When I saw my #1 blog fan (arguably, but anyway his picture is to the left) this past weekend, he pointed out how I had not blogged in many weeks. Although he's right, I was kind of waiting to go on all my Phoenix trips this month and make one long blogging post. I find that I blog most about my vacations or events I go to and not so much about my random thoughts. Sometimes I wonder what my audience prefers to read about, but in the end I just try to blog about whatever and if I can find the time to write something up. So anyway, on to blogging about the month of May where I ended up going to the Phoenix area three weekends in a row!
The weekend of May 12 was Mother's Day, so my sister was also in Scottsdale to visit my parents. I usually try to coordinate visits to our parents with her. That Saturday I got into Dobson to have some good ol' Dim Sum at Mekong Palace with the family, but I will argue that there are better Dim Sum places such as Phoenix Palace. Later that afternoon, I went to meet up with some friends who had traveled from Tucson to go ice-skating in Chandler at Polar Ice for my friend Dori's birthday. Tucson actually doesn't have any ice-skating rinks anymore and she wanted to go ice-skating, so it had to be in Phoenix.
I hadn't ice-skated in several years but I had been before and had also roller-bladed a ton as a kid. I actually used to play street hockey with other kids in my childhood neighborhood almost every night until it got dark and our moms called us all home from their front doors. :) I had no trouble ice-skating well, although the skate rentals were pretty crappy and made my feet hurt a lot afterwards, heh.
After ice-skating, we went to Teharu for sushi dinner, which was actually my recommendation after it was recommended to me by Matt. If you've never been, it's one of those conveyor belt sushi places where you just pick off the belt whatever you want to eat and they charge you at the end. It's not only delicious, but surprisingly very affordable as well.
The next weekend of the 18th was the 4th Annual Wakeboarding and Camping at Apache Lake trip. It had been planned for months by Doug and was something Kalyn and I had been looking forward to for a very long time. For me, it was my second time on this annual trip and Kalyn's first. We drove up to Apache Lake from Tucson on Thursday morning and set up camp that afternoon.
The next day, we got out on the boat early in the morning and did our share of wakeboarding, wakesurfing, and tubing. This was now my 3rd time out on the water and you could really see the improvement. It can be very hard just to get up on the water and be pulled and for example, my first time I barely got up on the water. This time around I was getting up almost every time and then it just came down to figuring out my balance and how to maneuver around on the wake. (Yes I realize the attached picture below is of me still in the water 'cause the ones on my camera where I'm up actually up were instead videos; but they are boring because it's just me trying not to fall off!)
Camping and waking at Apache Lake is always a great time since we get a big group of close friends together and just enjoy the nice lake and the great outdoors. On the last day, Kalyn attempted to wakeboard, something she hadn't done in many years. She was able to get up for a few seconds, which reminded me a lot of my first time out. I'm confident that next time she'll be able to pop up onto the water with ease. :)
This past weekend was Memorial Day, and Kalyn, Lucky, Ann, and myself decided to make it a full blown weekend of fun in Phoenix. On Saturday we met up with Kyle and Jamie and Nate and Elizabeth at the Diamondbacks game versus the Brewers. It was also JJ Putz bobblehead day, so each of us received free bobbleheads! The game was a good one that ended in a 8-5 victory for the D'backs.
Afterwards, we decided to hit up some bars in Old Town and so we went to Gilligan's and Social Tap (where Mulligan's used to be). Gilligan's was a little interesting when we spun the shot wheel and Lucky got the "bartender's choice". His shot turned out to be a shot of blue food coloring with absolutely no alcohol in it at all. His mouth was all blue the rest of the night (he didn't even shoot all of it) and it's kind of questionable why Gilligan's would do that to their clientele. He tried not to let the blue dye get to him too much and I think the joke of the night for him was "I just blew a smurf!" lol. My shot was horrible - El Chuey - which was whiskey and an egg yolk. In my opinion, the wheel is not really worth it, or at least don't expect much or take it seriously!
On Sunday we met up with Jeff and Ashley for their pool party, which turned out to be lots of drinking games like flip cup, beer pong in the pool, bag toss, and slap game (that's a fun, new one). We weren't planning on staying out too late because we had to be up early the next morning, but ended up going back to Old Town and didn't make it home 'til after midnight. I had waaaay too much to drink that night and ended up throwing up twice before bed and once again in the morning. :/
On Memorial Day, we went Salt River Tubing with Matt, Pamela, Doug, Jonny, Alex, Jody and several others. I think we counted 20 in our group. It would've actually been more, but we unfortunately got separated from Jen, Jon, Deanna, and Vanessa. :( Regardless, it was a great time even though I was hungover for most of it!
So that about wraps up my past 3 weekends out of town. I am now a whole skin tone darker from all that sun and ready to take it easy this coming weekend. For my loyal fans, I say thanks and appreciate you taking the time to read my blog and I hope it's entertaining or at least informative! I will try and blog more often, but you know me, I just blog whenever there is something worth blogging about! Until next time....pppppppeace!
