Happy Thanksgiving!

This has been a nice long break for us and we're sad to see it end.  

We had a chilly start to the week, causing mom to pull out all our winter gear.  She sent me to school on Monday with a thick coat, gloves, scarf and a hat.  It was possibly a teeny bit of overkill but you can never have to much gear on when it comes to cold!

Thankfully, it warmed up by Wednesday because we headed out for our second annual Thanksgiving "camping" trip.

We went with our camping friends, Mike, Audrey and Madeline and this year, we had full hook ups!  That is the Ritz in RV terms.  All the water and electricity we could use so no worries about our heat conking out at 2 AM like last year.  We maintained a cozy 67 degrees both nights and were snug bugs. 

Thanksgiving day was just gorgeous- even a little warm.  Probably 80 degrees!  We spent the day bike riding, hiking, feeding the horses.  And this year, we even ate while the sun was up so the food stayed warm while we ate it!  Last year, we ate after dark, bundled up, shoveling food in before it got cold.

We got home late Friday morning, unpacked, showered and then headed out to get the tail end of Black Friday sales.  We all came away with something to show for our efforts so it was a good evening.
On Saturday, we put up our Christmas tree and all of our decorations and now we are full on into the Christmas season, even though it continues to be 75 degrees.

It's back to the grind tomorrow for a few more weeks.  Hope everyone had a happy and safe Thanksgiving day and have a great week!

What to do? What to do?

Greetings from toasty, warm Tucson!  This was our first weekend in a long, long time with nothing on the schedule.  No softball games, no traveling, nothing.  Mom and dad weren't not quite sure what to do with themselves.  I, on the other hand, had a friend filled weekend and it was super fun!

We made it through the week and I was kind of (OK, I WAS) a big grump.  I was tired all week from our weekend and I was getting over a little cold.  I was sure snotty in the mornings and sleepy in the afternoons but we survived.  

On Saturday, because we didn't have anything else to do, mom slept in until 7 AM!!  You'd have thought she was the sick, tired one.  Dad and I were up and raring to go at 5:30 in the AM.  Once everyone was up, we got our workouts in and mom cleaned the house.  I got out of that one because I had a nice long playdate with my friend Lily.  It was super fun.  While I was there, mom and dad headed out in two different directions to get some clothes shopping done.  Mom was successful, dad was not, so that probably means more of it in dad's future.  Good times!

My friends Max and Claire had their birthday party back in October.  (Remember the Big Kahuna??) Instead of buying them a gift, we decided to take them out to do something.  They picked the climbing gym and today was the day.  

We went to Eegees for lunch and mom was very amused by us and our conversations.

Then we headed to the climbing gym.  We were the only kids there and had the whole climbing part to ourselves.  We had climbing races, rappelling races, creative dismount competitions.....

After we wore ourselves out doing that, we came back here for a bit and finally dropped Max and Claire at home around 5.
We are mentally preparing for Thanksgiving on Thursday- that's about all we have to do since we ordered our dinner again!  Woot-woot!  Have a great week!

Return to the Scene of the Crime.....

We have had some complaints about the last two blogs.  Apparently some people don't like it when "mom" writes the blog.  They said it was better and more creative when "Jordan" wrote it.    Well, you don't have to tell us twice (and mom kind of agrees with the creative part) so I am back!  Yeah me!

And now, with further ado- back to the Goedel Family Adventures.

Softball has finally ended, thank goodness (did I say that out loud?).  I have started intramurals at school.  We are doing 4 weeks of volleyball and 4 weeks of basketball.  Our girls won the Tucson Independent Athletic League championship for volleyball this past week and our basketball team is pretty good so this will be a good learning thing for me.  I really like volleyball so far and if it weren't for the stupid boys always hogging the ball, I might actually love it.

Did you know that this past week was mom and dad's 10th wedding anniversary??  I had no idea there was even life before I was born but apparently, there was.  Mom and dad cannot believe how fast things have gone- the blink of an eye.  It's been a fun blink though!

To celebrate, dad surprised us with a trip to Tanque Verde Ranch.  This is where they had their wedding reception eons ago.  They had always talked about doing a stay-cation there one day and this seemed the perfect time.  It was tons and tons of fun.  I got to go to the kids camp on Saturday which involved not one, but two long horse back rides through the desert.  Heaven I tell you.  Mom and dad took advantage of some down time and went for a short hike and then they drove to Starbucks and then came back took a much needed nap and hung out by the pool.

Saturday night was probably the highlight of the weekend.  The ranch has a big cookout under the cottonwood trees and it was just beautiful.  All my friends from kids camp were there so I got to run around like a crazy woman all night.  And then.... mom and dad actually, really and truly talked to new people!  They never talk to anyone new and no one ever talks to them so this was new territory for them.  It was kind of fun but they probably won't make a habit of it. There were great big fire pits, good food and good family time.   We could not have had a more perfect night to highlight 10 years.

Have a happy week before Thanksgiving!

Recovery Week

Happy Belated Halloween!  We were exhausted after another whirlwind two days at Disneyland and just couldn't sum up the energy to do anything but stare into space last Sunday.  We had a great time and of course, Disney does it up right for the holidays.  We have Disney down to a science now and can easily get in 12-14 rides at peak season.  (We rock, I know ;) ).  This time though, it was so very not crowded that we didn't really need any of our skills so it was a little more relaxing then usual.

On Halloween night, only people with wrist bands get and they only sell about 1/3 of park capacity so it isn't too crazy.  There are 12 "treat trails" throughout the park and each trail has 4 stations that you stop, open your bag and candy is literally dumped by the handful into it.

We came home with 15, count them 15 pounds of candy.  Lordy.  We somehow managed to get it back in our suitcases and gave most of it to Rich's mom to take into work.

Nothing out of the ordinary for our week.  Softball on Tuesday and Thursday.  I took Jordan to vote on Tuesday.  It was a last minute decision because I wanted her to see the whole process so I ended up with a provisional ballot.  The poll workers were great with her, explaining how everything worked and she actually seemed interested!

Saturday was the final softball game of the less than stellar fall season.  The girls didn't win a game all season but there was definite improvement with all of them, so I guess that's good......
Rich ended up pitching to the girls during the game.  Turns out, he is a good softball pitcher and struck a whole bunch of our girls out.  It did make the game go nice and fast which is always a blessing.
Saturday night, Rich and I headed out for a date night with some friends while Jordan hung back with favorite babysitter.  Our dinner was pretty bad and we ended up being comped for part of it and the show we went to see was just OK.  At least the company was good!

Ginger and I are officially Puppy School drop outs.  I just didn't have it in me anymore to drag our butts to class once a week and come home absolutely exhausted and a little disheartened by how crazy our monkey seems.  So now, we are just doing stuff on our own and it is so much easier.  This morning, Jordan and I took Ginger to a new park to do some exploring and "manners work"  We are slowly but surely making progress and maybe some day, she can make her public debut.  Deep sigh.....

After that morning adventure, I met an old friend for brunch and finally, finally was able to try a cronut.  What is a cronut you ask?  It is a craze that has been sweeping the nation- a doughnut made from croissant dough.   Mine was chocolate caramel.  Yes, it is as good as it sounds and yes, I ate a whole one.  After eating all of my biscuits and gravy.  It was not a stellar day nutritionally but it was damn tasty.
We had Rich's parents over for dinner and had a really fun evening.  We are now gearing up for another week of the grind.  Jordan gets tomorrow off- lucky girl

Hope everyone has a great week!

Mish Mash

 We're going to be reaching a little bit for fun and exciting things to report on this week....
One thing we neglected to report in the excitement of the past few weeks was Rich's amazing makeover of Jordan's room while we were in Ohio.  If you've ever had the  misfortune, honor of staying in Jordan's room on a visit to us, you will probably remember the colossal nightmare that it was.  Crap everywhere, with no place to walk, let alone sleep.  She seems to have inherited a few of my hoarding tendencies :(.  Anyway, Rich spent his one free weekend doing a complete makeover of her room.  He moved the tons and tons of toys out of her room and they now exist in 3 enormous bins in the garage, he painted (with glitter paint even), he stained old furniture, he bought new furniture, he bought new sheets, he organized, he hung stuff.  And the result is an awesome room that we can now walk in.  Jordan loves it and it has stayed clean for two weeks now!  Yeah!

