Catch up time! (Sept.-Now)

I know, I know, I've really been neglecting this blog & all of you, but it's only because I've been sooo busy the past few months!! We've had so many big changes & so many exciting things happening in our lives together. To try to get you caught up, I'll start with the fact that we started house hunting in the beginning of Sept. We weren't planning on starting to hunt so soon, but the prices are sooo good & we really didn't care for living in the apt. complex we were in. So we found a bunch of houses we wanted to see, contacted a realtor, & went to go check them out. We found OUR house the first day we were out & put an offer in that night. We still did quite a bit of searching to make sure it was "the one", but we couldn't find one better for us than this one. So we put an offer in Sept. 13th, got a counter offer the 14th, then got our counter offer accepted on the 17th. We were sooo excited, yet nervous! What do we do now? We've never gone through any of this before & our parents were over 2300 miles away, haha. Somehow we managed & got things figured out to be able to close Oct. 20th & start moving in! Of course this meant we had to get out of our lease for the apt. & take care of getting everything switched as well. All of this was happening so fast, we didn't even have time to really think & let it all sink in. And on top of all of this, my parents were coming to visit Nov. 1st-11th, so we had to prepare for that. But everything worked out & it was a blessing to get this gorgeous house we love & to be able to accommodate our guests better.

And here's a little peek at what else happened the past few months...I'll let some of the pics speak for themselves. My friend Jenn's bachelorette outing w/the girls (Oct. 9th)
Jenn & CJ's wedding day (Oct. 23rd) Me w/some of the Nestie girls

Dad & Mom's arrival (Nov. 1st), which included lots of travels & exploring during the week:

a trip to the Phoenix Zoo, the AZ Science Museum, hiking at Papago Park, 2 days at the Grand Canyon, the Desert Botanical Garden & some other fun things, since this was my parents' first time in AZ.

Me at the Grand Canyon

The 4 of us at the Desert Botanical Garden

hiking into the Grand Canyon (Nov. 5th)

our 1st Thanksgiving dinner in our new house
our 1st Black Friday shopping experience in AZ, our 1st puppy! (Nov. 27th)
decorating our new house for Christmas
a Nestie Christmas exchange GTG (Dec. 11th)
going to see the Luminarias at the Desert Botanical Garden (Dec. 21st)

celebrating Christmas in our new place

plus some other fun things! Whew! I'm sure I've missed some things, but at least you get an idea of what we've been up to lately. Now that I'm caught up here, I'm hoping I can keep up with this better, but we'll see how it goes.

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:

Lake Meade, Hoover Dam & the ram (Aug. 21st)

On our way down the hill on our way home from Vegas, we saw this beauty. This happens to be part of Lake Meade & what a gorgeous view!

We then came upon the Hoover Dam area again & decided to stop to check it out a lil better. The water level was low, but it's still pretty amazing to see. Here we are in front of part of it.

Sooo pretty!

This is a view from the look-out area we stopped at (there were lots of them).

I looked over & saw this one couple looking towards the mountain w/a camera, but couldn't see anything that they might have been looking at, until I put the large zoom lens on our camera & checked it out. To my surprise, this is what I saw. I was soooo happy & excited to see a ram! The whole time driving through the mountain areas there I kept saying to Mark that it'd be so awesome to see a ram, but we couldn't find one...until we stopped here.

It's kinda hard to see in the pics here (unless you click & make them larger), but it was such an awesome sight to see this ram standing there so proud! He just looked down at us like, "what are you people doing here?!?" He gave us such great shots too!

So that made our day & the rest of the ride home better. God's creatures & nature are so amazing! We're really pretty blessed to be able to live in a country like this & be able to see such things.

On the way to Vegas & Mark's 1st time at the Rainforest Cafe (Aug. 20th-21st)

The country is sooo pretty out here, it amazes me. Here are a few pics of some scenery on the way to Vegas & the Hoover Dam.
Too bad these pics don't look near as good on here as they do for real & enlarged though.

Here are some views of Lake Meade:

And of course, we had to get the "Welcome" sign.

I knew that there was a "Rainforest Cafe" on the Vegas strip & that Mark's never been to one, so I really wanted to go so he could experience it. So we decided to walk down the strip Sat. afternoon to get there & an hour & 15 mins later, we arrived! Our hotel was at one end of the strip & this was at the opposite end. The meal was awesome though & we got some good exercise, so it was worth it.

It was in the 100s temperature wise, so that's why I look red & tired. That was one LONG walk w/in lots of other people & passing over the strip multiple times up & down stairs & such.

It's kind of hard to see it here, but there are mechanical animals throughout the restaurant that move & make noises when the "thunderstorm" starts. They do a thunderstorm scene every 20 mins.