Rain storms and cooler days

Saturday morning was warm and sunny for Benjamin's soccer game.

A huge storm hit a couple hours later, bringing lightening, thunder, wind, and rain. We all ran outside to play! 

This was, by far, the best daytime storm we've had here-- and we were all home to enjoy it! 

The clouds hung around into the evening, bringing a bit more rain at times. Then the sky cleared just enough for a gorgeous sunset.

Guess what? It hasn't been hot outside since that storm! The mornings and evenings actually feel cool. We have more hot days in the forecast, but this little break is heavenly.

Ballet under the Stars

Fall is here! Oh, wait...

For the most part, we've enjoyed the weather here... until the past few weeks. 

Most other places we lived (Stateside, anyway) begin cooling off around now. When we watch BYU football games, Scott and I feel nostalgic for crisp air and crunchy leaves. While the heat is on a slow decline, we're still in the sticky temperatures of late summer monsoon season.

Locals say that early fall can be tough on morale. At first I brushed this off, but I'm starting to feel it now. At the same time, veteran transplants have told us that the first year in Arizona is the hardest-- a gorgeous late fall, winter, and spring put the long summer into perspective.

So I look at the year-round averages and repeat this mantra: pretty fall, nasty winter; hot fall, pretty winter. As eager as I am for the weather to cool off a bit, we still can't have this kind of fun in the snow.

Yeah, it's not so bad.

Padres vs. Diamondbacks

When Jamin snatches my phone...

A nice morning for sandcastles

Flood day

After a night of house-rattling thunderstorms, we woke up on Monday morning to rain. Lots of rain. 

Our patio was the first sign that this wasn't a run-of-the-mill storm. When we stepped outside, rain water covered our feet. 

Reports of flooding came in, so Scott left for his commute with caution in mind. He saw this overflow on his usual route (before turning and going a different way):

In the meantime, the kids and I found out that school was closed. Many of the roads were impassable, and the busses couldn't exactly leave the district office.

NO SCHOOL!!! Ben and Travis dropped everything to look for frogs (they were loud in the desert behind our house!).

The Phoenix area had record-breaking rainfall-- they had never recorded this much rain in one day! This normally bone-dry wash (just down the street) measured 4.8 inches of rain in 3 hours:

Photos from our neighborhood-- water rushing through a walkway and a thoroughly soaked fairway: 

Down the hill, many roads looked like this: 

And two freeways basically turned into rivers.

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt... except maybe this seal.