Valentine's Weekend

This year for Valentine's we decided to spend time together with a nice date night and then outside in the wonderful winter Vegas weather. Since Valentine's Day was on Sunday this year, we went out Friday night to our favorite Chinese restaurant, Cook on Wok. Afterwards, Travis was so sweet and let me pick a movie to go see, which of course was a romantic comedy, Valentine's Day. Very cute movie. He always lets me pick the movies we see! He's so sweet.

Then on Saturday we slept in and later headed out for a hike to the Arizona Hot Springs. There were 2 trails to take at the trail head-one to the Colorado river, and one to the hot springs. We meant to go to the hot springs but ended up on the White Rock Canyon Trail to the river. The trail of course is in a wash with lots of sand, so the hike out was killer! It's nothing steep, just a steady incline for 3.5 on the way out. So we hiked a little over 7 miles that afternoon! Lily was a trooper! She wasn't tired one bit! Well, we all were beat when we got back to the car, but she kept truckin the whole way.

So at the end of the trail was the gorgeous Colorado river which Lily took a quick dip in. The trail also led to a small waterfall where a ladder use to be positioned giving access to the hot springs. But since there was no ladder, we just got to experience the warm humid water fall instead.


At the mouth of the narrow canyon to the waterfall was a huge camp of tons of kayakers and canoers. Looked like they boated from Willow Beach upstream to this camp and brought all sorts of gear to spend the night. There were all sorts of different groups of people, some even had dogs! My guess is that there were over 100 people there. It was nuts. But it was the perfect weekend to do something like that. There was no wind and the weather was gorgeous!

So on our way out, Travis of course spotted a big horn sheep on the canyon cliffs above. There are just tons of sheep that live in the cliffs near the Hoover Dam. As we were hiking out I was reflecting on last year's Valentine's adventure and remembered that we also hiked to some hot springs that year as well, and come to think of it, our first Valentine's Day together we did the same thing! It's just a good time of year to good hiking, especially in Southern Nevada.

Superbowl Party

The Starley's put on a great Superbowl party with tons of food and a couple of creative games. A bunch of our friends were there including the Kessingers, Alans, Pursers, Heffners, and Meeders. It was great catching up with Steven & Amber- it'd been so long since we'd seen them! The kids there had a great time sneaking food to Lily all night, which I was surprised to see that she really wasn't all that sick afterwards! She got brownies, chips, cookies, smokies, jalapeno and cream cheese appetizer from Travis and who knows what else! Spoiled doggy. I too of course had my fill of food! It was all so yummy. :)


During half time, Amber and I went over to the Symes to visit little Crew that was only 8 days old. He's so adorable! It was fun seeing such a teeny tiny baby again.

As far as the game goes, I guess the outcome was a big deal, but since I'm not all that into football it was just a good excuse to get together and chill. The Colts and the Saints played, with the Saints as the underdog. They had never won a Superbowl before and they won like 30-something to 17 or something like that. So it was a pretty cool win and a great little party. Thanks Starleys for hosting!

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.