Busy Week!

Well...not for everyone...mostly Mara.  Mara is in the middle of her 13 straight days of work on the inpatient wards, so she's ready for this month to be over!  She likes the work, just lack of days off isn't much fun...:)
With Mara working so much lately Rohan has had some full days of Dad-Time.  I still am amazed at the stuff he learns and the things he puts together in his mind.  We caught him a couple of times playing with his trains and letting his imagination run wild...pretty fun to see...:)  There are a couple videos on our YouTube page, and I posted one of them below.  It's 4 minutes long, but he did this for over an hour.  Rohan has also been learning to pedal his bike so that's been interesting.  He hasn't quite caught on yet, but there are flashes where it looks like he know what to do.
Wednesday we met Heather & John and some friends for John's birthday (& Mary's).  We had a great dinner at Golden Budda before heading to our softball game this week.  I am still "D League MVP"...:)  In a related note, we are super excited that the Brewers clinched the NL Central division!  There is a chance, if the Cardinals take the wild card, that Arizona would play 2 games in in Milwaukee and then the Brewers would come here!  John said he has tickets to the first game in AZ, so it should be pretty awesome if Milwaukee is here!  If not we'll see the Phillies destroy everything in their path...
Saturday (Mara had to work all day) I went over to Greg & Nico's to let Rohan spend some time with Mila and we all watched the Hawkeyes beat up on ULM.  Afterwards Rohan took a near 5hr nap and I got some yard work and house stuff done in the meantime.  Sunday was more of the same...Mara worked and Rohan and I watched football, played outside, and caught a little baseball in there too.
All in all a good week, but an exhausting one for everyone! :)  The weather is getting pretty nice out and we can't wait to be outside all the time on the weekends and explore more of the parks in our new area!


Rohan Playing With His Trains:


Rohan Counting:


Indoor bike riding lessons:


Rohan has some words of cation for the puppies....

Cave Creek Trail #4

Not much going on this last week for us.  With Mara working so hard at the hospital, our weeks are usually pretty consumed with softball, climbing, and resting when she can.  This last week Mara was the scheduled late person Monday AND Friday, so she didn’t have much free time.  Rohan and I got to spend the evenings with some fire truck races, baseball and football games, yard/house work, and some bike riding…pretty exhausting, but so fun to watch Rohan learn, adapt, and apply.

Saturday Mara had to work a few hours (only 10! :P), so Rohan and I did tons of work outside while it was still cool and nice before we headed inside and watched a thrilling Hawkeye game!  Rohan fell asleep at halftime and proceeded to take a 5hr nap!  Can you say growth spurt!?  After Mara got home we had a nice dinner at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants (Flo's Asian Kitchen) before running some errands and having a drink by the pool to relax.

Sunday started early at 5:30 (although to Mara it was sleeping in!).  We got the car packed up, picked up Jeanette, and headed to Carefree to hike the Cave Creek Trail #4.  We had an awesome group for this hike…15 people including Rohan & 6 dogs!  The hike is pretty easy, with tons of water along the way to cool the dogs and hikers off in.  The temps weren’t too bad, probably mid 90°’s, but it was nice too to have the shade from the creek that ran along most of the canyon trail.  We found 2 areas to cool everyone off, and one even was deep enough for some 15-20’ rock jumping.  It was a lot of fun!  I think this trail is going to get some use this fall with some of us planning a couple backpacking trip to explore this Sonoran Desert area!  Afterwards we all headed back to Jeanette’s for some “brunch” even though it was now 3:00 in the afternoon…:)  It was complete with waffles, mimosas, watermelon, grapes, bagels, bread, and lots of biochemistry (what?!?)...:)

Later that night we grilled some brats and went on a nice walk in the cooler night air to cap off a busy, good weekend.  Hope everyone else had a good week/weekend!  Get out and enjoy the fall weather!!!!

More Outdoor Time!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this last weekend, and looking to hover around 100°F the rest of the week! It feels awesome after the 115+°F we had recently! Friday we did some things around the house (like trying to fix the ceiling fan in our room...no luck yet...). We had a pretty laid back night
Saturday we got up early and met Greg & Nico at the Sandbar to watch the IA game. It was a VERY good game, just not the outcome we were hoping for. Father of the year...Me...left Roahn's shoes on top of the car (a pair of Thomas the Train Crocs that he LOVED), but now they are somewhere along Tatum Blvd...oops...:( We continued back at our place with some grilling, then headed to Greg & Nico's for more grilling and a horse/dice game Nico's Grandpa made. Pretty fun day!
Sunday we met up with friends and hiked around Lookout Mountain. It's not a huge mountain, but the circumference trail is about 3mi long, and pretty nice. Michelle will definitely love to do some trail runs with us when she comes in December! :) We went back to our friend Jen's place for a cookout (we skipped this time), then hit up Home Depot for some house necessities (like a ladder!). We then picked up some ingredient for Connecticut Beef (something I've been craving for a while!) The recipe usually takes about 4hrs, so starting at ~6pm...we had somewhat of a late supper...:) There were some nice adaptations we made like cooking the steak in the soup mixure for 2hrs at 300°F, that made this one of the best reditions of Conn. Beef yet!  While some of the ingredients were cooking we got some yardwork done with the low-voltage lighting in our yard that doesn't work. We replaced it with solar LED lights so we wouldn't have to re-wire our yard...:) We also replaced our front porch light which was not pretty...it was gold and glass, and not very attractive.
We are looking forward to some more outdoor time while the temps are getting cooler! We wish we had more pictures, but it hard to take pictures when you don't slow down...:)

