Busy, Busy Weekend

Wow! I think I need a weekend to recover from this weekend. 

We have tentative plans to leave the state in January, so we made a renewed commitment to see and do as much of the local flavor as possible—it wasn’t like we were spending every weekend at home as it was.

Anyone who reads even half-way closely knows that John is here to go to school for the Army.  This means that he can get tickets to certain events though a service called Vet Tickets. (If you are active duty or a veteran, we highly recommend this site!)  The biggest thing that it allows us to do is afford to see some of the events around town on a teacher’s salary.  This great site allowed us to jam pack a weekend…

I decided that money was money, and being a teacher I don’t make a ton of it – so I decided to teach AIMS boot camp for half a day each Saturday morning for six weeks.  This Saturday was the first session. It was actually a really enjoyable day with the “babies”, and I’m looking forward to seeing if their scores go up after working for 6 Saturdays.

We had tickets to the Coyotes NHL game Saturday night, and I have to admit that I was really looking forward to seeing the game.  I love hockey – ok…I love a good fight – and that game had a hum dinger!  I also just really like the area around the Jobing.com arena.  We didn’t decide to eat there this time, but it is really fun to walk around. 

We decided to have dinner at a place I’ve seen near my school and read reviews about in the paper.  The Barrio Café on

Thomas/16^th Street

came highly recommended.  We have been looking for amazing Mexican food since we moved to AZ; I’m sad to say that we are still looking.  The food was really good, but it wasn’t amazing.  It was also expensive to be in a restaurant that is located in a “depressed” area of Central Phoenix.  Not exactly the wrong side of the tracks, but I was still glad that the car has an alarm on it.  I ordered pasole soup (something my students told me to try) and it was the highlight of my meal.  If I go back, I will definitely be trying it again.

Part 2 – of busy, busy weekend will be the NASCAR race.

This past President's Day weekend turned out to be one of the most pleasant weekends that we have spend in Phoenix thus far.  It was all in all a very nice weekend from the entertainment, to the food, to the simply amazing weather.

It was Veteran's night at the Coyotes' hockey game Saturday night, and the husband was able to score us two free tickets.  (That's a really good thing because the price on EACH of the tickets was $112...there is no way that we could afford them at the price!).  They were playing the Stars, and it was a hard fought game.  The Coyotes won in over time.  I loved every minute of the exciting game and am hoping that we will be able to get tickets to another game before the end of the season. 

John has been missing Moe's Southwest Grill, and we didn't know that there was one in Glendale.  We thought that it was an Eastern Coast thing.  We were pleasantly surprised when we saw it while we were walking to the rink to watch the game.  It shouldn't come to a shock to anyone that we made dinner plans to eat there at the end of the hockey game.  John always (and I do mean always...it was what he wanted me to bring when he got back from Afghanistan) orders a Joey bag o' doughnuts.  I got their nachos and there was too much food for two people to eat in my one order of nachos, so if you are going to order them (and I suggest you do - they really were delicious) bring a friend.

Monday we decided to go to the Renaissance Festival.  It should be no surprise to anyone who has read any of my posts that pretty much we ate our way from one side of the fair to the other.  It costs and arm and half a leg to get into the fair, but once you are inside they have decided to be nice with their food prices.  That made me very happy.  I am used to fairs that seem to think that once they have you, you'll pay anything...so they charge anything for their food.  Don't leave without eating a roasted ear of corn, a bread bowl (the marinara meatball was delicious, or a royal spud.  I would pass on the Scotch egg - they are better at most Highland Games (and my mommy makes better).