21 Day Summer Challenge Day 20

Today's Topic: Summer Outings

Outings so far:

• We have been swimming a few times now that the weather is finally hot enough to allow for out door pool enjoyment.
• We took Austin on his first camping trip when we had a camp for the kids I work with.
• Last week we went to the park to take in a couple of the summer softball league games.  I used to play, but haven't since we  had Austin.  Austin had a blast playing ball with one of the little boys he used to go to daycare with.
• We went to the big city last weekend to see Cars 2.  Austin did really great considering it was a two hour movie.  He sat through the whole movie and only got antsy twice.  Overall we mostly enjoyed it, but I thought it was un-necessarily on the violent side.

Outings to come:

• We are thinking about going camping and fishing this weekend, but we will see how the weather holds out since we are expecting the monsoon any day.
• We will catch the firework display in the town north of us on Monday.
• Our trip to Colorado for the Soundgarden concert.
• More swimming!
• More softball games at the park.
• Western Legends Roundup
• Kaibab Paiute Heritage Days Powwow
• Possibly interview/house hunting trips if either of the jobs we are applying for pan out.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 19

Today's topic: Summer Reading

At one point in my life I used to be a reader, I was always getting awards in school for reading the most.  But then I went to college where they killed my enthusiasm for reading, so I'm not really into it much any more.  I guess I should clarify that I don't really read many books, I of course love to read blogs, I read news articles and I subscribe to Parents and Parenting: The Early Years.  I also read a lot of kiddy books at the moment.  Tonight we read Red Hat, Blue Hat and Goodnight Moon before bed. 

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 18 and 17

Day 18: Summer Fashion

I'm not much of a fashion oriented person.  So long as my clothes are fashion neutral, I am ok.  In the summer I love to wear shorts and short sleeve or tank tops.  When I work in the field I always wear work jeans and boots though no matter how hot it gets, I don't like getting all scratched up. 

Day 17: Summer Camp

I never really went to summer camp as a kid.  I always wanted to go to Girl Scout Camp, but you had to sell a million and five boxes of cookies to do it, and I always just earned enough to go to the day camps a couple of times.  It seems like one year I went ice skating and another year went to Chuck-E-Cheese.  I know at least once my troop had an overnight camp at a cabin in the mountains.


The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college I got a job as a camp counselor in New York.  The camp was two months long and had two one-month sessions.  The kids that we had were mostly wealthy Jewish kids from the city who got sent to camp while their parents vacationed.  They hired staff from all over the world, so it was a pretty interesting experience to meet people from New Zealand, Canada, England, Spain, and Australia, as well as college students from all over the US. During both sessions I was bunked with 9-10 year olds.  I taught arts and crafts during the day for all ages and my subjects were tie-dye and leather craft. 

They basically said "just show up" so when I asked my brother about how to get there, he made all the arrangements for me and met me in New York City for the weekend and then put me on a bus to get to the camp in the Catskill Mountains (really just hills compared to the Rocky Mountains that I grew up in).



Doug and I in NYC, recognize this view?  Hint: You won't be able to see it today.



Yes that picture was at the top of one of the World Trade Center Buildings, hence my fear of going into tall buildings today.

It was mostly pretty typical, what you would expect from a month long sleep-away camp: arts and crafts, swimming, sports, group activities, day trips, etc.  During both sessions they had a week long "color war" where they split the camp into two teams and all activities revolved around competition.  When they "broke" color war they hired someone famous to come and announce it.  The first session the celebrity was the New Jersey Net Basketball Cheerleaders/Dancers, and the second session was WWE wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin.  In other years they have had real celebrities, Toby Maguire, Justin Timberlake, Shaq, so I must admit I was disappointed.

Some of the counselors getting ready for the final night of Color War, we were on the Hawaii Red team. The other team was Alaska White.

Stone Cold Steve Austin



The final night of the second Color War, we were on the Storyland White team.  The other team was Monster Red.



21 Day Summer Challenge Day 16

Day 16: Road Trips

We just so happen to be prepping for our next summer road trip, in July we are driving to Colorado (the greatest state ever!) to go see my family and see Soundgarden at Red Rocks Amphitheater.  I went to Red Rocks several times as a kid to attend Easter Sunrise Service, but have never been there for a concert, so I am way stoked!!!

Thinking back to past summer road trips I remember in February of 2003 I started dating a pretty incredible guy who happened to be from Iowa.  When our spring semester ended that year my sister and I were thinking about road tripping to Iowa to visit our relatives, so we invited my incredible guy along and promised that we would drop him off at my future in-laws house on our way to our relatives.  Who knew at the time that I would be meeting my future in-laws that trip! 

