Locks of Love

I have been considering cutting my hair sorter for a few weeks now. I've thought through how short I wanted it, whether or not I wanted to do layers and bangs, what styles I still wanted to be able to do and so on and so on. I had decided that if I cut about six inches off of the length It would still be long enough to do everything I wanted but be short enough for a new, fun summer look.

Then I had a thought.

If I cut off only four additional inches I could donate my hair to Locks of Love.

I had cut my hair three years ago and donated it and I remember how much I hated having that short of hair. But how could I cut off six inches of hair and not have it go towards something good? I mean, that's a lot of hair.

I thought about it and finally decided that my short time of suffering with really short hair would be worth giving a wig to a child who needed it. I made a call to the salon this morning (before I changed my mind) and went in at noon...

I'm in shock. I know I'll get used to it and I know it will grow out soon... and it is definitely worth knowing a little kid will get a wig from my donation of hair. Here's to the new haircut and a new adventure!

Happy 3rd Anniversary!

Three years - I can't believe it's already been three years! It seems like we got married only a short time ago. So far we've had good times, not so good times and great times - and I've learned that the great times wouldn't be so great without the not so good times. 

So, Lovey, here's to three years! You are my best friend, my adventure partner, my listening ear, my support and the love of my life. I can't wait for the next 3 x 100 more years together! I love you so much! 

Happy Anniversary!

Camping, hiking and Geochacing

This past weekend was awesome - so awesome that is has taken me a few days to get this blog post up about it because I've been so busy cleaning up and catching up since we arrived home!

We left on Friday night to a campsite we had never been to before. We have hiked around there several times but have never stayed so we thought we'd give it a try. It was beautiful! A nice wooded area not too affected by the beetle kill and not too close to other sites. Bliss! We recently purchased a new tent, a 3-season 4-man tent that we were anxious to try out. The tent we have been using for the last four years is a 7-man generic tent which has been great for having friends camp with us and for when the weather is warm (it is mostly mesh with a light rainfly), but we were looking for something a little smaller for when just Dave and I went camping by ourselves - and this seems to do the trick.

On Saturday morning we attended a park ranger talk about Geocaching. We kind of knew what it was but were uncertain of the details and we learned a lot in this little class. Basically what you do is visit a website listing all of the Geocaches world-wide and you search for some near you. You enter the coordinates on a GPS device and away you go! The GPS only shows you the direction in which the cache is from where you are located and doesn't guide you along trails so you have to be the one to follow the actual trail until you get close to the cache location. When you get close you search for the cache which can be any sort of air-tight container containing, well, almost anything. The idea is that you find the cache, open it, log your visit in the logbook and then you have the option to take a trinket from the cache but only if you brought along something to put into the cache for someone else to find. I like to think of Geocaching as hiking with a purpose or as a treasure hunt.

That afternoon we went to find our first Geocache. The trail which led to the cache ended up being longer, steeper and harder to do than we anticipated. I hadn't been feeling well the last couple of days and a few miles into the hike I started feeling dizzy, light-headed and nauseated. The sky was also beginning to look like rain so we decided to turn around and head back down the mountain without finding the cache. But before we left I got this fantastic picture of a sun dog (an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun).

We tried another trail with a cache on it on Sunday and successfully located that cache! Wahoo, our first cache!

We left a new container of "Moose Smooch" lip balm in exchange for a moose postcard, signed the log and headed back down the trail to head home; but after we made Gromit try on the pair of kiddie sunglasses left in the cache.

It was a great weekend of trying new things and I'm sure we'll be Geocaching in the future. It looks like there of plenty of Geocaches along the trails in our town!

Wild G!

Dave and I have been letting Gromit stay out of his kennel during the day while we watch him on two web cams (or what we refer to as G-cams; and yes, I know watching our dog on web cams is a little crazy) to see how he is doing. We have had some problems in the past with him chewing on cords and cables, something he never attempts to do while we are at home. I bought some bitter spray to put on the cords, cables and other things we definitely don't want him putting his mouth on and sprayed it all around the apartment. So, we thought we would try again to let him out of his kennel. He has been doing great for a few weeks but yesterday he had a little wild spell and... well... just look at the pictures from the web cam.

Running across the coffee table

Looking for a good book to read

Checking out the firewood by the fireplace

After that little adventure of his I adjusted the location of some things in the apartment and sprayed another round of the bitter spray on everything just in case he was feeling a little extra wild today, but so far, he's been fine. We'll see how the next few weeks go!

4th of July weekend

It has been an absolutely fantastic 4th of July weekend. I always have high expectations for this weekend each year as it is my absolute favorite holiday of the year - and this year those expectations were met - with a few hiccups along the way.

Saturday morning we decided to take a bike ride to the dog park so we could get some exercise riding and Gromit could get some exercise running around the dog park. Here's a picture of Dave with Gromit in the dog trailer. So funny, but it works!

Gromit isn't thrilled about riding in it yet, but I think as he rides it in more he'll get used to it and stop resisting to get in and enjoy the ride.

At the dog park there is a pond for the dogs to jump in and swim in and Gromit has been resistant to actually swimming and prefers to lay down in the shallow part of the water to cool off. But on Saturday he surprised us and followed some much bigger dogs into the water chasing after a ball. After he got into the deeper part of the water he turned around and swam back. Too cute! We've never seen him do that before but we hope he'll do it again sometime.

On Sunday we got ready to go to the park and host a BBQ for some of our friends and then hang out until the city fireworks started. I was making deviled eggs and a patriotic cake for the BBQ. The deviled eggs turned out so well until the car ride to the park knocked them on top of each other. Good thing I have photographic evidence of how they looked before the accident.

I had my usual failure with baking while trying to make a patriotic cake. My idea was to make a round cake with red and blue cake layers and white icing. Very festive, right? The first cake I baked tasted great but the blue layer fell apart when I took it out of the pan. I swear, it was baked through and I let it cool for a long time before I took it out of the pan, but because I' have a baking handicap, it just fell apart.

So back to the store I went for another box of cake mix. At least with making another cake I had the opportunity to add a white cake layer (because the red layer from the first attempt turned out fine). So after my second try I prevailed and conquered the cake! The only other disappointment was that the icing looked pretty bad, but I was willing to let that slide since I had such difficulty with the actual cake. Oh well!

Our BBQ at the park was cut short when high winds and heavy rain almost took out our canopy - we were having to physically hold it down to keep the wind from blowing it away! Luckily only a few things ripped on our canopy walls and can be easily fixed with some simple sewing. We packed everything up and headed back to our apartment to finish out the BBQ. Dinner was much better when we didn't have to worry about blowing away or getting wet! We thought the city might cancel or postpone the fireworks because the weather was so bad but they said it was still going to happen.So after dinner and dessert we piled back into the car, drove to the park and watched fireworks from the car where we were nice and dry. All in all, it was a great 4th of July!

Today we have spent the day cleaning up, doing laundry, repairing our canopy and getting ready for the upcoming week. I even made a summer time wreath to replace my patriotic welcome sign on the front door. I'm prety proud of the wreath and Dave doesn't think it is half bad either.

I hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July weekend! We are so lucky to live in a free country and to have brave men and women willing to put their lives on the line to protect that freedom for us. Thank you all!