Sales ramped up slowly for fireworks. Slow on Monday, half that on Tuesday, a nice steady trickle on Wednesday, absolute flood on Thursday, and a slow trickle on Friday. Seriously, Thursday the first customer was there moments after we opened the gate and after lunch there was a line circling the tent – and it remained that way until evening. Crazy busy day – that was the highest single sales day of all the lots. (And we ended up with the highest sales over all.)

It was certainly nice for Ashley to be able to walk to the grocery/coffee shop (we really enjoyed Bead & Berry across the street from us – delicious coffee and amazing food). Over-all, however, we liked Gilbert better. It’s a more upscale community (helpful for sales with Christmas trees, we suspect) and feels cleaner and safer. Not that we have any specific issues with Maricopa – it’s just not somewhere that we want to stay for months on end.

Ashley walked within a couple feet of this lil guy

One highlight on New Year’s Eve was the lady who sold us some home-made tamales. Wow, they were delicious! We got a dozen of them, so they stretched out across a few different meals – and when we received them they were still hot so we had a quick, delicious supper!

Twice now we’ve had ladies come by (and, since they didn’t speak English, had their daughters) sell us Tamales. Once while selling Christmas trees. They were darn good, but these were even better!