grand canyon -- day 2 -- south kaibab trail

read about the second day of grand canyon trip at i scream for sunshine!

i talk all about the advantages and disadvantages of the biolite camp stove, our favorite camping accessory!

grand canyon -- day 1 -- the bright angel trail

we spent memorial day weekend at the grand canyon. and i finally wrote about it. check out the blog post on the new website, i scream for sunshine, now!

road trip -- santa fe, new mexico to flagstaff, arizona -- day 5

read about our last day of driving here.



and remember, my website has changed to www.iscreamforsunshine.com, be sure to change your bookmarks! 

2013 -- week 30 -- work, work, work, & lots of fun!

this past week was one of my busiest -- i had to work six of the seven days, drive over 1000 miles, and recruit students from three different schools to join the teen pregnancy prevention program i run. it was a bit intense. 

(ps. if you're interested in learning sex ed facts and statistics, please like pinal county teen outreach program on facebook. it's a great resource for teens, parents, and teachers to learn more about teenage sexual health education!)

but there were also some really awesome things that happened this week -- rcg and i celebrated our anniversary with dippin' dots, the ice cream of the future, and my favorite ice cream of all time, and we went to a matchbox twenty concert! it was like a two day extravaganza especially for me. and it was amazing for a couple of reasons. when rcg surprised me with dippin' dots, it convinced me, beyond any doubt, how awesome he is, and how well he knows me. and that's a really cool feeling. and then he was totally supportive of my desire to appease my eighth grade self and see matchbox twenty. he patiently sat through the concert, without so much as one whine, even though he had been up since 3:30am and hiked 15 miles, and would have much rather been asleep than listening to rob thomas croon to screaming girls. i'm so lucky!

since i am the one who puts together our project life "pages" each week, sometimes i feel like i'm not properly documenting what goes on in rcg's life, just my own. which is totally lame. especially since he gets to do some cool things at work; just check out his day in the life from february 28, 2013. so anytime he does something super cool without me i try to remember to ask him to take at least a couple of pictures for me. that way i can document the neat things he does when i'm not around. like this past weekend, when he went hiking with a friend in the santa catalina mountains. (if you're interested in trying out the trail they hiked, you can find it here.) they've been doing a lot of hiking over the past couple of months (in june they hiked mt. wrightson and in march we all hiked baboquivari) because they're prepping for a rim to rim hike through the grand canyon in september! i'm pretty pumped for them!!

what do you do so that you can document everyone in your family's week?

old trees and rainbow rocks: the painted desert & the petrified forest

i've been sitting here, looking at these photos for hours trying to figure out just what to say about them. but there's nothing that i can say that the pictures can't say themselves. so i'll be quiet on this one, and let the photos speak for themselves. enjoy!

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

we were so lucky to be in the right spot at the right time to get these photos of a train traveling on the santa fe railroad. and i loved them all, so instead of sharing one or two of them, i decided to make a gif!

  

   

 

(this is a close up of a fallen fossilized tree from 225 million years ago. omg, so cool.)

2013 -- week 27 -- a kitten birthday, homemade pizza, and a lazy holiday weekend

i can't believe it's already july; i feel like this year just started. but i guess we've been busy and, as they say, time flies when you're having fun. and this week was definitely fun.

on monday we had a birthday party for cornelius, our cute but precocious kitten. he turned four, and one can only hope that as he ages, he's finally starting to slow down. he's a super lover kitten -- he's always looking for a lap to take a nap on, or a body to lean against -- but he's also wild. over the years we've called him a raccoon, a black bear, a panther, and a master buggy hunter because he's always getting into things he shouldn't and rummaging around. he's become quite adept at opening cabinet doors, and any day now he'll be able to get into the bathroom by himself. despite all of his hijinks, he's still my baby kitten. happy birthday bug.

on wednesday night we decided to try making homemade pizza. we cheated a little -- we bought pizza dough from trader joe's, but that's only because we were so nervous to make our own dough and we really wanted to try out our pizza stone. we had some problems at first rolling out the dough, and then again when we tried to take the pizza off the peel and put it on the hot pizza stone, but we were resourceful and made a calzone instead. and it was delicious.


we especially enjoyed the holiday and the opportunities it provided for us to hang out with friends and eat well. on the fourth we ate at new restaurant, robert's. we'd heard that it's supposed to have amazing cinnamon buns, so we got up early on thursday to give it a try. and we were pleasantly surprised, because not only were the cinnamon buns huge and delicious, but they also had homemade pie! and i can't resist homemade pie for breakfast; i am my father's daughter after all.

for the weekend, we met up with friends at the salt river and went tubing. we went tubing last year, so we had an idea of what to expect, but it's a lot more fun with a large group of people and beer! it's so relaxing floating down the river; there's nothing to worry about (except reapplying sunscreen!) and it's refreshing being in the chilly water when it's 100+ degrees out. if you live anywhere near a river and tubing is an option, take one day and float your river -- you won't regret it.

what did you do for the holiday weekend?

how cool is the grand canyon?

guys, i've been so busy planning the bodanzalez boda that i've been a bad blogger. again. sorry! 

but i made you another gif!

and all that planning has paid off because we picked a date! look forward to more updates soon!

2013 -- week 21 -- road trip!

i feel like everyone's bucket list should include a long cross country road trip. ideally you would take your time, seeing all sorts of weird things, eat strange but local delicacies, and stop in a lot of states. so when csv was talking about how she needed to get her car from vermont to arizona after her graduation, i jumped at the chance to accompany her. not only would i finally get a chance to drive across the country but i would also get to go to some new states -- this was especially exciting since i haven't been to a lot of the midwestern states, and my goal in life is to go to all 50.  

we've been planning this trip for a couple of months. we've looked at maps, ordered aaa books, read books about the sights and eats along the road, and researched the things to see along route 66. and all of the planning really paid off -- we had an amazing time, saw nifty things, and ate awesome food. and since i bought a fancy new camera the pictures are super cool. which means the blog posts should be great; be looking for those in the coming weeks, including a guest post by csv about all of the food we ate along our trip.

some highlights from this trip include the four new states i went to (missouri, kansas, oklahoma, and new mexico), local food in oklahoma (fried onion burger, a coney, and calf fries), the changing landscape from one state to the next, and the grand canyon where we met up with rcg.

have you done a cross country road trip? where did you go? what did you see?

that time we hiked for 12 hours

a month ago, a friend of ours invited us to hike/climb baboquivari, the holiest mountain for the tohono o'odham tribe, for his birthday. our friend is from tubac, a town slightly south of tucson along I-19, so he's wanted to climb baboquivari for as long as he can remember. every year he attempts to summit the mountain, but inevitably he comes up short because the last part of the mountain needs be climbed with ropes. this year, he decided that he'd had enough and hired a guide to help him (and us!) get to the top. 

this is a story in pictures of our 12 hour hike up baboquivari.

 

 

  

how cute is this jack rabbit?

  

 

happy birthday tv!

the beginning of the hike: 6am. gross.

   

 

ahhh. i love these trees.

 

  

 

one of our guides.

 

climb on!

 

 

we made it to the top!

  

tokens of gratitude to i'itoi.

"kiss the mountain air we breathe."

 

how cool are our guides? they're doing a simultaneous belay. amazing.

  

 

we did it!

thanks to tv & bv for the use of their pictures. and for letting us tag along! you guys are awesome.