Our first Valentine's

Phil and I have had a pretty exciting week as we were able to get out of Midland, go camping, celebrate our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, deal with computer problems and continue with life in general! Whew-- since when did becoming an adult get busy?!?

Last weekend, Phil and I headed to Carlsbad, NM to visit the Carlsbad Caverns and go camping. I took the day off of work on Friday, and we left Midland around 8am. We drove to Carlsbad, stopped for lunch and then headed to the caverns. It was extremely interesting to see all the formations below ground and we highly recommend that everyone goes. We did the self-guided tour, which was about 3 miles of walking and took us about 2 hours to complete the tour. Unfortunately, we didn't get very good pictures, but we tried to capture a few of the things that we did see.

After walking around and seeing all that we could, we drove about 30 minutes and arrived in White's City, TX. We got there just in time to set up camp, go for about a 3 mile hike and watch the sun start to set. After our hike, it was a quick dinner of sandwiches (no campfires were allowed in the park) and then the rest of the evening was in the tent, snuggled under a blanket and eating a dessert of GORP/trail mix (which we lived off of for most of the weekend. Side note, Phil and I decided that GORP must become a staple in our pantry)! Both of us were pretty exhausted from the day, so we both were asleep pretty early.

The next morning, Phil and I were brutally awakened by the cold (our bodies were fine, but our heads were freezing!), so after a few minutes of staying in our sleeping bags deciding what to do, we agreed to get going with our day and set out for our hike. Since neither of us has been up in altitude for some time, the hike up the mountain was a rude awakening for us. But, we managed (with the help of yummy gorp) and I think we did pretty well :) The best part of the whole experience however, was seeing little (and we mean little) patches of snow! We almost didn't know what it was, but after getting over our giggles and smiles, we of course had to take some pictures (you would think that it's been years since we last saw snow)!

About 4 hours later, we had had enough, so we packed up camp and headed home. Both of us agree that we need to get out more often and see all the sites of Texas (because, as we're told, there are some great places to camp and some beautiful things to see), so I guess we'll be having some more adventures in the up and coming months.

When we got home, we began to get settled into our everyday life, only to find that our computer didn't work. (You can tell that we're from a generation that loves technology-- well, I guess I am more addicted than Phil, but we both enjoy our 'toys'). Phil tried to work on it for an hour or so, but decided it was best to call tech support the next day. Long story short, the computer company had no idea what they were talking about and Phil's original theory of what was wrong was the correct problem. Thankfull, it was an easy fix and all is well (however, we did take that as a warning sign and Phil proceeded to back up all of our files. I married such a great guy)!

As for other news from Texas, we continue to stay busy with the everyday activities. Phil is busy at work preparing for upcoming interviews with potential agents and I am consistently having adventure-filled days full of the entire emotional spectrum. I am now at 10 weeks until my race, so pray that my body continues to deal with the training as well as it has thus far!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week and God Bless!