Getting Settled

Well, we survived the move! We are now officially residents of Edina, Minnesota (about 5 miles from Minneapolis). The movers delivered all of our stuff on Monday and we are getting settled in. I've worked some pretty long days unpacking and finding a home for everything but I think I can finish it all today if I stay focused!
So far we really like it here. The weather is gorgeous (like 75-80) and everyone is always outdoors walking/biking/etc. Please remind me of this come January. The people are so friendly, I love the Mid-Western attitude. We made friends at church who had us over for dinner that night, neighbors have brought by brownies, we have had multiple invitations to all the 4th of July activities (apparently our block party is a BIG deal), our real estate agent brought us flowers, and our insurance agent gave us tickets to the Twins game tonight. The list goes on and on....Minnesota has really sent out the Welcome Wagon!
I've found most of the essentials: post office, gas station, dry cleaner, Super Target (the most super one ever! This is Target country after all), places to eat, the mall, etc. So far it seems pretty easy to get around and I am relying on the garmin a little less each day.
Luckily I've been so busy getting everything done, I haven't had a moment to be sad. My family is Sun Valley this week and I had to miss the trip to meet the movers. But we are excited about our new adventure here and have so many fun things going on over the next few days. If I get a chance I'll try to bring the camera along. I'm always terrible at that, but it makes things so much more interesting.
And if I owe you a phone call or an email back (or in a few cases both)...I'm publicly and officially so sorry! I promise soon.

Another Graduation!

Does it seem like all we do at our house is have Graduations? Well we had another one...and this time it was for me! : ) I officially graduated from Culinary School. I am happy to brag that I graduated at the top of my class with honors (4.0 GPA!). I even got a special new Chef Coat with my name and "honors graduate" embroidered on it as well as MEDAL that is engraved. I've never had a medal before...I'm pretty excited about it. Sometimes I wear it around the house just for fun. We were lucky to have my in-laws in town to help us celebrate and we had a great time with them. So yea for me!

Me receiving my diploma from the President of the School, Chef Wilson. You know what they say, "Never Trust a Skinny Chef". Well, he's the real deal then.

Being recognized for my Honor's Status.

My cute Mother and Father In Law.

We have lots more going on around here, so I'll try and keep updated!

Graduation

Last week the big day came, and Jose officially graduated with his MBA! I honestly couldn't be more proud of him!!! We had a great celebration with family and friends all week long and are now happily adjusting to life without school. : ) Thanks to all of you who came to help us celebrate and those who watched and cheered on the festivities via Internet! Here are a few pics of the happy occasion!

Last Day of School!

Last Wednesday was Jose's very last day of school! Does he look smarter? Graduations festivities are this weekend, but we had to commemorate the last day. More to come...

I'm Back!!!

So after many months on blogging hiatus, I'm back! But just because I've been absent doesn't mean I haven't been reading all of your blogs! Actually, my amazing and trusty IBM bit the dust a few months ago and I've just been slow to replace it! Considering that I got it to go to college it's amazing it made it that long....I think computer years are like dog years! But sharing a computer with a busy grad student hasn't allowed me much time online. But I am an independent woman, so expect to be hearing from us again!
So now I'm going to go back to playing with my new toy.... : )

Thanksgiving Holiday

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday this year. We went to Dallas to spend it with Jose's parents. It was really nice to have a few days off of school for both of us and to spend time in our old hometown. We were able to spend some time with friends and family and watch A LOT of football. Ugh. If you don't know...I hate football. It is so long, and so slow, and so boring. But I am the awesomest wife ever and went to 3 games in 3 days with Jose.

First we went to the Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day. Nothing like celebrating a holiday with 85,000 of your closest friends. But the new stadium was UH-Mazing and I was excited to actually get to use our season tickets. The big screen is unbelievable. It's like watching the best TV you've ever seen but 10,000 times bigger! The Cowboys won, so it was happy all around.

Then on Friday night we went to see Jose's High School Football team play in the state playoffs. There was some definite reliving of glory days. But, you haven't seen football until you've seen the Friday night lights of real Texas football. They ended up winning and Jose was really happy to see it.

Saturday Jose dragged me to the SMU game. We hit up the Boulevard for the tailgate and watched the game. I think that it might be the only place in the world where football fans come in high heels, pearls, and blazers/ties. Maybe I finally found my crowd! SMU also won, so it was a 3 game, 3 victory weekend. And it will be a long time before I go to a game again.

