Sweet Times

Life is good. All is well.
We are just ahead of old man winter. It seems to snow within 48 hours of us leaving a town. Not bad for not following the weather reports. We've had to turn on the heater a few times at night, but so far so good.

It's crispy today. A fall chill is in the air. We're in Prescott, Arizona right now. We are falling in love. Tack another town on the list for "potential settlement". It too is a lot like Bend, OR. But milder I hear. Flagstaff and winter lie 95 miles to the north while Phoenix and it's blazing sun is 95 miles to the south. So I guess if your sick of the weather here, change is a short drive away. I'm thinking the town itself is a bit bi-polar in the weather department. Yesterday was 80. Warm for us. I got up this morning ready to put on shorts and a tank, only to find clouds and a high of 50. Brrrrr.........
We've done lots of exploring between Flagstaff and here. Native American cliff dwellings and spooky ghost towns. Cacti stingings and tarantula hunts have also filled our days.
Before we left Flagstaff, we celebrated Halloween.


I tried hard to find a pumpkin patch in Northern Arizona. You know, the kind on a farm, with spitting llamas, hay mazes and carmel corn. I failed in that department, so we settled for some pumpkins being sold in an old gravel parking lot. Not quite the same, but we still got our pumpkins. That's what matters, right.The kids couldn't wait for school to be done the next day. Carving was on their minds. ART CLASS! KK and Ani had a blast. Avery would have nothing to do with the pumpkin guts. GROSS!

(no we didn't pick up another kid, this is our friend Michael. The kids spent all week helping him build a tree house behind the RV park we stayed in)
We heard stories from the locals all week long. To put it mildly, Flag LOVES Halloween. The kids were "decorated" but Jay and I weren't. We were the ones feeling odd and left out. EVERYONE dresses up and roams the streets. We took the kids to a carnival first and then zig-zaged our way through neighborhoods to historic downtown. Every store was open with workers dressed up handing out candy. On every corner awaited huge containers stocked with sweets waiting for little hands to grab as much as they could hold. Charlie Browns Great Pumpkin was shown on a big screen in the town square. People everywhere, in every costume imaginable, in character, not skipping a beat.

We're all stocked up on candy. We've made smores with peanut butter cups, kit kats, hershey crunch and butterfingers. The kids insist the stash will last a year, i give it 3 more weeks.

We had fun in Flagstaff and will consider it "home" when the time comes. For now we journey on. Surprises await around each corner. We'll spend a few more days in Prescott before heading south a bit more. That is unless i see a snowflake.