Visit from the Stocktons

If this seems like a long post, it's because we've had an action-packed week! Mike's sister, Tiffany and her adorable little boy, Kingsley, came to visit for a week. We had so much fun!

Aside from the jealousy, and the total lack of sharing, I'd say Ellie did pretty well having Kingsley around. Ok, it wasn't all that bad... but the girl definitely needs to learn a few things before she gets a sibling (which won't be for awhile... sorry grandparents).

Mike had Monday "off" for Labor Day. He didn't have classes, but he did study for most of the day. Despite his studying, we managed to go to Los Reyes De La Tortas (another feature on the Phoenix edition of Man vs. Food, although this one wasn't featured for a food challenge, rather their exceptionally good food!). It was delicious!

We all tried the Torta del Reyes, which was massive. Luckily, Tiff and I shared one which was more than enough food.

We managed to go swimming a few times.
It was Kingsley's first time swimming in a pool, and as you can tell by the picture, he really enjoyed himself!
Wednesday was my birthday! Tiffany made some seriously AMAZING Andes Mint Cupcakes.

We all enjoyed them, and true to form, Ellie licked off all the frosting and left the cupcake part untouched.
We also spent a day driving out East to the Superstition Mountains. We stopped at the Superstition Museum which was really neat! For years, there was a place called Apache Land, which was a town/movie set where several Western Films were made. In 2004 the entire city, minus a few buildings on the outskirts of town, burned to the ground. So they moved the remaining buildings to this museum. They had a wall full of pictures of actors and actresses who filmed movies in Apache land: Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, etc.

This building was called the Elvis Chapel because it was used in parts of Elvis' film, Charro! (which is the only film he did which didn't feature him singing). In the movie, they built a fake steeple and blew it up with a cannon!

And people get married here all the time.

These are the gallows...
Steve McQueen's boot prints...
A Stage Coach
And of course, a jail...
And they also had a display of like 300 different kinds of barbed wire. Who knew there were that many different kinds?
We drove just a little further to Goldfield Ghost Town, a genuine 1890's ghost town which has turned into a large tourist attraction. Although, since it's the beginning of September and still deathly hot, half of the shops were closed and we only saw a handful of people. So it really felt like a ghost town! The Superstition mountains were beautiful! You can sort of see them in the background of this picture.
We drove about 30 minutes further on the Apache Trail (a twisty-turny road with beautiful scenery) and saw Canyon Lake. It's kind of weird to see a lake out in the middle of the desert.

Tiffany served her mission in the Philippines, so we found a little Filipino restaurant for dinner. I'd never tried Filipino food (aside from the Ramen/hot dog thing my little brother made once). It was really good!

The best part was the dessert though! On the left is Halo-Halo, which is kind of hard to explain but it's delicious. It has shaved ice, evaporated milk, fruit, sweet beans, and purple yam (ube) ice cream. It reminded me of stuff I had on my mission in Korea (pat bing su). And on the right is a coconut boba drink. I think it's also called bubble tea, or pearl tea. It's basically a coconut smoothie with these huge tapioca balls (boba) at the bottom. So it comes with this massive straw so the boba can fit through. It was SO good.

Speaking of delicious food, Tiff and I also made a few fabulous recipes which I highly recommend: cookie brittle, crispy chicken wraps, and a fantastic pulled pork recipe. I definitely need to commit to my diet again after this week!
We also drove to the Mesa Temple, which looks so different from most other temples, but it's really beautiful in its own way.
We had a really good time, and hope Tiffany and Kingsley did too. So there you go folks... come visit any time and you too can experience these things first hand! We'd love to have you!