Thank goodness Football season is almost over!!

Disneyland

In October we went to Disneyland with the Pugh side of the family. We had a great time and it was nice to get away for a few days for both of us to take a break from school. We had fun seeing my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. I just can't believe how big they are getting. I didn't really take many pictures, but we had a great time!

Here's Jose giving your the Churro Salute outside the main gates.

Us in our sweet 3-D glasses for the new Toy Story ride.

Jose with my brother Brandon in the back being a dork. Typical.

Thanks for a fun weekend fam! We love you all

Happy 30th Birthday Jose!!

First, I suck. A whole month with no update. I think I totally forgot what it was like to have a life/be busy. Blogging drops very low on the priority list. Anywho...

Happy 30th Birthday to Jose! Yesterday (the 26th) we celebrated a big day as Jose has graduated to his thirties. We've spent most of the last couple of weeks celebrating and have had a blast doing so.

A few weekends ago we went to the Boulders resort up in Carefree with our good friends Tyler & Ashley. Tyler just turned 30 about 2 weeks ago, so we made it a big double celebration. The boys played all-you-can-golf, while Ashley and I went to the pool and the spa. We then went to dinner at T Cook's at the Royal Palms, one of the best restaurants in town. All in all, it was a pretty perfect weekend! Thanks guys for so much fun, as always!

For his actual birthday, Jose and Tyler played golf again (can you see a pattern...that's pretty much every saturday) and then we had a few friends over to watch the BYU game and have dinner. It was a fun night with friends and the Cougars pulled out a win for Jose.

In some ways, I think I have had a harder time with Jose's birthday. I mean, when did I get so old I could be married to someone who was 30 and it wasn't creepy?!?!

Anyway, Happy Birthday Babe! Here's to your 30's being even better than your 20's!

(Sunrise at the Boulders...isn't it beautiful?)

August at a Glance

Ugh...I've been so absent on the blog. My apologies!! It's been an insane summer, and fall just snuck right up on us. We've done a lot since I last posted and a lot has changed. There have been 3 trips, a birthday, a move, and one Castaneda going back to school. (hint: it wasn't Jose.) Here's a few highlights from the past month or so!

We had a great trip to Chicago. Neither of us had been and we ate our way through town! Lots of Chicago Dogs, deep dish pizza, and other fun treats. Not to mention an architectural tour, night time fireworks, and a whole mile of shopping. Twice. All in all, it was a pretty perfect trip and Chicago definitely got added to the list of cities we'd love to live in.

We also spent a weekend in Ohio. We started with a trip to Cedar Point (America's biggest theme park), visited with a friend of Jose's from his mission and his new wife, went to Kirtland, and then to the Rock and Roll Hall of fame. And Cleveland does rock, fyi.

Then it was off to Utah for a few days to visit with my family. I went solo on that one while Jose finished up his internship.

Then it was a move back from Michigan to Arizona. I flew and let Jose drive home. He spent a week with his family and got to go to a pre-season cowboys game at the new Stadium.

I had to come home to start school! I decided this summer that I wanted to go to Culinary School. I am now 2 weeks into my 9 month program and loving it. It's something I've always wanted to do and it just seemed like the right time. Anyway, I started a separate blog about school and the things I am learning/doing so if you want to check it out it is:

cisforchef.blogspot.com

All in all it's been a crazy month, but we are happy to be back home and start a new year!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Tuesday night, Jose and I headed to downtown Detroit to watch the Tigers take on my hometown team, the Mariners. It was a fun outing and we enjoyed seeing the ballpark, enjoying the great weather (it's around 75 everyday here), and of course having a hotdog. I love hotdogs...I could write a whole post on that, but I'll spare you.

Jose sporting his new Detroit hat.

The outfield of the stadium opens right up to downtown. Gives a pretty cool view from inside. Especially because lots of the buildings are really old and ornate.

Life in Michigan

We've been running around so much lately I haven't even really gotten to tell you all a little bit about Michigan. It has been an adventure, that's for sure, and fun to get a chance to sort of "try on" a city. Here's the real shocker....we really like it! Who ever thought I'd like living in Detroit?! It is really beautiful (they don't call it the Land-O-Lakes for nothing!), the weather is great (70-80 everyday), the suburbs are really nice, and the people are so friendly. It's also so close to many major cities and we are hoping to get out and explore a little for the rest of the summer.

