- Went to the nursing home with Melinda and visited the old folks. This is the 3rd time we've been - we see the same group of grandma's and grandpa's (what Emma calls them) each time, so most seem to actually remember us and are excited to see us. It felt good to know that they are expecting and excited for our quick visits. I find nursing homes to be such sad places - I'm sure some are really nice and home-like (and probably super expensive too), but most seem to be so drab and hospital-like. I see a need for our elderly to be better cared for.
Chucky Cheese! Emma sure loves this place! And it's always fun to hang out with friends, so I had fun too. We cashed in our 30 tickets for a little sucker, a sticker, and a plastic top. Jodi says that she's saving up all her tickets each time they go, so one day they can get the biggest prize there! I wish you luck Jodi in your Chucky Cheese- ticket- cashing- in- endeavors!
- Cleaned like crazy at Heather's house - Heather left us all this morning (sniff, sniff) - in preparation for moving, we cleaned and purged and packed -well, I just cleaned. Heather has been a real trooper this week in taking on the task of packing up and moving from their house, all without her hubby who is away on rotation. You are my hero!
A night out with Emma! We got a sitter for Becca (since she is the worst to take to movies right now, and I didn't want another Kung-Fu Panda experience), and Ben and I took Emma out, just the 3 of us - it felt weird to be without Becca, but we had a great time! We ate a quick dinner at Wildflower, and then went to see Wall-E. So great! It definitely took a turn for the unexpected... I came away from the movie feeling a need to exercise and recycle more. But I actually liked the social commentary that was present in the movie and Wall-E is just the most lovable little robot I've ever seen (I have a little robot crush) - and the animation was incredible! After the movie we all got ice cream at Cold Stone..... wait a minute... did I say I left the movie wanting to exercise more?... well, I don't listen very well - I got ice cream instead.- Emma's first dance class - Her teacher is a 7 year old girl (with a little help from her mom I imagine). The class is just for two weeks and seems to be the perfect little intro to dance for my Emma. Emma LOVES dancing, and was really excited when I picked her up today. She seemed to have a great time learning some new dance moves along with a bunch of other little girls. Tomorrow she plans on wearing her ballerina outfit. Thanks Jill!
Monday, June 30, 2008
I have a crush on a robot...
Stuff we did this weekend:
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Random summer activities
Oh, I love summer! I like dismissing my routines for a time and just playing with the kids, going on vacations, swimming, and eating lots of Popsicles and ice cream. :) We've had lots of fun and random activities going on this past week - On Friday we had the Sis Missionaries over for dinner. I was glad to have them over again, because the last time we were signed up for it Emma had the flu and we tried to call and reschedule with them but we could never get a hold of them - so, in an effort, to keep them from catching the bug in our home, we just ordered in pizza and kept Emma as far away from them as possible. Anyway, I felt bad about not making anything nice for them. Well, these were different missionaries from last time, but I was glad to be able to fix them a nice dinner. :) One of the girls is from New Zealand - that's cool. I had made enchiladas and she was so excited about it! She said that she's just been LOVING the mexican food here, because apparently they don't have anything like that in New Zealand. So funny! On Saturday morning, I went with the Young Women and Young Men in our ward for a boating trip at Lake Pleasant. The Beehives were in charge of this joint activity. I was so thankful to Dana, the other Beehive leader, who really took the reins on this one and thought of everything in the planning - the only thing I did was buy Costco muffins for breakfast. I'm good at that! ;) Anyway, I actually went tubing, which I haven't done since I was in Young Women's. I was pretty bruised up the next day, but it was seriously sooo much fun! On Saturday evening, we celebrated Midsummer's Night Eve with Ben's family. As is tradition, we floated a cake, sang songs, and recited our favorite poems. This holiday is so random but I love it! For dinner, Ben made 3 different grilled pizzas which were all so yummy - he's getting really good at it - maybe we'll open up our own restaurant! :) 
Yesterday we went to the Aquatic Center with friends and I was really impressed - it's a fun place! Emma went down the little kiddie slide like 20 times. It was a fun afternoon. That morning we also went to playgroup, which was to see a dollar movie, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. I was able to leave Becca home with Ben, so it was fun to just take Emma and see a movie together - I actually really liked the movie too! Today has been an especially nice day - I got to spend time with some great friends at a really fun restaurant for a girls lunch. This was in honor of quite a few July birthdays coming up (Taya on the 7th, Liora on the 8th, and me on the 11th of July!) and since Heather and Aubree are leaving for forever this next week (for rotations), we went out to celebrate a little early. We ate at Oregano's and it was superb! I highly recommend it for those AZ dwellers. I ate a lot and I'm still full at 7pm, but tomorrow I'm going to want to go back for more! 
