Happy Halloween!

This weekend we celebrated Halloween with friends and tried to spend as much time outside as possible!!!
Friday night we headed to our friend Irena's house for a party.  Rohan got to dress as a pirate at daycare, and pretty much wore the costume all weekend.  He's been practicing his pirate ever since we saw the Treasure Island pirate show in Las Vegas last weekend (see video!).  Irena's was a blast.  Mara and I coped out and went as a Researcher and a Dr...I know...I know...but not many people were drinking from a beaker like me, so it was somewhat original...:)  Rohan had a lot of fun with the pumpkin this year, and really like the scooping guts part.
Saturday Mara had to work all day (her last shift on Well Baby) so Rohan and I watched some football and played at the park by our house.  Rohan has also been loving the prism that I found.  I've had it for probably 20yrs and we set it high on our windows in our living room and he chases the spectrum is casts around the room as it moves with the day...pretty fun to watch.  After Mara got home we went on a bike ride and ended the long day with some fresh, desert night aire!
Sunday we all slept in until 10am..yep...10am.  Haven't done that since Rohan has been around!  We made up for the lazyness by going for a 15mi bike ride to Jeanette's and met her for lunch at Pei Wei before biking back.  Found some cool areas and Rohan loved the pedestrian bridge that goes over Greenway Blvd.
After the bike ride we rested for an hour or so, then headed to AZR for about 3hrs of climbing.  Rohan showed off his costume to more people and afterwards we cameback and perfected our basil/cilantro, tomato, motzerella cheese, basalmic vinegar homemade grilled pizza...MAN was that good!  Capped it off with a bottle of wine and capped off a great weekend of getting outdoors!
Hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather as much as we are!

Pirates Have To Practice:

Vegas!

This last weekend we had the chance to use some free hotel nights we earned before they expire, and since we can't really afford to jet set anywhere for just the weekend, we decided to drive up to Las Vegas.  Mara had never been there, and I have some fuzzy recollections of being there, but nothing I can clearly remember...:)
We drove up Friday night (through some cool Joshua Tree preserves), and got to our hotel around 8 or so.  Low and behold it was right next to the Hofbräuhaus Las Vegas!  There were plenty of pretzels & Oktoberfestbierin our future...:)
We were about a mile from the strip (which was nice with a 2.5yr old!).  The walk was nice to stretch our legs and take in the city from afar.  We walked up and down the strip over the next several hours.  Rohan was enthralled with everything!  He was so tired, but had his eyes peeled open the entire time, not wanting to miss a thing.  Walking with a stroller through the Las Vegas strip was a challange, but we are professionals, so it worked out just fine.  We made a trip to the Bellagio fountains thinking Rohan would like it.  The second the water cannons went off he curled up on Mom's shoulder and could barely look.  After the show was done he snapped up and said "Where'd the water go?".  He made it seem the whole time like he didn't like it.  He did like it when we saw it later, from across the street and the cannon noise wasn't so loud and echoing off the hotel.  We capped the night off with some wine back at the hotel, and nice way to start our Vegas trip.
Saturday we spent most of the day outside since it was gorgeous!  Mid-80s and mostly sunny, you can't beat that!  We hit up 2 parks in the morning.  The first had some baseball fields that Rohan ran around on, and the second had a playground and some other fun stuff. The second one had the finish of the ~200 mile Ragnar Relay Series (looking to do one in Colorado next July if anyone wants to join us!), and what turned out to be Rohan's favorite pastime...leaves.  There were several leaf piles that we scraped into one and let him run and jump into.  A couple of kids joined in too, and there was about an hour of leafing.  Afterwards we checked out some of the vendor booths at the Ragnar and came across the Rage Mud Run booth that had kiddie pools of mud for people to play in...Rohan had a blast...:)
After that busy morning we met up with Mara's cousin Steve & his wife Erin who live in Vegas.  It was really nice to catch up with them.  We might even be able to get them to do the Tough Mudder with us...:)  We hit up their favorite Thai place (and ours now), called Archi's Thai Cafe.  Rohan showed off his ability to scarf down everything in site!  He cleaned up our soup, pad thai, tofu, and some of Erin's pinapple fried rice.  No idea where he put it all!
After lunch Steve made some calls and made Rohan's year...he called up a fire station.  Steve is a fireman...and also Rohan's new idol.  We went to Station 47 where Steve, and the station Captain, gave us a VIP tour of the ladder truck and rescue vehicle.  Rohan even got to drink water from a REAL firetruck, something he is still talking about!  It was from a water cooler on the truck, not the tanker...:)  The Captain also showed Rohan their Desert Turtles they have, and we may end up getting Rohan one...maybe...  Rohan came away with a new fireman's hat and some wooden trucks from the Captain as well...what a great time!  Thanks again for making that happen Steve!  Rohan lasted about a block before passing out HARD for the drive back to the hotel...the picture says it all.
After all that, we still found a chance to check out a rock gym, Red Rock Climbing Center, which was nice, and a lot of fun to check out.  They had some really interesting routes and wall features that we didn't have at AZR.  It was also a great way to almost completely wear us out...and it was only 4:30...

