Scott and Katie's Blog

Various randomness and other miscellanea

2008-04-07T21:52:00.009-07:00

We've done a few things and taken a few pictures recently that I wanted to share.

First, about a month ago, we went to the Tres Rios Nature Festival in South Avondale. It's an annual festival on the Gila River celebrating the river, the wilderness around the area and other things natural. A lot of the rivers in Arizona don't have water in them usually, but this part of the Gila does. So we took a canoe out for a little trip:

We also took another trip to to Desert Botanical Gardens to see all the flowers blooming:

That same day we visited the Desert Botanical Gardens, we went to Moon Valley Nursery and bought a new tree for our backyard. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome the newest addition to our family, Dusty, a 36" box Palo Brea. Yes, for some reason I really can't explain, we name our trees. Dusty got his name because the first time the cats went out after he was delivered, Moe turned a distinct shade of brown from all the dust that was kicked up when the guys from the nursery were digging the hole.

By the way, turning brown is pretty tough for a black cat, but somehow Moe was able to do it. We don't have pictures of that.

But we do have a picture of both cats enjoying the patio furniture my parents bought us for Christmas last year.

Poppies! Poppies!

2008-03-14T10:40:00.003-07:00

Because of all the rain we had this winter, the wildflowers are spectacular this year. We went hiking at Lost Dutchman State Park this past weekend which is famous for its Mexican poppies. The park is at the entrance of the Tonto National Forest and is at the base of the Superstition Mountains, all the way at the far east end of the valley. It was crowded but beautiful.

New Patio

2008-03-02T18:08:00.008-07:00

Back in September, Katie and I started working on our new patio. We dug a 20' by 15' hole next to our existing patio, expecting that we'd be able to get the new patio built by Thanksgiving. It took us a few weeks to get the hole dug and flat, and then in late October, we had all the materials delivered for the patio. At that point, it hadn't rained in about six months, and the backyard was totally dry.

It rained a little the day we had the materials delivered. It turns out that it takes about two weeks for our backyard to dry out enough to do any work back there. We know this because, from the day we had the materials delivered in October to early February it rained about every two weeks. So we didn't get to do any more work on it for about three and a half months.

We finally got to start working on it again, and it hasn't rained since, so we finally got it finished this morning. We're pretty excited about it. We can finally have a nice place to eat and hang out outside. We've got a lot of other plans for the backyard that we'll work on over the next few years, but getting the patio done is a huge accomplishment. It was a lot of hard work, but it's going to be worth it.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the patio. See if you can pick out the homage to my heritage.

And here are some pictures of the patio with the nice patio furniture my parents bought us for Christmas.

Scott and Katie’s Christmas Letter, version 2007

2007-12-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-12-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-11-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-11-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-10-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-07T15:58:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-30T11:58:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-09-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Our First Anniversary

2007-06-24T16:43:00.001-07:00

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.

2007-06-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

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

The Curtains are Done

2007-06-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-17T09:51:00.001-07:00

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.

2007-06-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-28T13:04:00.001-07:00

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.

April and May Photos

2007-05-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Now you can view more photos of our adventures!

View photos from March. Includes moving in and our first big rain.

View photos from April. Includes Joanne's trip out here, Katie's trip to Philadelphia, and the Springfield boy's get together.

View photos from May. Includes our camping trip.

We also have an album of all the progress pictures of the house.

The World's Largest Fountain

2007-05-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

On our way home yesterday we were driving along and noticed a huge fountain in the distance. We couldn't figure out what it was but when I pulled out the map I saw "World's Tallest Fountain" on it. We knew Fountain Hills, a suburb of Phoenix/Scottsdale had a large fountain but we didn't know it was that large; so we pulled the car over and stopped to see it. The fountain runs for 15 minutes on the hour and we caught one of the shows. The fountain reportedly gets as tall as 500 feet in the air.

Camping

2007-05-28T12:26:00.002-07:00

We just got back from our first camping trip. Don't be fooled by the post date. We came home a day early. There were forest fires in the area that are under control but unfortunately all of the hiking trails were closed and no fires or charcoal grills were allowed. With not much to do we decided to head home Sunday evening instead of Monday morning. We still had a great time and saw some amazing sights.

Keeping up with the cats

2007-05-20T16:28:00.001-07:00

Because we are one step away from being crazy cat people.

Getting ready to camp

2007-05-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

We had a campout in our family room today. We needed to make sure our tent was ready for this weekend. As long as the wildfires don't stop our plans, we will be camping in Payson this weekend.

Break like the Wind

2007-04-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Scott and I went to Lowe's on Saturday to buy some plants for our yard. While out in the nursery we saw a wall of dust coming our way and within a few seconds the whole place was filled with dust and everything was blowing around. We managed to get to the car and make it home only to discover our poor little tree was knocked down. But the potted plants look great, right?

We also wanted to share the view of the sunset we have from our hallway window.

Sorry for the formatting

2007-03-24T08:57:00.001-07:00

Blogger merged with Google and in the transfer many of our posts have been reformatted and are a bit messy. We are working on fixing it all up.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Katie!