Awesome Labor Day Weekend

This weekend we celebrated Labor Day by getting the hell out of Phoenix! :) TGen let me out at 2pm, so I was able to go get the car packed and pick up Rohan and Mara when she was done with clinic. It took us over an hour to get out of Phoenix (normally 20min) with all the traffic, and there was a lot of it! We headed about 5500 vertical feet (~140 linear miles North) to Flagstaff. You will never hear Mara and I complain about the heat in Phoenix. It's just one of those things you deal with while you wait for the awesome other 9-10 months of the year. But this August was brutal. We set several heat records, and it just sounded like a great idea to get out and cool off a bit...:) Schroeder did not enjoy the ride so much, and we also found out a little secret of his. Apparently he's been eating poop in the backyard (hopefully just his and Linus'!) because about halfway to Flagstaff he threw up in the back seat and it smelled horrendous!!! We drove on, and Mara cleaned up what she could while we had the windows open on the interstate going 80mph. We hit a rest area and rinsed off the floor mat and tried to get as much of that smell out as possible..we'll spare you the pictures... One thing that probably helped ease the smell is I left the floor mat (we think) on the roof of the RAV4 and it probably blew off on the interstate...oops...:) The smell never went away and we've been airing the RAV out since... We made it to Flagstaff and eventually drove down some random forest fire access road and came across a campsite with a fire ring and set up camp. It turned out to be a VERY isolated area, given that on Labor Day weekend we only saw ONE other car come down that road, and they camped somewhere else, so we didn't even see another person! I think we've found a pretty sweet camping spot...:) Rohan had a blast running at 7000ft above sea level...didn't seem to slow him down a bit! He eventually crashed in his camp chair and then found a more comfortable spot laying with Mom. We spent the rest of the evening watching stars and chatting next to the fire since there was a slight chill in the air...hadn't had one of those in a while...:) Since Mara had to work early on Sunday, we only stayed one night, but we had a whole day left in Flagstaff. We hit up a new coffee shop (again, new to us) called Macy’s. Very good coffee, awesome people, and we got to enjoy our french press outside, which was awesome! We love sipping coffee outside and relaxing! Afterwards we hit up a park in Flagstaff called Thorpe Park. Rohan had a blast playing on their giant playground equipment, firetruck, and enjoying real grass (as did Mara). After the park we met up with friends from AZR (Kim, Angelica, Jeremy, Shantelle, and Melissa) and hit up a new climbing spot (new to us anyway) just outside Flagstaff called The Pit. It was awesome climbing rock (limestone) and we could not have asked for a better day! The sun was intermittent, and mostly behind huge clouds, so we all stayed nice and cool on the wall. We got to lead a couple longer routes and explore some awesome canyon walls. It's great to have explorer friends that can introduce us to places like this! We climbed for almost 6 hours before everyone got all their energy out. Mara and I had to head back to PHX eventually so we grabbed a bit to eat at an awesome restaurant called Salsa Bravea. Awesome salsa bar, and really good food. Turns out I think I also left the leftovers on the roof and it blew off somewhere in Flagstaff...not a good weekend for me...:) We got back to PHX and crashed Sunday was pretty laid back for me and Rohan. Mara had to work 10hrs in the Peds ER. We all were pretty tired from the trip. Monday I got up and golfed with John (and his buddies Mike & Bud) at Desert Canyon in Fountain Hills. The 6:45am tee time made for some spectacular scenic views of the sunrise and surrounding mountains. I shot pretty good until I imploded on the last 2 holes, but a bad day of golf is still better than working, and nothing an ice cold beer can't help erase...:) Greg, Nico, and Mila came over in the afternoon to grill out. It was Greg's birthday, so we sang and danced for him...at least Rohan did... It was great catching up with them too. Greg has been crazy busy with school and extra curricular studies that his time is pretty precious. Mara was able to pass on some of her COMLEX study guide to Greg to help him bone up for the MCAT and eventually Med School. We spent the rest of the night replacing a ceiling fan since the fan quite working (but the lights still worked). Unfortunately the new fan worked, but the lights didn't... It's still up now, but we'll have to take it back to get a new one sometime this week...ahh the joys of a house...:) Enjoy the pictures, there are a ton of them! :) I do have a couple videos to add, so check back later tonight or tomorrow and I'll have them added (maybe)...
 

Updated with some videos... Rohan singing about Monkeys (sorry for the road noise...): Rohan Counting to 14: Fun little tool within Picasa's program. You can tag faces (and have it try to recognize and group them for you). You can then make a movie out of it centering on the face in the picture. Pretty cool. Could be fun with a small subset of good pictures, or time lapse over a few years. Here is Rohan over the last 32 months or so. The pics are not in any order, and it runs through them pretty quick...enjoy!: