New Year's Resolution

Here goes!! After 6 months of absence I've resolved to keep our blogging up to date. After spending Christmas with our 5 families in Red Deer we flew back to Abbotsford to overnight at Kevin & Shannon's. We got a fairly early start on the morning of December 29th, got across the border in record time of about 10 minutes and began our southward trek along the I-5. We arrived at Ashland, OR about 5:00 PM to learn the highway ahead through approximately 30 miles of the Siskiyou Pass leading into California was closed due to blizzard conditions at the summit. We found a motel and stayed the night. The next morning we were told the highway was passable with chains. So, we chained-up and started out for the checkpoint at the entrance to Siskiyou Pass. There we were told chains were no longer required; so we took them off! This little adventure helped make us feel right at home dealing with those who have been given a bit of authority! The Pass did turn out to be still quite treacherous. We made it through without incident and after an hour or so the highway was bare. The next thing we had to contend with was the truck traffic that had been backed up for miles overnight. We spent the night of December 30th in Bakersfield and arrived in the Palm Springs area during the early afternoon. We stopped at Rancho Casa Blanca in Indio where we stayed and visited friends we hadn't seen since our last time there 2 years ago. On Sunday January 2nd we left Indio after a late breakfast and got here to the Anthem at Merrill Ranch resort at about 5:00 PM with about an hour's daylight still left. The total trip here was just shy of 3000 Kms.
We are now pretty well settled in this spectacular house we're renting until March 31st. It's 2558 sq feet! I took a few pictures today and will post some here but it's very difficult to show what we really have...