See that was part of the revelation during our first real conversation that got this relationship going, my now husband told me the name of little town in Iowa that he was from and I actually knew where it was because it is on the little highway that we take to visit our relatives who are in the far south east corner of the state.  In fact we had stopped there on a couple of our trips to eat at Hardees.  Now if you have ever met someone from Iowa, you ask them where they are from and they say some little town that no one has ever heard of, and that is the norm because Iowa has about a billion little towns.  So when someone actually knows the highway that bisects your little town, then they actually know something and are alright.  Now here we are over 8 years later with our perfect little family living our happily ever after!

Of course I have to qualify that trip as it was not all fairy tale, if you ask my Mother-in-law about our first meeting, she will laugh and tell you about how on that trip I had my first experience with ticks.  Oh yes, those little bugs of the devil!   When we were visiting my relatives we went out morel mushroom hunting.  Morel mushrooms are so incredibly, wonderfully flavored edible mushrooms that grow wild in the forests of the Midwest.  We went out tromping through the trees and found some mushrooms, so it was quite the experience, until that is, we got back to my Aunt's house and I went to shower.  I noticed a little black dot just in front of my right arm-pit, right in the bra line.  I yelled through the two-story farm house for my sister.  She came up and upon inspection we realized it was in fact a nasty tick.  We looked around and found a couple more on my ankles.  I must have stepped right through a nest of the little buggers.  So I thought we got them all accounted for and went on with the rest of our visit.  We left a couple days later and went to pick up Dustin and spent a night at his parents house.  That evening we were visiting and somehow I realized there was a lump on my ankle, I look and sure enough another tick!  I freaked out, come to find out I really hate ticks!!!  Dustin helped pick off a couple more ticks on my ankles, now there is romance for you!  They must have been too small to see when they latched on and after three days of gorging made their presence known.  As if this whole story wasn't the highlight of my life, when we had my bridal shower a year and a half later my Mother-in-law traveled from Iowa to Colorado to attend it, and one of the activities was to share a memory of a special time spent with me.  Does she share some sweet bonding memory, NO, she recounts how at our first meeting I was picking ticks in her living room!

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 15

Today's topic: Summer Blockbuster

Well actually, we hardly ever go to movies in a theater anymore, I think I have been to 3 since Austin was born.  BUT, we have a family date scheduled this weekend to go to the big city to watch:

I am so excited and can hardly wait.  I really hope Austin is able to sit through most of it.  We attempted to go to Yogi Bear last December, and he did well considering, but we had to leave with about 15 minutes left in the movie.  Hopefully now that he is six months older he will be more into it.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 14

Today's topic: Summer Recipe

I haven't made chicken kabobs yet this year, but I'm thinking this weekend we are due!

Sesame-Soy Marinade
3/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup rice wine vinegar
3 TBSP packed light brown sugar
1 TBSP Sesame Oil
2 green onions, chopped
1.5 tsp dried red pepper flakes, crushed

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and use as a marinade for poultry or fish.

I use this marinade recipe and put kabob sized pieces of chicken breast into a ziplock and let it marinade, the longer the better.  Then when I am ready to grill I just have to skewer the pieces.  I always cook meat seperate from veggies for the germ factor, but you can skewer it however you like. I have not tried it with fish yet, but I bet it would be delish!

21 Day Summer Challenge, Day 13

Wow, it is finally summer here, is it ever hot today!  I can't complain though, this is my seventh summer here and in every other summer here it has already been over 100 for a while by now.   Today the high is supposed to be 95, so it's hot, but not too bad relatively.  I had to run out and do some field work this morning and enjoyed watching all the lizards out and about scurrying across the hot desert sand. 

Today's Topic: Summer Craft

 This is one of the topics I don't have much to talk about.  I don't have any summer craft traditions, or anything I look forward to in that category every summer.  I am usually so busy keeping up with my garden and yard work that I don't have time to craft, for me it's more in the winter.  I am of course working on my son's quilt and if you want to see more about that you can click on the label "quilt" on my sidebar and it will take you to all the posts where I talk about quilting.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 9

Today's topic:  Childhood Swimming Memory

I meant to take the camera today when we went to the pool and I forgot, darn it!!!

I know we usually had some type of kiddie pool in my yard every summer.  I think one summer when I was a bit older my Dad put a stock tank in the yard and filled it for me so it would be deeper than a kiddie pool.  In my home town there was an indoor pool, so you could swim there year round.  I did take swim lessons during the summer though when school was out.  I was really a pretty good swimmer since I started lessons so young.  I remember once as a kid we went to my Dad's side family reunion and I was about 7.  My Aunt made me wear those goofy water wing arm blow up things and it made me SO MAD because I was already a proficient swimmer, but my cousins could not swim so she made me wear them like everyone else.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 7

Here it, the much anticipated Day 7 post...drumroll please, LOL!

