Settling In

We've been busy, although from these pics, it looks like we've mostly been busy relaxing. I drove up to Sun City West to pick up my parents and bring them down to the house for Mother's Day weekend. We had a great time. We went to the big Festival de la Primavera at the monastery in St. David on Saturday, where I fell in love with another Mexican rug. My parents bought it for us for a housewarming present. Steve and I are argui8ng about whether it should go on the wall (Steve) or floor (me). It started out on the floor, but is now draped over a chair. I don't want to hang it up and put holes in the walls until we get furniture in and decide where the rug will stay. Other than the festival, we spent a lot of time hanging out on the patio. All the pictures were taken with my new camera that Steve surprised me with for Mother's Day. It's been years since I've had my own camera. This one is a cinch to use and takes great pictures. And little movies. haven't done that yet, but I will.

Yesterday on a trip to Benson, we stopped in at the western shop next to Ace Hardware and Safeway for a stampede string for Steve's new straw cowboy hat he bought at the festival. I wandered to the back of the store and started looking at cowboy boots. I've been wanting a pair of red ones for a long time. they didn't have any red ones in my size, but I found these, on sale, and fell in love with them. They are on my feet now.

We are still working on a bulding permit for our pole barn (storage building). Thought we had it all set, but when the permit arrived, they flood zone people said we had to be 250 feet from the wash instead of the 50 to 100 feet they quoted us originally. There isn't that much room where we'd plan to put the barn, so back to square one. Found a new site, called the planning people to check it out, and got more glitches. They driveway can't run over the septic leach field because it "might break the lines", even though utility trucks and big machines used to build our house had been running over that area for months. After some careful measuring, we were able to just squeeze in the driveway between the leach field and the property line and still meet code. I just faxed the new site plan over to Planning and Zoning in Bisbee; we hope to get the okay quickly so we can order the pole barn kit from Sutherland Lumber. Actually, if it goes through, it will probably be a better location anyway. It was going to cost $4000 to grade the site and do the driveway because it was very uneven ground and we'd have had to install a culvert to deal with a drainage. The new site is already level, and there are no drainage issues. We were initially worried that it would block our best view of the mountains, but we don't think it will. Cross your fingers and toes that it all works out.