A Weekend in Prescott

I already mentioned that I went up to Prescott last weekend, but let me reiterate: It was awesome! Usually when people grow up in one place, they can't wait to get out and aren't too concerned with going back once they have. I have the opposite mentality. It was difficult to leave Prescott and I love going back to visit- and I especially love that I now live close enough to do so! I've even thought seriously about the possibility of someday (after I've traveled the world and stuff) coming back to Prescott to settle down and raise my own family. Speaking from experience, I think it is such a great town for kids to grow up in. It's so quaint and beautiful, has several great areas to go camping, hiking, and swimming, AND it has a lot of the perks of a city- great restaurants, shopping, cafes, etc. Plus, it's pretty centrally located in AZ so it's relatively quick and easy to get to other cities. I love this town :)

Anyways, Stewart and I left Tucson with the plan that we were going to do as many fall type things while we were in Prescott. We were also going to try to see as many of our friends as we could. A large portion of our time was set aside for Stewart's Grandpa's funeral (the reason behind us going up there in the first place), but we managed to fit in plenty of other things as well. I'll do my best to make it all sound interesting as I tell you about each and every activity!

This is the view as we were leaving Tucson. About 2 hours later we were in Phoenix and it was dark out. We visited Brian (Stewart's older brother) in Tempe at his new little apartment. It was really cool to see him there!

We got to Prescott around 8 o clock and went straight to my parents' house. We talked a bit and settled in and then they went to bed and Stewart and I went back out to go to Denny's.

We met up with our good friend Jaimie and the three of us hung out for what seemed like FOREVER at the local Pizza Hut, because our other friend Josh works there. When he finally got off the four of us went out to eat. It was so weird, we got seated and then our waiter never looked at us again, not even to ask us if we wanted drinks. It was thirty minutes later when a waitress who we're familiar with finally noticed we were being neglected and took our table even though it wasn't hers. That's never happened to me! Anyways, it was all ok because the four of us got to hang out while we were waiting :)

Stewie and I came home at around 3:30 AM after hanging out with a couple of Jaimie's new friends, and then were up at 8:00 AM to eat a wonderful breakfast that my parent's had made for us. It was really delicious and also nice to spend some extra time with them because soon after we ate they took off for California to visit my sister.

We decided not to go back to sleep like our bodies wanted us to but instead stay awake and get started enjoying the beautiful, cloudy, sprinkly day.

The first thing we did was get all dressed up for FALL! haha. Notice the scarf, sweater, gloves, tights, and boots. I was in heaven. The second thing we did was head straight down to St. Michael's cafe (the hotel/restaraunt shown in the first picture) and order two soy milk pumpkin lattes.Very yummy. Here's a picture of the cafe in daylight:

We drank them on the square, and admired some of the fall color.

Leaves on the ground! This makes me so happy.

We were feeling pretty hungry again by this time so we went to a sandwich shop called Eddie's on Whiskey Row. The building it's in was a quiznos for a long time (and surely something much cooler before that since it's a historic building), and has changed to various different sandwich shops since. I'd never been to Eddie's and I was very pleasantly surprised! It was soooo delicious. Whole wheat bread with feta, avocado, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, sprouts, spinach, cucumbers, banana peppers, and honey dijon mustard.

It was so good I took a picture of it! And then I devoured it. Mmmm :)

 We ate in Granite Creek Park in my car (because it was so rainy) and I took a picture of this pretty red-orange tree through the window.

<3

After we ate, we went over to Stewart's Mom's house so that he could say hello, do his laundry, pick out some of his Gpa's things, and pick apples.

His mom has a big apple tree out back but isn't really the baking type and had way more than she could eat or give away- so we were happy to take a bunch off her hands!

 Crisp, clean, and delicious. We got at least a hundred of 'em!

So fun :)

And later that night...

Apple pie!! What could possibly be better than homemade apple pie made from freshly picked apples? I even made my own whole wheat crust because I'm one of those crazy awesome people that thinks the only way to make pie is with a homemade crust. I shun you, store bought frozen crust.

I made one pie for my parents (because I love them so and I wanted to thank them for letting Stewie and myself stay at the house) and one for me and Stew, which ended up actually being for us and 6 of our other friends. But that was Saturday night!

The rest of Friday we spent doing the slightly embarrassing activity of watching baby videos of myself and my sister. I hadn't seen them in FOREVER because they're VHS tapes and we don't have a working VCR. But Stewie happened to be able to pick one out of his Grandpa's old stuff! So we ordered Monsoon take out, went to visit all my lovely friends at Mama Eddas, came home and ate while giggling at my 18 month old self. And then we went to BED because by midnight we were soooo exhausted!

Not to mention, the next morning we were up at 9 to go to Stew's Gpa's funeral. It was a very nice service, and afterwards the retirement home hosted lunch for us and about 20 of Stewart's other relatives.

We were pretty lazy for the rest of the day and didn't do much aside from having coffee with one of our friends. And then somewhat spontaneously around 6:00 we decided to host a dinner party. 

Like a stupid person, I didn't take any pictures of the party. It was awesome though! We had everyone bring one ingredient so that no one had to pay much money, and we had 6 of our close friends come. I made homemade pumpkin lattes for everyone (recipe to come...), spaghetti with homemade sauce, garlic bread, salad, and of course the apple pie from the night before. We played the board game "Loaded Questions" until 2 AM and had such a blast! I'm so glad I'm finally at the age where I can invite friends over to eat dinner, play board games, and NOT drink and they'll actually think it's a good idea! I feel so old.

The next morning, Stew and I got up around 10:00 for a plan that was VERY important to me: going to the local pumpkin patch! It was a new one this year because the old ones have all been closed, but it was still a lot of fun.

On a hay ride

We went in a corn maze...

 

 ...and then into a petting zoo that I'm sure was intended for 5 year olds. But hey, who says you can't like cute animals post-adolescence?

Gah I love this one! I think the cow is just eating but it looks like it's got a merry grin on it's face.

The most important event, of course, was picking out our pumpkins. We didn't realize it was going to be 50 cents a pound so we just went right in and picked out the roundest, biggest, orange-est pumpkins we could and then our total came to 20$... but we had already come so far so we bought them anyway. I'm sure we will have a lot of fun carving our locally grown, fresh-picked pumpkins :)

After we were done, we basically just packed up and hit the road. We got back into Tucson around 8pm and were pleased to find a Dollhouse Season 2 DVD in the mail. The rest of the night was relaxing, eating, and watching our show- a nice end to an activity-packed weekend. 

I hope you guys had a nice weekend too!

Love, 

MSoSS