As a side note, Emma continues to love going to summer preschool - this has just been the best thing for her! She gets so excited to go everyday - this morning I told her that her ride was going to be here soon so to watch out the window for them to come, well, I went to check on her and see if her ride had arrived yet and this is what I found...
She is so funny - apparently she was really anxious to leave!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Summer Travels
We've been in Utah for the past week, hanging out at Ben's family's cabin in Provo Canyon, near Sundance. We had a lot of fun despite illness. We split up the drive on the way up by stopping and spending the night in Las Vegas. After only 20 minutes into our drive, Becca threw up in the car! Wonderful! We weren't about to turn around and go home, especially since we weren't sure if she was really sick with a flu or just motion sick or something. Well, she ended up throwing up FOUR times on the way to Vegas. Good thing I packed lots of extra clothes and wipes! It was the worst - somehow, though, we ended up having a good time in Las Vegas - Becca stopped throwing up finally and was actually very happy during our overnight stay. We found THE BEST place to stay in Vegas - the Red Rock Resort. It's about 5 
miles west of the strip and it was just so fun! I could rave about it for hours - they have the coolest swimming courtyard - there's a big swimming pool in the center with a little fountain island in the middle of it... then there's like 8-10 other smaller pools as well - some hot, some cool, and varying sizes. We were just so impressed. The resort also has many great restaurants, a movie theater, bowling alley, and spa. My favorite part is the Kids Quest. It's basically a play area with video games, tunnels and slides, art stuff, etc, where you can drop off your kids while the parents go play elsewhere. Awesome! Our original plan was to drop off both the kids while we went out to eat for a nice dinner, but since Becca was recently throwing up, we just dropped off Emma for an hour while we got dessert and started a movie in the hotel room - we watched Be Kind, Rewind with Jack Black - it was sub-par I'd say. Definitely worth a rental, but maybe not more than that. Anyway, Emma had a ball, and it was nice to get some alone time with Ben (we put Becca to sleep, so we were basically alone). The hotel room was great too - it even had a little tv above the bathtub. :)
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Thankfully, there was no more throw-up as we finished the drive to Provo the next day. Our week at the cabin was fun - we played a lot of tennis and bocce ball, did a little hiking, and some guitar sing along's, cooked up some yummy food, watched some movies, stayed up late chatting, and went to several family events taking place around the valley. We went to the Museum of Art at BYU one morning where they held some Medieval themed children's activities- art, story-telling, castle building, dancing, face-painting and dancing. We spent that afternoon touring several properties on the Parade of Homes in Utah Valley. It makes me dream of owning a house someday! Later in the week we to the petting zoo at Thanksgiving Point, where they were also holding Dairy Days - so we got to make ice cream, as well as get some free ice cream cones. Yummy! On Saturday morning we went to Sundance for their Children's Festival - they had a reptile show which included this HUGE snake - Emma was interested, but did not want to touch it! The highlight of the outing was taking the lift ride up to the top of the mountain and back. I was rather nervous, being up so high and not having any seatbelts on the kids - I kept imagining them flying out of the thing! But despite my fears, I still enjoyed it. :)
So, as not to neglect all the pictures I've taken on my camera - we also went to the Anthem Outlets again a couple days before leaving on our trip. This time they had the splash pad running... Becca was cute to watch - she picked a fountain and just stayed put most of the time, sticking her finger in the hole and then being surprised each time as it squirted water out. I love summertime!!
