Autumn Leaves

I know that the weather is a boring, recurring theme of my blog. But you have to understand, after 11 years of living in Arizona, we still aren't used to weather. We are in culture shock when it comes to weather. So humor me a bit--maybe after we've experienced the full yearly cycle once, I'll quit talking about it.

I have to admit, I have always loved autumn. Today is the first official day of the fall equinox. The weather in Utah is doing it's best to comply. It's suddenly rather cold and windy today. But I've been noticing the signs of fall before today. Our family is experiencing a new phenonenom this fall--the leaves on the trees are starting to CHANGE COLOR and FALL OFF!! O.K., so it isn't new to me or Niles--we've seen it all before--but not for years. But for our kids, this is only something they've heard about but never experienced first-hand. I've been noticing the sprinkling of red spreading on the mountains. And I think it is beautiful and I'm enjoying the wonder of the changing of the seasons. (I'm just trying to forget it means that winter is on the way.)

At this time of year in Arizona, we'd still be in that agony of waiting for the temperature to cool down to a decent level. I'm thinking of buying my kids those cute furry Halloween costumes that they've never been able to wear before. You wouldn't dream of dressing them in those things in Arizona--they'd die of heat stroke. I always used to laugh to see all those racks of cozy costumes on clearance after Halloween. I wondered if the retailers would ever figure out not to bother to send those costumes to Arizona stores--no one ever buys them, hadn't they noticed? October in Arizona means that you don't carve your pumpkin until the day before Halloween, unless you want it soft, moldy, and caving in on itself for the holdiay. We learned that the hard way the first year we lived there--we had to throw out the first jack-o-latern and carve a new one.

I did a neighborhood preschool with my first three children where the moms took turns teaching, called Joy School. One of the daily routines in Joy School was the "weather wheel" where you talked with the kids about the weather that day. The wheel had choices like hot, sunny, cold, windy, rainy, and snowy. Guess what the weather was EVERY SINGLE DAY? We sometimes wondered why we bothered. The kids would get bored--hot and sunny AGAIN! I remember one year we were particularly excited that there was a morning monsoon storm on the first day of Joy School in August. It was so exciting to have the weather wheel on "rainy!" Once out of the 5 years I did joy school, we weren't on hot and sunny. You think I'm exaggerating--I'm not. It rained the other day and after almost 9 months of living in Utah, I was still taken by surprise. It's raining--AGAIN?! It just rained last week! I've lost track of how many times it has rained in just the 4 months I've lived in this house. I'm still in the "rain is an extremely rare event" mentality. We moved to Arizona the very last day of January. If it is going to rain in Arizona, it happens in February or during the August monsoon season. The first rain occured the first Sunday we were there--we were at church when it started sprinkling. I remember some 6-year-old kid (that of course didn't know me from Adam,) excitedly shouting at me in the chruch foyer, "It's raining! It's raining!" I thought this was rather bizarre behavior. I didn't realize at the time that this was probably the first time this kid had seen rain in his memory. I will never forget Niles and I doubled over with laughter that August when they broke into a T.V. show we were watching with a breaking news story. Reporter: "I'm standing here on the corner of 7th Street and McDowell and, as you can see from the camera shot, there are raindrops on the windshield of my car!" Astounding--raindrops on your windshield! You think I am exaggerating--I am not--not even slightly. We looked at each other and said, "What kind of crazy place is this?!" So the leaves changing on the trees is a big deal. I point it out to the kids--"Look, remember in Joy School when we talked about seasons and we explained about how in other places the leaves turn orange and red and brown and fall off in autumn? You thought we were making it up, huh? Now you can see it for yourself!" They are properly impressed. So right now I am enjoying it. Don't check back with me November to March.

I was going to go outside and take some photos of the beautiful fall mountains for this post but I guess it will have to wait until a future blog. It just started to rain and the mountains are all hidden by clouds. Do you think if I turn on the T.V. there'll be a breaking news report about the rain?