Day 43, April 2nd

 Today was quite a busy day, we really had a jam packed schedule.  We woke up and hit the gym then got ready and headed to Tempe for the Salsa Challenge.  I love chips and salsa, a known fact if you were at our wedding thanks to my wonderful MOH's speech, so I was looking forward to this day for awhile.  Last year I got my wisdom teeth taken out the weekend of the challenge, a not so smart move, so over a year now I've been waiting for my redemption day!  We met up with Alex and Heather and dug in on all the yummy chips and salsa.  We sat for the margarita challenge for awhile, long enough to capture a few pics, and then hit the salsa once more.

After the challenge we headed over to Canteen for a quick bite to eat to wrap up a lovely afternoon with our lovely friends.
Ryan and I then headed home to get ready for Brandon and Heather's engagement party.  We made the long drive up north, separately, not because we were fighting, but because I was heading out early for another soire.  The life we lead...

We had a nice time with all our friends celebrating the engagement.   I stole this photo from Facebook because I didn't take any pictures.  If I set my purse somewhere else, that's it, I never think oh I should take my camera out...must get better at this!! 
Here is the tailgating crew, sort of, for the most part.


After the engagement party I headed super south to meet for my friend Elise's birthday.  She picked a cute little place called El Zocalo in Old Town Chandler.  We sat on the patio and had a beautiful evening.  
My phone died, curse of the Android, so I was completely out of the loop on time.  I was quite surprised to find it was almost midnight when we left!!  
It was a long day, but a fun day, happy to celebrate so much in a 24 hour span!!

Day 42, April 1st

Happy April Fool's Day! Do you know where this holiday started?  I guess back in the day, April 1st was the first day in the calendar year, well the Pope up and decided to change it to January 1st.  Obviously this was before text messaging and twitter so it took along time for information to get out, so there were still some people that celebrated April 1st as the new year, and those that were in the know called them "April Fools".  And that my friends is your little does of knowledge for the day.


When Ryan and I got home Friday from work, we headed out to get a birthday present for my friend Elise, as her birthday celebration was on Saturday.  We picked up a nice little gift and then decided we were hungry.  
I suggested pizza, and since we had a few Fox Restaurant gift cards we decided Sauce it was.  We split a salad and pizza and had our respected glasses of wine. There was this couple sitting near us, both drinking and I kid you not, they looked 14 years old!! I didn't want to sound like an old lady but I really wanted to ask them how old they were.  I didn't obviously, one because I didn't want them to think what I creep I was and two honestly, what if they were older than us?!? Then I'd look like a real fool!!

Day 41, March 31st

I can't believe it's the last day of March!! Birthday month over!! :(   My mom and Rick came over for dinner on Thursday to see us but more importantly to bring us a beautiful Kitchen Aid mixer for our wedding present.  The coolest part is there was an offer to get a free ice cream maker attachment!! So in a few short weeks we will be able to make our own ice cream!! 
We made enchiladas and had a lovely time.  Of course, because my mom loves my cats more than me, she brought presents over for Gus and Max.  They are so spoiled...
After dinner Rick and Ryan sat on the porch with a cigar and I made some banana bread in our new mixer!! It was a nice night, and nice to see my mom and Rick, since we no longer have our weekly Valle Luna nights.

Day 40, March 30th

So this day goes back to last week.  I was talking to my friend Amy online during the day, and mentioned to her that I really wanted to join a book club, as geeky as that may sound. Well low and behold, she said she was interested too!! We then set out to see who else in our friend circle might be interested. And bam...we had like 7 people interested!! So we had our first sort of official meeting on Wednesday.  

Those of us that were free met at Michelle's pad to discuss what book we want to read first and then honestly eat, drink and gossip!! We established our first book, and appointed our Director of Merchandise, but that really was about it!  We are excited to start our adventure though, read more books and be apart of an official club...name to come.   

Want to join?!?! Let me know!! 

