fall musings

Fall. My favorite time of the year. The mornings are finally ‘ok’ and for those of us who have lived here our whole lives, we can smell it and feel it. I am ashamed to say I still sound like a newcomer every July and August. I am pretty much the first person to start whining as soon as the monsoons start and the humidity and heat are at their most intense. But. I love this time of year. The sky is amazing with all the clouds and I love hearing the storms outside our house. This year, in particular, was one that reminded me of my youth with the storms lasting for days and the dark clouds low and close to us. And the sunsets. Wow. Here is a picture I took from our deck where you can see one of those storms marching across the valley at sunset:

Fall brings us to a time of year where we have an Arizona Stone Henge moment (my name for it). From our deck, you can see the sun set behind the downtown Phoenix sky scrapers twice a year in March and September, similar to when the sun rises behind Stone Henge in England. Very cool. In the eleven years we’ve lived here, I’ve only been able to catch it three times; many times the day before or the day after. Very frustrating. This year was the 3rd time and I captured a pretty good picture of it:

Fall is football season; a big thing in our family. Our sons have had season tickets to the Cardinal games for 15 years. If you do the math, you’ll realize that they and their friends were scraping together the money every year, including those starving-student college days. We started getting them a bit later than that, mostly to give us something to share with them after they became adults and had lives of their own. We relish those tailgate moments and celebrating with them after big wins and crying over those tragic endings. The moments over the years with them and their friends (most of whom we’ve known since they were 5-years-old) have been numerous in number but singular in the bliss it brings us. The recent game against the Patriots was especially fun since our guys and a few of their friends did a road trip to Boston. What a game to attend, right? Here’s the moment captured at the end of the big win and tell me if you recognize the joy:

Yeah. That says it all, doesn’t it? The experience of going to Boston for the first time, combined with a momentous win, created memories they’ll be hashing over for years to come.

So, there are many reasons to be grateful this time of year. The heat is still here but it’s a ‘dry heat’. The mornings and evenings are stunning and beg you to eat outside. The light on the desert isn’t bleached out like it was at the height of summer and the shadows give it so much character. And I am past my Monsoon Mopes so Danny gets meals again and doesn’t have to stop on his way home from work to pick something up. It’s good for everybody in our house!