1st holiday in AZ: Labor Day 2010 (Mon. Sept. 6th)

Mark & I decided to have a low-key Labor Day holiday, so we drove around & checked out some houses, then went to Estrella Mountain Park to take a walk. It was a gorgeous sunny day for a walk, but kinda hot. Here are some pics from the park. The mountains are so pretty out here!




I love his smile when he's laughing. :)

After our walk, we did some shopping, then I wanted to show him this restaurant/brewhouse that my friend Emily had shown me. So I took him to the "Yardhouse" for happy hour. I'm not a beer drinker, but this place is pretty cool!! It has 100 types of beer on tap! We tried to get a pic of it, but it wouldn't turn out. They have them all lined up in an oval around the bar area. They have about any kind of beer you can imagine. You can check it out here: http://www.yardhouse.com/Default.aspx So we had a nice dinner, then went home, watched a movie & called it a night!

Mango coming out our ears! (Aug. 28th)

This week our Bountiful Basket had an option to buy 5 kilos of mangoes as an add-on. So I thought, "yum, I like mangoes. We should get those & try out some new stuff." Well I didn't realize until it was too late what 5 kilos really was...a little over 11 POUNDS of mangoes! So we got our basket (which also had 3 mangoes in it), & our add-on & got to work. We made mango pie, mango custard & also ate some fresh. This is what was left after we made those 2 things:

So needless to say, we had TONS of mango leftover! So I found a bunch of other recipes, but I'm saving them for later so we don't end up hating mangoes, lol. And I also want to save some to make something for when my parents get here in Nov. They're not too adventurous w/foods sometimes & haven't tried mangoes yet. :) So I'm gonna introduce them to a few things, haha.

GORGEOUS sunset... (Aug. 27th)

that I had to miss!! Mark was home & caught this gorgeous sunset from our apt. one evening while I was at work. I'll let the pics speak for themselves...amazing!

Our 1st crazy monsoon storm!! (Aug. 24th)

I was out w/my friend Jenn for her wedding dress fitting in the afternoon & on the way home it was getting awfully dark. We made it home before it started, but shortly after I came in, we got hit w/a crazy monsoon storm. It rained, hailed, blew real hard winds, thundered & was lightening. I had only heard about these & never saw one before. It was pretty cool to see, until it started cracking trees & hit the one that was privacy for us right in front of our balcony. Here's a view of the damage...just split it right off! The storm only lasted like 15 mins, but it sure did some damage. I didn't wanna ruin the camera, so I only got this pic after it was over, but we did get a pretty cool video...just can't figure out how to upload it yet. :(
Yay, we got it figured out! Here you go: