Billiards

The Coopers' Hawks have been really active.  Now I know their call.  There were two this morning and one had a dead mouse.  I couldn't get very good photos with my phone.

We finally, after six years, checked out the Billiards Room.  It's pretty nice and there are four tables.  We played for a while and it was actually pretty fun.

This is an actual glazed ceramic donut.  Now I am working on making clay pastries.

Gilbert, AZ

We met Jim J's parents for lunch in the town on Gilbert.  It's not really a "town" as the population is about 240,000 now, but it's very charming.  Lots of trendy, fun restaurants and I very nice performance theater.

These cactus look like the Crested Cactus that we see on Saguaros once in a while.

More guests

Jim and Marcie visited us for a couple of days.  Unfortunately we had tons of rain on one of their days here.  February can be really iffy with the weather.  But I'm hoping that's the last of the cold weather.

We played a few games on our "game table."  We had this kitchen table for five years before we discovered the underneath side was a game table.  So we took advantage of that for Mexican Train.

Oranges

After talking with some people, in the know, I think a few of our orange trees our Valencias which aren't supposed to be fully ripe until March, and the other smaller, thin skinned oranges are the "sweets".  So I picked from both trees and made a delicious blend.  Two buckets yields a bit more than a gallon.  But it's so fun to juice!

Something is Missing

Here is something unusual.  We noticed two days ago that one of our main entrance signs is missing the "Brooke".  At first I thought it was taken off for painting or maintenance, but now I think it was stolen.  So now we live in Saddle.

We had L & J for 48 hours.  We went on a nearby 5 mile hike one morning.  This was the day we were expecting rain and we barely got done in time.  You can see all the gray rainclouds rolling in.  It later poured rain for several hours.

Clay and Nature

Just some things I'm working on in the studio.  Mugs, dog dishes, large bowls.  Today I threw some more soup mugs as we didn't have any in AZ.

We went on a hike in Saddlebrooke before our swim and we startled this Cooper's Hawk out of a tree.  When he flew by us we could see he had a dead animal in his talon.  We caught up with him and got a really good look at  him with the binoculars.  This is the best photo my phone could take.  We didn't want to get to close and startle him.

Lauren and Jim are visiting AZ and should be here on Monday for a couple of nights.  Unfortunately, the weather looks rainy for all three days of their visit.

Hockey

Went to a Tucson Roadrunners' Hockey game.  First we ate at a plant based Mexican restaurant, which had very nice food.  At the game it was hat night, so we now own Roadrunner hats.

Here was the moment of silence for Kobe Bryant, everyone using their flashlights.  Of course, I could hear a lot of old people around me saying they didn't know how to turn on their flashlights, or off.

Then a couple got married on the rink!  Luckily it was a short ceremony.

We are expecting an extreme storm to come in Monday/Tuesday.  The temps are going to be really cold, so I'm curious to see what really happens.