Rainy Days

Emma has been loving the crazy rainstorms we've been having lately. Apparently the beginning of the Arizona monsoon season is upon us and its awesome! Yesterday morning the rain was really loud as it pounded on the outside of the building, so Emma wanted to get a closer look. I opened the front door and sent her outside to get wet. She loved it! She screamed when I made her come back in to take a bath.

On another note, Becca is growing bigger and cuter everyday. I remember when Emma was a little babe and I always thought at each new stage as she grew that she just couldn't get any cuter... but she kept surprising me. Now, I think the same of Becca... she just keeps getting cuter, especially now that she can smile in her darling way and she is always sucking on her hands. She's also started grabbing at her toes a little, which is super cute too. I've recently changed up Becca's eating and sleeping schedule to accomodate an earlier bedtime. Emma has always gone to bed quite early...even now her bedtime is 7 or 7:30. But it used to be 5:30 or 6 for the longest time. Anyway, Becca has been going to bed so late and being so fussy too. I finally realized that she's just tired and needs to be put to bed before she can even start the evening fussiness. So, now she says goodnight at six o'clock and its so much better! :) Just look how happy my well-rested Becca is....

Tummy Time

I took a cute video of Becca. I've been so lame about taking pictures and such... I figured my mom in particular would enjoy this to see how big she's getting! She's actually still such a teeny little thing, but she looks much more like a baby and not so much like a bitty newborn. Oh, my little cutie! We've been trying to make tummy time a routine every day... she likes it for a little while but soon gets tired and flustered. She's fun to watch...



Oh, and as you can see, Emma likes to get in on the tummy time too. What a cute goof! :)

P.S. Ben received his USMLE board scores today! He did awesome! I'm such a proud wife. :)

Pie, pie, and pie...

I imagine I won't be the only one blogging about the pie party last night. It was so amusing... Thanks Heather! You're just so fun to put that together. :) I'll start with a couple videos of the pie-eating contest. It turned into quite the mess (you'll notice upon close observation that Craig started it!)... also my laughter was rather uncontrollable throughout the whole video... pardon my silliness. ;)



You may have noticed that once the pies started to get tossed around, many of the kids got a little upset. Emma started crying and then refused to join in on the kids pie eating contest. I think she was worried she might get one thrown in her direction. ;) This second video is to give props to Cory Brown for his determined effort to finish his pie, instead of just cheating and throwing it at someone. ;)



Anyway, it was a great evening. Emma really enjoyed jumping on the Peck's trampoline all night. She was so red in the face from all the activity. There were also many delicious pies to sample (that weren't thrown at others). My favorite was the lemon cream pie (I believe this was Heather's). I also really enjoyed the two ice cream pies brought by Aubree and Jess. Yummy! You can never go wrong with an ice cream pie! :)

Harry Potter in 3D?... Awesome!

Last night we went to see Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix on the IMAX. It was superb, I must say. First of all, Aubree was a super friend and watched Emma for the evening (Thank you so much... Emma can't wait to play with Addy on Friday!). Ben's family met up with us for the evening and we started with a quick dinner at Macaroni Grill (my favorite was the chocolate cake with a birthday candle). After eating we walked over the theater and got in the MASSIVE line. It wrapped around a couple of times and we ended up right near the emergency exit door... goodness sakes. But it didn't seem to matter much because we still got good seats. This was also one of the special 3D showings of Harry Potter, so we got cool glasses as we went in. The 3D part is just at the end for about 20 during the intense part with everyone fighting at the Department of Mysteries. I thought the 3D was absolutely great! 3D has come along way from the red and blue glasses. It was really well done and I felt it really added some excitement during the finale. Anyway, I liked this movie more the all the rest of the Harry Potter's so far. The villans in the movie were played very well, I thought... ie: Umbridge and Bellatrix Lestrange (she was super creepy!). Now the countdown continues for the final book! Only 8 more days!

25

So, we've had some fun activities the past couple of days. Yesterday we got together with friends to swim! Emma loves swimming so much... she gets super excited any time we say we'll be going swimming. She especially enjoys her big pink swim wings. ;) I particularly look forward to the day when Emma can actually swim on her own. She loves to be in the water but she gets frustrated if she gets stuck in the middle of the pool and can't get to the side. She screams "help mommy, help!" and I have to pull her to 'shore'.

So, today is my 25th birthday! Wow! I keep telling people that I'm a quarter of a century! That sounds really old, when you put it like that, eh? Anyway, Ben didn't have to go to his rotation shift until 2, so we spent the morning at the Science Museum in downtown Phoenix. It was fun, but extremely busy with several summer school groups or something. Emma looked so small in comparison. ;) But despite the congestion, it was a great birthday outing. I just love my little family... and we're gradually becoming not so little, especially when Becca is strapped into our big sit and stand stroller, we become quite the wide load of people! Below is an amusing video of Emma enjoying a silly spinning contraption at the museum.



