Life in Arizona Heat Update :)

This post is a solid week overdue. Oops.

It's been a busy few weeks. I've officially survived the first two weeks of the school year, and am really liking my seniors...so far :) I think in the spring, when the fact that many of them still don't have the credits to graduate starts to hit home, things will be quite a bit stressful. For now though, they are relatively mature and fun to work with.

Last year my district had half days for students and teacher meetings every Friday. This year, they've switched to full day Fridays and half days every other Wednesday. I have no idea what the theory is behind this but I'm not a huge fan. The first week, without a half day Wednesday, went even faster than this last week, with a half day. Wednesday felt like Friday, and surviving the rest of the week was a little rough.

We took this weekend just to relax. On Friday night I met up with Rob after work and we went out for drinks and appetizers. Then yesterday, we went on an excursion to Trader Joe's and ended up creating our own appetizer night at home...homemade breadsticks, onion rings and stuffed portobello mushrooms. I tried really hard to like the mushrooms, but yuck. I think next weekend we will try to get back into the house projects and add handles to the kitchen cabinets. The garage door opener still needs to be installed, but we're dragging our feet on heading out to the garage in the heat.

Last weekend, we took a day trip up to the rim above a small city called Payson. It was much farther north and a good bit cooler. In the morning, we stayed lower and Rob fished a little in a river, but didn't have much fishing luck. We both jumped across the rocks in the river, which I loved. We headed up to the rim in the afternoon and did a little bit of off roading to get to the area we wanted. There is an awesomely pretty lake and a nice camping area that we headed to. Rob fished in the lake, and again didn't catch anything other than crayfish, and I sat in a lawn chair and read.

We grilled hot dogs and made s'mores for dinner over a campfire...I made mine with peanut butter cups...delicious!

Because I'm a wussy camper, we drove back to Phoenix that night for a shower in our shower and a good nights sleep in our bed :)

Also, thank you to everyone who called and sent cards and gifts to celebrate my birthday almost two weeks ago now :) I had to work on my birthday, which was a little less than ideal, but I survived the school day, and came home to lots of presents to open and a pink cake that Rob baked me. It was an all around awesome day!

There is a ridiculous amount of dishes left from our appetizer cooking last night that Rob just started washing. I think it'd be best if I jumped off of here and started helping. Hope everyone is having a good weekend, and that everyone heading back to school around now has a good first day/week/school year :) Love, Sarah and Rob

The Agnews' Visit :)

This weekend was amazing. Seriously, best way to end the summer. (Yes, I'm headed back to school tomorrow. Technically, mandatory meetings start Thursday, but I need to get my room set up, write some lesson plans, write and copy a syllabus and knock out a few other items on the school to-do list so I'm picking up keys and getting to work a few days earlier.) Before I get into all the fantastic details of this weekend though, let's back track a bit to last weekend. Just so things stay chronological and easy to follow.

Rob and I decided not to head up north last weekend. The weather had been cooler (for Phoenix, at least) and we felt like we could get a lot of work done on the house in preparation for the Agnews' visit. On Saturday, we bought a kitchen table. And assembled a kitchen table. All that took a good bit of the afternoon. Up until that point, our table only had seating for 2 people, which worked for Rob and I, but left us dragging out computer chairs anytime we had company over. Our new table is a countertop height with four barstool like chairs. I love it :) We had Davina and Brian over for dinner and drinks last Saturday to celebrate the new table and catch up. It was another really good evening.

Throughout the week we tried to knock a few other things off our endless house project to-do list. :) I finally broke down and cleaned the guest bedroom window and hung curtains to match the room.

We also hung the mirror that Rob's Aunt Sue gave him in the guest room and hung a few other picture collages up throughout the house.

Anna and Jeff came into town this weekend for a wedding, which, conveniently, was on Friday night. Anna came in on Thursday, and we picked her up from the rehearsal dinner Thursday night, but Jeff's plane didn't come in until Friday afternoon. This gave Anna and I time to sleep in and catch up over breakfast on Friday morning. Really though, our adventures took place on Saturday.

We woke up, surprisingly, to rain. It's monsoon season here, and while it's been getting cloudy, dark and even humid on a somewhat regular basis over the past few weeks, we haven't seen too many actual storms. The rain wasn't super ideal because we'd planned on driving up to Sedona and hiking. We still went for a short hike, and while it wasn't raining much at all when we started out on it, at one point there was a pretty steady rain, and the four of us jogged along the trail a little. The cloudy, dreary day masked some of the beauty of Sedona, but we were still able to appreciate some of it.

You can see here how cloudy it was and how low the clouds seemed to be.

We all look a little wet here from the rain :)

We kept our time in Sedona somewhat short and headed back into Phoenix to introduce the Agnews to Oreganos. It was a surprisingly perfect evening. The rain cleared out and it was cool...only about 80 degrees with a nice breeze! Not at all weather you'd expect in Phoenix in August. We sat on the patio for pizza and pizzookie, enjoying the company and the break from the heat (and for the Agnews who are currently in southern Georgia, the humidity as well). 

Rob took them back to the airport today, and headed into work at Cutter a little early. I stayed home to finish up some school work, probably head to the Y here shortly to run off some of that pizza and relax a bit before life gets crazy again tomorrow. I feel fairly ready for it, as things are quieting down around here again. I really want to try and find time to visit all of our friends living all over the place, because we have some pretty awesome friends in some pretty awesome places. (This weekend reminded me of that.) I really like having guests out here, and cooking good food and taking them to see the popular places in Arizona. So, let's plan visits. You come here, we'll go there, it will be splendid. Ready, go. :) Love, Sarah and Rob