Day 39, March 29th

On Tuesday, I went to visit some sites for the west valley walk with some of my co workers.  Quite an exciting day out on the road.  When I got back to the office, I was cleaning out my personal emails and came across my happy birthday from Z'Tejas coupon.  It expired on the 31st and I thought, well there is no way Ryan and I will be going there in the next two days, so I deleted it...
I got home from work, and Ryan came home and was in a tizzy from work, stressful day at the Fargo it seemed.  So he asked, "hey do you maybe want to go to Z'Tejas tonight?!?!"
"WHAT?!?! Are you kidding?! I seriously just deleted my $10 off coupon because I thought no way will we go before Thursday and now bam you suggest it! What are the chances?"
So...I went and undeleted my email, and hoped that the Z would take the coupon on my phone.  
We headed out and had a lovely evening at our favorite place. Our waitress had been the creator of this skinny margarita I got, I ordered it out of guilt, but it ended up being super delicious.  We talked about Ryan's upcoming work-ness and enjoyed our Tuesday evening.  Before we headed out someone from the past of a friend's sat next to us, I know she knew who we were, but that's okay, I wouldn't have said hello either!! :)   And yes!!! They did take my coupon off my phone, I told them I wanted to be green!!

Day 38, March 28th

Oh Monday, back to work...womp womp womp.
On Sunday we bought some pork chops to have for dinner on Monday.  Now, I don't know about you, but I think that applesauce and pork chops go hand in hand.  We don't have applesauce in the house, but we did have apples so I googled it up and found a simple recipe for applesauce.  So when I got home, I peeled and cut up some apples, tossed in some water with sugar and cinnamon and cooked it up for 20 minutes.  Ryan got home, and we got ready to go to the gym, once we were ready to go, I turned off the stove and hit they gym.  When we got back, the applesauce was ready to go!!! Seriously easy and amazing.  Ryan cooked up the pork chops and I threw together a salad, viola, lovely dinner!!  And now I will never buy applesauce again!! Sorry Motts!

Day 37, March 27th

Sunday here again.  But, this Sunday was a tad different as Ryan didn't have a baseball game!! So we cleaned the house up and did some laundry then the unthinkable happened...Kansas lost...

We spent most of the afternoon watching the madness of March, even though today was the end of my brackets, we had a fun day watching the games.  

To try and cheer myself up in all the loss of the day, I made some Oatmeal Raisin cookies.  I eat Coach's Oats for breakfast and one morning, I saw a recipe for the cookies on the bag, so bam, I was like, yo, I need to make these!! They were scrumptious.  We ate dinner and caught up on Six Feet Under, which whoa, season 3 really kicked it up for us!! 

Day 36, March 26th

Saturday morning I woke up far too early for a Saturday to head downtown for work's Board Retreat.  It was a good day talking about JDRF  and how awesome we will be this year! We were on the 27th floor in the new City Scape building, it had amazing views of Phoenix.  Once the meeting was over Julia and I took some shots upstairs. I posted this one since technically, sort of, Ryan is in the picture too...

Ryan was at Leila's circus birthday party, sad I missed out, so I went home and chilled out until he got home.  When Ryan arrived back at the homestead, he informed me that Alex called him and asked if we wanted to head up and see them, hang for the evening.  We said heck yes, and headed up north.

We got to Juan Jaimes just in time to see the Wildcats loose, maybe next year Cats, and wrap up the night of college basketball, which I'm unhealthy-ly obsessed with.  We caught up with Alex and Heather because like Tommy, we haven't seen them since the wedding!!! After we left, we went back to their place to continue our hang sess.  We got some bottles of wine and cigars, and headed over to Casa de G2.  The boys sat on the patio and talked manly things, while Heather and I talked about girly things inside.  It was a great way to spend our Saturday night!! 

Day 35, March 25th

When we saw Tommy on Wednesday he gave us our wedding gift which was a gift card to Stingray so on Friday we decided to go out for a date night and grab some sushi!! We headed to The Biltmore, had a drink while we waited and then dug in on some yummy sushi.  It was a nice night, except that March Madness was on, and the teams I needed to win weren't...such is life I suppose.  After dinner we headed to Toys R' Us.  It was Leila's birthday party this weekend so we had to get her a dope toy!!
This was really all we did Friday night because on Saturday I had to wake up super early for work's Board Retreat. 

