The Fabulous Four Seasons

Instead of rooms, they have little "casitas" that you access from the outside like you would an appartment. They were so cool...you can see them in the background of the 2nd pic. I think the smallest ones are even 500sf. I look forward to going back in 2012.

Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West

We didn't leave the grounds much except for the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum. It was rad of course. Here are some pics.

wind in my hair and a view of the hares

I hope I haven't already posted about this. Look, I know i'm behind. Far behind. But today I'll go "above and beyond" to win your love and devotion back!

Did I mention our Winter Retreat yet? The board of neurosurgery, my employer, takes an annual retreat / meeting in which spouses are invited. Gammy and Pops were able to take the kids for us so that Evan could attend. We were at the 4 Seasons Resort in Scottsdale AZ. All expenses were paid so it was even better than the honeymoon 3 years ago! We had spas dinners, balconies, long walks, rental cars, cocktails, and as you see....hot air balloon rides!

I had my own portrayal of what it would be like when I was young child. I invisioned a tiny basket, room for 2, with incredible risk at take off and landing. It all seemed pretty organized and structured, though. The appointment was set through concierge and billed to my room. As we began approaching, however, it all went back to being pretty terrifying. The basket was in fact small, and we had to wait about 2 hours before we could get in the air because of the wind. Then we drove about 45 minutes away from the planned take-off location and were just followed by a bunch of guys in trucks with walky talkies! It just didn't feel so controlled anymore, but I started to like that. We needed a long clear path in the desert so we could skid out on landing and "not run into a cactus"! And they were dead serious when they said that.

It was beautiful watching the desert from up there. It was quiet but pretty eventful too! We got to pour water on a few cars, took a picture of our own shadow (see above0, we ran into another balloon in the air (yes, you heard me right!), and crash landed into a steep hill! The entire desert was complete flat and the one spot where we could land HAD to be a hill. I had a hard time dealing with that. :-)

excusably neglectful

Meet Saturday. Saturday is our new 4 month old kitten we adopted from the SPCA. I think we all had many of our own reasons for wanting a new kitten around the house, but the cohesive thought was to pull Penelope out of her funk. She's depressed and fat. She meows at the door all day and all night. She darts for the open air when she could fit maybe a sliver of her thick body through. The girl is big yall!
It's sad and it has become something easy to ignore which I feel terrible to admit. I need to think about her feelings for a moment. She lost someone very close to her when Imi died and ever since then she has probably felt abandoned. I doubt she has any clue why Imi is gone. Instead of having sympathy I find myself getting annoyed when she howls, or getting mad because there is hair matted to the curtains because she is glued to the windows, dreaming of a better life outdoors.
I was determined to let her live that better life out doors and risk whatever it is that could happen out there than to live a painfully long life indoors with us.
I think she's already warming up to this spirited little Saturday! When I get home every day I look forward to Saturday....very literally, I am.
He's a cutey though, huh?!

Another pic

Look at that balance and stance! also, i corrected the website to her gym on the post below. it's actually www.discovergymnastics.com.

my little "gymnastical" - a 3-year old kiran word!

I signed Kiran up for gymnastics last week so we had our first class this week. We had our second class as well, but that’s due to picking Wednesdays for the set schedule.
I am enormously happy with this facility as well as the staff. Very professional and they don’t baby the kids. If you aren’t participating, you’ll just get left behind. They do encourage all the time, though. They started out the class with some pretty amusing warm-ups which got all the kids giggly. Kiran has really been wanting this for a long time so I’m glad we finally committed to it. Our agreement was that she would too. She got tired of soccer so fast and complained about going. You don’t spend that kind of money if you think it’s going to happen again.
The class is around 10-12 kids and they split them up by age or ability into groups of 3 or 4. At that point they spend 10 minutes or so at different stations with different instructors. She already learned so much in just two classes after working on the low beam and high beam for balance and grace, the trampolines taught her how to control her body a little more, she gained confidence after spinning around on the bars, both high (where she hangs from them) and low (where she spins all they around it). They have their own version of the cartwheel for kids just starting out and the tumbling was really constructive for their coordination as well. All in all I feel like she’ll be learning so much from this. And if she does decide she wants to move on to ballet, she’ll be ready to ooze (spell?!) all of that grace and poise she’s been learning.

She’s lined up in this pic at the end of her class and you can’t even see her. I couldn’t get pics the entire times I was there, but I will next time.

www.discovergymnastics.com in case anyone here in houston is interested. It's $340 per semester and you really get your money's worth i think.

First post of the year?

Really? Wow.

Well, I just came on here to say hi! I have some pics I need to upload of the kids as well as our trip to the 4 seasons resort in scottsdale, az.

Um...Happy New Year?!!!