Life Lately / Summer 2022

It is officially–big sigh– fall here in sunny hot-as-hell Arizona!

I write this as I sit in a cozy bed in the early morning with a soft thunderstorm rolling in. Naturally, I feel the mad impulse to fake the flu, call out of work, and then snuggle in bed to watch Halloween movies all the live long day.

Yesterday I emerged from my work office on my lunch break and I was like THE CRISP FALL AIR! Nearly twirled in circles and quoted You’ve Got Mail, and then I got into my car and the temp was 88 degrees LOL. Hey, when you’re pushing 115 degrees May-August, 88 DOES feel like a nice, crisp, chill in the air.

We pretty much have our entire house set up for Halloween, babyyy. I did weasel my way into our storage unit in which is packed full of holiday bins (ha ha, this is me, my life??? LOL) and stealthily grabbed our Halloween bins back in, what, July? We kept them in our extra room and I would sneak in to unpack the bins to say an early hello to all of my Halloween beloveds. I can’t help it! Come July 5th my brain defaults to Halloween mode.

And then just this past weekend I arranged our kitchen tiered tray, by packing it with all of the Fall/Halloween goodies to nibble on throughout October, with fun little dollar store witch fingers and vampire fangs and plastic eyeballs thrown in amongst the black and orange M&Ms and Little Debbie cakes and fun size candy bars. Bah!

But.

All of that to say–I actually came on here to update you, my dear darling internet, on Summer! Surprise!

Oh and look, how typical of me, my “I really should blog more” disclaimer that just seems so damn necessary and compulsive on every.single.blog.post because, well, I DO want to blog regularly. I miss it, it’s so cathartic, and self-actualizing –warm fuzzies all around!–but it seems to require a routine.

So! Until I get my act together, here you are! Our summer goings on being reported to you in October!

Imagine you have a bowl of buttery popcorn and I am flipping through a slideshow…1950’s style.

>>Wyatt Earp Days in Tombstone AZ on Memorial Day

The big enchilada of a blog post about this trip you can find HERE.

But what the hell, some pics just for fun.

>>Friday Night Pizza Night

David, the pizza whisperer, made lots of homemade pizza. Mmmm. OH BABY. Somehow he is able to emulate a wood stove pizza in our little basic oven. It’s all very technical which he explained in detail I’m sure but I was probably just eating my pizza and nodding my head.

We’re both highly nostalgic beings so we started this thing where we would watch old TGIF re-runs like Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch while chomping down on delicious pizza. Okay, side note, I forgot how hilarious Salem the black cat from Sabrina was???

>>Some Summer Scenes

Never you mind that filthy window now, this isn’t Better Homes and Gardens but a basic white broad blog, ahem. But this was a lovely summer moment, the blazing glory of an Arizona summer sunset with the Stars and Stripes flapping in the breeze which I enjoyed from inside the house with the AC blasting, probably with a big ole bowl of ice cream.

Summer plants…David is a huge green thumb. His birthday gift every year thus far is to give him money and we go to a big nursery in Tucson and he buys new plants/pots. He’s into Bonsai so the pic on the left is a future Bonsai plant he’s working on.

Me, ever the festive broad, bought some red, white, and blue plants because DUH.

Sonic drinks all damn summer long! Let’s see, we have Shark Week Drink on the left, Sour Patch Kid Slushee. Yes, I’m ten. Not to mention all of my Diet Coke with cherry and lime, and grape lime aids.

I like fun drinks! Sue me! The Sonic staff know me by name!

Pavlova!

Ice cream!

Donuts!

>>Oh Look! Lil’ Festive Me

I’ve already shared a slew of pics of my 4th of July decor but I need to highlight my beloved 4th of July Village *fist in mouth* ! This started as a Covid impulse buy, but now I’m trying to add one thing to my village every summer. This year I tried to buy an old figurine of a Dairy Queen and Mcdonalds on Ebay. Lost the damn bet at the last second. DEVASTATING.

I love fresh flowers:) I was able to buy these lovely sunflowers from the store along with some hydrangeas.

Gosh, I would love to live somewhere where I could grow hydrangeas in the summer. They are so quintessentially summer to me.

>>Our First Wedding Anniversary

We celebrated our FIRST wedding anniversary, hot dog! We went back to Prescott which I will make a separate blog post about. Siiiigh, it was lovely.

This is us, strolling by our wedding house! We got married on the porch of an old house, purrr.

>>Visited My Folks in Wickenburg

After Prescott, we swung by Wickenburg to visit my family. At our wedding reception we served Nothing Bundt cakes for our wedding cake, and we had a mini Nothing Bunt cake to reserve for our first wedding anniversary.

Funny thing is–the arch where we had our wedding cake(s) was still up in my parent’s yard LOL. Yep, a whole year later because we’re classyLOL> Sooo of course we had to eat our anniversary cake there, ba ha ha.

Annnnd coming to Wickenburg usually means my nephew and niece, Jason and Ava, become our proxy children because they absolutely adore David and just tolerate me LOL even though I’m the quintessential obsessed aunt who just wants to pinch their cheeks and bribe them with quarters and such. I miss these kiddos so much.

We had gone to the store and as per usual, Ava hijacked my man.

Driving home with pool noodles, perfect time to perfect my white-woman-in-car-selfie game LOL.

I suckered the kiddos into making an American flag cake with me. We went with a Jell-o poke cake.

>>4th of July

I had these BIG plans for 4th of July once we got home. I’m blaming the heat but, hot damn! we were totally exhausted. So we took it easy, with some gas station snacks, Sonic sodas and binge watched the new series of Stranger Things. We planned on going to see the fireworks but we were groggy by then. I know…this Festive Freak should be ashamed. What can I say? The Arizona heat can just get to you.

Before we hunkered down in our air conditioned laziness, we took an early morning walk, and Thatcher has this tradition where the fire station takes all of their firetrucks on the road and drive through all of the neighborhoods blasting their fire alarms. So that was kind of fun to watch from our walk LOL.

Some scenes from our walk…