Escape From the Heat

It started as a little niggling idea in the back of Tim's mind as he stood in our backyard in May as the temperature neared the mid-90s, "Why don't we escape to someplace cooler this summer?" He thought it might be nice for our children to be able to spend some time outside everyday -- some time longer than the 45 minutes in the pool late every afternoon. He listed an ad in Craig's list and, after a few false starts, he came upon a home for rent at a very good price. Sure, we would have to take care of chickens, but it would be worth it to have high temperatures in the low 80 degree range rather than the 110 and above range. Three weeks in the mountains! What could be better?

The house is a few minutes south of Flagstaff, at almost 7000 ft. The picture above was taken from the trail just behind the house. The trail leads for miles in a lot of different directions and we've taken advantage of the chance to explore since we arrived here last Saturday. The kids are really loving the freedom of being able to get outside any time they want!

We keep our windows open for most of the day, enjoying the cool breeze and the smell of the pine trees.






There is, of course, the issue of the chickens, which I lovingly refer to as "bundles of histoplasmosis." I'm, obviously, not really excited about them, but the kids seem to like them and have named them (although they've all three named them differently -- I don't think chickens are really very smart, though, so it doesn't matter). Our care for the chickens consists of letting them out a couple times a day and making sure they have water, so it's not too overwhelming!

We've yet to get rid of our citified ways, though. We've been taking daily trips to Flagstaff for a variety of reasons. We'll try today to just stay in the forest to see how we like it. We'll probably take a trip into Flagstaff tomorrow again to try out their ice skating rink.