lovin' summer #11... and the end

When you live in a desert, rain is like dessert... with whipped cream and a cherry on top. And this summer the Valley of the Sun had slightly more rain than average! I love watching a good rainstorm... and I especially love the way the desert air smells when it's over. It may not happen often, but it's worth the wait!

It amuses me that a scant quarter-inch of rain becomes the lead news story on all local channels with multiple reporters covering "the storm!" But, to be fair, rain in the desert is news and we all share it via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We send our kids outside to play in the rain and the puddles. We even dance around in the rain. Why? Because it's something different and it's fun.

This post marks the end of my "Lovin' Summer" series for this summer. I know. It is officially summer until September 22nd when fall begins. At least that's what my calendar says. Retailers, of course, think fall begins in July when they clear out the summer stuff and put out fall/winter things. In my mind, summer is over right after Labor Day when all the kids are back in school, football season begins and, perhaps most importantly, Pumpkin Spice Lattes are available.

Looking - sometimes REALLY hard - for things to be thankful about summer helped me focus on what's positive about it rather than on what I don't always like about it -namely, the heat. It helped me appreciate things that only happen during the summer. It reminded me that with the heat comes fun things.

And speaking of the heat, the hottest day of the summer in Phoenix was June 29th with a record-breaking 119 degrees. And with an average humidity of just 14%, it was a very dry heat! I always like to get the worst out of the way at the beginning. The coolest high temperature occurred July 21st with a mere 87 degrees. Of course, the average humidity that day was 75%! Yeah, not so pleasant.

But even so....

I LOVE SUMMER!!!

lovin' summer #10

Everyone knows that Arizona summers are blistering hot. We find ways to endure it - we stay in air-conditioned buildings, we swim ... a lot, our kids play indoors a good part of the summer, we take a longer vacation somewhere else - and it doesn't seem so bad. But by August everyone is tired of the scorching heat and it's time for a weekend getaway to cool country.

This year we actually took TWO weekend getaways in August - one to Flagstaff and later one to the north rim of the Grand Canyon with friends. While the south rim is open year round, the north rim is 1000 feet higher in elevation and is closed during the winter making it the perfect summertime retreat.

The pristine views are awe-inspiring.

The north rim is my favorite place to view the canyon. The considerably longer drive from the valley and at least ten degree cooler temperatures (from the south rim) make it less crowded than the south rim - a huge plus in my book. The higher elevation (8800 feet!) means there are more pine trees and more "green" in general than the south rim which has some pine trees but also a lot of high desert vegetation. And then there are the views - absolutely spectacular and much different than the south rim. You would think it would be like walking around to the other side of the swimming pool and looking in - not all that different. But because of the 1000-foot elevation difference and the way the inner canyons run, it is a totally different view.

We were treated to a fabulous thunderstorm the day we were there. What produced an extended downpour (and, I'm sure, some flash flooding) in the middle of the canyon gave us just a few sprinkles. 

If you get tired of the spectacular views inside the canyon, simply turn around and feast your eyes on the lush greenery and pretty wildflowers growing everywhere.

After dinner we hiked out to a lookout point to watch sunset. The sky changed from blue to a million shades of red and orange over the course of about 30 minutes as the sun dipped lower and lower toward the horizon. At the same time, rocks on the east side of the canyon were lit up in vibrant shades of pink and purple. 

I love that God uses the gigantic, extra jumbo pack of crayons and not the 16 crayon box most of us use!

After "sunset," when the sun is completely below the horizon, comes "twilight" which has three distinct phases each lasting about 30 minutes. Then it is officially "nighttime." Many people leave as soon as the sun has set but there is still more to the show for those who stay. We hiked back to the lodge during twilight as we didn't bring flashlights. What an incredible encore!

This was shot during the second phase of twilight (called nautical twilight). Robust pinks and purples shot across a blue canvas - exquisite! 

