To be completely honest I do not find the desert all that beautiful, there just isn’t enough variety for me.  There are parts of Arizona that are beautiful (the red rocks of Sedona, the painted desert, Alpine) but here in the Valley it is almost always brown with a shade or two of beige.

When my husband and son were in the WY this past weekend I decided it might be a good time to take the girls to the Desert Botanical Garden’s Butterfly exhibit.  I had also heard that the gardens were in bloom and thought it might be nice to see the brief beauty the desert offers.

The desert did not disappoint!  Cacti were in bloom all over- yellow, orange, pink and red.  I don’t think my daughters noticed a single flower, all the my oldest was interested in were the benches and the butterflies!

She and her friend who came with us stood as still as they good and extended their arms and fingers as perches…as close as they could with out actually touching the butterflies.  Nearly begging the insects to please land on them!  It was pretty cute and silly!

If you are in the Valley and want to pretend that we have spring- then go and go quick (there is even a groupon)!  With 100 degree temps about a week away it is almost time for our annual six month hibernation.  Enjoy the brief beauty while you can.

I love a good parade, before I die I hope to see the Rose Bowl Parade (from the side walk, not the couch).

This year we went to the Mesa Veteran’s Day Parade, breaking from our Tempe tradition.  I have such respect for the men and women (and especially the families) who serve our country.  I cried through nearly the whole parade.

The Blue Star Mother’s marched by and my son asked me if I wanted to be in that group.  I nearly choked over my answer explaining that the members of the group are women whose children are soldiers fighting in a war.  How I could only be in their group if he or his sisters joined the armed forces.

And then the marching band went by and I smiled.  I love a good marching band, the drums are just the best!

October was a busy month at our house and time together was at a minimum so Aaron and I planned a Saturday escape with the kids.  We put it on the calendar and then made it a priority- many other invitations popped up for that day but we held fast to our plan!

We packed the cooler and headed to Oak Creek Canyon with the kids.  West Fork Trail was super doable for our 2 year old (we didn’t hike the full trail) and very beautiful.  It was so popular though, we had to wait 15 min for someone to leave so we could park!  The leaves were all sorts of beautiful shades of orange, gold, yellow, red and brown, it was the perfect fall fix for a desert dweller.

The kids climbed and wondered and really seemed to enjoy themselves.  Well…accept for the 2year old who decided she was done walking and would begin shrieking- which of course echoed through the canyon walls (alerting other hikers to our presence well before we were in sight) until one of us picked her up (usually me as she has an aversion to her Dad’s arms- crazy kid doesn’t know what she’d missing!).

We picnicked before heading down the trail and while we ate the kids could hear the sounds of croaking frogs and chirping crickets.  Anytime I can I try to point out the sounds of nature to the kids.  One of my favorite sounds is that of a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of a tree, such a beautifully calming sound!  I was totally astonished at how many people used their cell phones to play music as they walked along the trail!  Not only did I think it was rude to impose your music on nearby hikers, I thought it was counter productive to being out in nature.  Such an odd thing….in my opinion.

**All of the pictures in this post were edited using Instagram Photoshop Actions by dbox.  If you love Instagram filters and use photoshop this is the best of both worlds and really fun to play with!**

The weather is finally starting to get cooler, our highs are now in the 80′s with lows in 60′s.  To most of the world those temperatures reflect summer, but here we consider that fall and break out the sweaters.  If you live here long enough your blood begins to run cold and 70 degrees feels like winter.

Yesterday we took advantage of the cooler weather (the kids were on break) with a trip to our favorite local park.  It was breezy and beautiful.  The scene was marred only by the shrieking yelps of my 2year old who threw more temper tantrums in a 2 hour period than I knew was possible.  No amount of redirection seemed to help.  Looking at her face in the above picture it seems hard to imagine that she could not be sweet and adorable all the time….but let me tell you; yesterday I would have shipped her to grandma’s if I could have!

It was one of those days that only a girls night out can heal. Thankfully my 3 favorite friends gathered for late night sushi and ice cream last night!  I’m crossing my fingers that today will be better, if not, Sonic Happy Hour starts at 2pm!

Yesterday morning we woke up to cooler temps, cloudy skies and a bit of a breeze.  Only in Arizona would I consider 94 “cooler temps”, but that is 20 cooler (yes, you did the math right) than Monday.  C was kinda edgy all morning, as if she was on the brink of throwing a temper tantrum.  I packed her up and we went to the park to enjoy that 20 degree drop in temperature.

I’m not near as fun to play with as her big sister, but we had a good time and I remembered to bring the big camera.  Since I’ve had my new phone it seems I never lug the big camera around anymore.  The quality of photos my phone takes simply can not compare to the D70, so I’ve vowed to take more “real” photos of the kids!

Here’s to  “cooler” days and more rain!

This summer has been one of the busiest that I can remember, it seems that at least one of us, if not all of us, is coming or going.  The days when we are still are crammed with a mixture of life and business.

sugar bowl in scottsdale, AZ

I feel like my time and attention are constantly split between so many things.  How can i spread myself between all three children and make sure each is getting what they need? I keep thinking what can I cut out, or how can I structure my life so I can focus on one thing at a time?   I am beginning to understand that life just doesn’t work like that.  This is life, it is what it is.  There will always be important things competing for my attention.

