Scott and Katie’s Christmas Letter, version 2007

I promised a Christmas letter, so here goes:

Katie and I had a pretty big year this year. It started off with us buying our first house. We started this blog to kind of show the progress of the house as it was being built, and you can see pictures of it from along the way in some of our oldest posts. We moved in back in early March, and have spent many weekends since fixing it up and working on the backyard. The cats are happy to have a big backyard, even if it is only dirt at the moment, well, especially since it is dirt at the moment. We have plenty of room, so if you are ever in Arizona be sure to stop at Casa Wilken.

Scott is trying to make this the longest Christmas letter ever by rewriting about our travels, which are already blog posts, so I’ve stepped in to save you. You can read about our travels from this year on our blog. No big trip, but we have visited all over Arizona; to South Carolina to visit my family; to Illinois and Indiana over the 4^th of July so that I could say goodbye to my childhood home (my mom moved to South Carolina to be near my brother). I got to go to Philadelphia for the American Planning Association’s national conference and Scott got to see his high school friends at the National Fencing Tournament in Tucson.

2007 has been a good year for us – a promotion for Scott; I took the AICP exam in November of 2006, so I finally got to use letters after my name beginning this year; we’ve been enjoying the Arizona weather and survived the hottest and driest Arizona summer in history. Scott wants to make sure you all know he has achieved Pro status on Wii bowling and placed 9^th in a poker tournament at one of the local Casinos. Both of these accomplishments could not have happened without many hours spent practicing. Since I haven’t accomplished anything nearly that amazing I think we will end the letter there.

We hope you all have a joyous holiday season and wish you all a wonderful 2008!

Love,

Katie and Scott

Coming soon...

I haven't written our Christmas letter yet. But I will. I swear. In the meantime, check out our old posts. They were good enough to read the first time, maybe they'll be better the second time around. Or third.
I'll have the Christmas letter up this weekend.

Katie's birthday

Katie's 28th birthday was the other day, November 1st. We went out to dinner at Sweet O Lounge, at Westgate in Glendale. It's a wine and chocolate bar, and Katie thought she'd enjoy having her birthday dinner at a place that specializes in two of her favorite things. And she was right. It was outstanding. Great wine, great sandwiches, great dessert, and great chocolates (which we got to go).

But before we went out to dinner, Katie came home from work to see a pile of presents in the kitchen. Here's what happened next:

Happy Halloween!

Moe and Mia saw so many kids with cute costumes this year they asked if we could get them some for next year. We got Mia a rooster costume. She loved it so much. Moe got a lobster costume but it didn't fit so I will have to alter it before next year. He was so jealous of the rooster costume he decided to try that one on too. They just love Halloween!

Ahhhhhhhhh!

I told Scott I saw a black widow spider in our backyard. And now I have photographic evidence of one on our front porch. If I see a scorpian we're moving.

Hiking the Estrella Mountains

We went hiking in the Estrella Mountains this weeked. The Estrellas are the mountains that are closest to our home. We both got burnt to a crisp but it was a beautiful day. We could see across the entire valley when we got to the highest point of our hike.

A Virtual Tour of our Actual House

We made a video tour of our house for those of you who won't be seeing it anytime soon. Let us know if there are any problems viewing the videos. Enjoy!

Tour our home

Catching up

We haven't posted in a long while. It turns out we haven't taken any photos since July. So, here are July photos. They include our trip to Highland & Springfield, Will's birthday party and baptism, saying goodbye to katie's childhood home and some house pictures.

We also had some professional pictures take with the Coble's at the house. They might not be up for long but you can see them here.

A few more pictures of the house

A few pictures of our house when we were getting ready for our house warming party and a couple after we finished the kitchen. Notice that we picked up one of those new cat shaped DVD players from Best Buy.

Our bedroom is finished!

Our First Anniversary

We just got back from our first anniversary trip to Sedona. We stayed at the Territorial House B&B in the Miss Kitty room (named for the character from Gunsmoke) where we enjoyed amazing breakfasts and stargazing (we waited until night for that).












While there we visited the Amitabha Stupa, Chapel of the Holy Cross and the Airport Vortex so we are one with our spiritual selves now.












We did see some fantastic views from the different touristy new age spots as you can see from all of our pictures. We didn't get to do too much hiking but we did hike up one very steep hill and got some great pictures from the top.













On our way home we stopped at a couple wineries which were suprisingly very good. We didn't know Arizona produced such good wine. We also stopped at Motezuma's Castle. It's not quite a castle and we're pretty sure Montezuma didn't live there but it is an amazing cliff dwelling site. We even saw some amusing squirrels who seemed very friendly and were rolling around on the ground looking cute which we thought was very funny until we saw this sign:

Yup, apparently the Bubonic Plague is alive and well in Arizona - gotta love it here!












The cats were happy to see us when we got back. I had grown some grass for them and left it out for them to enjoy while we were gone but apparently Mia would rather sit on it than eat it.









We're having trouble with snapfish so I will post all of our pictures later.

I once caught a fish thiiiiis big.

While Scott was decorating the house I went out to the lake for the afternoon.

The Curtains are Done

And it only took six months. I'm lightning fast! We also made and hung a collage of our house progress pictures. Our next project is hanging all of the music posters Scott has collected over the years. Once we do that and then get our new tv and entertaiment center our first floor will be complete. Just don't look in our study...

Our Dining Room

Another exciting weekend in the Wilken household. Our dining room is finally completely finished. We put up our maps (from the same book of maps that we used to make our wedding invitations). The orange table runner matches the curtains in the family room. Enlarge the picture and note the ball and chain sitting under a picture of comet Hale-Bopp over the Springfield carillon. We're trying to finish the house up so we can have a party. On non-related news Scott received lots of accolades at the latest quarterly City Manager's meeting for sticking through the rough periods during his department's restructuring. Scott is now a "senior citizen" in the City as deemed by the City Manager.

Our honeymoon: the coffee table book.

We did nothing exciting this weekend so I thought I would post pictures of the photobook I made of our honeymoon. In less then one month we will hit our first anniversary! Anyone officially lose any pools yet? Below are some of our favorites including "At the zoo", "First day at the Del", "Drunk Katie" and "Dinner at Mister A's".

Fish hatchery

When I told my dad that Katie and I were going camping near Payson, in the Tonto National Forest, he remembered having gone to the area years ago to work on a fish hatchery. He suggested that while we were there we could visit the hatchery. I'm sure he was kidding. But the trailhead we went to first, that turned out to be closed (see Katie's post below), was near the hatchery. So we stopped by. It was Katie's first fish hatchery visit. I hadn't been to one since I was a kid. It was kind of cool. They had a visitors center with information about the history of the hatchery, and displays of some of the large fish that had been caught in the nearby lake. Anyway, here's photographic evidence that we went to visit a fish hatchery my dad once worked on while we were on vacation.