Cats At Work - Winner, Winner, Friskies Dinner

One of my favorite Facebook Pages is Cats At Work.

Monday - Friday, the creator posts a cute meme of a cat at work. Often, she will also post a Top Fans chart. It is based on how many comments you make and how many pictures you liked during the week. I wish it also took into account how many shares, because I share all of them on my wall. I'm usually in the top 3. A few weeks ago, she gave away a prize to the top #1 fan of the week and I won! I got to choose a coffee mug. She has several cute options, but in the end I could only choose one. It arrived in the mail last night.

Camping at Upper Stillwater

Last weekend, we decided to head out of town and go camping again. I had Thursday off, but since Josh works for a Colorado based company, he had to work on the 24th. Since we were worried it would be crowded for the holiday weekend, we decided that I would head up that morning and get us a good spot. 

Sage was so excited to go, she didn't even seem to know that Josh wasn't with us. I had tried to leave her a spot in the backseat, but when I took a turn, the stuff fell on her. I decided she would have to just ride on the floor. I had to make a quick stop at the store, and when I came out, she was seating in the driver's seat! So I quickly rearranged some stuff and let her ride in the passenger seat up front.

I found us an awesome spot! It sat off of the road a bit and had a nice shady spot for the tent. Going early worked well. By the time Josh got there that night, the campground was pretty much full. I had taken up the food and other supplies, but Josh brought the tent and canopy with him. However, he forgot to leave me one of the chairs that were in the back of the truck, so I had nothing to sit on up there once the table wasn't in the shade. I sat on a rock for a while, but it wasn't that comfortable. Finally, I got out the sleeping bags, laid them in the shade and read a book until Josh got there that night.

On Friday, Melanie, Matt and the boys came up to go fishing with us. Unfortunately, the fish weren't biting. We only caught one, but he got himself off of the hook right before we got him in. But we still had fun. We saw a few water snakes and the boys had fun watching them.

On Saturday, Josh wanted to run the Longhorn Days 8 mile run. They start at the Bluebell park and then run some back roads and end at the Altamont Park. Oh, and its pretty much uphill the entire way! We had to set an alarm on my phone and get up pretty early, but he had fun.

We were disappointed to find out they weren't serving breakfast that year. We had planned on eating there, so I didn't have any extra food at camp. So we had to make a quick trip to the store before heading back to camp. Josh ran it in 1 hour and 13 minutes, which was 2 minutes quicker than last year.

Sage LOVES camping. One of her favorite parts is eating the "human" food that is left over.

We didn't have any chipmunks in our camp, but we did have a few squirrels.

Sage always digs a few holes in the ground when we go camping in that she "nests" in.

And she always buries some of her food.

She was filthy by the time we came home. She was covered in tree sap and her nose was black from all the food burying.

Our last night there, we had a moose run through camp. It wasn't actually that dark, but my camera thought it was. You can just see her to the left of our tent.

I think Sage was drained from camping. We had been home for a few hours and I looked outside to see her laying on her back.

We had a lot of fun and can't wait to go again in three weeks.

Josh's Day Gift

This year, we decided it was time to get a new BBQ grill. Our last one was quite large, but we decided a smaller one would be just right for us. I love that it has folding shelves on the side and a cupboard door to keep the propane in. 

Josh also wanted a smoker.

We've had them for a few weeks now, but it takes several hours to smoke something, and we just didn't have the time. Finally, on Saturday, Josh was able to smoke a chicken. It took about 5 hours, but it was so moist and delicious it was worth it.

He's pretty excited about his smoker and keeps finding recipes he wants to try, including jerky and a whole pig!

Camping at Yellowpine

Last week, we decided it was time to break out the camping supplies and escape to the mountains. We love being able to unplug from technology and escape the heat. Although, we did notice, not all campers feel that way. One night, I was sure I could hear the theme music to Mario. Sure enough, the camp across from us was playing Nintendo. 

Our home for the weekend was in Yellowpine, up near Stillwater Reservoir.

We had several chipmunks that were eager to clean up any crumbs we dropped. I didn't get a picture of them all, but there was a ton. One was HUGE, like the size of a squirrel. But he wouldn't hold still long enough for me to get a picture of him.

As we were driving to a fishing spot on Friday, we spotted several turkeys. But they hid before I could get a good picture. If you look really close at the edge of the bush on the left side of the picture, you can see one of them.

We didn't catch any fish the first day, but the view was amazing.

A deer wandering through camp.

Sage LOVES camping. She will just go and go and go until she is utterly exhausted. Even when we would just walk down to the restrooms, she would have to go with us. When we started packing up to go home, she started to wine and cry. I think she wanted to stay there forever.

Our view of the super moon.

For Christmas, my dad got us a Kelly Kettle. Josh watched the videos on YouTube and was excited to try it out.

You fill it with water, start a fire in the base and then add pine cones through the top hole. It heated water super fast. It also comes with a small pan that you can cook on, but it is only big enough for one, so we didn't use it to cook. But I loved being able to have hot water within minutes. I even washed my hair one day.

We must have tied Sage to the tree this squirrel was in. It chewed us out the first morning we were there.

On Saturday, we met my sister and the boys to go fishing.

We took Valex fishing last year, but this was Daxsen's first time. They both had a blast. Daxsen was fun to watch. When he was reeling in the fish, he would just stare and concentrate on the reel.

Valex, on the other hand, would try to reel and watch the water at the same time.

Taking a break to eat.

Sage, hoping for some food to get dropped.

Tyler was a little bit older before he liked fishing, so Josh was worried Daxsen wouldn't like it. But I knew he would. He wants to do everything like his big brother. Josh tried to get them to pet a fish. At first they wouldn't, so Josh did it first. Then Valex did, so Daxsen did too.