Day 34, March 24th

Thursday didn't bring any real excitement.  We went to the gym after work, but to spice up the usual workout we rode our bikes there!! It has been super nice out, so we need to cherish these time.  Plus I hate doing cardio, so I count my 3 minute bike ride against the cardio portion of my workout! :)                             

After the gym we headed home ate dinner and caught up on our shows.  Watched Th Office, which literally was the most beautiful and saddest episode!! I can't believe they are going to continue the show after Michael leaves, he is The Office.  Ah but anyway, Michael's proposal was so sweet, I heart Michael Scott.

That was all we did, super lazy, and yet wonderful night.

Day 33, March 23rd

 Wednesday was a super exciting day, after weeks we were finally going to see our sweet little cousin..SAM!!! We also saw Tommy too so that was pretty cool. We hadn't seen Tommy since we got back, I guess he had something better going on and that's why he couldn't come celebrate my birthday with me...that's cool whatever.  We missed Tommy and Sam and I still hadn't seen Tommy's bachelor pad, so we headed over after work to reunite! 
I can't tell you how happy Sam was to see me, we hugged for hours.  
Tommy took us to dinner at Cibo for dinner, which was wonderful.  We had a fabulous time catching up with Tommy on all the excitement of his life.  It is so weird when you go from seeing someone every day, to not knowing what the heck is happening with them! So it felt nice to be caught back up, I mean facebook can only tell you so much!!

Day 32, March 22nd

 Tuesday, JDRF had a research update at Paradise Valley Country Club. Ryan came out to hear the updates and probably a little to have some free food and drinks!! :) I thought the research update would be the highlight of our night, we didn't head home until almost 9, so really what else could happen tonight I thought...
Well, Ryan's birthday was 3 weeks before the wedding, which is also like 3 weeks after Christmas, it also happened to by The Promise Ball on his birthday weekend, so honestly, it didn't fall on a good time this year.  
With trying to have enough money to pay for the wedding, I gave Ryan an IOU for a beach cruiser, well now that we are back from the honeymoon, I'm no longer buying things for the wedding, I have money again, and so I ordered his bike a few weeks back.  When we got home from the event, the box was on our porch!! Ryan and Gus worked to put the bike together as Max and I watched.  In under an hour, Ryan had his sweet new ride put together, so he went for a quick night ride and then headed back in, exciting end to an otherwise normal day!

Day 31, March 21st

Monday was unusually cold in Phoenix, I won't say what the temperature was since I'm sure people who live in actual cold climates will scoff at me, but for us, we were freezing.  When we got home from work, we headed to the gym and then back home to make dinner.  I found out at my bridal shower that Ryan's favorite restaurant was PF Chang's (judge me if you must for not knowing this beforehand), and I never want to go there, so I thought I'd bring Chang's to him.  

I made Kung Pao Chicken, which by no means was as good as Chang's but pretty good otherwise.  We actually have chopsticks too so it was quite an authentic night!!  Ryan wanted to enjoy a cigar on the patio on this chilly evening, and I finally had my laptop up and working so I joined him and blogged while he smoked.

As you can see it really was cold!! I had 26 layers on and I was still freezing.  Don't mind the mop, just proof I really did clean yesterday!

Day 30, March 20th

On Sunday, it was back to normal in the house of us.  Ryan had a baseball game so he was gone for the day, so I did my normal Sunday stuff, went to the grocery store, cleaned the house, had a dance party with the cats.  

I had been looking all week at some new recipes, sans meat for the Lenten season, and even though it was Sunday I decided to make one of them for dinner to see if it was any good.  It was Garlic Butter Shrimp over Grits. I love grits so I figured it had to be good, and it was!! Very delicious!! Then after dinner, we watched The Town, which was amazing, now Ryan and I are planning on becoming bank robbers, so that's fun...

As we watched the movie we enjoyed a scrumptious fruit tart I made in our wonderful new tart pan!!  Lovely way to end the weekend.  So crazy that one short month ago we were traveling all day to get to our honeymoon!!

