Detox

I'm trying to detox from Facebook. I joined FB in November 2008 and I even blogged about how much fun it was at the time. But the numbers over on the right definitely confirm that the FB outlet has crimped my blogging. Those twenty words or less status updates are just so easy and right up my alley...but I found myself always thinking in quips whereas two years ago I was enjoying the outlet of creative writing on this blog. I won't be able to quit FB entirely. I still love the convenient medium FB allows me to keep in touch with new and old friends...but I want to get back to capturing our lives and my reactions to this amazing journey in a more meaningful way.

Based on that very idea, I introduce a published copy of Desert Doers...



Slurping up our blog through blurb.com...it gave us a published hard-copy of the first year of our blog. I gave this first one as a Christmas present to Steve with an extra copy ordered to save so the girls will each get a copy later in life. It suddenly became very apparent that focusing on the blog, instead of FB, will allow me to share a hard-copy of memories and photos with our daughters versus just a collection of status updates out in cyber-space.

Go ahead, call me old-fashioned. Then after that, stop by and catch up with us here at the blog. We'd love to have you.

Hawkin' cookies...

Who can resist buying cookies from a couple of cute Brownies? Especially the one dressed as a Tagalong!?

Catch up...

I've neglected the blog. I know, it happens. As Steve just said, "I'm a desert non-doer." I could give you a gamut of excuses about how busy we've been these first two months of 2010 but instead I've summed up just a few of the things that have been keeping us busy...

♪ 169 cases of cookies in the garage...

...169 cases of cookies. Take one down, pass it around, 168 cases of cookies in the garage. ♫



It's Girl Scout Cookie season in AZ again...and guess who's the troop cookie mom again!?

♪ On a bicycle built for two ♫

I finally decided what to do with some of my birthday money (thanks Mom, Dad & Carol)! Now that Em is an experienced bike rider, we wanted to get out for some longer rides but Megan isn't quite ready to keep up. That's when I came across this trailer-bike! It hooks on under the seat of the adult's bike (with a quick release so we can switch between bikes easily) making a pint-sized tandem bike! Megan loves it...laughing the whole ride. And Emily loves going on longer, adventurous bike rides outside of the neighborhood.




We're sure to have a great time riding our bikes this spring.

Be mine?

On our very first Valentine, thirteen years ago, Steve and I cooked a dinner together. Chicken Cordon Bleu. He didn't cook at the time, and it was a dish I'd never made before, but we had fun figuring it out together. That became the first of 13 Valentine dinners...always Chicken Cordon Bleu.

This year we decided to mix things up a bit with a new dish. Heart-shaped Beef Wellington. Good enough that it just might be Valentine dinner for the next 13 years!

Quadragenarians

Lisa and I have been friends since the summer before we both attended UCSB. We worked together at a Togo's sandwich shop that summer. She likes to tell people how cool I was because I was 18 and I got to use the slicer. (Who knew a career in cold cuts had its very own celebrity status?) Our first day at college, we ran into each other while moving into our dorms. To bump into a familiar, friendly face in a huge dormitory meant that we immediately connected and to use the cliche, the rest is history. Twenty-three years and many laugh-out-loud memories later, we're all grown up with careers and families and celebrating milestone birthdays!

So just a couple weeks after we'd been in San Jose for Al's memorial service, I flew back solo to celebrate Lisa's 40th birthday. It was a quick trip but a great time catching up with old friends and making new ones. We're already talking about a girl's trip in 2010!

Ski Utah!

Our first travels in January took us to Utah to enjoy the snow with Susan and Mark. While Megan was content hanging out in the snow and throwing snowballs at me, Emily took to the slopes for the second time. After just a couple runs she was confidently zipping down the hill. So confident in fact that the morning of her refresher ski lesson she says to me, "Mom, the problem with the lessons is that we're supposed to stay behind the instructor...and I think that's going to be a problem because I'm so fast now!"



Susan and Mark hosted a wonderful weekend of delicious food, home brewed beer, playoff football, playing in the snow, and the girls favorite thing, hanging out with Guiness and Murphys.




And finally, on our last morning there, it snowed enough to catch a few snowflakes on our tongues before we left for the airport!