Phoenix, Arizona.

This week, Nancy Thanki asks us to focus on the holiday season. For Lynn and I, that has come to mean a late fall in Arizona and a short trip back to Fargo for the holidays with our family. Nancy asks us to share the one thing without which the holiday season could never be complete. You can read the entire challenge post here.  Life changes you in many ways, and for us after spending over 30 years in North Dakota winters, our retirement brought us to winters in Arizona. Since January 2012, our winters feature saguaro cactus and views of the mountains around Phoenix. In the photo above, the Phoenix Botanical Garden features an annual Luminarias display. Arizona winters have become a place we look forward to visiting. We enjoy meeting anew with our other snowbird friends who have also just returned for the season.

Don’t get me wrong, our time with our family over the holidays is very important. It’s why we plan a return to Fargo for the two weeks over the holidays, a time we also would miss greatly. But I felt you might enjoy seeing photos of Arizona at dusk rather than photos of our family gatherings.

The sunsets here are magical and we look forward to sharing them with you. These two images came from a photo gallery taken at the Phoenix Botanical Garden during a Chihuly exhibition and luminaria display. You can view that entire gallery here.

John Steiner