Tony Time in Arizona

So Tony came out here to visit from January 1st through the 5th. He got here around 11pm on the 1st , riding with some people from craigslist. They dropped him off at a gas station in Scottsdale where I picked him up. Luckily ( I guess ) he didnt arrive earlier in the day because I was dealing with this:

Yes, see that hose above? It goes to my power steering. I had gone to my friend David's house for him to check my motor mounts (they were fine) and we were riding in my car and when I dropped him off at his house, I noticed some smoke, he said "I think thats dust" and then we both said "no its smoke" and opened my hood and yep..some oil was dripping onto the firewall from that hose. I ended up buying the part and he spent 4 hours replacing the old hose with the new one for me. Sooo grateful to him for doing that because I didnt want to drive around with the hose like that or catch fire either! Phew!

Saturday was mine and Tony's first full day together. In the morning we went to the Fiesta Bowl Parade in downtown Phoenix. We were going to ride the lightrail, even bought all day passes, then ended up driving my car down there instead. Ha. Here are some highlights from the parade:

HAD to get a $5 Dominos pizza for breakfast-lunch. Of course! Got some fun pictures and Tony was most excited because this year, his team, BSU was playing against TCU. So he was pretty stoked to be at the parade ...and later a party of sorts at my house to watch the game.

Going backwards for a moment...on Friday night Tony gave me belated Christmas presents to open. I got:

a sweet blanket from where he works (Dept of Forestry aka Smokey Bear)

a rolling picnic basket with dishes included (also Smokey Bear)

and the big winner

a Wii!!!

Heck yes. I am now the proud owner of a Ninetendo Wii.

(hopefully get a video posted here)

Back to Saturday. We went to see Avatar at the AMC Theaters. A really good movie. Really good. I am now wanting to see it in 3D. I had a $25 gift card from Battery Solutions to one of 3 restaurants so we ended up eating at Macaroni Grill. It was alright..very noisy though and for the amount of food we got for the price, it wasnt so much worth it. At least *I* wasnt paying for it.

We were able to make it to Goodwill for their 1/2 off day and buy a couple things. I got a sweet shirt & Tony did too.

SUNDAY

Got to go to Glendale to see one of my friends (and trainer from the mission!) Tausha...get her twins, Addison & Rigdon, blessed in sacrament meeting. It was about a 45 min drive or so to get to Glendale. Tausha's husband , Gates, did a great job on the blessings and after the meeting we went to a nearby park for lunch. It was fun to socialize and eat outside - the weather was AMAZING.

We left after a couple hours and down the street and around the corner I spied:

Tony was driving so I begged him to go closer to the balloon. It was easy enough to find the street and I jumped out and got to walk up fairly close to the balloon. I made a movie on my hd camera and took some pictures (above). I tried to jump in the basket of people too (just kidding!) and we watched until it floated away behind some houses. Sigh. I dont know why I have such a fascination with hot air balloons but someday I sure would like to ride in one!

Back at my place, Tony & I worked pretty much all evening on organizing stacks of tubs that have been in my bedroom since I moved here to 33rd place. We also managed to find a moment to make some meat and veggies in the crock pot. Yum! We dragged all my tubs out to the backyard and took the lids off. He got me 2 headlamps for Christmas which came in handy for us because by the time we did this , it was dark outside. So now, all my possessions were exposed! We worked on going through each tub one by one, throwing away things I didn't need to keep anymore, getting a give-away pile going and putting items together in 1 tub instead of scattered in a few different tubs.

Found a cat bank my grandma had painted for me in 1981. Before the mission I remember it had an accident which caused some of the back to crack open. I always intended to fix it but it turned out not to be possible. This is the last pic ever with the cat bank. I was super bummed to say goodbye. So sad. So very sad.

End result on Monday morning (picture that Tony sent me to my phone)

SO EXCITING to have these tubs out of my room and space for other things. Like my cases of water :-/ Oh well. If its not one thing its another. Sooo grateful to Tony for helping motivate me on this project and being ever so patient with me as we went through my stuff.

Blog post about our Monday & Tuesday will come shortly!