And the heat goes on....

This week has been particularly hot. One day, it hit 115.

The seminary classroom is finished!  Here are the final photos.  We are going to miss the nice general contractor, Bob, who reminded us a little of our now deceased friend Bob Eschrich.  Just give him a few more inches and he would be even more like him.   Now all the room needs is furniture (oh, please, put in a real piano!) and students.  School starts on August 7th so it won't be long, now....

We've enjoyed some dramatic skies again this week - and even some rain.

It amazes me that, even in Arizona's intense heat, plants will bloom!  The yellow flower is from a bush and the lavender one is from a tree.  The white flower is in our back yard.

This is my every-morning task - water the last remaining tomato plant and the basil plant.  As you can see through the net, the tomato plant is struggling.

Here we are with Elders Williams, Evans, and sisters K. Brown and Berry at Blaze Pizza.  The sisters you might recognize from several blogs back when they helped us transport some new vehicles off the car lot to the mission office.  They were back in the office last Tuesday and when they learned that I had forgotten my lunch at home, they suggested Blaze Pizza since that's where they were going with a bogo coupon.  Steve and I wanted to take Elders Williams and Evans out anyway since Elder Williams has been our new bike repair missionary and he is returning home on July 31st.  Blaze offers a gluten-free crust.  It was pretty good and it was so fun to share a meal with these missionaries.

Speaking of eating out, Steve and I had Culver's coupons so that was our Friday night date, along with going to the temple.  

Saturday was a senior zone conference down in Phoenix.  I was asked to put together a musical number and I knew just what I would do - Rob Gardner's arrangement of  Savior Redeemer of my Soul.  Elder Fawson is an excellent violinist and Sister Garrick has a nice, innocent voice and I played piano.  It is mostly in the key of E (4 sharps!) so I practiced my part as much as possible on the piano at the mission office.  There is a piano there because, when President and Sister Collins arrived, they brought their own baby grand to the mission home and they had the existing piano moved to the mission office.  It comes in very handy for Monday office meetings and giving Scott Collins piano lessons.  But, it cannot be played on Tuesdays and Thursdays when a certain part-time Family Services counselor is working because she won't put up with the "noise".  And, of course, I DO have mission office duties all week so I couldn't do unlimited practice.  Happily, we all three did a decent job at the performance.  

This morning, I woke up at 6:30 to a text message from Amy Ellsworth inviting us to Cade and Colby's missionary farewell today..... at 8:30am!  So, we scurried around (a la Home Alone) and made it just in time.  SOOO glad we made the effort.  Jerri was there, Rob and Joanne, Emily and Brig and family, and, of course Atley and Camden and the twins since it is also their ward.  The boys talks were just wonderful.  They will be serving three days a week from noon to 4:00 in the Records Operations Center in downtown Mesa.  The center supports Family Search and prepares images for indexing and publication.  A perfect mission for them! 

July 16th through the 21st

It is hot, even in the early morning.  Only the air conditioned home, car, and mission office make it bearable.  And, thankfully, July pushes on....

It was particularly quiet at the mission office this week and I was able to start a new family history project.  For the last 14 years of his life, my grandfather Young kept a daily diary.  I am not sure they even make them now but, back then, they had Five-Year Diaries.  They were small - about 4 X 5 inches - and each page at the date of the year.  But, the page was divided down into five sections, one for each of five years.  So, each year, you wrote about that particular day in one of the sections.  Ultimately, each page had five different years worth of accounts written in each of the five sections:

January 1, 1950
January 1, 1951
January 1, 1952
January 1, 1953
January 1, 1954

I started transcribing the year 1950's diary entries.  It is easy because the entries are obviously short.  It is hard because my grandfather's handwriting is in the old-fashioned style of cursive and because his spelling was not always the best and because he sometimes abbreviated words to save space.  Thank goodness for magnifying glasses!  He was born in 1883 so by the time he is writing, he is 67.  And, he is still working his small farm!  Amazing.

