To all my friends and family; have a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving!

Lauren and I spent the day with our close friends Aaron and Jenny at their uncle’s house here in Tucson. It was a wonderful meal with Steve’s “adopted” extended family and friends; they had everything from green-bean casserole, to sweet potatoes with marshmallows, to mashed potatoes, to the required turkey. In my opinion, it was everything that Thanksgiving should be; a great time spent with those close to you.

As pointed out in one of Aaron’s blog posts, this is the season for spending lots of time in the presence of friends and family enjoying their company. So, on that note, again, have a happy and healthy start to the Holiday Season!

Yesterday, our kittens Sophie and Miles turned one!! We adopted them when they were 9 weeks old, so we approximated the date a touch, but are prety sure it was one year ago yesterday the little scamps were born. They’ve been such a joy to have around and have, since day one, been the most affectionate and loving little guys I could have asked for.

In honor of their birthday, we, naturally, spoiled them rotten; Lauren let them have milk (Sophie tried it, but Miles didn’t even attempt to give it a shot), we bought them a jungle-gym thingy (pictures to come), two new bouncy toys since they destroyed both of the last ones, and moved them up to adult food (which they both liked without any issues, interestingly).

I’ll post some updated pictures soon (the batteries in my camera died, so I couldn’t take any pictures until they were charged up again).

Lauren and I spent the last week and change running around the North East visiting the three states that we spent the vast majority of our lives calling home while seeing our families and friends.

We spent a few days traveling, three days in Massachusetts visiting the sights around Boston, a day in Pennsylvania visiting the Philadelphia and Bethlehem areas, and then another three days in New Jersey relaxing and taking a day to enjoy Six Flags Great Adventure.

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We left for Phoenix Wednesday morning and decided to take a detour to the Biosphere 2 up in Oracle. It was a great facility and I learned a lot about what the Biosphere project was hoping to gain from their experiments; unfortunately, the property was just purchased by a developer and could be closing as soon as the end of the August. After leaving the Biosphere, we drove up to Tempe and did some creative sightseeing (my passengers thought I was lost, but I really knew where I was going ;)). We stayed at the Fiesta Inn and used that as our base of operations for the part of the vacation up in the Phoenix area. On Thursday, we went to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West facility where he taught young men and women his techniques in organic architecture. Later that day, we went to Old Scottsdale and met up with one of my sister’s friends and his grandfather for dinner. The evening was made more exciting when a restaurant down the street caught on fire! After leaving Old Scottsdale, Jeramie and Lauren went for a swim and I played with my camera without a flash. Friday was a lounging day since we had been doing things every day my mom and sister were here; we sat around and read at the pool and then went out shopping at the outlet mall later in the day. Lauren and I got home yesterday early afternoon and my mom and sister left Phoenix and arrived back in New Jersey last night. This past week was amazingly relaxing and just what the doctor ordered (even though Lauren and I are now somewhat sick from a bug my mom and sister imported with them)!

Mom and Jeramie came out on Saturday evening and we’ve all been hanging out here in Tucson doing the tourist thing for the last few days. We went to Saguaro National Park on Sunday with Jenny, the Desert Museum yesterday, went out to dinner at the Melting Pot last night with Lauren’s uncle Kevin and his kids, and today we are going up to Mount Lemmon and possibly Sabino Canyon. Tomorrow morning, we are headed up to Phoenix to spend the rest of the week seeing what there is to see up in that neck of the woods.