It is only 9am.  It is already 98 degrees outside. The wind is not blowing ...yet.

Yesterday, being Monday, is my heavy work day.  Before 10 am, I had washed and hung 4 loads of laundry, fed and watered the animals, watered all the plants and washed all the dishes from our busy birthday weekend.  Oh yeah! And stripped the bed and put clean sheets on it.

 Our only granddaughter turned 5 years old on Saturday, my husband had a birthday on Monday and Father's Day was on Sunday.  We celebrated all those on Sunday.  Steve got a big new bar-be-que grill for his birthday so he bbq-ed pork chops for 11 people.  We also had coleslaw, potato salad, hot dogs for the kids, applesauce and two cakes, one for Eden and one for Steve.  Eden's cake was a rainbow layer cake with all different bright colors inside.  I made a pineapple upside-down cake for Steve, as that is his favorite and he almost never eats cake anyway.  Of course, Eden got so many gifts it looked like Christmas in June!  The theme this year seemed to be horses and mermaids.  Along with her horse quilt, she also got a horse pillow and a stuffed horse.  Her aunt got her a herd of "My Little Pony" horses that had long manes and tails and combs to style them.  She got a mermaid Barbie and an "Ariel" mermaid from the movie.  For the pool, she got new water wings and another mermaid doll with seahorses that swims! Ha!  What a haul!

We had a fire behind us and a fire in front on the border.  We watched the big air tanker fly back and forth from Parker Canyon Lake to the fire behind us all day yesterday.  The smoke seems less this morning.  I do not know if either fire is out or still going.  The weather people are saying we will get record high temps this week and then get "steamy" by the weekend.  This will be a precursor to thunderstorms on the weekend and perhaps, the start of the monsoon.  I am not looking forward to the "steamy" part, but I do like the monsoon storms.  We will have to start swimming in the mornings if we want to swim at all.  Afternoons will be full of lightening and heavy rains.

Our swallows on the front porch hatched the first batch of babies for this season.  As far as I can tell there are at least 3 little wide open mouths up there when the mamma comes by to feed them.  There are probably more.  They are tiny right now.  All you can see are big mouths and eyes.  The lizards are loving the dry hot weather and are everywhere. It is a good thing because if not for the birds and lizards, we would be overrun with bugs, bugs, and more bugs.  The crickets are abundant and obnoxious with their leg rubbing.  The tiny little red ants are virtually covering the yard and everything else.  I can hardly water the animals or the plants without getting some on me.  They are nasty little biters too.  If I am wearing a sundress, which I often do, I have taken to picking it up and walking, like the ladies used to do in the Old West. Sometimes the ants will still hitch a ride, but I usually notice if they are crawling up my feet and ankles.  Then I can stamp them off before I go inside.  If they get on the hem of my dress, I may be inside before I notice the buggers!  I've even gotten them on my arms from leaning on the fence as I fill up water buckets!  Yikes!

This week our #1 daughter and her family, including 3 of our grand kids, are moving to their very own first house in Tucson.  Steve is helping move their stuff.  I will help by keeping the kids while the move is made.  Then, our #2 daughter and her son are moving into the house being vacated by daughter #1.  Steve and I will be official "empty-nesters."  Whooo-hoo!  I have been looking forward to this but I am thinking that it is going to be rather weird at first.  I will be alone much of the day.  What will I do with all that time????  Don't worry!  I'm sure I will think of plenty!