We moved here to Surprise in 2000, and back then there wasn’t much to see or do. Shopping was difficult. There was a Wal-Mart and that was pretty much it. Over the years, things have been opening and now we’ve got a pretty nice place to live. We’ve got Sam’s Club, Target, Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, and a bunch of chain restaurants. But we’ve also got some local businesses that help give Surprise its character. We’ve got a ton of Chinese restaurants, a Polish deli/restaurant, and two different French places. We’ve got several Mexican places (although I have to say I’m not a big fan of any of them, I wish we could get some good Mexican food here) and all of the usual fast food places.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve tried three businesses here in Surprise that I hadn’t been to before. I want to share them with my local readers, maybe you are just looking for the perfect match and now you’ll find it!

Mountainside Fitness (Bell & Reems)- I had pondered joining a gym off and on for a while and realized that while I wanted to be able to use a treadmill, I really, really didn’t want a treadmill taking up space in the house. So I joined the gym and now not only can I use the treadmill, I’ve got all of the other stuff as well. I went in for a tour and the guy who helped me out (Rigo) was great – he gave me the info without any sort of hard sell, just showed me the numbers and let me decide on my own. I’ve been going for 2 weeks now and I’ve really liked it. Everything is always clean, the people are friendly, there are TONS of machines and classes, and they’ve also got child care. Someday when I work up the nerve, I might even try a spinning class – they’ve got a theater style room with a huge screen so you can feel like you’re going somewhere.

One Brothers Pizza (Cotton & Greenway)- We went there today for lunch and it was delicious. The crust was perfect, worth eating even the edges. Usually the kids don’t do that, but they did with this! It reminded me of NYPD but they were a lot faster and a bit cheaper. While Sam’s Club has good pizza for the price, this place was tastier. They also have salads, calzones, pasta and desserts.

Victory Farms (Waddell & Cotton) – This was the high point of the girls’ day. For $30 they both got to spend 2 hours with the horses – feeding them, brushing them, and riding them. They have 8 horses and were really good about picking the right ones for the riders’ experience. Grace rode Leci and Marie rode Samson and they had a blast. They can’t wait to go back!

I’ve noticed a bird that is always there when I walk out the door to walk Max in the early morning. I told my husband that I thought there was a bird nesting on our front patio, but he insisted that there wasn’t. There’s a lot of tiny piece of bird poop all over the ground, but he still insisted there was no nest.

Guess what? There’s a nest. It’s on top of our lamp, so it probably gets nice and warm when I turn on the porch light to go on my walk, making the bird startle and fly around. It appears to be a hummingbird. Surely that’s some sort of good-luck omen, somewhere.

We went on our whale-watching cruise last night and saw lots of whales. It was fun just to ride on the boat, very comfortable and lots of good seats available. We saw pods consisting of mom, baby and an escort male. Another male was trying to move in, so of course there was a little bit of showing off, trying to convince the mom of who the best whale was.

We had some visitors yesterday – a pod of whales. It looked like 2 adults and one calf. They surfaced quite a few times, slapping their fins and playing around.

This morning a turtle has been playing around on the beach – surfacing every few minutes and then swimming underwater for a while.