Montezuma's Castle

We went up to Flagstaff solely to meet up with my friend Linn for picnic with her siblings as she was driving through from Vegas to New Mexico.  I got no pictures of that (*bad friend*).  Well, we decided to make more use to that trip and we stopped off at Montezuma's Castle on the way home.

No, Montezuma didn't really live here but they thought he did.  Really it was a people called the Sinagua.  They built this in the cave with multiple stories and additions. They used a system of ladders to get from the ground and between levels.  Sounds like a lot of work to me but I guess back they it was pretty cool stuff.  Either way, the structure and the innovation is pretty amazing.

It's one of those things you always SAY you're gonna do and then never do. Well, it's about time...!

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Stacy Came To Visit

My sister and her family came to visit for a week over the 4th of July.  This is her with her 2 boys: Bryce (8) and Cole (6).

This is her with her boyfriend Michael.  We took them to the Grand Canyon and then to Vegas.

I love this picture.  I know it's their backs but it's very artistic and I like it.  Plus their standing on the edge of a cliff staring at the Grand Canyon. Maybe I should push them... Just kidding!

Now, the obligatory in-front-of-the-Las Vegas-sign picture.  We did TONS of stuff in Vegas but I'll just give you the list.  We saw the Flamingos at the Flamingo, the Lions at MGM, the volcano at the Mirage, the water ballet at the Bellagio (my ALL TIME favorite thing in Vegas), M&M World and some other stuff.  There's more but I can't remember.  Even though we were doing all these cool things in Vegas, the youngens just wanted to play at Gameworks. Go figure.

I'm so glad they came to visit! Besides the fact that Stacy had never met Diego, I miss my sister and hope we can eventually move closer together. And, yes, I do know that we look SOOO much alike.  When we were growing up people thought we were twins.  Come on people, we're 5 and half YEARS apart!!

Love you Stace!

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Anniversary in San Diego

It's been a GREAT three years for us and we went to San Diego to celebrate. We went geocaching in Balboa Park.

I found this awesome patch of flowers.

Diego had fun playing fighter pilot on the USS Midway.

Yep, that's me with Principle Figgins from Glee. He was just having some lunch with his family on the pier.

Diego looking all powerful at Seaport Village.

The beach at La Jolla.

Sun set at Pacific Beach.

Mind you, this was all in a day and a half.  It was a very good time!

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A Year in Picture...

Okay, well half a year.  We have been doing stuff.  I've just been remiss in either taking pictures or posting them.  So here's a recap of the first half of our year.

To start off with we have Pollo Disco night in January.  Pollo Disco is yummy chicken and sauce cooked outside in a round pan.  Really, just a reason for everyone to get together again.

Next we have a charity walk in February for the American Heart Association with our friends Stacy and Walter who, incidentally, live in England at the moment.

Later on for Easter all the Argentines (okay, not ALL, just some of the ones here in Arizona) got together for a picnic at a park and Walter cooked a pig for us.  That's right, an entire pig!  Look close enough and you can see teeth and tongue next to Diego's elbow.

That brings us to May where my boss at the pharmacy threw a Gringo de Mayo party.  Her husband's from Mexico and wouldn't let her call it a Cinco de Mayo party cause they don't really celebrate it - just us.

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2009 Wrap Up

If you feel the picture is a little bit skee-wampus (or small, for that matter), just click on it to enlarge and read all about our goings on for 2009. 'Tis the season, Happy New Year and all!

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Best New Years EVER

If New Years in any reflection on how awesome the coming year is gonna be then I'm in for a hum dinger.  Seriously people.   (make sure you read to the bottom, that's the best part)  New Years Eve was spent with friends.  The boys barbecued a goat *literally*.  It wasn't my favorite but I got to play Speed Scrabble with a good friend of mine.  I never get to play anymore.  Diego would totally be willing but I'm not so sure he'd be any good at it.  Anyway.  No pictures of the charred goat.  The next morning, we went shooting with Uncle Richard and the Lazona Ward. This is me with my cousin Brittany doing our Charlie's Angels pose.

Here's Diego with a shotgun and a death stare.

This is a Colt Junior.  Pops says it's the assassins gun of choice.   It only shoots 22s but if you put it in behind the ear, the bullet will bounce around inside the head cause it can't penetrate the skull.

 

Then there was this guy named Chris.  He was way nice but a little shady with his information.  He said he works for a consulting company.  Upon further pressing, he gave up that he works for the government, he's a chief weapons instructor and that they consult on all things foreign and domestic.  Doesn't matter.  I got to shoot a Mac-11 9mm semi-automatic machine gun.  How cool is that?!  Here's the video.  You can totally hear me saying, "I'm gonna obliterate those rocks!"

And if all this wasn't cool enough, later that evening we checked into a 4-star Scottsdale resort and we didn't take any pictures of that either...

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High School Reading

For some reason I've felt like reading.  And since I didn't do much of it in high school (or college, for that matter) I've decided to do it now.  I found this list online.  Feel free to comment or add/subtract from the list.  I'm kinda glad I'm reading these now.  I mean, I like the books I've read so far but I can also imagine being very irritated by them when I was younger.  I've stricken through the ones I've just read.  I haven't decided if I'm gonna re-read anything that I actually read previously (or that we read in class).  Hmm.  It's a pretty long list.  Wonder how long it's gonna take me.  Maybe I should rule some of these out.  Any help out there to narrow it down?

Beowulf

Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart

Agee, James A Death in the Family

Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain

Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot

Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March

Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre

Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert The Stranger

Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop

Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales

Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard

Chopin, Kate The Awakening

Christiie, Agatha Murder on the Orient Express

Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness

Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage

Dante Inferno

de Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote

Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment

Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy

Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers

Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss

Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays

Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying

Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury

Fielding, Henry Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby

Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary

Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier

Forester, C.S. Horatio Hornblower

Frankle, Viktor Man’s Search for Meaning

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust

Golding, William Lord of the Flies

Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph Catch 22

Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms

Homer The Iliad Homer The Odyssey

Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley, Aldous Brave New World

Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House

James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady

James, Henry The Turn of the Screw

Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis

Keller, Helen Story of My Life

Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior

Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird

Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt

London, Jack The Call of the Wild

Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain

Marquez, Gabriel García One Hundred Years of Solitude

Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener

Melville, Herman Moby Dick

Miller, Arthur The Crucible

Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman

Morrison, Toni Beloved

O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find

O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night

Orwell, George Animal Farm

Orwell, George 1984

Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago

Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allan Selected Tales

Proust, Marcel Swann's Way

Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49

Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front

Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac

Roth, Henry Call It Sleep

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare, William Hamlet

Shakespeare, William Macbeth

Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet

Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein

Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Sophocles Antigone

Sophocles Oedipus Rex

Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck, John The Pearl

Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island

Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin

Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels

Thackeray, William Vanity Fair

Thoreau, Henry David Walden

Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace

Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons

Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Voltaire Candide

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five

Walker, Alice The Color Purple

Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth

Welty, Eudora Collected Stories

Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass

Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray

Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie

Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse

Wright, Richard Native Son

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Merry Christmas to All

I like to hand-make my "I love everyone" Christmas treats.  Two years ago it was the box of chocolates, last year it was dipped pretzels (no pictures, boo) and this year it's this...

Oreo Truffles with ideas a la Bakerella.  I also made a gingerbread man with cute little red "buttons" but he was running late for the pictures.
For Diego's work, I made pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting and picks that said "Naughty" "Nice" and "Somewhere In-between."

It's all just my way of saying that I care.  And for all you wonderful people out there that I care about that I cannot give treats to - this is for you.  Merry Christmas!!!

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