Monday, October 3, 2011

Roughin' It At Home

Friday was Josh's birthday.  Several years ago, Josh and I started the tradition of camping for our birthdays instead of giving gifts.  We're not always great about making it happen, but we did ok this year.  We were camping just outside of St. Louis for my birthday in July, and this weekend we camped out at home for the first time.  Some of you may not see the point of this, but we thought it was fun.
We threw our iPad, tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags and some stuff for Titus into the back of the truck and headed out to our designated campsite.  We've had this spot picked out for quite some time.  It's a spot on our property where you can't see our house or any of our neighbors' buildings.  There are trees all around but none directly over the campsite.  So why did we bring our iPad?  For stargazing (and music)!  You see the tent we used is all mesh on the top- perfect for looking at stars!  We found a great little app called Star Walk that is really fun to use.  You just hold the iPad up in any direction and it tells you which constellation/star/planet you are looking at.  It also gives a bunch of info about each one.  Fabulous!  It was a very romantic/nerdy night :)
The red line is the horizon
Our campsite
Titus loves this tent.  He just sits and looks around waiting for something exciting to happen...
... and sometimes something exciting does happen.  This is seconds before Titus took off to see the neighbor's llamas.  See that little white spot to the left of the zipper?  That's one of the llamas.
On Saturday morning we packed things up and headed back to the house.  Just as Josh was about to cook breakfast, we heard a POP and we lost our electricity.  A squirrel had electrocuted himself.  We know this because Josh found the half-paralyzed squirrel laying on the ground by one of our electrical poles.  We called the electric company, Josh put the squirrel out of its misery, and before long our power was restored.
The rest of our weekend was pretty typical, but we did end it with an apple-cranberry pie.  Josh's favorite!
What did you do this weekend?
*FYI- We thought Star Walk was a really fun app.  I could see it being really fun/educational for kids too.  They have it for the iPhone and iPad. 

2 comments:

Autumn said...

So I was reading the part about the squirrel, but could see the picture of the pie out of the corner of my eye... made me wonder where this story was going.

Todd & Andrea said...

Glad to hear you had a nice birthday, Josh! Thanks for the app recommendation. We'll have to try it out!