Every city/area has its own little quirks. Here are some of the most interesting things we've found while living here.

1. The state of Michigan is shaped like a left hand (see above map). People actually use this as a reference! They say, "I'm from where the ring finger and the pinky finger meet." Or they will actually hold up their hand and point! I've heard they make Michigan oven mitts...I may have to find myself one.

2. If you want to turn left at a stoplight, you actually have to turn right. What?! Crazy. They call it "The Michigan Left". You turn right, then in about 1/4 mile on the left lane there is a special U-turn lane where you finally get to go the direction you want. Maybe the above diagram will help. It doubles the amount of stoplights needed and you actually have to wait 3 times sometimes. Jose and I are NOT fans.

3. They take construction workers VERY seriously here. Everywhere on the freeways and streets there are signs saying that if you kill/injure a worker you will pay a $7,500 fine AND serve 15 years in prison! They are not joking around.

4. People are really aggressive drivers and they drive really fast. The speed limits are really high here:70-80 in major highways in the city. It's taken a little getting used to. Hard to keep up with the traffic when you have no idea where you are going! But we've adjusted.

5. We live NORTH of Canada. Eh? Yes, we actually do (you can check me on the map above). Did you know that Detroit and Canada (Windsor) pretty much touch? There is even a chunnel to go back and forth. I think we are the few cities in the continental US that is actually North of Canada. Pretty cool.

6. Pop cans are worth $.10 each! And the crazy part is people actually collect them. They have deposit machines at the front of every store and it gives you money. I think $.10 is a lot. I've been saving mine. I got a 12 pack of diet coke on sale the other day for $2.00 and with the cans that will be like paying $.06 per can. They are practically paying me to drink it! And everyone (I mean everyone) actually does it. That's the weird part. But I guess it's very green, so good work MI.

7. If you pay for you gas with a credit card you have to pay more per gallon. Or as Jose says, they give you a discount for paying cash. Definitely shows the difference in our personalities on how we see that! I think it's a penalty and he thinks it's a discount! Tomato...tomatoe...pay in cash.

I'm sure we'll find out many interesting things in our remaining month here. Who knows...maybe next year this will be our real home.

Seattle

This weekend almost the entire Pugh Crew got together in Seattle. Sadly, Jose couldn't make it as well as Melly and kids. But, we certainly enjoyed being home and saying:

WELCOME HOME MOM & DAD!

We're so excited to have my parents home from their 3 mission for our Church. We're looking forward to many more family events where we can all be together again. While in Seattle we visited with old friends, had some Burgermaster, ate baby doughnuts from Pike Place Market, and mostly just spent time with all the cute cousins and each other. We even had a wonderful 'adults only' dinner. There was needless to say lots of laughing and we were sad to see it end.

I wasn't very good about taking pictures. I think quite a few of them ended up on other peoples cameras, but here's a few!

Laura and Sammy - what a cute pair!

Trevor's big crack on the Pinata.

The madness that occurs moments later when candy is everywhere.

Princess Baby (aka Abby) enjoying a sucker.

Alex showing off his bag of treats.

How our "really cheap" Mexican trip really cost us!

I forgot to mention above about our sad loss in Mexico....Jose's Wedding ring! It has always been a little too big (we already sized it once!) and when he went swimming in the ocean a big wave just took it away and it was gone. : ( The waves were pretty big that day so there was no hope.

I've made up overly fantasized/romantisized stories in my mind about a sweet poor little Mexican boy who stumbles on Jose's ring years from now on the beach and can finally propose to the love of his life with it. But that's just so I can sleep at night.

And let's be honest, we're just glad it was his ring and not mine! But these pictures are now all we have left of his symbol of our love.

So for now, Jose's sporting a naked left ring finger like he's single again. Should I be worried that I'm leaving and going to Seattle without him this weekend?

Cancun

We had a happy surprise upon our arrival here in Detroit that Jose would have a week off from his internship while the Factories close for summer shutdown. So we decided we wanted to get out of town and away from our tiny apartment (ugh!). So we decided Cancun was just the ticket! We were there for 5 days and had a GREAT time. We were a little worried when we arrived and it was pouring rain, but the weather quickly improved and we had a fabulous time! There was sightseeing and sunning (or shading in my case!) and lots of wonderful Mexican food. We certainly miss that in MI!

