Whew… four holidays in one week! Ok, three of them were the same (Thanksgiving), and one is made up (National Cake Day). We drove up to Phoenix to see Grandma Jean on Wed night after work, and had a big Thanksgiving dinner on the actual day. Then on Friday, Jess had to work 🙁 but Scott got the day off 🙂 and did a little Christmas shopping. When Jess got off, we celebrated National Cake Day with a delicious whippped cream-topped angel food cake (see last year’s post on the origins of National Cake Day). Saturday we had to put on our Thanksgiving hats again and head over to Aunt Nancy and Uncle Robert’s for another dose of the Gobble-gobble Bird. It was a house full of people again, fortunately there was enough food to stuff us to the gills once again. We went home full. Sunday we headed back to Nancy and Robert’s with Brian (he had to work on Thansgiving) so he could celebrate with everyone as well. As always, there are new photos in the gallery. Needless to say we’ve had a lot of food in the past few days! Turkey + Cake + Turkey + Turkey = VERY FULL Scott and Jessica.
Happy HalloWiin!
We have been pretty busy this past month. Three weekends ago we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and we had a great time! We had been to the museum a few years ago when we visited Tucson, but we decided to go again. Check out our photos here. My favorite animal was the bighorn sheep who seemed to effortlessly scale the rocks.
Two weekends ago we went to the U of A v. Cal football game. The Wildcats pulled through and beat the Golden Bears. It was a beautiful evening of college football, but I must admit that it was rather weird to me that it was October and very much unlike the normal fall football weather I’m used to. I think it hit around 85 or 90 degrees right before the game. Thankfully, it was an evening game with a 7 pm kickoff so once the sun went down it was a lot cooler.
We were also busy again this past weekend! On Saturday night we went to a corn maze that’s about 45 minutes from our house. Yes, there is corn in Arizona. What’s interesting is that I never went to a corn maze when I was in Iowa, the land of corn. Yet, I’ve been to a corn maze in the Southwest. The next morning I walked with some of my co-workers in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk. It was a gorgeous day to do a 5k walk. Afterwards we went to one of my co-workers’ house for a potluck. Her cat just had kittens and Scott seemed to really bond with one of them. I had to check his pockets before we left to make sure he didn’t steal one of the kitties.
Last night we carved our pumpkin. We decided to pay homage to the Wii and carved a Wiimote into the pumpkin. I know…we’re geeks.
Birthday Surprise Trip
Last weekend for my birthday Scott told me to pack a bag and that we were going on a surprise birthday trip. He didn’t tell me much except that I would need stuff for the whole weekend. An hour into the trip I still didn’t know where we were going, but I had my suspicions. We finally hit Phoenix and were heading north when I finally got it out of him that we were going to Sedona, Arizona! For those of you who don’t know about Sedona, it’s probably one of the most beautiful places in Arizona, in my opinion. The scenery is absolutely amazing. What’s cool about it is the red rock that’s everywhere in the mountains. We stayed at a vacation rental by owner for the weekend and hiked around a lot. We also did a little bit of shopping in the gallery district. Check out our photos. There isn’t a bad view in Sedona. We had a good time enjoying the weather and relaxing. Thank you, Scott!
More visitors from the Midwest!
We recently had some more visitors from Iowa! My parents came for the weekend and hung out with us. We watched the Hawkeye football game (I don’t want to talk about it) and Mom took me shopping for my birthday (awesome!). Needless to say I got plenty of good outfits at my favorite store…Ann Taylor. We also went to Mount Lemmon and hiked around a bit on Sunday. Mount Lemmon is one of our favorite places in Tucson because it’s always cooler up there on top of the mountain. Oh, and there’s a pie shop at the top that serves amazing pie! (see Scott’s last post for more pie fun). Check out the pictures from their visit here. It was nice to see you, Mom and Dad!
Visitors from Iowa and Wisconsin
We had some visitors in from the midwest recently. My parents, and my aunt and uncle came downto spend some time in the Tucson area. We had our first overnight houseguests (in our house!) the first night when mom and dad got into town, and Brian also came down from Casa Grande for the night. Tom and Marj came in the next day, and everyone (excluding Brian, who had to go back to work) moved to a condo in Marana. We had a good time while everyone was here. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants in the area, Poca Cosa, with the whole gang plus Nancy and Robert. The following day we took a trek up Mt. Lemmon, did some geocaching, and of course, everyone had a big piece of pie (pie coma photo). My parents headed back to Iowa, but Tom and Marj stuck around for the rest of the week. They explored the area a bit more, and took an overnight trip up to Sedona before heading back to Wisconsin. It was good to see everyone, and have some visitors. We’ve got a load of new photos in the gallery.
Random Pile of Photos
We’ve been collecting a few random photos fro a little while now. They don’t really have a specific place of their own to live on here. Several are from our anniversary last month. We kept the top tier of our wedding cake (it survived 2 moves!), and ate it on our anniversary. We’ve also got a few new house photos. We’ve been adding storage shelves/brackets/doors to provide some places to put our stuff.
More Painting
It was another busy day for housework today. When we bought the green paint for the kitchen last month, we also bought some tan paint for the living room. The paint found its way out of the bucket and onto the walls this morning. Like before, we put together a time lapse of the process. I wish it had gone as fast as the time lapse makes it look.
Music: Kevin MacLeod
Jo & Ben’s Wedding
My sister, Joanna, and Ben tied the knot on July 12 and it was quite the party. Though they were originally going to have their reception at the IMU, the alternate site, the UI Athletic Club, turned out to be fabulous. It was an excellent party. Check out our pics in the gallery here.
While we were in Iowa celebrating Jo and Ben’s wedding, we also celebrated our first anniversary. It’s difficult to believe that we’ve been married for a year now. Where has the time gone?! Scott and I have had so many adventures this past year: moving to Arizona, starting new jobs, buying a house. It’s gone by so fast!
Green Kitchen
Today we painted for the first time at our house. We decided to paint the kitchen an olive green color. We only ended up painting a few walls, but it seemed to take forever going around cabinets and appliances. Now we just have a few touch-ups to do and then we’ll be done…with the kitchen anyway. We’ll see when we can muster enough energy to move on to another room. Check out our time lapse video painting the kitchen and photos of the final product.
Music: Kevin MacLeod
84 Pavers & 4.5 Tons of Rock Later
It is done! As of this morning we’re mostly done with the backyard! We moved four and a half tons of rock from a pile on our driveway through the gate to the backyard (after a short interruption from a thunderstorm). As you can image we were very tired once everything was moved and spread. We got most of it spread out last night, but it got dark, and we finished it up this morning. So now all that we have left to do is find some plants for the back portion against the wall of the yard. Hopefully that won’t be as tiring as the last parts! You can see the final shots of the 90% finished backyard in the gallery.