig price was $60 and I paid $19.99. Do they think the consumer is stupid, the pajamas were not worth $60, they were probably worth the $20 I paid.  Any way I like to think we saved all that money but I’ll take whatever the actual savings was, if there was any.

By the time we got done with the shopping I was hungry. Everyone down here says you have to go to Midwestern Meats, http://www.midwesternmeats.com/, they have three stores in one. Now as I have stated before I really like tenderloins so that is what I ordered. As good as the tenderloin was at the Iowa Café this one was even better. It wasn’t quite as big as some I have had in Iowa but it was just a good. The owners of these stores are from Spencer, IA or so I was told. We will be going back and trying something from both the meat counter and the bakery.

On December 5th Bill and Ludella said they wanted to take us for a drive.  we went to Tortilla Flats, AZ, http://www.tortillaflataz.com/, and Goldfield Ghost Town, http://www.goldfieldghosttown.com/. The drive is a big part of the adventure in going to these two sites. It is absolutely beautiful, a different beauty than what we are use to but beautiful in it’s own way. We went to a couple different lakes, the only one I remember the name of is Canyon Lake, http://www.canyonlakemarina.com/, they boat tours of the lake, my understanding is the ride goes into an area of the lake they call the little grand canyon. We hope to take this ride before we leave in April.

Now some pictures of our day with Bill and Ludella.

Some of the great views we saw during our drive.Tortilla Flats, AZ, it isn’t much of a town I don’t know if there are any permanent residents but they do have a post office. I tried the prickly pear ice cream and it was very good. It tastes a lot like strawberry ice cream and of course I had to try the fudge they had and it was good also. Could this be why I am not losing any weight?

I like this mountain’s look, it is across the road from the buildings at Tortilla Flats.

This is suppose to be an old gold mine, I don’t think so but it makes a good picture.

Sara and Ludella have their picture taken, interesting.

This is the steamboat Dolly on Canyon Lake.

These pictures are pictures of some of the buildings at Goldfield Ghost Town and the surrounding mountains.

So we have been here for about six weeks and have enjoyed every minute of it. We have a few days of rain but mostly it is cool at night and warm during the day. We are very happy to be here.

Dreams Do Come True