While we had visitors from Washington, we had this kitten stop by for a few hours. The bottle in front of the kitten is bug spray for the “no see ums.”
Our Washington visitors were brand new friends in 2021. We were introduced to them by the friend who brought us out to Arizona. He introduced us to the other couple before he died of Valley Fever Thanksgiving 2021. He also introduced me to my husband 40 years ago in Seattle.
The couple who stayed with us the past few days, still live in the Seattle area but bought a home here that they will retire to. It’s now a rental home for them.
While my mom was alive and in assisted living, I’d get together with this new friend, who lived a few miles from where my mom was. I feel like our friendship with this couple deepened throughout the few days they stayed with us this week. We shared our childhoods, stories about our kids, parents and found more connections.
While they were here, we had visitors of a wilder kind:
I wonder where the momma cat is? This is the youngest kitten I’ve seen alone. Does he have siblings?
Eventually, the kitten curled into a ball and fell asleep
First time I’ve had a cardinal visit in a couple months.
What is this Gilded Flicker doing? It looks like he’s trying to remove a screw with his beak.
A picture my son colored in second grade. Wait until you read the story he wrote about it below!
Funny how it takes guests staying with us for me to get motivated to clean closets. I successfully emptied the casita closet. It had turned into storage space for all sorts of stuff including blankets, air mattresses, slippers, Sorel snow boots, hiking boots and even a box full of canvases and paints. Now it holds an appropriate number of sheets and towels.
That felt so good. I continued my cleaning spree in my own closet.
My efforts filled a car with blankets, books, comforters, and more that made it to Kiwanis Thrift Store. It’s amazing how things can accumulate after three short years of being in our new home. To be honest, a lot of stuff that I stored in closets moved with us.
Next, I went through my bathroom drawers and threw out ancient makeup, cough drops, unnecessary ointments and mini lotions and shampoos from years of hotel stays.
I have a guest bedroom closet left to tackle and I’ll be done! But it has all the personal things like photo albums, boxes of photos from my mom including her notebooks and diaries. I have generations of things to go through. Like the photo above, I saved things my kids created, report cards, school awards and swim medals. I have my daughter’s set of Madame Alexander dolls from the Wizard of Oz. I think it was easier to clear out the big stuff — especially because there’s no emotional attachment.
Here’s the story that goes with the photo:
What are your thoughts about the story? FYI, “derend” is a unique spelling of turned.
Here’s a view from a Saturday afternoon luxury home tour. This is outside the living room on the patio overlooking an infinity pool.
We watched Michigan vs. USC football at our friends’ house, a mile up the hill from us Saturday. It was interesting because the other couple went to Michigan and my husband is a devout USC fan.
I was afraid it would be awkward, but it was a good game and Michigan won by three points.
At halftime, our friends suggested we go on a luxury home tour in their neighborhood. Every Saturday afternoon you can tour amazing homes in their massive development that has everything from condos to mansions on seven golf courses. We visited three homes. The first was all white, with white shiny counters, white walls and all white everything else. It’s was boring and I’m not wasting your time with photos.
The second was amazing. Fully furnished with the most unique art, fixtures, countertops, stone, etc. For a cool $6.5 million fully furnished. I didn’t take any photos, but here’s a LINK so you can see for yourself. The photos don’t do it justice. In fact, it looks crazy busy but in person it was really unique, fun and not overwhelming.
The third was high on the mountain with the most spectacular views. Here’s a LINK to the sales info. It was 9,411 square feet and $5.9 million, unfurnished.
View from a bedroom of the third house we toured.
Bathtub in the Master Bath.
Of course we’re never going to buy a home like this. Nor do we want to live in a country club community. But, it’s fun to take a look and wonder about the people who are selling these homes. Where are they moving to? Why are they selling?
Would you rather watch football or look at crazy luxury homes?
During last weekend, we watched a young boy building this unique sandcastle in front of Ashton Kutcher’s house. I swear as we walked by, I saw Ashton on the sand with friends playing with their kids. That’s my story. And I’m sticking to it.
