Why, hello there.

Well, we are officially the worst bloggers ever. I can't tell you how many times in the past two months one of has said, "Can you update the blog?" The other always replies in grunts, and so it never gets done. Instead of composing something artful and interesting, I thought I'd present a few literal snapshots of our recent adventures, as sort of a stop-gap measure. Besides, then it will officially be Philip's turn to update, and he will be sure to write something nice.


Before the adventures, a slice of daily life. I love taking pictures of what I cook, although I almost never share them (because that's weird, right?). But this is a typical dinner chez Zoutendam. On the menu was homemade sesame chicken with sauteed asparagus over jasmine rice. It looks like it was a Friday evening, since I made cosmopolitans. We didn't have a strainer or a shaker so I used a water bottle and sieve. Because we are classy like that.


My parents gave Philip a yearly zoo pass for his birthday, so this is from our second trip. We love zoos, and my favorite discovery this time was actually from the Arizona Trail (native Arizona wildlife): the prairie dog village. I could watch these little guys for hours (and would have, if Philip hadn't dragged me away to see the bobcat (I want one!)), but I settled for taking about a hundred photos of them.


Here's Philip at the start of a hike we took about a month ago. The hike was in the White Tanks Mountain Regional Park, just west of Phoenix. The hike was a long one (at least for me, a novice hiker)--more than an hour longer than the three hours we had predicted--and I definitely didn't look as optimistic as Philip does in this photo by the time we were done. In fact, I plopped down at a trailhead .4 miles from our real trailhead and sent Philip running off to bring the car around. Philip must have been afraid of his wife's foul temper, since he let me eat pancakes in bed afterward. But pancakes cure all ills, and in fact I now remember this hike even . . . slightly fondly.


The white tanks, about a thousand feet higher than where Philip is standing in the last picture. It doesn't look like much, but it was actually amazing to find little clear pools in the middle of a desert. All in all, the hike was between 7 and 8 miles and it took us about 4 and a half hours.


My mom came to visit me this past weekend! Or, really, she came to see Barley. As I've told others before, when I was young, I never thought that I would grow up to be the kind of woman whose best friends are her sister and her mother (in fact, I thought that was crazy), but here I am, considering myself blessed to have it so.


We all went to the Grand Canyon. It was the first time for all three of us, and although we only spent about five hours there, it was well worth the four-hour drive. Here we are at the bottom of our short hike into the canyon (descending several hundred feet in 3/4 mile), squinting into the ferocious wind.


One picture can't capture everything we saw, but this was my favorite from the day. It was hard for me to even conceive of the Grand Canyon despite having seen pictures, and I loved that fact that we couldn't see any of the Canyon really until we walked up to the rim, and then suddenly the earth opened up and there it was for miles on all sides.

I apologize for cheating by using photos as a substitute for compositional elegance (which obviously would have abounded otherwise . . . ). But hopefully those of you who are kind enough to take an interest in our lives are satisfied for another two months or so. Until then, God bless.