Day 29, March 19th

Today is our one month anniversary of being a married couple!! Since I changed my license over today was also the day that we got joint bank accounts, another exciting occasion!! 
We got ready and headed out for the day, we went to La Grande Orange for breakfast, it was Ryan's first time going, which when I find out things like this, I question how I ever could have been paired with such a deprived individual!! After breakfast we headed up the road to the bank to join together our revenue and expenses.  That was quite a short process, shorter than we thought, and we were heading over to see our friends for the day so we made a quick detour to pick up Ryan's new ring, as his first ring was too big, to give the group time to prepare for our arrival!!  We headed over to see the group, none of which said Happy Anniversary to us, so I was pretty much over them right away! :) We decided that since it was such a lovely day we should head out and hit a patio bar.  We went to RnR  which I've been wanting to go to for some time!! We ate a bite there and had a few drinks.  I got the Bloody Mary which was amazing and had a slice of bacon in it which only added to the awesomeness.  After RnR we headed over to Patties to watch more of March Madness and do more chillaxin.  I loved this place, I got like 6 drinks for $25!! We didn't take any pictures during the day, which I really need to get better at!! Especially since I'm doing this blog, I really need to step up my game.
After we bounced from the group we went home to get dolled up for our evening.  Ryan took me to J&G Steakhouse to celebrate (or did I take him out?! The questions of life with one bank account!) and we had a wonderful time.  The meal so delicious and the place was amazing.  They serve their sides in mini cast iron skillets, which we own, so now I have cute ideas for serving side dishes! We had a great night, reliving all our memories of married life, haha.

Day 28, March 18th

Friday morning, I started my day at the DMV switching over my name on my license.  I wasn't too pumped for this because I really liked the photo on my license and I didn't want to risk getting a bad picture that I will be stuck with until I'm 65!! The line was about what it was at the Social Security office but the wait was a bit longer as my category was only being called by one person.  I got my new license and got ready for the photo, then bam it was done!! When I got it back I was disappointed that my shirt isn't showing, it's just a creepy close up of my face, why did I spend so much time making sure the top of my shirt was cute?!?! It did feel good to get the big two changes out of the way...now I need to get my passport changed over!! 
On Friday I also had my last birthday celebration for the month.  Sad face!!  Ryan and I met up with my family on my dad's side for dinner at Arriba.  Wow, we really do eat Mexican food a lot!! Not like I'm totally surprised, but when you put it out there, it's sort of like whoa.
So we spent the evening with the family, talking about this very blog here, our honeymoon, since this was the first time we had seen most of the family, and about my sister's new beautiful floor!  My dad and Sara got us the rest of our dining set, so that was exciting, they also got us a beautiful teapot cookie jar that I wish I took a picture of, although when I re-gift it, then the surprise will be ruined if you knew what this beaut looked like. 
I was having Ann take my picture for the blog when the waiter came to sing to me, which startled me, which resulted in quite an awkward photo. I was not okay with this depicting the day though, so I made her redo it..yay birthdays!!

Day 27, March 17th

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! 

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and since we aren't really all that Irish we contacted our most Irish mate to see his holiday plans! My beloved froomie, Michael Gallagher, let us in on what the most Irish would be doing for the evening.  After work, Ryan and I met up at home then headed out to meet with Mike and Mary for an evening of green beer and friends, minus the green beer, I don't think any of us drank that.  We went to Casey Moore's where I always love going, mostly because it's close to home and has a wonderful patio.  

We hung out with friends, talked about New Kids on the Block, diabetes and how being the established ladies in the group some how never works in our favor like it should.  Overall we had a great night! I think we headed out around 9 p.m. or so, one because we are old but mostly two because we hadn't had dinner yet!! Ryan and I went to Macayo's for a late night dinner, since Corn beef and cabbage really isn't our thing! 

Day 26, March 16th

After the excitement of the social security office, I needed a excitmentless day...and Wednesday provided.  Ryan had a baseball game Wednesday night, so I was home alone with the kids for the evening.  I was able to catch up on one of my guilty pleasure shows... The Game, so good, but Ryan thinks it is cheesy so I can't watch it when he's around.  I admit this season has been weird, but I can't just give up on a show, it's not who I am!! This was the same thing that happened with 7th Heaven.  Best show of all time in my humble opinion, then Simon hit that kid on a bike and the show totally jumped the shark.  Simon totally went against the Camden way with his life, Ruthie got all edgy and rebellious and frankly annoying, we pretended the Mary was just too busy to be with the family and then there were those creepy twins...
Any way I digress.  So I watched The Game and ate dinner, then started in on the thank you notes again.  I bought 40 stamps so vowed to get 40 thanks you done before Ryan got home.  I think I did about 30 which was still sort of impressive if I do say so myself.