This house is at the opposite end of the beach. A couple years ago our daughter and Waffles the pug joined us for a week. This house had the beach roped off and no trespassing signs around it. Waffles, of course, went inside the guy’s “private beach” and the owner yelled at our daughter when she went in to fetch Waffles. My husband explained to the man that there are NO PRIVATE BEACHES in California. The beaches belong to all of us. Now the ropes are down and there are two no trespassing signs on his house.
I made burgers with lettuce, Farmer Fred’s amazing tomatoes and avocados from a friend’s tree. Yium!
I think these shore birds are Plovers? They don’t have the long beaks that sandpipers do. They are standing in front of the house I mentioned above. I hope the owner doesn’t get mad at them!
A colder, foggier day at high tide.
Friends invited us over for dinner and we started the evening with this charcuterie and wine on their Duffy electric-powered boat. They live in Ventura in the Keys and we cruised around the inlets before dinner.
This is a photo from the Duffy website. I forgot to get a picture of the boat they keep at their dock, but this is what it looks like.
Below is a short video from our evening puttering around the neighborhood. What a fun night with friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Nine-month old Nina hanging outside in our friends’ backyard.
It was an arduous few days, but we’re on our way to getting settled into the cottage at the beach.
We packed a day early. My husband magically managed to fit into our car all our stuff — his office equipment, our suitcases, cooler and bags of stuff I didn’t want to buy on vacation, like condiments, paper products and our Keurig and coffee.
We hit the road early and dropped in on two clients, one for lunch as we passed through our old hometown.
Then we met long-time friends for dinner in their hometown. They were celebrating their 45th anniversary and we got to treat them. We hadn’t seen them in at least 10 years. It was so much fun to catch up and we talked late into the night.
We ended up driving close to six hours on day one. Day two was a little easier with only three hours to drive. Strangely, those three hours seemed to take all day long!
Then arriving at the cottage, we spent hours unpacking and getting organized, grocery shopping etc. I slept that night like the dead.
Our first morning began with a beach walk with our friends and Nina, the rottie. They invited us over for omelettes after the walk.
View from our friends’ backyard.
Now it’s time to relax! One challenge for me is we have more friends in our vacation area than we do in our new state of Arizona. Through COVID, I got used to having lots of downtime. I need to be balanced with our friends here and not over schedule our social life.
The last few days reminded me of Lenny Kravitz song “Fly Away.”
Do you need to have downtime in your weeks, too? Or can you be super social and enjoy it?
I have never seen this cactus bloom before, let alone in August! Must have been our recent monsoon.
I’m wondering what happened with the week? It rushed by. Usually the dog days of summer in the desert are slow to pass. But not this week.
What was I up to this week?
On the weekend, we made dinner for newish friends of ours. We cooked an all American meal of ribs (my husband), potato salad, corn on the cob and cherry pie (me.) We met these friends at the funeral of our friend who introduced me to my husband 40 years ago. He died suddenly from Valley Fever after we moved to Arizona. Our friends we had over for dinner were his brother and wife who moved to Arizona from Seattle. A circle of new friends all bought homes in Arizona, including us and another couple from Kirkland, because of this one friend. We’ve all pledged to keep his memory alive and get together several times a year.
The next busy moments came Monday morning meeting to brainstorm with my newsletter co-hort to write and layout the quarterly HOA newsletter. I’m proud to say that after 30-plus years of “newslettering,” I returned to my roots. We initiated a new process this issue that worked and the President of the HOA approved.
I compiled all the copy in a word document and sent it to the board to approve — prior to spending hours laying it out. This was similar to my early PR days, before desktop publishing and Mac computers. I would drive copy to the typesetter and then get it approved before giving copy to graphic designers to layout. Or, do the layout myself.
This is saved me countless revisions. It was annoying to have the newsletter all ready to go, and then have five board members give their two cents worth on what to change — one by one.