So onto our week.  It was pretty quiet which is kind of nice during the week.  We had a fun weekend with a daddy/kid campout at our favorite campground.  They managed to cram 7, count them 7 people into the RV and apparently, it didn't smell too bad at the end of the trip....
They had a great time and the moms left behind had an equally fun time.  I met up with Christina for dinner and a movie.  We discovered that the first thing we wanted to do with an empty house was to clean it. So both of us spent our free morning cleaning toilets and floors.  How pathetic is that?  But it is nice to have a clean house for 12 hours.

I spent Sunday morning going for a long run, taking Ginger for a long walk, making pork ragu and a chicken pot pie.  Rich and Jordan got home about noon and we spent the rest of the day relaxing.

We found a show on wolves to watch and Ginger was very interested in it and spent a good 5 minutes just watching the boob tube, probably planning her next hunting expedition.

Hope you have a fabulous week!

Halloween's Coming!

We're going to start off this week's blog by apologizing for the picture quality.  Mom took our old point and shoot camera on our adventure today and had it in the wrong setting so she took some bad pictures.....I guess some pictures are better than no pictures.

We had a quiet week of the usual stuff.  Ginger's "Good Canine Citizen" class on Monday (There's a test at the end of this one and mom does not have high hopes for our little monkey), softball practice Tuesday and Thursday and our annual trip to the allergist.  

Saturday was a good day though.  I had a softball game on Saturday morning.  I didn't pitch this week but I had some good hits and some good fielding so it was an overall positive outcome.

In the afternoon, my good friends Max and Claire had their birthday party.  Their mom rented an enormous water slide called......The Big Kahuna.  That is about all I need to say.  A gaggle of 8 and 9 year olds and a slide called The Big Kahuna is a recipe for amazing fun.  Mom could not drag me out of there.  I had a great, great time!

On Sunday, mom took me and my friend Lily down to Amado, Arizona to go pumpkin picking.  This was better than last year's trip to the Pumpkin Parking Lot down the street but still no Denver pumpkin picking.  We had a great time any way.  The was a petting zoo, tire swings, a pumpkin patch with store bought pumpkins planted around, beautiful weather and beautiful scenery.  Lily and I had a great time and came home with some huge pumpkins.

(These are not the huge pumpkins- mom was just looking for a photo op.)

After lunch at Beyond Bread and desert at Dairy Queen, we dropped Lily off and came home to take a nap.  We were treated to a nice afternoon of cool temperatures (67 degrees!), thunder and rain.  Dad made us a nice steak dinner and we are all fat and happy now.  A great way to wrap up our weekend.  See you next weekend! (Maybe)

Our Last Two Weeks

We have a busy, fun two weeks and because it's semi-late on Sunday night, we're going to give our adventures in pictures.  They are in no particular order because it is too much work to arrange them correctly.  And it's semi-late on Sunday night.  So, without further ado....

Jordan and Grandma- Jordan is gaining on her!

Finley Lake near Grandma's house has a big Halloween celebration every year.  Everyone that is camping for the weekend decorates their campsites with some amazing scenes.  With the fall colors too, it made all very Halloweeny.

We spent some time at Lake Erie.  It was dang cold and mom is reminded again how much she dislikes anything below 70 degrees.

Back on Grandma's farm, we enjoyed the fall colors, a walk through the corn fields and the fall weather (not really...)

Mom and her cousins Heather, Shea and Elaine ran in the Wellington Run For Your Life 10K.  They went as the Dairy Princesses.  Mom smoked the competition and came in first in her age group.  She beat a whole three other women but it earned her a medal!  Woot Woot!

We then had a bunch of family converge on Grandma's and had a great time catching up.  Mom and I got home about 11 on Sunday and have been recovering.

Onto our next adventure- which was actually the weekend before our Ohio weekend.  We headed up to Pinetop Arizona and met Nana, Mr. Walker and some other friends for the tour of White Mountains mountain bike race.  It was an amazingly gorgeous weekend and tons of fun.

Nana recovering from her car accident 10 days earlier- she was a trooper.

The girls watching the finish line.

Dad crossing the finish line- it was a hard 50 miles and he earned his beer.

The tired crew after some good riding.

Mr. Walker crossing the finish line.  He earned his beer too!

So that's it- hope you have a great week!