Miss Arizona

Just because she's so stinkin cute!

Halloween 2009

It was so much fun to have Sydney understand more about Halloween this year and actually be excited to carve her own pumpkin, pick out what she wanted to be for Halloween and walk around the neighborhood. She carved two of the three pumpkins! She actually did really good drawing eyes, a nose and mouth! We added final touches to the pumpkins with some Mr. Potato Head like additions.

Here's Sydney drawing her eyes, nose and mouth for her pumpkin

What's in there?

So proud of her first pumpkin!

Still suffering from an injury to the bone of my middle finger, I irritated it again by carving pumpkins with Sydney the first night. I had to ask Chris to step in and help me carve the remaining two pumpkins. Although he wasn't happy about it at first, he had a blast!

Cleaning the pumpkins out, his favorite part

Lovin' every minute of it

So proud of his pumpkin

Sydney putting the final touches on Mommy's pumpkin

All dressed up in her Zebra costume sans the leg warmers. I love this Zebra!

All dressed up and ready to go out trick or treating with the neighborhood kids!

Trick or Treat!

Our Pumpkin Family

The aftermath

Checkin' out her loot! Sucker!! SCORE!

Best Halloween Ever!

Colorado Springs

Chris and I get one chance to get a way for a weekend a year. It's sad, but true. We go out for dinner or have a night away, but this is our only long weekend. The only variable is that it's a work trip for Chris. It's amazing because we get to stay at five star luxury hotels, which we'd never want to cough up the money to stay there...but for work, WOOHOO. Thus the reason I tag along. Chris does have to go to meetings during the day, but they break in the afternoon and we can head out doing some fun touristy stuff. It's really weird to go out and not have to think "ok, we need to be back home no later than 2 so Syd can get her nap in." It's just us....and it's fun, yet so lonely! We totally missed the little booger and kept saying "Sydney would LOVE this."

One of the earliest structures of Colorado City, built in 1839. For several years this building was referred to as "the first state capitol" because the first Territorial Legislature met here. It was later decided it was too small, which is it. I love historical sites like this!

Chris and I headed to the Seven Falls for our first little outing. If you look closely you can see the staircase going all the way up along the falls. All 224 stairs. It's scary as heck going up because you can see right through the stairs straight down. It was pretty cold out and the railings are metal, so they made your hands ache as you held on with your death grip. After me saying "no way in hell" about going up them, we took the elevator over to the scenic point.

Then while up at the top, there is a staircase with 185 steps to the ground. We decided to use this as a test run to see if we could actually do it. Damn straight we did!!! Almost wet my pants a few times, but we did it!! Here's Chris at the bottom of the stairs we came down.

So then we decide...."we got this" and head back to the stairs along the falls. Take one last photo for Sydney to remember us by.

And here we go up the stairs.

Chris is in the lead and we get to about the halfway point and he turns around because I'm trailing behind him "Are you ok?" I respond, "No, I am not OK!!!" That's right, I went into a full blown PANIC ATTACK! I was pretty much frozen in place and picturing a helicopter rescue. I DON'T CARE IF I WAS ONLY A FEW STEPS UP, I WANTED A HELICOPTER, DAMMIT! So then I decide to just go down the stairs backwards. Mostly because I had no idea how the heck I was going to turn around, so this seemed like the most logical solution. This freaked Chris out pretty badly as he came running down after me. I finally got the nerve to turn around (wasn't easy and I prayed A LOT) and headed back down to quickly kiss the ground and call Sydney so she knew I was alive.

One of the many very cool things were the deer in the roads CONSTANTLY! We don't get that in Arizona, so all the locals thought we were weird when we'd stop the car and take several (yes several) photos of them.

We decided to go off-roading up to the top of the mountain. Some of the most amazing views, snow and very steep drop offs! But heights while securely in our car is much more our speed versus stairs that drop off to sudden death.

The next day we headed over to the Garden of the Gods. Such a gorgeous park.

In the park we decided to climb around "Balancing Rock" I wish I knew I was going to do some climbing. I wore some tight ass jeans. Apparently I've enjoyed too many chocolate donuts lately and my jeans are feeling the brunt of it all. I'm sorry jeans, I promise to cut back (as soon as the Halloween candy is gone).

Check out how strong Chris is. He held up that huge thing all by himself.

Rock climbing. We couldn't agree on a path to take, so we went our own way and took pics of each other. Story of our marriage. :)

Next on the ol' tourist attraction was the Cave of the Winds. What a really really cool thing to do. In the late 1800's George and John Pickett, two local boys heard a whistling noise while climbing in the mountains and ran back to town telling everyone they found a ghost. Only one man believed them, a local geologist and they discovered the Cave of the Winds that makes a whistling noise when the wind blows through the holes.

They began hosting tours of the caves in 1880 where you would ride on a horse and buggy and then climb a huge set of wooden stairs into the entrance of the cave.

The old entrance to the cave Yep, it's that tiny hole to the left of the steel column. Thank goodness it isn't the same entrance these days!

The tours were six and a half hours long and most of the tour was by small candles while on their bellies crawling through the small passage ways. No idea how they did it. We were getting light headed just walking around for our tour! Here's an old ladder they had to climb to get to another room in the cave.

They actually do a few tours by candle light and tell the ghost stories of the cave. How the wife of the geologist that actually discovered each of the rooms is seen walking the halls and the geologist as well! Here's a picture of Chris looking through the part of the cave that made the whistling noise that the young boys heard when they discovered the caves.

Off to the Helen Hunt Falls. An asthma attack later as I climbed to the top of the hill, we realized the view was MUCH nicer on the bottom. Probably gorgeous during the rainy season.

Back home to scoop up our baby girl. Was a beautiful little mini vacation. So nice to have a little bit of Fall/Wintery weather. See some changing leaves, do some hiking, realize how out of shape we are. Then head back home. Need to buy new hiking shoes though and actually use them! :)