February 12th – It’s been a rather relaxing few days as we settled-in to a routine and began to plan our time in the desert. We’ve had a lot of fun at the house and I suspect our hosts are just a bit frustrated with us, but when you pay good dollars for a place you expect it to be fairly well appointed. In our first four days here we found:

• the waste disposal in the kitchen sink backed up and required a plumber
• there were no pots smaller than 5 qt soup pots and no paring knives in the kitchen
• the inside of the BBQ is all rusty and we have deemed it unusable
• the inside of the dresser drawers have 1″ screws (obviously replacement handles) and I’ve managed to snag my hand and lingerie
• there was only one pool towel
• the lounger on the back patio has seen too much sun and now has a big hole in it.

We’ve kindly sent notes to the hosts so that they can remedy some of these things before the next tenants arrive. My guess is that they haven’t stayed here themselves, having just bought the property in the fall.

During the week we golfed on the course here, went to Joshua Tree National Park and the Moorten Botanical Gardens. We worshiped last Sunday at Southwest – a large campus church in La Quinta – and this Sunday at Hope Lutheran – an older church with a new contemporary service that was started just four months ago by the previous lead pastor and associate from Southwest. In both cases the worship style was contemporary and we recognized how these types of services are done within 60 – 75 minutes. There is very little liturgy, scripture is read as part of the sermon and very brief prayers.

The weather has been good although much cooler than last year. The forecast is for very wet and cool weather next weekend, so we’re planning a number of things for early this week.

Here are a few photos from our fabulous time at Joshua Tree National Park.