The Catch-up of all Catch-up Posts

Hello America, I am Carissa Townsend and I will be your host for this next blog post and all the rest of the words thereafter. This is usually the part where I'm like, "Omg hi hello it's me I haven't blogged in soooo long omg but here I am," BUT since it's fairly obvious I haven't been around these here blog parts for the better part of about two and a half months I'm just gonna skip over that part.

I've stopped in for a Father's Day post, and also a celebratory paid-off-the-truck post, but for the most part, I haven't really checked in here all summer. So that's what I'm going to do today. I'm gonna check in and recap and update and all that good stuff, and then I'm hoping to get back to blogging as usual. Because I really miss it. I used to scrapbook as my creative outlet, and then I started blogging, but since I haven't done either in a loooooong time, what creativity I did have is like, spilling into work emails and I'm pretty sure a Harry Potter themed email at work might be considered unprofessional. Or also the lyrics to "Hungry Eyes" woven into my requests for information could confuse and/or throw some people off.

Anyway, I digress. Summer, right? That's what we were talking about? Summer "kicks off" Memorial Day weekend and we spent it up north camping and fishing with some friends of the family.

Although this particular weekend was not my best fishing-wise. Nate caught a whole weekend's worth of meals and I didn't catch a single thing.

Even the 6 year old caught fish on her Dora the Explorer fishing pole while she slept. But me?? Nope. Nothing. Not even a bite. Whatever, I'm over it (sort of).

I wanted a picture of all of us in our tent but this was as good as I could get with the selfie stick:

I don't know what they were looking at but it was probably a squirrel or a leaf or something...or nothing. They do that sometimes I think, just to spite me when I want a picture. They're like "No! You are NOT getting eye contact!" Whatever, I'm over that too (sort of).

So throughout the rest of the summer there's been hiking:

Lots of pool time:

Both with my guys, and their doggy friends:

(LABS FOR DAYS)...

Dbacks games of course:

I've made a good dent in my bobble head collection this season including Randy Johnson's Hall of Fame bobble:

Your husband is a keeper if he goes to a baseball game while you're out of town just to pick you up a Randy Johnson hall of fame bobble head. Thanks Nate, you're really nice sometimes.

Also, summer isn't summer without the 4th of July, of which we celebrated with as much patriotism and red, white, and blue as we could:

In fact, I tried to get all fancy with an underwater picture and a flag and all 4th of July mermaid-y and stuff,

But Gunther kept attacking me so it took like, 50 tries:

He gets really concerned and goes all crazy when you go under water. He legit panics and tries so save you like you shouldn't be going underwater or something. It's funny but really annoying all at the same time.

We made it out to Bartlett a time or two for some catfishing, and while I didn't catch a catfish I did catch this big carp so I'm happy about it:

On this particular weekend we ended up at the lake all afternoon, on the day it was 115 degrees with an excessive heat warning. I don't know what we were thinking either and I don't have a good answer for you, but I just made sure to stay in the water as much as possible.

Catfishing is fun (even when it's 115 degrees) because you're up all night waiting for a bite, and all you have is your cot to sleep on underneath the stars, and you can swim whenever you want. And then when you leave on Sunday morning at like 6am (cause it gets too hot really really fast), you deserve a killer nap until like 1pm in your own bed. Good times people, good times.

Also this summer, like last summer, my dear friend Kailey and I, we slipped and slided (slipped n' slid?):

Because kids ages 10 and up (per the label on the Slip n' Slide box) shouldn't have all the fun. We couldn't get the nozzle on the hose off, so that it feeds the slip n slide, so we ended up having to rig up a stand that propped the hose up, nozzle-on, using bricks and some hair-ties.We were pretty proud of ourselves, especially after being a few beers deep:

Sunday funday at its finest, folks.

This summer marks one year since Nate and I bought our kayaks and we made sure to try and use them as much as we did last year...which has been difficult since Nate is in the Academy and studies all weekend and hardly has time for fun anymore (boo) and naps a lot on the weekends like so:

But we've managed to get out a few times, including recently we went up to Woods Canyon and we fished all afternoon and it was marvelous. He caught a trout and a few Blue Gill and I just caught some Blue Gill:

This is Nate worrying about catching fish, and me worrying about taking a good picture:

Oh and these are a couple of my Blue Gill:

Blue Gill are just little things but they're quickly becoming my favorite thing to fish for. They'll come right up to your 'yak deciding if they should take the bait or not and it's just a lot of fun to fish for those guys.

Once 5pm hits, all the boat rentals have to be off the water and so the congestion dies down and you kind of feel like you have the whole lake to yourself and it's really quiet and really neat. I could sit there, in my 'yak until dark and be content.

We also had a visitor this summer, in Arizona....none other than Ms. T Swizzle and like we've done every year she's headlined, my dear friend Kayla and I went to see her tear the house down (figuratively, of course. Not literally).

We got down to these sick beats, and we shook it off, and we wrote her name in our blank space, and we welcomed her to New York Arizona, and it was everything we'd ever dreamed of in our wildest dreams. I really just feel like, if Taylor really understood how cool and how fun Kayla and I are, she would totally want to be friends with us and like, have us in her next music video. I would try to catch her attention on the internet but she does all her blog-stalking on Tumblr and I just don't know how to work Tumblr. I think maybe because I'm too old and not hipster enough.

So I think I've hit the high points of this summer. It's crazy to think we technically only have one weekend left of summer (unofficially) and then it's Labor Day, and then it's pumpkin spice everything and fall and sweaters...except it's still 110 degrees and none of that is applicable in Arizona.

I miss all my blog friends and I hope you've all had a good summer too and haven't forgotten about me!

Happy Monday!