Hola!

We've moved!  They loaded all our stuff into pods last Saturday and we're now renting a house on the edge of the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson while we wait for our new home to be completed.  We wake up early to gorgeous sunrises and take long morning walks through the hilly neighborhood.  The temps here are 10 degrees cooler than Phoenix during the day, and often 20 degrees cooler in the evening.  What's not to love! 

The early bird gets the worm.  We wake up to gorgeous views of the sun coming up over the mountains.

Sunrise colors reflected in the clouds to the south.

The house comes with a few warnings.  Don't put the trash out the night before because javelinas will ransack the bins.  Don't leave the garage door open because rattlesnakes and scorpions will walk in and the javelina will take off in my VW Bug screaming weeeeee as it speeds down Desert Wind Drive.  I'd love to see the javelinas, but I'll pass on the rattlesnakes.

 Craig's itching to play golf, but we've been spending our days running errands looking at appliances and furniture.  He needs to take a break!

We're also enjoying storm watch duty.

Here comes the monsoon!  At our old house, this cloud would have been brown -- a big haboob.  We weren't there to see it, but on Monday evening after our house closed at noon, a huge wall of dirt rolled into Chandler.  We got the rain squall in the photo above instead.  According to locals, we may have seen our last dirt storm.  My asthma, acquired in Phoenix, is very excited about that. The monsoon is supposed to fire up again late this afternoon. 

I'm so glad I picked this rental off VRBO.  The mountain views from this location are fantastic.  We really needed a big chill pill after the last month.  I can't say much, but the buyer of our house was a bag of tricks and the shenanigans extended past closing.  This sale was the most stressful one we've been through. Hopefully we're done now!

Here's a few more photos from our new location.

 Cactus flower.

Jabba the Hut.  (I didn't touch him to see if he was sleeping or dead.)

My parents would have loved to live at the corner of Eagle and Birdie.  We're renting in an older golf community, so we're constantly amused.  We went to the local grocery store Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. and the place was dead.  I mean D.E.A.D.  The meat counter was shut down and the clerks were all in late night joke mode making prank announcements over the loudspeakers.

This is our new pool and Craig's SO glad he doesn't have to clean it! 

Stay tuned!  We planned to take a little daytrip to Bisbee today, but decided to stay in Tucson since heavy rains are predicted.  I can't wait to start exploring.  We have a few more weeks until the work begins again moving all that stuff into the new house.