Wednesday, October 22, 2008

older & wiser

For Troy's birthday we took a last minute mini road trip. We headed north to one of Arizona's hottest tourist spots...Payson. :) And we left no sight unseen. Our first destination was the old bike shop that you pass on the highway. We'd always wondered what the heap of junk was...and we found out it was just that. "30 years in the makin" the toothless woman told us. Over 10,000 bikes! She even let us climb the old car trailer to get an aerial shot. It was actually quite impressive, and once we started walking around we found that there was some semblance of order in the lot. There is just something cool about large amounts of things, collections of any random sort become novel.

Next we hiked Natural Bridge which was absolutely beautiful. We went all the way through this time since we didn't have the babies on our backs. Everything was so lush and green and the waterfalls made you feel you were somewhere exotic. We couldn't have asked for better weather and the company was ideal. It was fun just talking with Troy using uninterrupted sentences. We enjoyed lunch at a little roadside diner and walked through The Old Randall house. Then we went up to Pine and visited the graves of Troy's grandparents. Next we were off on the hunt for my "starter cabin"...unfortunately, it's just not meant to be...yet! :) After inhaling our brownie sundaes we headed back into the valley.

We stopped by Troy's office and I tried to do a little housekeeping while he worked, much to his irritation. Apparently setting up shelves and filing is not what he wanted done on his birthday. Go figure.

And no birthday would be complete without a trip to the local pawn shop. ??? Troy heard on the news, that with all this economic mess, pawn shops are being infiltrated with good stuff. So he wanted to go check it out. What makes this even more random is this is SO not Troy's style. First off, he doesn't ever buy anything, second, if he ever did buy something, he would know exactly what he's going to get, style, color, price etc. So randomly going to see what a pawn shop had to offer just threw me for a loop. But, it was his birthday... he ran the show (and I almost got a new platinum diamond ring out of the deal!) :)
It was a wonderful day overall and it was nice to remember how much we like each other when all the other stuff is taken away. :) We came home that night to happy kids and a worn out Karen...what a trooper!
Happy Birthday Heeney!