I Go Back To A Time...

While working on our site and adding new things, updating and changing things around I sit and think back to when I first created this site and why I created it. At first, I decided to make this for friends and family and give them a way to keep up to date with things that were going on with us and a way to view pictures that we post, since I have a tendency to take a LOT of pictures.  Now it has become more of a notebook for things that are going on, a photo album, scrapbook of ideas and new articles of what is going on in our lives and even more so of a window into our lives since we are now much farther away from friends and family. It is also a place to express adventures and struggles in everyday life as we make our way down the un-trekked path together.

While I look back to how many posts I've posted and readers we have, I am thankful to have such a great handful of readers who continue to keep up with what we are doing. Thank you for reading and keeping in touch with us and our lives. I sure do appreciate it and love to read what others are doing. If it weren't for some of you filling me in on your lives and what is going on with you, I may feel more in the dark than I already do being 900 plus miles away.

While I look back to when I started this site, and this is very hard for me to do, I notice the date. The exact date and time of my first post. I guess I never really thought much about it or looked in to it much until tonight. And why tonight was the night, I'm not fully positive. I do know that he is always with me and I'm always thinking of him, talking about him and to him everyday. Very much of an idol, role model, someone I looked up to, still look up to, and continue to involve in my life everyday he is missed, loved and never forgotten.

The date I started this site, April 12, 2009. Easter Sunday. 10:09am was the first post. While I know exactly where I was that day and what I did, it feels just like yesterday and gives me chills to think about it. I was at work in Boulder. I got off work early that day, Sunday's were pretty quite and the guys I worked with were really nice and let me go early since it was a holiday and I did have plans to spend it with family. Probably the first Easter that I'd spent with this side of family, it surely was an Easter I'll never forget, and ironically now Easter means quite a bit of difference to me.

 I called D'anne on my way down to see her and the family. In good spirits and a cheerful voice I headed her way. Seeing Ava, May and Tea was a blast. They were getting so big and just being little girls. I love these girls dearly and can't wait to see what lovely young ladies they become. It is always great to see Danny, Alexa and D'anne. While I've never had older siblings these three do justice to serve that void. Alexa and D'anne really are the older sisters I never got to have. Aunt Sandi has always been such a wonderful and amazing woman, I absolutely loved every holiday growing up that we got to spend with her and Uncle Gary. Uncle Gary was doing well, not the best but doing good considering the condition he was in. He was so cute, when I walked in the first thing he said to me when I came over to him was "Hey Kid". From the time I was very young I can remember him calling me 'Kid' all the time. Maybe this was my special nickname or maybe he called everyone 'Kid', either way I like to think it was my own nickname. It was great to see him and everyone. Like I said, usually I saw this side of the family for Thanksgiving's or Christmas's so this was a treat to see them for Easter. It was just me who came down, but it was worth it. Like I can not express in words.

Easter will never be the same to me. Ever. This was the last time I got to see and talk to Unce Gary in person. While our goodbye's that day consisted of me saying "I'll see you soon Uncle Gary, I love you", he parted with "No Kid, I love you more". My heart hurts when I hear those words over in my head and I can not help but cry so hard. Today he sits in a picture frame on a bookshelf in my house and his picture of the Northern Lights in Alaska is a reminder of what he saw and what I will oneday see as well. We shared a love of science and physics. That I carry with me everyday.

Ironic that this site started that exact date and time? Perhaps. However I think it has part to do with life and what comes next. Who is in  your life and how they touch it. Who you carry with you no matter the distance or time. The people and places that influence your future. It hurts to think about it, and it always will. But as long as you move on, while carrying him/her with you, you will be strong. He/she would want you to be strong. They have never truely left your side.

Who do you carry with you each day? Who are your biggest influences and why?

{Edit & Revamp!}

Poof - And it's here! Have wanted to work on the blog for some time now, get all creative and try out some fonts and new color schemes. I just can't decide on colors and a 'look' for the page, so that may change. But love the new font, thanks to Kevin & Amanda's helpful page! So many cute fonts and tutorials and 'how-to' pages. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. This Friday is my actual Friday, weird how that worked out?! So I will try to catch the pool this weekend and continue to work on some more recipes & a possible food blog and recipe book...ya know in my spare time :)

Lightning, Rain & Dust...Oh My!