This was the view out of our hotel room. Isn't the water just amazingly blue? And it was so warm!

Here were are at the main temple at Chichen Itza, the temple of Kulkulkan. What an amazing place! All of the ruins were so neat and it really gave you an idea of what things were like thousands of years ago. We decided to go ourselves (instead of on one of the many tour groups offered by the hotels) and it was such a fun adventure and we really got the more Mexican experience. I love traveling in Mexico with a Mexican! Jose always finds us the really good food from the locals and of course the "mexican discount".
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This was one of the more intricately carved buildings at Chichen. The motifs were beautiful. It's really interesting how many structures there are, and how many are still uncovered. There were archaeologists digging all over the miles of the property uncovering new things everyday. Most of Mexico is said to be that way. It is just so expensive and there are so many they can't afford to uncover all of them. Wouldn't you just love to go on a dig? I would!

A view of the main temple with a smaller one in the foreground. The main one is just massive (it's hard to get the scale). I was really bummed that they stop let the general public climb it and go inside about 3-4 years ago when it became one of the 7 modern wonders. The stairs are pretty steep and with how hot it is there, I'm sure it was a bit dangerous. I told Jose that he needs to make a friend there with an archaeologist or someone important so that I can get the real tour before I die. I'm absolutely fascinated by the whole thing. We'll see if Jose can make that happen for me in the next 50+ years!

Jose of course had to hit up the golf course! Good shot, huh! Luckily he didn't run into any crocodiles or critters bigger than an iguana. Apparently they have quite the wildlife on this course (as my brother Brandon learned) and the club staff warned.

And I had to include this because it is SO Mexico. I took this picture in downtown Cancun one afternoon. What is it you ask? It is a person dressed in a bobble-headed Doctor costume dancing around to music in front of a Dr.'s office as an advertisement. You can see the pink banner to the right. Because that's the Dr. I want to visit when I'm sick, how about you? Seriously, do they think that works? I prefer taking my doctor incredibly seriously, not as a cartoon character.

And for those of you who were worried, we have no swine flu. The locals said they haven't ever had a problem down in that part of Mexico but it has nearly killed the local economy (tourism). We were happy to do our part. : )

The Great American Roadtrip!

I know we've already been here in Michigan for a few weeks now, but I thought I'd keep playing catch-up and post some pictures from our cross country drive out here. The total route took us about 35 hours. We we passed through: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and then finally to Michigan. We've sure been a lot of places this year. I think I could claim that I know am a professional traveler! Here are some highlights!

It's always a highlight to drive in to Texas! We felt right back at home and had a good time visiting with Jose's family and seeing a few friends. There were a lot more things we wanted to do, but with such a long way to go it was hard to stop for too long.

We certainly enjoyed Memphis and ate here at BB King's Blues Club and had some amazing bbq and live music. What a fun place. We'd love to go back and try many more bbq joints in town!

And we of course had to visit Graceland. Here's Jose & I in front of the mansion. Jose is a big lover of Oldie's music and who doesn't love the King? It was actually very cool and we really had fun checking out the house, grounds, and seeing lots of interesting memorabilia like cars, awards, jets, jumpsuits, etc. Definitely check it out if you're in Memphis. Sadly the second floor of the house is closed to tourists (where Elvis' bedroom was) but we really had fun overall.

And here is Elvis' grave. There were so many flowers and things that had been put out for him. Apparently people send things from all over the world and they put everything out until it starts to show signs of wear. I couldn't help but wonder since Michael Jackson died if they are going to do the same sort of thing at Neverland. But there's no way it would be as cool as Elvis' house. What a cool retro/glam/rockstar/over the top style he had!

I think Leonard's may have been Jose's highlight of the trip. It was a real local type of bbq joint. It is all you can eat buffet everyday and de-lish! It was a fun way to get to have a little bit of everything without missing out on anything. (Because what if Jose and I missed out on food?! - tragedy!)

And finally here's a shot of good old downtown Detroit. On the left side of the bridge you can see Windsor, Canada. Crazy that they are so close, eh? There's even an underwater tunnel that connects them. I'll let you know how that is when we try it in a few weeks. And, Detroit is not nearly so bad as everyone says. It gets a terrible wrap!