Other than the newsletter, which took up most of Monday and Tuesday, I had my first hair appointment since April. My hairdresser, who I love, went on maternity leave and it wasn’t worth it to me to try someone new for a one off appointment. It was fun to learn how my hairdresser is totally amazed and feels blessed with motherhood. She wasn’t expecting the dramatic love and emotions she’s experiencing now.
Thursday was a doctor’s appointment for my husband that I drove to. It was his final cataract appointment. He has new-fangled lenses that can be adjusted post-surgery with a laser light. It meant four or five extra appointments, but it’s supposed to make vision sharper.
Now that it’s Friday, we’re meeting friends who moved here from Palm Springs for dinner. But I have the day free to relax, read and comment on posts. I might visit the library, too.
I feel like one of my husband’s older clients from decades ago. My husband would call them to come into his office for an appointment. Often they’d respond, “Oh I can’t make it Wednesday. I have a doctor’s appointment.” Those were the days I was volunteering at school, taking kids to piano lessons, packing lunches, making dinners and volunteering at swim meets. I always wondered why people thought they were busy doing one “main thing” a day. Now I know!
How did your week go? Did it flash by quickly or seem slow?
We had a great time revisiting Salt Lake City. The little big city has a special place in my heart because of my daughter’s four years living there for college. It’s filled with memories from our many visits. Plus, we saw my husband’s best friend from fourth grade through high school and his wife. We wish we had many more hours talking and laughing together! Every second was full. Our friend showed us a paper he wrote in fourth grade where he referenced my husband. Then he gave us a joint project they wrote together! Priceless!
Oh yes, Matteo’s restaurant owned by a former international student from Italy and swim teammate of my daughter’s at the “U” was amazing! The food and service was incredible. You can look at Matteo’s menu HERE. (Matteo is the handsome guy in the middle row photos that I linked for the menu.)
Here are a few views from our getaway in Salt Lake City:
No trip to Utah (in my opinion) is complete without a Freshie’s lobster roll. We’ve been to their Park City location, but now they have a Salt Lake City restaurant a mile from the hotel we stay at — the Little America. If you’re wondering how lobster rolls could be a thing in Utah, read this archived article “Utah restaurant stomps coastal competition, takes home ‘World’s Best Lobster Roll’ award.” Every bite of lobster was a major chunk from claws to hunks of tail meat. There was no sketchy filler. The roll was drizzled with warm butter, garnished with perhaps parsley in a grilled bun. Oh my!
Photo of the Little America tower I took during a morning walk. The Little America has two-story buildings surrounding the tower with garden and courtside rooms. (FYI, The Little America was founded by Stephen Mack Covey, grandfather to Stephen Covey of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” who in turn is grandfather to Britain Covey of the Philadelphia Eagles.
An example of the two-story buildings surrounding the tower that I borrowed from their website.
View of the Wasatch mountains from our 12th floor room. The apartment buildings below did not exist last time we visited Salt Lake City.
We walked to City Creek Center from the hotel. It was about a mile away. It’s an indoor-outdoor shopping center downtown and fills two city blocks. To get from one side to another you can cross the street, or use their skybridge. (We were on a mission to get new earbuds for my husband’s iphone at the Apple Store there. A story for another day!)
View from the skybridge walking from one City Creek Center building to another. Notice the train tracks lined with yellow? That’s TRAX, the light rail system that makes getting around SLC so easy and convenient. It’s free downtown.
Our daughter said she took TRAX from campus to football games, to downtown or wherever — all free as a student. She’d swipe her student ID. How convenient would that be going to a football game at the Rice Eccles stadium that seats more than 50,000 people and is sold out for every game? Or for everyday life? We used TRAX this past weekend.
City lights from our hotel room with the pool and garden and courtside rooms below.
The view of the Grand America from our deck. That’s the grander sister hotel across the street.
Thanks for coming along for highlights of my weekend.
Where you live, do you have a light rail system like TRAX? I wish we had that in Scottsdale!
Do you have any favorite go to places where you live or visit — like Freshie’s that I visit in SLC?