We did a couple of virtual geocaches at the Grand Canyon. Most National Parks don't allow physical geocaches so geocachers came up with virtual ones where you answer questions about a cache site using the coordinates they give or take a photo of something there showing you found it. Virtual geocaches are usually historic and often educational with interesting information included in the geocache description online. On the way home, however, we were ready for some serious hunting and found four geocaches. If nothing else, it makes us get out of the car and stretch our legs!

The one on the right was a typical cache - a camo'd container hidden under a log. But the one on the left was very clever using a tape measure (retractable) attached to a string that you had to pull to bring the cache down. You never know what you're gonna get until you find it!

We had a most enjoyable getaway as we spent some time with friends and escaped the heat for a couple of days. Although we do several during the summer,  we hardly ever do a weekend getaway during the winter.

I LOVE SUMMER!!!

lovin' summer #9

When our kids were young, they looked forward to spending  four or five days every summer staying with their grandparents, both of whom lived in the same area we did. I knew they enjoyed it but I didn't realize until this summer how much the grandparents enjoyed it.

Our oldest grandchild, Christopher, flew home with us after our visit to his house and spent the first two weeks of August here at our house. Although he visited us while we were living in Maryland three years ago, this was his first solo visit to our home in Arizona and he was VERY excited. So were we.

Christopher wanted to spend A LOT of time in the pool, see some Arizona sights and just spend time with us. He would also celebrate his tenth birthday while he was here so he wanted a little family party. We wanted to spend lots of time with him and spoil him just a bit - we are, after all, grandparents!

I remember my mother and my mother-in-law telling me how helpful and polite our children were when they stayed with them. Sometimes I wondered whose children they had and what had they done with mine. But now it was my turn to experience the grandparent end as Christopher helped me with household chores like taking out the trash, emptying the dishwasher and vacuuming the tile as his mother wondered who this helpful and cooperative child was we had at our house. I let a lot of my chores slide while he was here but having help with the bare necessities meant we had more time to play and have fun. To do things like...

Christopher dramatically improved his swimming skills as well as learned to snorkel... but not before getting several mouthfuls of water. And, of course, sometimes it's good to just relax!

.... and, of course...

We saw THREE movies (Despicable Me 2, Planes and Smurfs 2 - all good flicks!). We tried out a new (to me) coffee place where Christopher had his first (decaf) mocha - definitely something he wants to do again! We both like to do jigsaw puzzles and he picked out a challenging (ages 12 and up) 250-piece puzzle. We had a great time working on it together and finished it the day before he left!

After seeing Despicable Me 2, Christopher decided he wanted to make Minion cupcakes for his birthday party. HE found a recipe online and we went to work. Actually, the only thing I did was put the cupcake pans in and out of the oven and frost the cupcakes - he did everything else!

Aren't they cute? He had a family swim party to celebrate his 10th birthday here and then another party once he got home. 

Seeing some Arizona sights was a high priority for Christopher... we wanted to escape the heat for a weekend... so we headed up to Flagstaff to do some exploring. He REALLY likes the song Route 66 (Chuck Berry) and we listened to it many times in the car and finally opened up the sunroof and blasted the song, singing at the top of our voices, as we drove along a portion of Route 66. Then we drove through Winona ("You'll see Amarillo...Gallup, New Mexico... Flagstaff, Arizona and don't forget Winona...") just to see where it was... and to say we've been there. After all, how many 5th graders living on the east coast can make that claim? 

Meteor Crater was a hit (what 10-year old boy doesn't like stuff from outer space crashing into the earth?) as was Bearizona. The ski lift ride up San Francisco Mountain  was a little scary for both Christopher and me, but we persevered and loved the view from the top. A trip isn't complete without picking up a few geocaches - after all, what 10-year old boy doesn't like searching for treasure?

We spent two weeks making memories and really getting to know our oldest grandson. It was a very special time for us and could only happen during the summer!

I LOVE SUMMER!!!

50 shades of summer - july

I know this is the third week of August and I am just now posting my July activities. August has been busy, busy, busy with all kinds of fun things. But more on that later!

July was also a very busy month with a holiday weekend and a vacation to North Carolina but I still was able to get ten items crossed off my list. Activites were a little more varied this month - trying a new fruit, watching a couple of movies and shooting Peeps, to name a few.