SPC even gave us a Mesoscale Discussion, woohoo we're on the board! The night (last night, August 21st 2010) became more and more convective with storms rolling through the Phoenix CWA. Storms fired off early down near Tucson and a few up West of Flagstaff and then by 5:30pm local storms began to fire on the Northeast end of the Phoenix Metro area, up near Punkin Center. Some cells began to back build and came a bit farther Southwest towards Scottsdale and then an outflow pushed through. Just after these storms began to show their face, some rather fast moving storms came from the Southeast near Tucson. They were meandering their way up North along I-10. I thought for sure we'd have a dust storm coming our way, as I'm still learning what factors play into dust storm criteria. Before I knew it, we were issuing a dust storm warning and the reports began to come in with visibilities in the 1.25 - 2 mile range. Not bad, being at night time.

From here on out the storms just moved right in like they knew it was Monsoon season! The storms from the North kind of piddled out, but the outflows moved Southwest and collided with an outflow moving Northwest ahead of the storms coming from the south. The two outflows collided near Mesa. Winds picked up and some storms popped up just after the collision. The original outflow coming from the South was fairly ahead of the storm development. Along with very little to no lightning, it was decided that this warranted a dust storm warning. I'm still learning the criteria for dust storms, but with little to no lightning means little to no convection and when you can't use a visible satellite image at night and the wind speeds are quite fast and ahead of the initial storm development, that is prime ingredients for a dust storm. Throughout the rest of the evening until nearly midnight the storms came and dumped and moved and dumped and finally fizzled out. Areas of the far Southeast valley got rainfall amounts upwards of an inch, over an inch in some areas in just a short amount of time. The remainder of the night brough light rains and cool conditions. I believe the airport was down to 80 degrees last night at 11pm. Pretty cool! (Pun intended).

Right about where the word Tempe is, is where we live. You can see much of the Southeast valley got quite the rain!

Just some of the short term forecasts I got to issue last night. It was a steady and busy night. I thought it was so cool when all of a sudden around 9:15pm as my workstation faces South towards the windows in our office that the sky lit up by a few lightning strikes here and there. Couldn't see the actual strikes, but the sky was lighting up. I even made a remark to the people here "I can see lightning from the windows" and I think they thought I was crazy, maybe having not ever seen lightning before. Well, not here! And not this close.

Have I mentioned lately that I'm a weather geek and get excited about the little things just a little?!

Happy Weather Hunting to all :)

{I Heart Colorado}

Wordless Friday...just images. Credit for photos that aren't mine here.

Above photos not mine. Photos below are mine...

Lovin' The Desert!

The weather has begun to prove it's diversity here in Phoenix. While we have been in the Monsoon for just over 2 months now, it has shown very little of what I thought would be seen during a Monsoon. But, as weather is common to do, things change. Here is a glimpse of what happened Tuesday night.

A series of radar images starting at 6:27pm local (0127z) through 8:36pm (0336Z). In the first image I tried to point out about where we live, since it is in the middle of some of the "mess". Needless to say, it rained pretty good for a couple hours! I don't have an official rain gage at my apartment but in a gallon jug we had outside empty there is a good 2 inches of water in it.

Here is a map of some of the Local Storm Reports (LSR) received at NWS Phoenix on Tuesday evening, graphically. If you notice the two cloud icons with rain coming out between Guadalupe and Chandler, this is the area we live, just south of Guadlupe. These icons represent reports of 1.17 and 1.30 inches of rain that fell in about an hour or less that evening. This is pretty representative of what I witnessed at our apartment. Out near Apache Junction there were reports of over 3.30 inches of rain! The East Valley got quite a bit of rain, way to go Monsoon! There were quite a lot of reports of trees down and thunderstorm damage. Some areas were likely to experience fairly heavy downbursts.

News article from FOX 10 Phoenix about Tuesday August 17th Storms.

Here are some shots I took on August 15th of the last bit of a dust storm that was South of Phoenix. After I got off of work I drove down through Tempe and tried to see some of it. You could see it better than I could photograph it. The only real way to see any dust was to use lights. And I also had some fun with the timer on my camera :)