I don’t think times were ever simpler I think the strains and stresses were just different.  Life is truly a balancing act.

Bosa Donuts Tempe, Az

To keep the balance I am constantly evaluating the priority of the demands.  I am so good and putting the less important things near the top of my list in an effort to avoid the hard or complicated more important concerns, convincing myself that the priority is right.  I am constantly keeping myself in check…urging myself to do the work, for it will mean more in the end.

Sweeties, Chandler, AZ

When the day ends and the lights go out, I must hold myself accountable to my children and my husband.  Because in the end, they are it, all that really matters.

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
? Mae West

Saturday evening we celebrated a fun swim team season with a team party at the Mesquite Groves Aquatic Center (really great public pool, but only if you live out that way, it was quite a haul for us!).  My kids had a great time running walking around, going down the slides, floating in the lazy river and swirling around the whirlpool.  I enjoyed time alone on the pool deck (it seems alone time is in short supply during the summer months!).

I reflected on the season and feel so grateful that we finally found a sport that was a good fit for the boy.  When he was younger we did a season of soccer.  He got bored of running back and forth across the field for the ball, kept running out of a game to the sidelines to ask us what time it was (???!!!) and just generally did not enjoy it.  A year or two later we signed him up for little league…most of the boys had been playing for a few years already so there was a learning curve.  He didn’t always do well, which lead to a stubborn tendency to quit trying (major problem in my book!).  While we wanted to give him opportunities to get past this problem, we also felt it wasn’t fair for the whole team to suffer while our son figured things out.  We went a few years without sports until my husband started rallying around swimming, and we signed him up.

His first week or so of practice I wondered if he would “get it”.  His first meet was terrible.  He came in dead last on all events.  He was crushed, which meant he acted out in anger.  He told us he was done with swimming and that it was stupid.  We let him calm down and told him he was not quitting and we talked about practice and working hard to improve.  We watched youtube clips of Michael Phelps, I asked my son if he thought he was as good a swimmer as Michael (he said No). We talked about how if he quit he would never get any better, but that if he kept trying by the time he was 19 or 20 he could be a much faster stronger swimmer.

Miracle of all miracles, I think he listened to us.  At his next meet we told him it didn’t matter how he placed (first second or dead last), that his only goal should be to beat his own last times.  As long as he was improving and doing his best we were proud of him.  Oh, the tender mercies, he placed second, second, fourth and fifth in the next meet, beating all of his previous times!  I know earning second place really boosted his self esteem, and I was so glad for that.  He was all over the place the rest of the season, but he took the losses so much better by focusing on his times and how much he was improving.

Hooray for swim team and hooray for my son learning the value of working hard at something and seeing the results!  You can bet we’ll be swimming again next summer (my daughter wants to be on the team too!).

It’s regularly over 100 degrees these days….besides swimming there isn’t much you can do to cool down.

The kids get out of school the end of this week (!!!!!).  I keep reading on blogs about how moms can’t wait for the kids to be out of school.  Call me crazy but I dread it.  I like the order to our day that school brings, for me order=calm!

My plan for this week is to create some sort of summer schedule- to bring order and variety to our days.  It will probably be something like, Morning Chores (make bed, clean something) trip to the library, bowling alley, public pool, splash park, movie theater etc…, lunch, nap time/movie time for older kids/mom’s sanity time, dinner and time with Dad!

How do you keep your kids from climbing the walls during the looooong hot summer?

I hate when the blog sits vacant for so long…I want to post, but I think, “eh, I got nothing”, then the pressure builds and it turns into a cycle of not writing.  Anyone have any good ideas for summer writing prompts?  Writing prompts were the things I really appreciated about my (now done) writing course…It gave me a plan and a direction and caused me to look at like through a different lens in looking for a story to tell.  So, if you’ve got some prompts, I’d love to hear ‘em!!

Monday night we went here, the kids were begging to go walk around, despite the triple digit heat.  I brought the wide angle lens because it does well in low light, but it made it hard to photograph the whole building the way I wanted.  So I settled for capturing the flowers.

Someone once told me they employ thirty full time gardeners at the Temple, I can believe it!  The grounds are always so beautiful with all sorts of blooming flowers- year round!  I wish I could employ someone to make my yard look so nice year round.

Flowers that bloom year round…in the desert!  That is really saying something.  As we walked around I realized that the Temple is really an oasis in the desert, both literally and figuratively. You can easily walk the grounds and admire all of the beautiful greenery and forget that you are in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

And, when you think about all that goes on inside the Temple, it can be a real relief from the daily trials of life.

There are two visuals that come to mind when I hear the word “summer”.  One is bright green grass bathed in bright white sunlight, the sun is intense.  The other is kind of a dying grass bathed in a dusty orange and pink light, the heat is warm- but not in an overpowering way.

It is summer here in Arizona, in both senses of the word.  I captured this a few weeks back (our first 100 degree day of the year!).  I think the light and the processing just perfectly captures the dusty orange and pink of summer.