I had a really hard time coming up with what my #1 favorite memory of summer is.  I guess most of the major life events for me have happened in the other seasons.  And thinking back to my childhood I have a lot of great memories of going to the mountains and camping and fishing, visiting family, helping in the garden, riding my bike, and all those typical type memories, but one particular time did not stand out. 

I also thought about how every summer when I was in high school I was able to go live in another state for about a month.  The summer before freshman year I went to Florida with my brother to see all the Orlando attractions and ended up staying with my Aunt and Uncle until my cousins came for a visit to Cocoa Beach.  The next summer I went to New Jersey where I stayed with my brother.  Each weekend we did something adventurous, the first weekend we went to New York City and did a bunch of site-seeing and saw Cats on Broadway, the next weekend we drove to Washington DC and saw the sights with some of his friends, the third weekend we drove to Maine and camped out, then the final weekend we went back to the City and saw Grease on Broadway.  The last summer I went somewhere I stayed with my cousin's in Iowa, which was full of Iowa summer experiences, fishing, demo-derbies and a corn festival.  All three of those summers were memorable, but how do I pick the "favorite" one?

But, then I realized that one major fun event did happen in summer, in August of 2005 my sister, who was my Maid-of-honor, hosted my bachelorette party in Las Vegas.  I live about three hours from Vegas, and I knew it would be relatively inexpensive for people to travel there, so I requested it.  Only I asked that we not do the typical bachelorette stuff like male reviews or strip clubs because it is just not my scene.  So my sister invited all the ladies in my family and 7 of my cousin's also attended, three from Iowa, one from Georgia, one from Florida and two locally.

So they all flew in on a Thursday night and I was able to pick everyone up and take them to their hotels.  My sister got us a suite at The New Frontier Hotel/Casino.  We all gathered at the Frontier and went to the bar there and had some drinks.  It was the first time to Vegas for three of the cousins, and we were all a bit shocked by the bikini bull-riding Vegas style, WOW! 

Friday we went and toured Hoover Dam, then that night we went to a big dinner then to the Comedy Club at Riviera.  It was such a fun night, my sister got us all pink boas to wear so we would stand out as a group.  The maitre de at the Riviera put us in a group spot right next to the stage, I mean I could literally put my elbow on stage.  All three of the comedians had been on Seinfeld before and I don't remember the names of the openers, but the main guy was Dom Irrera.  All three comedians saw the pink boas and incorporated us into their stand up, it was way fun!!!  For the show my two cousin's who live in Vegas also brought their husbands, and the middle comedian came over and said to one of them "so what are you doing in the middle of a bachelorette party?"  then he walked over closer to us and looked an saw that Nick (pictured below) had a boa in his lap and the commedian goes "and even more importantly what are you doing with a pink boa?"  And I won't mention exactly what Dom said I could come backstage after the show and do to him since I was the bride-to-be. (oh and BTW, Nick actually kept and wrapped the boa around this rear-view mirror in his truck)

Saturday they had the gift shower for me in our suite.  Afterwards we went to the Fashion Mall and had facials and make-up consultations at Macy's so I could buy my makeup for the wedding.  That night we decided to do more night sight-seeing on the strip for those cousins who had never been there before.  That is when we had the glow in the dark necklaces in the picture above.  We made the big-fat-mistake of trying to walk and were SO TIRED!!!

It was not your typical Vegas bachelorette party, but I wouldn't have had it any other way!

21 Days of Summer Challenge Day 8

Ok, ok, ok I know I missed the challenge yesterday, which the topic was "Favorite Summer Memory".  I kept trying to think of what my #1 best favorite memory of summer was, but honestly most of the major memories I am fond of happened in the other seasons.  Not that I never had fond summer happenings, just not one capstone time when I would give it that all time favorite designation.  BUT, I did think of something today that I can write about, but I want to add a photo or two when I get home, so I will go back and do day 7 later today.

Now on to today's topic: Summer TV

So my favorite TV shows are:
Survivor- currently not airing at all
3 of the 4 Monday night sitcoms (How I met your Mother, 2.5 Men, and Mike and Molly)- In re-runs
Big Bang Theory- Re-runs
The Amazing Race- currently not running
American Idol (occasionally)- currently not running

That is mostly what I take the time to watch, so right now I am just out of luck on my favorite TV shows.  But it's summer right?  So no temptation to sit in front of the tube and waste away- time to get up, get out of the house and have fun!

21 Days of Summer Challenge Day 6

Today's Topic: LEMONADE Stand

I grew up kind of out in the country, it was a ranchette style acreage subdivision, so it wasn't really the right kind of place to set up a lemonade stand.  I now live in a little town where everybody knows everybody and it's pretty safe, and the neighborhood kids always have stands.  I try to stop and buy a cup when  I see one.  I have a confession though, I'm a bit of a germ-a-phobe and I often won't drink the lemonade from a stand because I think kids often lick the spoon when they mix the lemonade and it grosses me out.  