Several activities this month were solitary ones that took me back to my childhood. I have loved writing letters (and receiving them!) since I was a child. Email, text messaging and free long distance phone calls have all but eliminated that pastime and finding stationery (not note cards) was, not surprisingly, difficult. I finally found some I liked online (because stationery stores are also a thing of the past... sigh...) and wrote a letter (#14) to a friend of mine who is in her 80's and not able to get out much. Although I send her cards somewhat regularly, this was the first, but hopefully not the last, letter I've mailed her.

Although I still have some puzzles I enjoyed doing when I was younger, I bought a special jigsaw puzzle to put together - a 1000-piece puzzle in the shape of the state of Arizona with iconic Arizona places and things as part of the picture - which took us about a week to complete (#3). Of course there was a saguaro cactus, a roadrunner, a gila monster, the Grand Canyon, Indian ruins, golf courses and the like but imagine my surprise when a Green Bay Packer player appeared in the middle of my puzzle (and not on the picture on the box!)! An email to the company cleared up the mystery; it was a misprint and the puzzle was pulled and is no longer sold. Yippee - I have a limited edition!!

From the time I was about eight until I left home to get married, I loved to sit on the patio with my dad and watch a summer rain storm - thunder was a bonus. As the years have passed, I have taken less and less time to just sit and watch a storm which is why it was on my list (#41). We had a doozy of a rainstorm on July 16th and I watched it for over an hour as I sipped my iced tea on the patio. I enjoyed the melodic plink... plink... plink and later the swoosh of the water pouring out of the downspout. I embraced the cool drops on my skin as I moved some pool toys to a more secure spot. When the rain stopped, I could smell the sweet, clean scent that comes after a desert rain. And when I thought it couldn't get any better, I was treated to a most fabulous sunset (#9) that I watched for 20 minutes. It was a truly outstanding way to spend a late afternoon!

Lots of retailers promote Christmas in July but we found Christmas in July in two unexpected places. The new fruit I tried (#6) was a Santa Claus melon (of the muskmelon family), a football-shaped melon with a very thick green-striped rind and creamy white flesh. It is a sweet melon with a distinctive flavor that tastes a little bit like a casaba melon - quite delicious. In the US they are grown in California and Arizona and are harvested from June to October with July being peak season. So why the name Santa Claus? Because they keep until Christmas! We also went to an outdoor concert (#12) in Glendale on a hot July evening. The Glendale Summer Band just finished their 47th season and is the longest-running community band in Arizona. Musicians from middle schools, high schools, colleges and adults of all ages and professions join together to perform eight concerts in June and July. I loved watching a young trumpeter and two old-timers animatedly talk about the music they were about to perform with each learning something from the other. The concert we attended was a tribute to the music of the movies and held the audience captive for over an hour! So where was Christmas? For their encore, they played a tune with Stars and Stripes Forever and Jingle Bells merged together. We could discern each song separately, yet it was together in a new song. Amazing!

Friends are important to us. The 4th of July is our annual Peep Shoot with our MR KLUD friends and, as always, we had a fabulous time shooting Peeps with our BB/pellet guns (#33). Later in the month, another friend hurt her back and I took dinner over to them (#37). While I had intended to pick a friend at random to take dinner to, this friend was picked for me!

Finally, we watched two movies that were released in July - Back To The Future (1985 and #26)) and Lone Ranger (2013 and #21). Back To The Future was every bit as fun now as it was 28 years ago! Although most of the critics did not like Lone Ranger, we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was especially fun to see the places in Canyon de Chelly that our Navajo guide showed us last year (he was a guide for the actors in the movie).

So far, I've completed 21 things on my list of 50 things to do this summer. You can see why August has been busy, busy, busy!! Stay tuned...

lovin' summer #8

So far all of our grandkids (also known as "my sweethearts") live across the country from us. We talk on the phone and have the occasional Skype visit to keep in touch but it's not the same as going to visit them in person.  I feel very fortunate to be able to visit them several times a year. We try to go once during the summer while they don't have school so we can spend A LOT of time doing all kinds of fun "kid" things.

