Miss 2010’s review? 2010 is here

I’m going to recap 2011 a little differently than 2010. I always like doing these reviews because it allows me to see what exactly I did without thinking I didn’t do anything at all.

Backpacking

• We thru-hiked the Florida Trail in January and February (and a smidge of March).
• We hiked theCrosstimbers Trail with my brother and dad. I think we might have started a tradition?
• Thanksgiving was spent on top of Texas and the subsequent days were spent hiking throughout Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
• While I didn’t go, Chris spent two weeks camping in various places in remote regions of Florida’s swamps. He was trying to do some ghost orchid work but didn’t end up getting what he was after. I’m sure he will try again sometime!

Adventures

• I started a series of Local Adventures that I hope to expound upon in the New Year.
• I also started more Nature in the City posts but really need to get crackin’ on more!
• Saw a bunch of swamp creatures, did a lot of swamping myself.
• Went to Oklahoma to visit my second cousin and my mom’s first cousin.
• Worked in Pennsylvania for a bit.

Arts & Crafts

• Printed some of our photography on canvas and was excited to see it in print!
• Crocheted baby hats, a shawl, and a baby blanket.
• Made two quilts and another one that I don’t think I photographed.
• Only did two drawings, a sunflower pastel for my sister in law and hollyhock pastel that I framed and hung at my desk at work.
• I also made a how-to for the quilts.
• I experimented with bloom scans.
• I started writing a book on our Florida Trail thru-hike. Inching in at 40K words as of now.

There were lots of other great things…we moved, I got a job, our cats came back to live with us. Another year down…

Happy New Year!

On Christmas Eve I did not get to see these two, my niece and nephew, for very long, only a few hours in the evening. They were both sick and Zoe was dealing with a reaction to the medication she was on, so my ideas of visiting them at their house were sacked. But, I did get to see them for awhile and I got to see Grayson smile and laugh at me, and Zoe made me eat Christmas Eve dinner next to her at her kid table (me in the floor) while she watched ‘kid tv’—aka: Rio. I say ‘made’ me sit with her—but I really didn’t mind. I don’t get to see her but once every few months so I love to sit with her when I can.

And since they were both sick they both coughed in my face a few times so now I’m sipping Emergen-C in hot tea to see what I can prevent. I’m thinking that might not work so much since my brother was getting sick too…oh well.

I’ll have some photos from the chaos of presents on Christmas Eve tomorrow. I didn’t take many photos the entire weekend and instead spent it being rather lazy, reading, doing a smidge of crocheting and not being online except to find How I Met Your Mother episodes to watch while I walked on my parent’s treadmill Saturday morning. As a result of being lazy I am more than halfway through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because as usual I am late to the game on books and the movie is out and I want to see it.

Hope your holiday was wonderful!

Before I leave for the long weekend I thought I’d do a quick top 5 of my favorites for Christmas. Share yours!

Movies

1. A Christmas Story: My absolute favorite
2. Love Actually
3. Bridget Jones’ Diary
4. Little Women
5. It’s a Wonderful Life

Songs

1. Carol of the Bells
2. O Holy Night must be by Bing Crosby
3. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas loving the She & Him version.
4. Last Christmas only because it reminds me of Eliana.
5. Christmas Time is Here Charlie Brown Christmas

My brother has been chronicling his favorites these last few weeks.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Another photo from the old hard drive. This was in front of our old apartment in Melbourne, Florida, circa 2003. We caught these off of Vero Beach while scuba diving. Probably one of the most fun things we did in Florida and we surely didn’t do it enough.

Good times…

As I said in this post we went to Natural Bridge Caverns after our weekend camping trip and I have to say, it was well worth the money. I’ve seen two other caves, Penn’s Cave and Longhorn Caverns, which were both nice, but this one topped both of them. Only discovered in the early 1960s, the cave was discovered on private land is still privately held.

The ‘natural bridge’ above one of the entrances to the cave.

There were some fantastic formations in this cave and I was absolutely in awe every time we turned around. I was also happy that we were able to take our time, somewhat, in that we could spend time as we descended stairs and going up them to look around.

The calcite in some of the formations is very glittery!

Fossils are tucked away in some of the rock.

If you are near San Antonio I definitely recommend detouring off I-35 for this gem.

We planted the carrot seeds on October 3rd and they are just beginning to come into harvest time. We picked a few of the larger ones to determine if the rest were ready but from the looks of it I think we need to wait another week or two for them to fatten up.

Any good ideas for carrots besides decorating them on a bed of lettuce?

Was going through an old hard drive looking for gallery worthy photos for the website and instead it sent me back into nostalgia.

From January 2007…

The sketchiest place we’ve ever pumped water from…but there was no other water!

These are at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park during our first ever backpacking adventure together.

Who knew it would evolve to getting better gear…

and walking to Maine….

and the length/part of the width of Florida?

Go put on an old external frame Kelty and see what happens…you just never know!

Me and Baloo at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Florida: December 2008 at Cacheapalooza. Photo taken by Chris. Miss that doggie…such a good pal to take on hikes.