Pets

Since I've had my iphone, I've taken some good camera-phone pictures of Lily and a couple of my friend Mindy's cat Tigger. I just had to post them as a tribute to pets, both dogs and cats which I now equally love both. Ok, so I just might like dogs a little more now. :)

Mindy, Cael, Lily and I went rollerblading last weekend. Lily got tired so she got to ride with her buddy Cael for awhile. ha!

And a close up. Cael just loves her. :) Look out for that tongue!

We got a new ATV seat for Christmas (thank you mom!) And Lily was the first one to try it out.

I LOVE orange cats! He was totally sitting all curled up and purring on my lap.

Gold Strike Pass

Since Travis & I are pretty much limited in our traveling with him being in rotations, instead of going up to Utah with friends to go skiing, we had to stay here and decided to go 4-wheeling exploring. We took Gold Strike Pass, a road neither of us had ever been on. It's about 2 miles from Hoover Dam and also connects to the east side of Boulder City. It was the usual scenery along most of the pass as far as the desert goes, but there were some great views of Lake Mead, Hoover Dam and the new bridge, Black Canyon, and a bunch of big horn sheep! It was a nice little excursion and we even found a few other things to go back and check out later. :)

Lake Mead right before Hoover Dam

Lake Mead at Boulder Bay. The black square in the foreground use to be the parking lot which was right next to the water's edge. The bridge use to be at the water's height.

Hoover Dam & the new bridge. Almost done-just adding the road on top.

The bigger bighorn sheep that we saw.

Black Canyon. Somewhere down in between all those ridges lies the Colorado River below the Hoover Dam.

No puppies for Lily

So I finally broke down and decided to get Lily spayed. I've been toying with the idea of how much of a cool adventure it would be for her to have puppies. I think that having a female pet give birth whether it's a dog or cat or whatever would be so neat to actually see and have the little guys around for those 1st few weeks before you sell them. So I thought it'd be good to do something like that now. Well, Lily's heat cycle didn't start in November like we thought it would, nor did it come in December so we started wondering if she was mysteriously impregnated! Then I got to worrying- what if she is pregnant with mutts? What if we can't sell the mutts or even worse give them away? I could never take animals to the pound! But I don't want more dogs living here either! So after that train of thought I decided to find the most inexpensive vet and get her spayed. Here's a picture of her cuddling with Travis after the major surgery shock of her life.


She was sedated again right when I picked her up to take her home, so she was pretty sleepy the rest of the night, until about the middle of the night. Lily and I fell asleep on the futon while Travis stayed up late that night. He woke me up to come to bed and as I went to pick up Lily and put her in her bed, she totally tried to bite me! She's never done that before. I felt so bad for her; she must've been in so much pain. So I got Travis to move her, she was still biting at him, and then I gave her some lunch meat with her pain pill wrapped in the middle. Poor Lil.... That was the only major thing she did out of the ordinary though. Yes, she was waddling a little bit for the next day and she wasn't as hyper, but over all she cooped with it well. Glad that's over!

New Year

For our first activity in the New Year of 2010, we went clay pigeon shooting with the Starleys and Jon Purser & his 5yr old son. It was so nice to get out and enjoy the wonderful Vegas winter weather and work on my shot. Travis got a new clay pigeon thrower that allows you to throw the pigeons in all sorts of the directions, so we had to all go out and try it out. Nick so kindly picked it up for Travis at Cabelas while they were in Utah for Christmas. Cael had fun pulling for all of us and even had a couple rounds with the .22.

Grand Canyon

Since Travis and I have the week after Christmas off work/school, we had to take a mini-trip out of town. I've been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon for a long while now, especially since it's only a 3 1/2 hour trip from home. I'd never been before and it was such an amazing sight to see in person! It was so neat seeing it with snow everywhere and hiking the narrow trails in the snow. Because it was so cold, we stayed in a cute hotel in Williams where you could even stay the night in a caboose. Very cute. Here are a few pictures of our adventure:

He's really not too far from me on the trail, but since the trail is so steep he's pretty far down below me.

The caboose that we could've stayed in. A little too pricey for us, but still cool.

Yea, we just hiked down that whole cliff side. South Kaibab Trail

Bright Angel Trail

Christmas in Vegas

We had a great Christmas this year with Travis' family! We spent the night at his parents house on Christmas Eve, which I think is a great tradition we've started since we never spend the night at their house any other time of year. Travis' Aunt Cheryl and Bob came as well with their dog Murphy, a cockier spaniel mix of some sort, so it was a full house. Christmas Eve Dinner was shared with Uncle Darren's family so in total we had a nice turkey and ham dinner for 14 and leftovers for 4 dogs. :) Brighton was able to join us on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, a very generous gesture from her father. It was so fun having an excited kid in the bunch for Christmas.


At 5:30am I was woken up with a phone call from my family to join them online on the webcam Jess & I bought for mom for Christmas. I got to watch most of the present opening and it really felt like I was there. It was so nice to be a part of their Christmas as well.

The gifts this year were so generous from both friends and family. Travis & I were most impressed with our home-made crocheted beanies and scarfs from Grandma Hayman. They are so comfy and we love them! She also included a very nice personalized note for each of us, very touching. Travis so wonderfully got me my own iphone and a massage at a spa among other things. We had a great time opening gifts for about 5 hours with Travis' family (unheard of at my parent's house) and enjoyed another nice meal of prime rib for Christmas dinner. It was a wonderful Christmas!

Lily got a few gifts too. She really liked her cheez bonz- stuck her nose in the box and pulled out a bone all on her own.

Aunt Cheryl loves tea parties so we had one of our own. She got Brighton her very own porcelain Mrs. Potts and Chip tea set. We had some delicious lemonade at our very own tea party.