Pre-Halloween Dress Up

Willow is getting everyone in the spirit! :)

Sweet dreams

Barley loves his bed. This is seriously the fifth bed we've been through...




Willow's second haircut! The lady said Willow was too fierce to finish the cut.

Birthday Camping

To celebrate Em's 26th bday we went camping in the Santa Ritas. This is the range to the south of Tucson. The base of the range is 2000 feet higher than Tucson, and this is evident in the friendlier flora of the area relative to the angry desert succulents. We've been camping together a few times with variable success. We have the goal to camp more and become more efficiant with it (read: stop forgetting things like tent poles...).

Our first camping trip together, pry 3 years ago... hopefully our last without tent poles.

Of course, we're both too tall to fit in the back of Troop-Troop.

This trip was a great success. We made it to the campground in time to get the last spot, get the tent set up, fire lit, and dinner cooking with a some dusk. Our smores were delicious. It is so dark out here, and the stargazing is amazing. So good in fact that there is an observatory on the next mountain over. When we moved here our landlord told us the there aren't many streetlights in Tucson because of all the observatories nearby. Cool. We are at the stage in our lives where it's time to replace our aging handmedown camping equipment. Everything works... but our sleeping bags are almost as old as we are... I got Em a new bag and pad for her bday, and she slept like a dream. In the morning we had coffee and headed out for a hike.

I've been hiking down here a few times without Em, once to the top of Mt. Wrightson; it's an amazing area. Fifty feet from our campsite there was a trail head that made a 6 mile loop up to a cool springs and back. This was a tough little hike. The way up was a rocky double track that was super steep. It had some awesome boulders right off the trail. I don't know much about bouldering, but it looks like fun so we checked it out.

In other news, we made the best ice cream in the history of the world. We both love cookie dough but sometimes wish the choclate chips weren't all crunchy in there. So we made some cookie dough sans chocolate chips. Don't get us wrong, we love chocholate but melty chocolate like in hot cookies or really good dark choclate at room temp... So we decided to add the chocolate in the form of ganache. So it's vanilla icecream with plain cookie dough and chocolate ganache folded into it. It's as dangerous as it is delicious.

Before:

After:

Willow like the ice cream too:

"I scream cream; you scream; we all scream for ice cream." -Willow

Our adorable cat :)

Willow the Menace

I just wanted to share with everyone our new addition to the house. Tommy made Willow a fantastic scratching post in hopes of deterring her away from wrecking the couch... it hasn't worked, yet :) But it looks great and she uses it! This just brings us to the fact that Willow is very spoiled. She has taken to having conversations with us more. Whenever we come home she greets us at the door and tells us how her day and how lonely she has been. She then goes on to blaming us for her sorrows and then running up to her room. Willow has also managed to train us to give her ice cubes anytime the freezer is opened. If she hears the freezer, she will constantly whine until she has at least 3 ice cubes strategically placed in her water bowl. She then commences to watching the ice cubes melt for the next 2 hours. It is rather entertaining for us! In order to further understand Willow, we have been dissecting her past with us and we think we have found the problem. The following pictures are evidence:The poor thing... :-P Her life has been so hard!

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
~Unknown