Year In Yuma

Randy has now been in Yuma for a full year as of April 8 and working here a year since April 13. It is hard to believe how quickly that year has passed Yuma is located in the southwest corner of Arizona where California is north of Yuma. San Diego, CA and Phoenix are about the same distance away. 

The winter visitors are leaving as summer and high temperatures arrive just like when we first arrived last year. This year also included:

·         Biking to work and three crashes, one involving a car

·         One visit to the urgent care facility
·         One emergency room visit
·         Deciding on a house
·         Building our house

·         Our new ward (Yuma Fifth Ward in the Yuma Stake)

·         Finding new doctors

·         Finding a new dentist

For his one year anniversary at the hospital he gets a bonus of 80 hours vacation from work and starts accruing vacation time at a faster rate of 27 days a year as opposed to only 17. He has helped in the transition of the interfaces on the old interface engine to the new and finally started on what he came here to do: the new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for the hospital. He may or may not be able to use those newly acquired vacation hours as the new EHR system is built and comes on line. He can carry 160 hours of leave time from year to year. He might be carrying a few over. Vacation time now must be approved by the project director.

The apartment where we first stayed, furnished by the hospital, was in the Yuma 5^th Ward. Our house was also built in the Yuma 5^th Ward so we did not have to change again. As of last Sunday, Randy is the secretary for the High Priest Group leadership. We finally know a few people in the ward and working to know more. Georgia helped giving Boy Scouts a blood pressure test as part of their physicals for scout camp.

 

During this year Georgia also had some changes. She traveled back to Oregon for the last time, and then enjoyed all of her accumulated vacation time dealing with various new house matters. Finally she found two small contract jobs that keep her as busy as she wants to be.

Randy took his sports car (read road bicycle) out for a ride yesterday around our neighborhood. We are on the agriculture (west) side of town with fields of an ever changing carpet of plants for our neighborhood décor. The only areas that stay the same are the date palm orchards.  All of the citrus trees are on the other side of town.

For the ride, he headed towards the date palm orchard and found that they had a stand out front selling strawberries. With no room on the bike he passed it buy and continued west on 40^th street or county road 14.

Another mile down the road found another unusual crop – artichokes - as many as five acres of them. They look like giant thistles and indeed that is what they are. They were looking close to being harvestable.

He continued west another mile or so and found a garden of a different sort. Not a field of wheat, but a large, perhaps acre, of selected crops: corn, squash, tomatoes, etc. A small produce shed was present for selling these to locals. We will find out how good they are in a few weeks. We might not have a garden this year but we can get the next best thing.

When he got home, Randy told Georgia about the strawberries. Unfortunately they were all gone by the time she got there. Fortunately there will be more available this week. It was been a good year in Yuma. We hope to have many more here.