The mission acquired two new vehicles this past week - another Toyota Tacoma and a Chevy Silverado.  I got to help Steve bring them back to the mission office.  The Chevy dealer was almost to downtown Phoenix and on my way back, I checked out a bakery that specializes in gluten-free.  I bought a cinnamon roll to eat for Saturday breakfast.  It was yummmmm. 

A woman came into the building this past week with this adorable little dog named Daisy.  She is a Chug (Chihuahua and Pug mix).  I got to hold this sweet little critter and it made my day!


Friday night, Steve and I watched the 1964 movie The Great Escape.  We know this movie but it was fun to watch it again.

Saturday, after Noah's piano lesson and going to the temple, the plan was to visit the Musical Instrument Museum after lunch.  Then, while visiting with a group of four missionaries - Elders Hinckley, Karl, De La Cruz, and Perry - during the week, they somehow ended up being invited to our place for dinner Saturday evening.  They had heard about my homemade onion rings.  They had a big bag of charcoal just sitting in their apartment.  So a feast of grilled burgers and brauts, watermelon, corn on the cob, onion rings, potato salad, and ice cream was planned and we still hoped to visit the MIM.  Then, Saturday morning, they called to ask if we could bump the dinner to 4:00 so they could attend a baptism.  OK.  We'll just move the MIM visit to August.  And, with that taken out of the picture, I had one of the most relaxing Saturdays ever!  I even found myself with nothing to do.  (that hardly ever happens)  I took a nap without setting an alarm. I finished a watercolor project.  I practiced.  I sewed.  I watched the Brendan Fraser version of Journey to the Center of the Earth.  We watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Pioneer Day concert.  The dinner went perfectly and we have leftovers!!

We haven't had quit the rain we got last week but, in true monsoon form, the skies regularly have huge billowing cumulus clouds.  This was Thursday evening over Daisy Mountain in Anthem. 

This is desert sage.  It blooms in the dead of summer.  Stunning!

So, even amidst the oppressive heat of summer, there is still beauty.

Monsoon season has finally arrived!!!

Every day last week, there were billowing white and gray clouds somewhere in the Arizona sky.  And rain has fallen.  Arizona monsoons are often quite violent and this is what we encountered on our Tuesday morning bike ride.  A palo verde tree completely uprooted.  

Folks around here complain about the humidity brought on by the monsoons - 35%!  Poor babies.  All I can say is I hope they never have to live in Missouri with 85% humidity.   I can remember when I was a girl visiting my sister, Jerri, and her family who lived in Mesa.  The typical type of air conditioning at that time in the Phoenix valley was the swamp cooler based upon the evaporation principle: a fan blowing air over a water saturated pad.  As you can imagine, THAT didn't help much during the monsoons and I recall laying on the couch right under the air conditioning vent and still feeling miserably hot and sticky.

We now have two senior sister missionaries serving in the mission - Sisters Jones and Ziegler.  They came to the office Friday morning just as our regular start-of-the-day devotional began.  They took our photo and joined us for the spiritual thought and prayer.  That is Elder Wall on the right.  

My music teaching has eased up a bit this summer - Scott is not doing piano lessons at all until school begins and Erik and his family are in Nauvoo during the month of July to participate in the pageant.  All I have is Lottie.  I was a bit concerned about her cello position during Thursday's lesson so I took a photo of her and had her take a photo of me so she could compare and see what we should fix.  I'll share those photos...

In my continuing sewing endeavors I worked on a blouse for me and I have watched five of the six episodes of the BBC "Pride and Prejudice", the "Princess Bride", and the movie "Get Smart".  Steve remarked that, while "Get Smart" was appealing to all ages, that only the Boomers could really appreciate it since they grew up on the original show.  I agree.  It produced quite a few belly laughs. 

The Phoenix Temple is only about a fifteen minute drive away.  Because of it's proximity, and because of the messages given in the last General Conference about temple attendance, Steve and I are trying to attend once a week - usually on Saturdays.  I am loving it.  

4th of July

This past week was a Zone Conference week.  Steve has to attend all four but I get to select the day I will attend - which was on Tuesday this time.    It was held in Prescott Valley, about an hour and a half away and about fifteen degrees cooler!  On the day I attend, I don't go into the office.  