We returned from just such a visit a little over a week ago. It was a time of running through the sprinklers (okay, I did NOT participate in this activity, but it was fun to watch the kids!), playing board games, reading books, making funny faces, swimming, coloring, including the kids in a favorite activity of ours - geocaching, listening to hundreds of stories (real and make-believe) and answering a zillion questions (my favorite ones were questions about what their mother was like as a child!).

Notes: No trespassing occurred while searching for this geocache and playing with your food is perfectly acceptable if Grandma says it's ok.

I LOVE SUMMER!!!

history revisited

I just finished reading an interesting book in a genre I had never heard of before - alternate history or uchronia. It is a fictional genre in which a few true historical facts are altered yielding a completely different story. The book I read was "The Year of the Hangman" by Gary Blackwood, an excellent read! For more information about this genre and a list of over 3100 novels, stories, etc., visit Uchronia: The Alternate History List.

Everyone knows the real story of the American Revolution - that the colonies defeated the British and became an independent country, the United States of America. Blackman wrote a story about what might have happened if the British won and the colonists were pursued and hung as the traitors they were.

I won't give away the story but it made me think bout how different life would have been for our founding fathers. Many of them were landowners of considerable wealth. What if they lost everything and had to flee for their life? Ben Franklin invented many things (bifocals and the lightning rod, to name a few), established our first lending library and fire station, and founded the first nonreligious college (University of Pennsylvania) as well as helped establish our government. What would have happened if he moved to France when trouble between the colonies arose? George Washington became the Father of our country and shaped the office of the president. What if he had instead died a traitor?

And if all that happened, how different would our lives be over 200 years later? I might be enjoying a cuppa (tea, not coffee!) and scone (not muffin) as I anxiously awaited news of the new Royal Baby. Interesting to ponder...

something you'll want to catch

We recently watched an episode of "The Middle" (airs Wednesdays on ABC) where Sue, the middle child and only girl in the family, must come up with a hypothesis for her high school science class and then test and evaluate her findings. To add to the drama, Sue's teacher seems to dislike her immensely.

Sue, played by Eden Sher, is the epitome of the socially awkward high school girl - friendly and sweet to everyone but definitely dances to her own drum. While the other students in her science class have hypotheses that would rival those of biochemistry doctoral students, Sue's is more of the 5th grade science fair caliber - "Smiles are contagious."

I won't give away any more of the show but it got me to think about whether or not smiles ARE contagious. After all, yawns are. And laughing seems to be. So I conducted my own definitely unscientific experiment.

One very hot day in July, I went to the post office (some would say the crankiest place in town!), the bank, the gas station, Target and the grocery store. I smiled at every person I either had direct contact with (the bank teller, for example) or merely passed in an aisle or saw from afar (like at the gas station) and recorded whether or not they smiled back. When I tallied the results, I was both surprised and not surprised.

My results were both different and consistent with Sue's but you'll have to watch the episode to find out how. Out of 53 (yes, that's fifty-three!) people I smiled at, all but seven smiled back at me. Of the seven who did not, one was an elderly man who seemed pretty cranky (his wife did smile back, though) and six were young teenagers who looked at me like I was crazy - I definitely detected some eye-rolling! The 46 people who returned my smile ranged in age from toddlers to elderly, more females than males (although I did not keep track of gender for an accurate count).

I was not surprised that an overwhelming majority (87%) smiled back at me. I do believe that smiles are contagious and that the simple act of a smile can cheer someone up, turn their frown upside down or just let them know you noticed them. What did surprise me was that I encountered 53 people in the course of doing a few errands one afternoon. Wow! Fifty-three opportunities to possibly make a difference in someone's life, to let them know they were noticed.

And I bet YOU smiled just looking at all these sweet smiles!

This experiment has made me determined to be more aware of people around me (it's easy to withdraw into myself and not even notice people) and to smile at them. And I noticed that I was blessed when they smiled back - we had a brief moment of connection. In my book, that's a win-win situation!

"A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit."  Proverbs 15:13