Life in the Canadian Desert: Phoenix

So, you may have noticed my absence last week? No? It's ok, my blogging hasn't been exactly regular these last few months (although I have been making an effort to blog more regularly, so you know, when you make the effort to click over here, there will actually be something new to check out).

Anyway.... last week Jamie, Donovan and I, took what would be his last free flight down to Phoenix (more specificlly Fountain Hills), Arizona to visit my parents at the vacation home they reciently purchased.

They bought this home last summer, and yes, it took them THIS long to convince us to go down there. You see, Phoenix was never on my "must go see list". For some reason I never really understood the big excitement about it. I thought it would be much better to go to Mexico for a week and relax at an all inclusive, or go to I don't know, there are a number of places Jamie and I have talked about, and Phoenix was never one of them.

That all changed when we got off the plane a couple Thursdays ago (my birthday actually) and felt that Hot Hot air on our skin (Jamie and I are both hot weather people), saw all the catus' and the rest of the beautiful environment, walked into my parents beautiful home, and then stumbled into the backyard to see this:

Of course, shortly after seeing that, we did this:

And we sat back, relaxed, enjoyed ourselves, and well, life was good.

And people, I am not lying when I tell you this, I am a Phoenix Convert. I LOVE Phoenix, and I can't wait until our next trip down there!

First a word or two about the weather. People, it was HOT, I'm talking +44'C (or 118'F) hot. And it was beautiful! The pool heater was turned off (obviously) and from just the heat of the sun, never dipped below 88' and most days stayed around 92' (one day it even got as hot as 97'). And it was WONDERFUL. We were in the pool, at least twice a day, and the first dip usually being somewhere between 6 and 8am, depending on what time Donovan got us up at, and how quickly we ate breakfast.

We spent most of our time around the house, which was perfect, as the intention of this trip was to relax and unwind. Jamie and I like to travel with no schedule, to get up in the morning and decide what to do that day. That by the way, drives my dad NUTS, and I think it almost killed him to not have a plan. So for his benift, we did make a tentive schedule, and would even go as far as to suggest what we might be doing the next day.

And on Sunday, that ment Jamie and I taking off in the morning on a little adventure.

(please note, these next few pictures are over exposed. Donovan dropped my camera onto the tile floor while we were down there. On inital inspection I thought just the UV lens had cracked, but after using the camera for about a day and a half, I realized there was some pretty serious damage done to the lens, which resulted in my loosing the last 35mm of the lens (it would no longer focus at that range) and also the sever over exposure of my pictures. I think a mechanisim jammed somewhere that caused the apature to be stuck at a wide open setting. Anyway, I really wanted to get this post up before things got too busy around here, so I haven't had a chance to photoshop these pictures into a better image. Also, after relaizing what had happened to my lens, I got a new one, so you won't have to put up with the crappy pictures for long).

Of course, we had to get a little shopping in, and I have been dying to get to a Carters Childerns outlet store for, well how old is Donovan? Two? Yes, well that's right, two years then! Being down in Phoenix, we finally had the oppertunity, and we made it to this one in Scottsdale. And people, it did NOT disapoint! Jamie and I had to practice some real restraint in this store, and even had to ban ourselves from the little girls section after getting our niece a couple shirts, had we kept looking, well she would have got an enitre new waredrobe.

That same day we decided to try to check out a boxing gym that was near by in Tempe. Unfortunatly the gym was closed, but since we had made the trip all the way over there, we thought we would drive around and check things out a bit. And we were THRILLED to find that ASU was mear blocks away from the gym!

We had a great time looking around the campus (or what we could see from it), only wish we weren't there on a Sunday, so a few of the buildings (read gift shop) would have been open!

Donovan took the liberty of learning how to swim while we were down there, which simply amazed us! I can't believe what a great water kid he is! I guess taking him to the pool when he was 9 weeks old started something! Becuase he absoultly LOVES the water. Every day he was larning something new, from just floating on his own, to doing the doggy paddle from one end of the pool to the other, to putting his head down and trying to swim (with eyes open under the water I might add) to LEAPING into the pool, he was absoultly GLOWING around the pool (and not just because we kept him covered in a layer of SPF70 sunscreen!)

Jamie and I also took another trip on our own to try to go to a boxing gym, that was, well you know, OPEN. And we were lucky enough to find the best gym in Phoenix, Central Boxing. It was a dream come true for Jamie to walk into the gym, and I almost had to drag him out by his ear to leave. It was the perfect boxing gym, both Professional and Amature boxers trained there, and Jamie was able to watch them train for a bit, to talk to the coach and Ms. Margret (who LOVED us) and to make some contacts. He is hoping to get down there to fight in the near future.