The Anthem community holds their 4th of July fireworks show on the 3rd of July.  Hmmmm.  We were invited to the home of Bob and Sue Hall that evening for a potluck dinner and the opportunity to view the fireworks from their back yard which provided a perfect, unobstructed view of the city park where the fireworks are launched.  Many fireworks displays were cancelled this year due to the extreme drought conditions but the Anthem park is green and well watered and they evidently sprayed down the washes (full of desert-type growth) so the fire hazard was minimum.  Temperatures at 9:30 were still pushing 100 degrees but we enjoyed a pretty spectacular show.  We even got to watch the Lake Pleasant fireworks show in the far distance.   

On the actual 4th of July, the mission office was closed so I got to stay home a second day. BUT, Zone Conferences were still held.  It's location was quite close and Steve just went long enough to make his vehicle safety presentation which is always just after lunch.  We invited our ward missionaries over for hamburgers that evening.  Because of the holiday, they were not allowed to proselyte after 6:00 so they just stayed and we played games (Spot It and dominoes).  In-between, Steve and I watched the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers (a pre-mission tradition).  We watched The Return of the King Friday night.  And, because we had some free time Thursday night, we watched Life of Pi.  And, last night, we watched Penelope on Netflix.  Quite the movie-watching week!  

On one of our morning walks this week, I spotted this nest built in a cholla cactus.  I believe it belongs to a curve billed thrasher based on the egg color and nest shape

On that same walk I took photos of other bird nests - no eggs in them as far as I could tell.  The first one is in an ocatillo. The last three are in cholla and you can see how the birds use all kinds of materials for their construction.  They might belong to a cactus wren....

The prickly pear are now in fruit...which are also prickly!!!

This is what the tall stalk in our front yard now looks like...

My poor tomatoes are struggling with this extreme heat.  I water them every morning but the plants are not producing blossoms any longer and the tomatoes just seem to bleach rather than turn deep red.  The basil in the middle, however, is doing very well.  I think I already reported that I pulled up the squash and beans over a month ago.  They just couldn't cope with the heat and sun.

Kid's news:  

Steven and Tamara linked up with cousins Brent and Susette and their family in Nauvoo on July 4th.  The Bowdens are doing an epic church history tour and Steven and Tamara were on their way up to her brother's in Michigan for a week.

Sarah was offered a full-time, permanent job at the Ogden Nature Center!  This is what we have all been hoping and praying for.

A rather non-busy week in June

Behold the almost finished seminary classroom!  Carpet was just put down this past week.  They still need to put up lights, ceiling fans, and projector.   Plus, the bottom photo shows that the door separating the classroom from our living quarters still needs to be installed.  Between the door and the window will be storage cabinets.  It should be done soon.  

I received two gift cards to Abuelos (think Macaroni Grill for Mexican food) and we used one yesterday for lunch.  Mmmmm.  And leftovers!  We watched "Stardust" Friday night and "Walt Before Micky" last night.  Stardust is always fun.  The Disney biopic was rather slow paced  (It felt like it was made by the Hallmark channel, to tell the truth) and it was depressing!  It took so many tries before Disney became the icon we know today.  It was also strange to see John Heder in a serious role (he played Roy Disney).  I finished a book called Born on a Blue Day which is a memoir by Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant.  I have taught autistic music students so it was quite enlightening. 

That is about all the exciting happenings I can think of.  Most of the drama we experience this week was through our children.  Tamara returning from Arizona/Mexico with a horrible case of food poisoning.  Emily enduring a week without Joe and celebrating her 41st birthday with her photography website irretrievably crashing.  Elise looking into a media specialist job with Columbia Public Schools (which I really really hope she gets!).  Beckie having been called back a third time for a job with the Four Seasons Hotel (another really really hope)  and learning that she has to find a new place to live by the end of August.  and Sarah getting an interview with the Ogden Nature Center (yet another really really hope).  My gray hair got grayer this week over all this tension.

I hope to have great news next week as well as a report of our 4th of July activities.