2007-03-24T08:45:00.001-07:00

Katie got to go on a helicopter tour of a large area that the City is annexing soon. It was the day of the rains and it was absolutely beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice but here are a few shots of Goodyear and Avondale from the sky. The first pictures are shots of Goodyear and the White Tank mountains. The third picture is Estrella Mountain Ranch, one of Goodyear's nicer subdivisions and you can see Avondale in the last picture, if you look at the horizon line on the right side you can also see downtown. (you can click the pictures to enlarge them)

It does rain in the desert

2007-03-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

No, we did not install a pool. That is our backyard after a downpour on Thursday. The good thing is the water stayed away from the house, the bad news is Arizona soil does not drain well. It is Saturday and we still can't let the cats outside because of the water and mud. Our park/retention area also got flooded. I guess we need to get going on installing some groundcoversand other plants so they can help with the drainage.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful Christmas. Shortly after, Sarah came to visit and we all had a good time. Our house has been moving along at a rapid pace. Sarah and I visited the house on December 28.

This week, however, we received exciting news! We will be getting our keys on February 13. Our final walk through is set for the 6th and we sign our lives away on the 9th. It is so exciting and we can't wait to get into our new home. The outside is almost done, the landscaping and finishing the block wall is all that seems to be left. We even have a front door and keys! Currently, we have a view of the mountains from our bedroom, that will go away if our neighbors choose a two story home so we are hoping they get a one story. Our cabinets and counter are in and the walls are finished. Just a few more weeks and it will be ours. Now for the fun stuff, decorating.

Tis the Season

2006-12-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

We seemed to have neglected two very important people on this blog. Moe and Mia (they might not be people but they sure think they are). The cats are getting ready for Christmas. Mia is keeping an eye on the presents and they are both inspecting every box they get (the one in the picture is from Petsmart, just for them). The bottom pictures are from last year's Christmas. They enjoyed the basket that Alida and Bill got them (unbeknownst to them) and the box of peanuts very much.

Quote-unquote Pre-drywall Walkthrough

2006-12-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

On Friday we had what's known as a "pre-drywall walkthrough." They call it this in the construction biz because it's your chance as a homeowner to walk through the house with the building superintendent before the drywall is installed. You can check out things like the wiring, the air seal, and the insulation before it's all covered up with drywall. Our pre-drywall walkthrough was especially quick because they'd already installed the drywall. So our options are to have them remove all the drywall so we can look behind it, or take their word for it that they did it right. It looks like we're going with the latter. The good news is, the superintendent that we met with said that from this point forward, it should be about 8 to 10 weeks until the house is done, which would get us in it in mid to late February. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, here's how it looked on the outside yesterday:

And here's me inside the house for the pre-drywall walkthrough. Notice how good the drywall looks.

My latest project.

2006-12-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

I am finally getting around to creating an online photo album from the wedding. Unfortunately, we can't get a hold of our photographer, we think he was deployed to Iraq and we can't get to all of our photos on the DVD he gave us. So, it might be a long time before this thing gets finished.

We have neighbors

2006-12-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

aka This House is a Lath Riot (Scott's suggestion for the name of this post). As you can see there is a lot of progress on the house. They added the fiberglass board to the outside of the house. The realtor calls it lath but I don't think it really is lath, I think lath is a plaster like substance that isn't used anymore. Anyway, if you look on the roof you can see that they have the clay tiles lined up to ready to be put in place. We should have our first official walk through sometime next week. We also have neighbors on the other side. We were sad to find out they will have a two story house so they will block any potential mountain views we had from our bedroom but the good news is that they did not choose the same floor plan as us. Below is the view you see as you drive into the development. That is the back of our house on the left. Someday there will be a house built on that gravel lot so you won't see the house from the entrance though.

While we were in Mexico...

2006-11-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

We got windows. The cats will be very pleased.

Congrats Greg & Catie!

2006-11-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

Scott's brother, Greg, tied the knot in Riviera Maya on November 24. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Mexico last week and the wedding was beautiful. I find it strange to have my breakfast without champagne nowadays but we are glad to be home with the cats just the same. As you can see the Bride and Groom looked beautiful and they had a location to match.

We all had a fabulous time. Congrats to Greg and Catie.

Moving right along

2006-11-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

A bit more progress and the crew looks to be hard at work. We might just be in our house in February. Still no sign of anything happening on the lot on the right side of us. It will be fun to see how much progress they make while we are in Mexico for Greg (Scott's brother) and Catie's wedding. I hope everyone has a happy holiday weekend!

We was framed

2006-11-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Or, rather, our house was framed. Katie went out to the lot Thursday afternoon, and the entire frame is up on our house. Foundation, too. It's starting to look like a real house. It won't be long now...

Katie, AICP

2006-11-14T19:52:00.001-07:00

I wanted to add a quick post to let anyone reading this know that Katie passed the Comprehensive Planning Exam today and is now a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners! And because of that she gets AICP after her name. AND she's done studying for the exam! AND she's going to get her third set of business cards at work soon showing her new last name and new title.

I'm really proud of her, she worked really hard and all her work paid off. So congratulate her next time you talk to her. She's earned it!

Progress!!!

2006-11-05T10:06:00.001-07:00

We went by our lot yesterday to see the progress. It looks like they've put in the sub-base, some pipes, and things are happening! But look at the progress of our neighbor. Their house is going up pretty fast, so we're hoping our house goes up as fast. The other exciting thing is that they've put in the grass and some playground equipment in the park across the street. So that'll be fun when it's all finished.

Also, it's a little hazy, but here's a picture of one of our mountain views. We're pretty sure these are the South Mountains, to the south of our subdivision. They might be the Estrella Mountains, we'll get back to you on that one. We've got another mountain view to the northwest, but it was too hazy yesterday to see any of that.

Our first home

2006-11-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Well, we bought a house. Actually, we bought dirt. House to follow. The house is 5 bedroom/3 bath, two-stories complete with a Super! Family Room. Some pictures of the model home below.

Our first married blog

2006-11-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is our first blog post.