Kickin it, Cowboy style!

Hello! I (Joe) am stuck in Dallas for the next two weeks for training for my job :( it sucks big time, and to make it worse the IRS office was closed at 2pm because of inclement weather - it was 40 degrees and misting...no joke. Anyhow, I decided to look through old pics and pass them along, this is from when Mom and Dad Dougoveto were visiting and we went to Tombstone, Arizona and Old Tucson Studios. Enjoy!


This is in Tombstone AZ, we are just outside of the OK Corral. This is Mom and Dad enjoying the lovely afternoon....

Here you can see the OK Corral in the background, behind Mom and Dad.

We then went to Old Tucson Studios, where they have skits going all day long. Its a really cool place, many John Wayne movies were shot there, along with many tv shows such as Gunsmoke and Little House on the Prairie. some pretty cool ones, as you can see below. Here Mom and Dad actually took part in one of the skits.

This is a gunfight there, it was pretty cool...

They also had a Three Amigos skit, it was awesome! Lots of cool stunts, and it was pretty funny.

Here Dad was missing his old profession, he saw the sign, and decided to starting practicing again, momentarily...

Here the two love birds were taking a walk at Fort Huachuca, an active military base in far Southern AZ, its where a lot of the high tech military communication takes place...

Mary Ellen and I posed with some of the cowboys. it was fun, especially waiting in line with all the 4 year olds to get a picture with them...

Me and Mary Ellen....

Mom and Mary Ellen trying the Chic Cowgirl look...

South Mountain

Happy MLK day! We both had the day off here so it was a nice long weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We slept in and then went for a nice hike at a place called South Mountain. Its the largest city park in the US, about 16,000 acres. Its really beautiful, very desert like. We had a busy weekend with an open house and camera classes, so it was nice to get out and leisury hike around. Below are some pictures, we are testing our creative abilities. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

We were really high up here, and you can see the valley where Phoenix, Scottsdale, and all the suburbs are, with Four Peaks Mountain in the background.

We saw some really weird and cool things, as evidenced by this picture.

This is Mary Ellen taking in the beautiful day - it was 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky.

And this is me trying to jump over the mountain, which i did successfully. I even made it over most of the clouds.

Civic Center

Mary Ellen and I didn't have any plans yesterday, so we decided to live it up at the Civic Center in Old Town Scottsdale. Its about a half a mile from our house, and it a really nice place to walk around. Lots of green grass, which is hard to come by down here! One of our favorite things is the profound art that is on display. Below is an example.



Here is Mary Ellen, taking in the sights

It has lots of cool fountains and flowers

And one of my favorite things about Phoenix, the Palm trees!

Papago Park

Happy Sunday! Hope everyone had a good weekend. I spent the day preparing the house for sale. Tons of work to do, but I pretty much got it finished, so I'm happy about that. We sign the papers tonight, and then it will get listed on Monday or Tuesday. Pretty exciting. Please pray that it sells!

I went for a little hike at a place called Papago Park, its got cool rock formations, although the photos arent anything to write home about...I'm having a hard time understanding all the different settings and when to use them. Hopefully in time I will get it figured out :)

Mary Ellen should be home shortly, so I am going to get to cookin! See ya!

A few of the buttes - although I went to the wrong

ones. The are cooler ones, but far from my house.

This is Camelback Mountain, and I took this from the

top of the butte shown above. Camelback is the most

known mountain in Phoenix. Great hiking.

Here is the sun setting by a pagoda in the park.

And here is a photo of the tree in our back yard. I tried
a little perspective change. kind of cool.

Long Weekend

Long weekend here in Phoenix. Mary Ellen is working all weekend so I am at the house, preparing it to go on the market. Lots of cleaning up to do. I wanted to play with the leaves before i cleaned them up, as you can see below.
I just got photoshop, which i am thrilled about, so tomorrow I plan to go take pictures of some cool rock formations near our house, and mess around with them in photoshop. Hopefully more pics will be up tomorrow of that little adventure. We miss everyone! More to come!

Winter Wonderland

It's wintertime, even in Phoenix. Its Tuesday evening and a frigid 55 outside. brr... So we decided to make a little chai tea latte.

Our Christmas tree will be tossed in the alley this Saturday for bulk pickup, so we thought we'd take a photo before all the Christmas decorations came down.

Here are a couple of practice photos that Joe took today. Trying to get an understanding of the complex world of photography. As you can see our trees are finally losing their leaves.

And also a photo of Mary Ellen's geranium, grown with tender loving care.

Superstition Mountains

Hello Hello - we've taken a long hiatus from the blog. Since the last post the big news is the Nikon D80, the latest addition to the Dougoveto's of Phoenix. Today we went out on a nice hike in the Superstition Mountains, about an hour east of Phoenix. It was beautiful, and a storm was coming in so there were some cool looking clouds. We still don't know anything about photography, but we are working on it. here are some of the pics we took.

Funny sidenote - see that cactus next to me? Its called a Jumping Cholla. First time I went hiking here I decided to touch it to feel if it was picky. I realized quickly why its called a JUMPING cholla - its semi magnitized so if you get really close it will jump off and imbed itself into you. I spent the next 20 minutes pulling it out of my fingers.