Scott and Jessica

Recently we took a trip to Bisbee, Arizona–a tiny hippie town tucked away in the mountains about two hours outside of Tucson.  On our way to Bisbee, we decided to stop in Tombstone and maybe get a glimpse of the OK Corral.  Sadly, the tour was sold out, but we did see plenty of horsedrawn carriages and Tombstone (the movie) merchandise.  Unfortunately, our brief stop in Tombstone didn’t end well because it involved Scott stepping in horse poop.  I guess that’s just the chance you take when you go back in time to the Old West.

After our brief detour, we were on our way to Bisbee.  Bisbee is a quaint town, with lots of weird little town charm (i.e., the house with a bunch o’ crap stuck to its exterior).  We had a good time geocaching and exploring, but I would have to say my favorite part of the trip was going on the mine tour.  Bisbee was a big copper mining town so there are lots of abandoned mines dotting the area.  We also had an amazing meal at the Cafe Roka.  All in all, a good little weekend getaway.

I was not done traveling after we got back from Bisbee.  A day after we returned, I was scheduled to go to San Luis, Arizona, for work.  San Luis is a small border town roughly four hours west of Tucson.  Anyway, the trip there was fairly uneventful, but the trip back was something I will never forget.  My coworker and I got stuck in a sandstorm and had to be escorted out of the storm by Arizona DPS officers!  As you can see in the photos below, it was like blizzard whiteout conditions, but everything was orange.  At times we couldn’t even see the cars pulled off to the side with us.  Let’s just say I hope I never have to go through a sandstorm again!

You’ve probably noticed the new design to scottandjessica.net. Well, this is something that I’ve had on the back burner for a little while now, and decided to finally pull the trigger. My dad took some good photos of us when we were in Iowa over Christmas that I stuck in the header. In addition to the new design, I’ve also changed our photo gallery to something that is a bit more clean (and faster too). The new gallery also allows users to leave comments on photos (it was turned off in the old gallery because of spam). So, take a look around, leave a comment (or two), and let us know if you notice something broken.

Well, we’re back from the great white north, and finally settled back in after a couple weeks of holiday travels. We flew to Omaha in mid-December, and spent about a week in Atlantic, then drove to Iowa City (through the great blizzard of 2009) on Christmas day. We spent another week in Iowa City and then flew back to warm Tucson the second day of 2010. It was a nice trip, and was good to see friends and family. We’ve added holiday photos to the gallery.

The tree is up, the presents have been purchased (most shipped to their recipients), and we’re ready for Christmas! The weather doesn’t quite feel very Christmasy (we went for a drive with the convertible top down last night and were pretty comfortable). I’m sure we’ll be longing for the warmth when we get to Iowa in a few days. I hear it’s COLD… and there’s a good amount of snow on the ground. I’m ready for it, but I don’t think Jess is looking forward to the cold. It will be good to just relax with family for a while (cold or not!). Happy Holidays!

(more Christmas photos in our Flickr account)

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a fun (and filling) trip up to Sun City to celebrate Thanksgiving with Grandma.

…and a Happy National Cake Day (the day after Thanksgiving) as well!

Loyal Blog Readers: Boy, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from you, what’s been going on with Scott and Jessica?

ScottandJessica.net: Funny you should ask, we’ve actually been pretty busy the last few months.

Loyal Blog Readers: Well, as far as we know, the last thing that happened was a few people visited you, and you did some fun things.

ScottandJessica.net: Let us bring you up to speed on the latest happenings.

Loyal Blog Readers: Good! We can’t wait!

ScottandJessica.net: Let’s start out with a trip back to Iowa in October. We took a trip back to attend Iowa’s homecoming game. We both played in the alumni band. Jess has done it a couple times, but it was Scott’s first time in alumni band. He hadn’t picked up his trumpet in 10-plus years. Fortunately it still worked, and played well enough to march through pre-game in an Iowa win over Michigan. We got a taste of some fall weather, and even a bit of snow in the morning before the game. Check out photos from the trip in the gallery.

Loyal Blog Readers: Wow! That sounds like it was a pretty fun trip! Go Hawks! Did you guys do anything fun for Halloween?

ScottandJessica.net: Funny you should ask, we went to a couple of Halloween parties, and had a good time dressed as Mario and Princess Peach (y’know, from Super Mario Brothers?!?). You can see some lovely pictures from Halloween in the gallery.

Loyal Blog Readers: Ha ha ha! What great costumes!!! Looks like you had a good Halloween. You guys usually post home improvements on the site, have you done anything to the house lately?

ScottandJessica.net: Actually, we did just finish up a small project. We’d been talking for quite some time about getting curtains for the master bedroom (the blinds didn’t quite block out the STRONG Arizona sun). We took a trip to Phoenix to visit grandma a couple weeks ago, and swung by IKEA on our way home, and believe it or not, bought some new curtains. Before hanging the curtains, we decided to go a bit further, and paint one of the walls in the room (for you TLC/DIY/Home&Garden/HGTV watchers, it’s known as an “Accent Wall”). And before looking at the photos, you can probably guess what color it is…

Loyal Blog Readers: Green!

ScottandJessica.net: What can we say? We like green. Anyway, check out the photos below, of our new and improved bedroom.

Loyal Blog Readers: The room looks nice… and that’s a lovely, “accent wall!” (like how we threw that into conversation?!?)

ScottandJessica.net: Why, thank you! So far, we’re enjoying it – less sun in the morning, is always a good thing.

Loyal Blog Readers: Thanks for the update, and try not to let it go so long without a post next time.

ScottandJessica.net: Sorry about that… we’ll try.

The temps are starting to cool a bit, and that means a few visitors from the North start to arrive. First Jess had her birthday, and as part of her birthday surprise we went to the Arizona Sky Center on top of Mt. Lemmon. Tom and Marj just got into town so they joined us on our star-gazing adventure. We drove to the top of the mountain around 4pm, and then spend the next several hours looking through various telescopes. The top of Mt. Lemmon is home to quite a few observatories controlled by different groups around the world. We did most of our looking through a 24″ telescope at various celestial bodies. The next day we took a trip out to Biosphere 2. Jess and I had been there before, but the tour we took this time was different than our last one. They’ve recently opened up the rain forest section to the tour, which was pretty (wet) cool.

Later in the week my parents arrived after spending some time at a conference on San Juan Island near Seattle. We had dinner with Tom and marj a couple nights, then took a tour of the Titan Missile Museum. The museum was an actual Titan II missile silo that was active during the cold war. We got up close and personal with the missile and Jess got to sit in the commander’s chair and participate in the launch sequence.

As always, photos are up in the gallery.