Oh, and Ben was so sweet and decorated the house with several flower arrangements. I have lovely flowers in the bathroom, my bedroom end table, and the kitchen table. He said that he wanted to make a my birthday just a little prettier. :) He also made a great french toast breakfast with homemade strawberry syrup and whipped cream! In addition to all this, he is making me wear a flower lei and bow for the whole day (which you may have noticed in the picture above). He wants me to stand out enough so people will ask me why I am wearing a lei and such... this way I can respond, "Because it's my birthday!" How fun for me. ;) And thank you Heather for your thoughtful blog post. I have such sweet friends.

Mickey and Minnie

Here's something new I learned today (did everyone else already know this?): The current voice of Mickey Mouse, Wayne Allwine, is married to Russi Taylor, the current voice for Minnie Mouse. That's hillarious! I wonder how that came about. Were they married first before they started doing Mickey and Minnie voices, or did they meet and marry because they obviously knew each other through their voice work. Hmmm... Anyway, I think the whole thing is rather romantic and relatively amusing.

Who started this game, hmmm?

So I was tagged. I'm going to:

* Post eight random facts about myself.
* Tag eight other bloggers (hopefully those who haven’t been tagged before).
* Post these rules.

Here are eight random facts about me.

1. I used to be a huge fan of the Disney Channel. To clarify: This was between the ages of 17-19. I loved to get ready for the day while watching the cute kids shows- ie: Bear in the Big Blue House. Call me crazy... I guess I was prepping to have little kids, or something.

2. I'm terrified of the ocean! When we were in Mexico a few weeks ago, I refused to go snorkeling with Ben because I am afraid of what I might see! I'm scared of weird fish or stingrays, or whatever else might sneak up and bite my toe! To sum up: I'm particularly scared of deep waters in which I can't see the bottom.

3. I bounce back and forth between super productive and super lazy. If only I could find a happy medium between the two, I would be soooo pleased with myself!

4. I used to be a huge basketball fan! My dad really got me excited about the NBA, particularly following the Jazz back in their glory days with John Stockton, Bryon Russell, and Karl Malone. :) I even subscribed to ESPN magazine for a time... partly because of my odd dream of becoming of sportscaster alongside Dan Patrick. This is why I minored in Communications, I guess.

5. I am so happy being a mom! I taught elementary school for a couple of years before having Emma and I feel like motherhood is everything I enjoyed about teaching (plus more!), but without all the stuff that I didn't like about being a teacher. I get to make up daily routines and organize my home the way I want (which is a lot of what I enjoyed about running a classroom), but I don't have to deal with other people's naughty children. :)

6. I've had a cough for the past 10 months.... I'm in the process of trying to get a referral to a pulmonologist.

7. I am deathly afraid of spiders and other creepy crawly things. Ben once showed me a picture of a scary spider while he was studying about various insect bites. The picture caught me by surprise and I started crying. I'm a mess.

8. I have an aversion to seafood, and any meat that is served with bone. I have never prepared any type of fish for dinner (I told Ben that if he wants to eat any type of seafood or any meat other than chicken breasts or ground beef, he has to make it himself - is that mean?)

Here are the 8 bloggers that I've decided to tag (lucky you!):
Muffin
Brittanie
Taya
Melinda
Aubree
KelliAnn
Aaro
Dadoo

I hope none of you let me down!

Happy Fourth!

Hello to you all! I hope everyone had a memorable holiday. We kept extremely busy with lots of activities. I came home feeling all achy and absolutely exhausted! Ben said that it was comparable to how you feel after a day at Disneyland. So true. However, it was a great day! We spent the night of the 3rd at Ben's family's house. That evening we all went to see Transformers! Ben's mom stayed home with the kids, of which I am most appreciative! I must admit that I wasn't looking forward to this movie much, but everyone else wanted to see it... but, in the end, I absolutely loved it! It was very funny and action-packed. It had a few slow/weird moments... but overall, it was great! So the day of the Fourth, we kept super busy with activities that include the following: tennis, going to see Evan Almighty (which despite its poor reviews, we all really enjoyed... Emma got a little scared during the flood part), swimming, eating, crafting (which consisted of a flag using Emma's footprints and Becca's handprints... how clever!), and fireworks! What an exciting day. My favorite activities of the holiday were swimming and movie watching. We really wore out the kids... Emma and Becca both slept in this morning and Becca is already down for another nap, only 30 minutes after waking up. Oh, and even though video doesn't do it justice, here's a portion of the fireworks show from last night, in case anyone didn't get out to see any themselves... maybe you can still enjoy a little piece of the festivities. :)