I needed my Bavarian Pretzel fix so we swung by the Hofbräuhaus for pretzels the size of toilet seats, some Käsespätzle, Münchner Weisswürste, and of course a liter of Oktoberfestbierin. It all really brought us back to what a GREAT, GREAT, GREAT time we had in Germany last xmas! (did I mention it was great?)  Rohan, once again, showed his ability to eat everything in site, and even got compliments from the waitress about his pretzel eating ability...:) We saw some sweet Lederhosen for Rohan that we might have to get him for the next Oktoberfest...:)  After the pretzel gorge we met up with Steve & Erin at Treasure Island for their pirate show.  It was the same deal as the Bellagio, where Rohan wouldn't leave Mara's shoulder, but as soon as it was done he was asking where they went...:)

On Sunday we hit up one more park before heading back to Phoenix.  We had such a good time, and would love to go back for some real outdoor climbing, and maybe hit up The Strip sans-kids.
Oh, we also started our first (of I'm sure, many) painting projects.  We are livening up our laundry room with a deep red color.  It's a small job, that will help us get our painting prowess back for some bigger jobs we have planned.

Playing in the leaves:

Climbing Season Is Upon Us!!!

With the weather starting to get awesome here, it marks the beginning of the fall climbing season. That, and since the Brewers are out of the playoffs, what else is there to do!?!? :) We met up with some friends at Phoenix's Oktoberfest for some good food and great beer. Rohan had an absolute blast running around with everyone and dancing to polkas and the German Horn (alpenhorn). Our friend, Angelika is a first generation from Germany so she was working the festival. Sean, Shannon, Audrey, Ryan and Mackenzie all joined us as well. Rohan even got a drinking bracelet...:) Sunday we got a babysitter for the morning, while Mara was at work, and I met up with some friends to go climbing up near Pine, AZ. The area, Isolation Canyon, is fairly new, and mostly set by one guy who's friends with AZR. He did an amazing job with the routes and there are even several multi-pitch climbs over 200'! We also found some cool places to rappel down from the top and have some awesome plans for the next time go there. There were hundreds of routes so there wasn't much crowding. The ledge is pretty narrow at times, and your looking down a 200' drop...pretty fun...:) All in all and awesome day (11hrs!) of climbing. Hope everyone is getting a chance to enjoy the outdoors as well!

Postseason Baseball!!!

