During the summer of 2017, we wrote our first book. While it is our only book to date, we imagine many more in the future. The book was a project undertaken by Corey (mom) and Kacey (8-year old daughter at the time) as a fun experience to do during the summer. The first iteration of the book was called Catalynn, the Curious Kitty inspired by our two cats, Monkey and Ollie. Kacey drew the pictures and the two of us came up with the storyline. Just for fun, we printed a couple copies of the book through Shutterfly to share with family and friends. They loved the book so much that we decided to actually publish the book for real. But, we changed a few things, including the chapter order and the title. The new version was Fenix: The Fearless Feline, so named after our newest cat, Phoenix. But, since Phoenix might be tricky for kids to read, we changed the name to the phonetic spelling: Fenix. The book was available on Amazon starting in 2018 and the rest is history!
With all intentions of writing another book, we got a bit distracted and decided to create games instead, at least for the time being. Our interest in game design came from us wanting to have more meaningful conversation in a creative way. We had exhausted every discussion topics card deck we could find and wanted to develop a fun game to get people to talk to each other. But, we didn’t want the game to get old by having players have to answer the same questions over and over once they made it through the deck. So, we developed a versatile card deck that offers opportunities for different conversations every time you play. It is called Connection Reflection. And just with this one card deck, you can play six different games! Because the card deck provides such a great format for discussion, we decided to create three additional versions: The Adult, Junior, and Mini.
But, we didn’t stop there! We created Rank the Blank, another card game designed to get people talking and sharing their opinions. By filling in the blank and ranking your agreement, this game can be played over and over, with new discussions and opinions emerging!
And, if books and games weren’t enough, we wanted to celebrate one of our favorite places in Arizona: Tumamoc Hill. Tumamoc is situated in Tucson, Arizona and holds a deep and rich history. We are grateful that the walking path up the hill is open to the public and serves as a place for serenity, community, and wellness. We know that we can never take for granted that our path has been blazed by those who came before us on this land. To celebrate this special place, we commissioned an artist to do a rendering of Tumamoc for print on apparel. Notice that the “A” in Tumamoc looks similar to the observatory on the top of the hill, and the trail in the design matches the actual map of the walking path from the bottom to the top.