January the tenth (the one with the hedgehog)

Sawyer loves my socks. He's learned how to paw open my sock drawer and take them out, too, which means we find socks all over the house. Even in the kitchen sink. (Although, technically that was Jack who left it there, since Sawyer can't figure out how to get up on the counters.)

A few weeks ago Chris I loaned my old roommate Jenna some of our snow clothes for a trip she was taking, and she recently returned everything in a couple bags. Our nosy cats got into the bags, of course, and Sawyer fell in love with a pair of very soft, very thick, very expensive snow socks that were folded inside each other. For about a day, he carried those folded socks around the house, slept next to them, batted them around. I decided he needed his own little sock-sized stuffed animal.

Enter the hedgehog.

Found him at Target the other day. Just about the size of a pair of good snow socks folded inside each other. So I bought him and tossed him in front of Sawyer when I got home to see what would happen.

I think he likes it:

Disclaimer: After the first 45 seconds, it's much of the same. Please don't feel you have to watch all the way through. I'm just too lazy to throw this video in imovie and cut it down.

January the ninth

The normal 10pm-midnight scene at our house. In bed, but not asleep, working on photos and watching The Big Bang Theory. Or How I Met Your Mother. Both awesome.

January the eighth (the one with the photo shoot)

We went shoot scouting on Sunday. Found this awesome little nook in Balboa Park. I modeled. Chris used his new tilt shift. We made magic.

January the seventh (the one with Sonia's birthday)

Saturday day night we went out to Jamul for an ice cream social to celebrate my very first ever roommate's birthday. Woo-hoo!

I'm not going to lie, making that drive up Skyline had me missing the old camp days. It didn't matter that it's been five summers since I worked there; driving up that hill felt just like driving up every Sunday afternoon with my truck filled with fresh clothes and snacks. As I told Chris when we got to to the top of the hill, and looked down over the misty valley, God lives in Jamul. It's true.

We had a splendid time hanging out with Sonia and Paul, Jeremy and his girlfriend Sarah, Jared and his adorable daughter (who calls Sonia Mo-Geek, for Monique), and Krista and Jon. Settlers of Catan was the game of the night, but we had to play in teams since there were more than six of us. I'm not going to lie- I was a little concerned how Chris and I would handle both trying to control our team's strategies and moves. We are both way too competitive for our own good. Surprisingly, our strategies matched almost the entire game, and we ended up blowing everyone else out of the (Catan) water. Go, team, go!

And since this post is about Sonia's birthday, and not our awesome teamwork skills, here's some Sonia-centric posts I dug up from years past:

Adventures with my Roomie
Adventuresome Times
Last Night at B22
This is what...

Hmm. Half of these posts have the word adventure in them. I think that may say something about Sonia's personality....

January the sixth

With my new tutoring students, I had to change my schedule up a bit. Now I get out of work pretty early on Fridays, with no tutoring in the afternoons, which is great. I came home, got out the laptop, loaded up my current session (the Moses'/Bishop's) and turned on season five of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. 

( I love having HIMYM on Netflix. No changing of disks whatsoever. I could watch six seasons straight through if I wanted.)

Jack was feeling mighty cuddly, and I let him curl up into my arm since he just wanted to nap there. (We usually don't let them on the table.) 

Apparently Sawyer, who is not normally very cuddly, was jealous of this snuggle session, because this was the scene two hours later:

I was mentioning to Chris last night how much easier Picture of the Day is with two cats. No more trying to made mundane activities or inanimate objects interesting. There's always something interesting going on with two pre-teen cats.

January the fifth

This Jack photo may just rival the Sawyer-in-a-trashcan-shot for favorite cat photo ever. This is what my post-dinner and onto dishes evening looks like. My dutiful kitten watching and waiting in the hopes that a scrap of carrot or cilantro leaf will fall to the floor for him to bat around.

January the fourth

Not much going on today. Back to school/work. Back to tutoring. Wednesdays are now loooooooong days. Charter school in the morning/early afternoon, immediately followed by language arts tutoring with a seventh grader, immediately followed by math tutoring with an eighth grader (in Imperial Beach). Trying to get home from I.B. at 6:30pm is not so much fun, but luckily I've got my ipod loaded with the audio versions of all the Harry Potter books. I love me some multi-tasking, and I definitely don't have time to be lounging around reading once I get home.

I like this picture of Sawyer. He looks more like the kitten we brought home six months ago, and less like the teenage cat he's slowly growing into. This look here is one of limiting patience while he waited for me to get him unstuck from the little space he'd crawled into behind the TV. Poor thing couldn't figure out how to back up, and Chris' guitar rack was keeping him from just jumping to the ground. When I held out my arms to reach over the rack for him, he literally jumped into them. Love that our cats know when we're trying to help them and go along with it.