The Brewers are kicking butt in the playoffs, and we were so glad we could go to a game (even though they lost that one)! Heather & John got tickets through a lottery and John offered them to Mara and I, and since Rohan is still a "lap child" he was able to come too. The game was great for the D-Backs, and the crowd of 48,312 went nuts for a grand slam they hit...it was crazy! Rohan had a blast eating popcorn from his glove and chowing on some cotton candy. Around the 7th inning it was out of hand so we went to the kids play area so he could run off some of his sugar high. Friday the Brewers & D-Backs faced off for Game 5 and I skipped out of work a little early with some friends and watched 9 1/2 inning of the 10 inning game before I had to leave to go get Rohan. Luckily John DVR'd the game and replayed the final at-bat to send the Brewers to the NLCS against St. Louis. Rohan had a blast hanging out with Heather, John, Grandma Bacon, Great-Grandma, and Krista. They hit up parks, and Rohan even got a Ryan Braun #8 shirt from Grandma...his new favorite shirt! After I picked up Rohan we met up with friends at La Condesa Gourmet Taco Shop for our friend Sean's birthday. Mara had to work late, but after dinner she was able to meet up with us and we all walked around First Friday and checked out some art and crafts from local vendors. It's not super stoller friendly, but very fun non-the-less. Saturday Mara had to work in the morning so Rohan and I took the oppurtunity to hit up 2 parks before she got home. Before we could get him a nap we hit up the rock gym and grabbed some awesome Thai Tom Ka Gai soup from Thai House...best we've had! After the gym we got a call from one of Mara's mentors from her rotations and he remembered about 2 years ago, Mara was an active person and offered up his bike trailer for us tp pull Rohan! We drove out to Avondale and picked it up, and even got Rohan to play some hockey with his kids. It was great to meet him and his family. Since we were out that far, we swung over to Greg & Nico's for a quick visit. As busy as they/we are, it's hard to get together these days! After there we had some time to kill before supper so we took Rohan to yet another park (3rd of the day), this time we went to the Margaret T. Hance Park near downtown. Rohan had a blast running around and even found some friends to ride an alligotor toy with. Rohan had a funny thing happen too. He walked up to some random kid and tried playing with him by kicking sand at him...the kid was not amused and came running after Rohan with a cup of sand. Rohan took off running (and crying). He was able to out run the older boy so that's something...:) We met the family at the AZ Center by TGen at Sam's Cafe for a great meal and some nice relaxing convo. They even made fresh guacomole at our table...which tasted great! Sunday we took advantage of the day and got the bikes and trailer ready for the maiden voyage...problem was we had 2 flats...one on the trailer and one on my bike...so after an early trip to WalMart and some greasy hands, we were ready to go! We ended up going for about 7mi around our neightborhood and out to a park before ending up at Matador Coffee for some well deserved coffee! :) After that Mara and Rohan ran to IKEA and I got some work done in the garage making space for the bike trailer and watching some more Brewer baseball. Mara found a desk for some of her dictations and other things she has to do/look-up after work so we got that set up and hopefully start organizing our front room around a bit. After the game we got some food ready for Jeanette, and the family who came over, and bought Spinato's pizza, to watch the Packer game. It was great to entertain since we haven't had much of that yet, and also great to show the family around the house since they had not seen it yet. It was fun to relax and catch up after such a long, fun weekend! Hope everyone got a chance to enjoy the Fall weather! It's been GORGEOUS here!!!!

Ahhh...The Fresh Mountain Aire

This last week conlcuded Mara's 13 straight days of working in the pediatric wards.  13 straight days of 12hr+ days requires that we get out of Phoenix and relax!  Of course she had to work on Sunday, so it was only an overnight trip, but as soon as she was off on Friday we scurried up to the Mogollon Rim north of us.
We talked with some friends who had a really cool site they were going to Saturday night.  We got to the site Friday night and found there was an area that was washed out from the rain that day and we didn't want to chance getting stuck since we don't have 4WD, and it 10 o'clock at night and about 13mi back in the middle of nowhere.  We decided to camp at a more accesable site.  It was dark when we set up so we had no idea of our view.  We stargazed and got a good fire going (even with the wet wood, thank you very much! :P).
The next day we were greeted with a pretty sweet view of the valley below...:)  We found some awesome rocky points to explore.  Words are hard to describe the vastness and depth, but the pictures do a decent job, but nothing beats being there and taking it in.
We met up with the rest of the group at the site that we couldn't get to the night before.  We hung out a bit before heading back.  They had a pretty sweet site as well, and we'll definitely have to check that out sometime!  Our site had better veiws I thought, but we were close to the forest road, so when we did see vehicles it was a little annoying, but we didn't seem to mind too much...:)
Sunday Mara had to work (14hrs on her birthday!), so Rohan and I watched some of the Brewers game, Badger game, and Packer game...AWESOME weekend for WI sports! :)  When Mara got home I had dinner ready and then we went on a walk before crashing.  Mara starts her newborn nursery month today which will have it's long days, but nothing like peds wards, so just about anything will seem less hectic than last month...:)
Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler fall weather!

We saw a cool phenomenon when we made our last batch of Frappuccinos.  The bubbles made by the blender went down instead of up...reminded me of Guinness Beer...and some physics...:)