Tobin and Erin

We like not having training!  Tobin works long hours about once a week, but otherwise it’s muster, work out, and come home!  That’s nice, since I don’t have to worry about letting Titus out most of the time.

So, here’s a little fact about me…when I get home from work, I have a wallet and keys and work ID and planner and phone in my hands and sometimes the mail, and I like to just set them on the counter (which is the most accessible spot from the garage/front door) when I walk in the door.  However, Tobin hates it.  He doesn’t like having a “catch-all”, especially with it in such plain sight.  Apparently, moving my pile to the seat of a nearby chair didn’t help much.

So!  I decided to do something about it; a compromise of sorts, where I could still have my catch-all and Tobin could still have his neat, attractive entryway without a pile of junk sitting around.  Here’s my purchase, which we got from Lowe’s and World Market:

I love it!  It’s turned out to be very useful, and I would recommend it highly for you people who lose your keys or your purse or your phone all the time (I speak from experience…also wedding rings, but this hasn’t solved that problem yet!).

A random photo of our orange julius.  Thanks for the recipe, Mom!  Of course, we didn’t have vanilla on hand and I added strawberries, but it’s mainly the same thing.    Super great drink, all you have to do is add some frozen orange juice concentrate, an equal amount of water, an equal amount of milk, half that amount of sugar, and like 1/2 a tsp of vanilla and some ice cubes and voila!  Or you can skip the vanilla and add a couple strawberries like I did.  Luke, you can use Splenda.  It’s an awesome smoothie!

And last but not least…

  Aaaaaaaaahahahaha!  So helpless.  I think he’s saying, “Stop taking pictures and get me out of here!”

We’re doing well and getting things done.  Love you all and hope to see you soon.

I’ll be taking over the blog duties today.  Erin and I just returned from a camping trip this past weekend.  We headed out to Apalachicola National Forest.  We missed church; you’ll have to blame me for that one, but we had a great time enjoying the outdoors we are blessed with.  Titus came along and was a great companion for the most part.  We slept in a tent and cooked all our meals over a fire; we did great considering we forgot to bring eating utensils.

Hiking, four-wheeling, cooking, and of course sleeping in took up all the time we had.  We arrived on a Friday evening, found the trailhead for the ATV’s, then found a place to camp at William’s Landing.  The first night we met some “snowbirds” making their annual stop at this campground; one of the older gentlemen was an exceptional guitar player and singer, so we had some entertainment while we cooked our aluminum foil potatoes.

Saturday morning we went out to the trailhead at Silver Lake and took off.  Titus stayed behind in the truck and we came back every hour to check on him etc.  We ran into very few people and the forest was gorgeous.  The trails were very fun with some areas where you could go extremely fast (good thing our ATV’s are relatively underpowered) and others where you needed a canoe.  In fact, in all my wisdom I got stuck in one of these lake-sized mosquito-infested flooded areas and had to get off the ATV and start pushing.  I was up to my knees in water; when E came out to help she found the deepest spot and fell in all the way to her shoulders.  It was very funny for me, but I don’t think E laughed until we were back at the campsite and had showered.

I forgot to mention; in between our riding sessions we would come back and check on Titus.  One of these times I had no water so I gave him some blue gatorade, probably not good for your dog, but it was funny.  Check out his tongue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpHaaFPL3Q&feature=channel

That took us all the way to the afternoon, and once we were cleaned up we drove to some foot trails on the state side of the forest.  We headed out on the 2.9 mile trail with a good 2-3 hours of sunlight left.  Titus did great, and was walking along with us, hopping over fallen trees, and crossing bridges with no problems.  Everything was fine until we noticed the sun descending below the tree line.  Yup, we emerged from the forest at dark…but we weren’t worried, not at all!  Also, here is a video of Titus doing an exceptional job of walking with us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWthDVsl2cw&feature=channel

The next morning we went to a different trailhead and swore to ourselves that we wouldn’t get as wet this time around.  It went according to plan until near the end of the trail where once again I underestimated how deep some water was…but we didn’t get stuck that time!

So after packing up, and thanking God for watching over us, we headed home exhausted and ready to unload.  In the midst of unloading we had a new surprise…ticks!  Erin had five and I had three…Titus only had one, lucky guy.  So after that horrific experience I may be hard pressed to convince E to go camping with me again…ever.

So that’s that, it was a great weekend.  We thank God for good weather and safe travel, and to our family we love you all and hope to see you soon.  For videos of our experiences click on the links below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WE5GJw3ZCg&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GHxpkYwZLQ&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyyfjhTUkg&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUr8arY1eko&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPcVhxdzciU&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmISYBkBhM&feature=channel

T&E