As for recipes, I used to make one where you boil the water and dissolve the sugar before adding fresh squeezed lemon juice and zest, but often I am too lazy to go to all that effort.  So my quick and easy version is I make a batch of Kool-aid Lemonade and then take one or two fresh lemons, scrub them, and then cut them in half.  I squeeze half the lemon into the Kool-aid, then slice up the other half very thinly and add the slices straight to the lemonade.  The rind of the slice kind of help build the flavor, and the tiny bit of pulp from the squeezed lemon makes if feel like real fresh lemonade.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 5

Today's Topic: Summer Vacation

We don't really do a summer vacation because that is when my husband is super busy at work in his field season.  If we do summer trips it's more out of necessity than pleasure.  This summer we are taking a mini trip back to Colorado to see Soundgarden at Red Rock's Amphitheater because that is when they are touring and it is Dustin's Father's Day gift request.  The last two summers we took mini trips back to Iowa for Dustin's nephews high school graduation parties.  Let me tell you, it is MISERABLE to visit Iowa in May and/or June, my southwestern lizard skin cannot handle the humidity and heat back there!


We have been taking a real vacation to commemorate our anniversary every year since we got married, which is in October.

• 1st: Estes Park, Colorado where we stayed at the historic Stanley Hotel and visited Rocky Mountain National Park.
• 2nd: Moab, Utah where we visited Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.
• 3rd: Durango, Colorado and visited Mesa Verde and took a trip on the Durango-Silverton Railroad.
• 4th: Colorado to purchase a truck and visit family. (Ok so maybe this one didn't count as a real vacation!)
• 5th: San Francisco, California and road trip up to Vina to see some friends from college and back along the coast and by way of Armstrong Redwood Forest.

For our sixth we are planning to go to San Diego, California to go to the Zoo and Sea World.  That is unless we move and then we might consider Yellowstone National Park.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 4

  

Today's topic: Summer Goals

Wow, this challenge is keeping me on my toes when it comes to blogging, I will be over 200 posts before I know it!

Hmmm, summer goals.  I haven't really set any out in writing or anything, but I guess in the back of my mind I would like to go camping more this summer.  I would also like to finish Austin's quilt, but that will be a goal until it is finished.  It may be by the end of summer, but it may not.  I'm sure he will have it before he goes off to college, LOL!

I am a little bit not committing to too many things since at any time we might get a new job and be moving, but then again we may not, but since it's up in the air I hate to set anything in stone.  I am not doing too many things to the house, other than those that are necessary since we hope to be selling it in the next year or so.

I don't know if it fits as a goal, but we are going to Colorado in July to see Soundgarden at Red Rocks.  That should be a fun trip.  It would be even funner if it ends up also being a house hunting trip if we get one of the jobs we are currently applying for!

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 3

  "


Today's topic:

What do you think of when hear the word Summer!!

I'm a little late tonight, so I'll keep it short.  I think of blue skies, green grass, lemonade, home made ice cream, watermelon, grilling, fresh tomatoes from the garden, fireworks, and county fairs.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 1

  "
Ok so I know I am out of order, but I barely saw the link up today, and the Saturday topic was much easier to write about, so I am going back and doing #1.


About Sarah

I am a thirty something lady who happens to be wife to Dustin, six years in October, and Mom to Austin, two and almost a half years.  I work for an Indian Tribe in northern Arizona as their Water Quality Specialist.  I am originally from Colorado and lived there the first 26 years of my life until Dustin brought me to the desert.  This place is really beautiful with vermilion cliffs all around and tons of hiking opportunities which I love.  We are in the middle of Grand Canyon North Rim, Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.  We don't really fit in the community very well though, and we have no family close so we are more than ready to move on.  We are in the process of applying for jobs, but as everyone knows the market is very competitive at the moment.

I have many hobbies besides blogging, I love to sew, quilt, embroider, crochet, garden, can, cook, decorate cakes, scrapbooking and photography.  I am currently working on my son's quilt, which is taking me forever.  If you want to see photos of the pieces I have finished appliqueing you can click on the "quilts" label and it will take you to those posts.  My garden is growing pretty well now that we finally stopping having frosts at night, but I have not done a post about it yet, hopefully soon.

21 Day Summer Challenge Day 2

  "

Today is day 2 and here is the topic:

Summer.....Love it or Hate it?

I love summer!  We went swimming this morning, I look out my french doors and see pure green beauty in my garden, the flowers are blooming, I love to grill, ...what's not to love!  I also love summer thunderstorms, especially when lightning is off in the distance and you can watch it safely. 
 

The only thing I dislike about summer is the bugs, I hate the smell of deet, but hate mosquito bites even worse.  We don't have them here, but when we visit the midwest in the summer I also despies ticks and chiggars.