Piano Playin Puppy

Travis thought it'd be funny to have Lily try and help me play the piano one lazy Saturday morning. Yes, I'm still in my pjs :) Oh Lil!

4 wheelin Lovell Canyon

We had to take advantage of the wonderful weather this weekend too, so we headed up to Lovell Canyon with Nick and his son Cael to go 4 wheelin. Mindy was at a conference on the strip so it was just me and the boys. Nick just recently got their 2 seater 4 wheeler and it was so cool to see in action! Nick let both Travis and I drive it and ride in the second seat. The back of the seat is sooo comfy, not to mention the suspension. They also have a back seat package for Cael to sit in and he loves it! He just bobbles around with his cute helmet on back there chatting away looking for deer. It was a great day and so relaxing to be up in the mountains again this weekend.

Eagle Valley Reservoir

We FINALLY got a 3 day weekend to get away and go camping!! It's been sooo long since we went last which was Travis' dad's antelope hunt in September. It was sooo refreshing-perfect weather, gorgeous lake, lots of mini adventures and lots and lots of fish. :)

Eagle Valley Reservoir is in rural Nevada just 3 hours north of Vegas. We took off on a Friday morning, driving the whole way with an excited pooch on my lap. Spring Valley State Park has gorgeous rock formations and the lake lies next to huge rock walls and Travis' favorite sage and PJ hills. We decided to camp at the state park which has nice bathrooms and showers. We set up camp and headed down to the lake to fish.



Both of us got decked out in our float tubing gear and set out for the opposite side of the lake. We started at the overflow spill way end which kind of freaked me out because I felt like the wind was going to end up pushing us over the edge as well. After a long while of coaching, I got the hang of fly fishing again and caught a couple trout! One of the them was the biggest of all the trout we caught that weekend. Fun stuff! Travis of course was slamming them every other cast. Once the sun set behind the clouds it of course was too freezing to be sitting in the lake so we got out and decided to go on a mini hike.



Since Travis had spotted deer on a hill side, we set out in that direction. We found and came close to a couple herds and sent Lily chasing them around the mountain side. We hiked a long a muddy stream and barely found a spot to make it back out the other side since the brush got really dense. Being in so much mud, Lily was caked! By now it was 8pm and she HAD to be cleaned off. So the only solution was to drop her into the lake off the doc and make her swim back to shore. We felt so bad and she was soooo freaked out and freezing, but at least she was clean. Our campsite neighbors gave us some wood so we got to have a fire both nights. So we put her bed and blanket right by the fire and warmed her up, not to mention we had the big tent and heater so she was fine. Still, such abusive doggy parents, I know! :P



Saturday we slept in and fished the middle of the day. I caught a bunch more and Travis of course caught tons. There were a lot of people on the lake, but it was still really nice. I didn't fish as long so I let Lily out of the truck and she ran up and down the shore and got to swim around a little.



That afternoon and evening we went exploring and found a good spot to shoot the bow. Well, we thought it was a good spot but ended up loosing 2 arrows and damaging 2 others. Travis is a great shot practicing from super long ranges. I was his spotter for him and would glass his arrow locations on the target for him. We got in quite a bit of walking/hiking to retrieve the arrow from so far away.

That night we had a huge fire with all the extra logs we had leftover from the night before and ate dinner by the fire. As we were looking over our pictures on our camera from the day, Travis noticed that his pocket knife was missing. He searched all over camp and vaguely remembered hearing a "tink" noise somewhere when we were out retrieving arrows. So we got our flash lights and went back to the spot he shot his bow. We hiked all over trying to retrace our steps. Just as I was walking through an area that couldn't tell really where I was in comparison to the places we'd been during the day, I saw a long black rectangle in a pile of rocks. He was sooooo lucky that I found it! I guess the one he has, it's really hard to buy a duplicate or something.


The next day was more fishing for Travis while I sat on shore with Lily and dove into the Hunger Games novel. (not my favorite book, had mixed feelings about the whole thing, but still intriguing) He caught tons more fish and Lily had a blast just running around. She was a sleepy leepy all the way home. It was such a nice trip and so relaxing that I'm so ready to go back! Gotta take advantage of this weather while we can!

Work Work Work

The last few weeks at work have been filled with all sorts of events, so I thought I'd make note of them since it's been filling up a lot of my weekend and evenings. First we volunteered at the River Mountain Loop Trail clean up event. We were assigned a 3 mile stretch of the total 36 mile trail to walk back and forth across and gather the trash that's been tossed and blown into that part of the desert. The weather was perfect and a great day to enjoy the trail and do some service.


A couple weeks later we had our company retreat. We got to go see a couple of our landscape designs under construction, one of which was at a 20,000ft mansion of a house. We got to tour the house as well and it was amazing!-the pool, play room, office, kitchen, exterior spaces, etc. etc. was just soooo cool! I love looking at architectural design come to life. I'm just always so impressed at how people can think of the things they design.

In the afternoon we got to go racing with our spouses as well at a place called Pole Position Racing. It's an indoor race track that allows you to drive probably about 35 mph in a go-kart looking thing. It was a blast and Travis loved it! He was in the top 3 every time. :)


That night we had Benihana's which I realize I love! It's so fun to watch them cook and be entertained and the seafood was delicious. :)

And then the last event I participated in was CANstruction which is a charity event that involves designers and engineers coming up with a structure made up of cans that we end up donating to the local food bank. Our team did a tea cup and saucer and donut. I was in charge of the steam which we made with ribbon and fabric attached to a small fan placed in the middle of the cup. It was a cool thing to be a part of. Other teams did a volcano, a sock money, a cupcake, a pyramid, mickey mouse, and a stamp with Elvis' face on it. Very creative stuff.

Target Practice-Just an ATV ride away

So part of the reason we ended up buying the house we did was to be on the edge of town. Our community lies right next to a the Las Vegas Valley wash which has all sorts of wheelin trails, bike paths and exploring areas all throughout. It's not developed yet into a park or anything so as far as we're concerned it's up for grabs to take the ATV on. So for FHE our little family (that includes Lily) hopped on the 4 wheeler right from our garage and drove out to the archery range upstream from the wash. It's about a 5 minute ride away. Travis got to practice his shooting at different ranges all the way until dusk with the headlights from the 4 wheeler shining on the target for him. He's got great aim! Lily is still a little scared of the bow so she sat with me on the 4 wheeler for awhile and then we took off and went on a little hike as well. It of course is perfect weather in Vegas right now so it was a nice evening to be outside.

Archery from our own front door

We have a new toy at our house, the PSE bow and accessories! Travis recently realized how great it would be to have a bow to practice right off of our front porch and use without having to expend dollars and dollars in ammo to use it like we do when we go shooting. So he sold a bunch of old fire gear and some extra cameras we had and made enough money to get the bow, arrows, quiver, trigger, rest, sight, and target. He's been so excited to use it and especially to be able to practice in the comfort of his own pjs on our front porch. :) We're just lucky the builder still has yet to construct next to our house.


Lily isn't a fan of the bow though, she goes and cowers in the laundry room or in the back yard, but she'll walk out with Trav and retrieve the arrows from the target.


And speaking of all the practice he's been doing the last two days, he ended up shooting a "Robin Hood"- it's where the second arrow fired penetrates directly on top of the first one, splitting the arrow down the middle. Very cool looking. Looks like I'll be writing about quite a bit more hunting trips in the near future. :)