miles west of the strip and it was just so fun! I could rave about it for hours - they have the coolest swimming courtyard - there's a big swimming pool in the center with a little fountain island in the middle of it... then there's like 8-10 other smaller pools as well - some hot, some cool, and varying sizes. We were just so impressed. The resort also has many great restaurants, a movie theater, bowling alley, and spa. My favorite part is the Kids Quest. It's basically a play area with video games, tunnels and slides, art stuff, etc, where you can drop off your kids while the parents go play elsewhere. Awesome! Our original plan was to drop off both the kids while we went out to eat for a nice dinner, but since Becca was recently throwing up, we just dropped off Emma for an hour while we got dessert and started a movie in the hotel room - we watched Be Kind, Rewind with Jack Black - it was sub-par I'd say. Definitely worth a rental, but maybe not more than that. Anyway, Emma had a ball, and it was nice to get some alone time with Ben (we put Becca to sleep, so we were basically alone). The hotel room was great too - it even had a little tv above the bathtub. :)
Thankfully, there was no more throw-up as we finished the drive to Provo the next day. Our week at the cabin was fun - we played a lot of tennis and bocce ball, did a little hiking, and some guitar sing along's, cooked up some yummy food, watched some movies, stayed up late chatting, and went to several family events taking place around the valley. We went to the Museum of Art at BYU one morning where they held some Medieval themed children's activities- art, story-telling, castle building, dancing, face-painting and dancing. We spent that afternoon touring several properties on the Parade of Homes in Utah Valley. It makes me dream of owning a house someday! Later in the week we to the petting zoo at Thanksgiving Point, where they were also holding Dairy Days - so we got to make ice cream, as well as get some free ice cream cones. Yummy! On Saturday morning we went to Sundance for their Children's Festival - they had a reptile show which included this HUGE snake - Emma was interested, but did not want to touch it! The highlight of the outing was taking the lift ride up to the top of the mountain and back. I was rather nervous, being up so high and not having any seatbelts on the kids - I kept imagining them flying out of the thing! But despite my fears, I still enjoyed it. :)
So, as not to neglect all the pictures I've taken on my camera - we also went to the Anthem Outlets again a couple days before leaving on our trip. This time they had the splash pad running... Becca was cute to watch - she picked a fountain and just stayed put most of the time, sticking her finger in the hole and then being surprised each time as it squirted water out. I love summertime!!
Friday, June 06, 2008
Tempe Splash Park
I've been starting to really get the summer bug - meaning, I just don't want to go about my regular old routines... I've been aching to get out of the house and do some fun summer activities! So I guilted Ben into skipping his studying for the morning (is that horrible of me?) and we took off to the Tempe Splash Park. We've been there a few times before over the years and it's definitely the best free splash park in the valley (that we've found). They have fun slides, waterfalls, a section just for little kids, and plenty of fountains and water shooters and fun stuff to keep everyone happy. We spent a couple hours there and it was great - afterwards we got lunch at In 'N Out. So fun!
We straightened Emma's hair yesterday and it's always so surprising to see how long her hair really is. It gets so curly and wavy on the ends that you'd never know otherwise. Anyway, I just love the color of her hair - it has several natural highlights running through it - I'm super jealous. Also, yesterday I was super bored and so I had a little picture taking session - obviously I wasn't trying to do anything special, but I just wanted to get some pictures of Becca pulling her many cute and silly faces. I love this girl!
Becca's also really into giving kisses right now and she loves to kiss her bear - in this case it was Emma's bear, but she likes to spread out the love. :)
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Preschool!
Emma had her first day of Preschool on Tuesday and I'm just so excited!! I don't know if it has anything to do with having been a teacher myself, but I have been so anxious and excited to have her start school... and so has Emma! I told her a couple months ago that she would get to start preschool a little earlier than originally planned (since her preschool teacher was going to do a summer session) and she has been bugging me about it for so long now. I may have a little teacher's pet on my hands (but with plenty of spunk as well!) - we'll just have to see. I realized as I dropped her off that this was the beginning of the end, when it comes to her schooling career... from here on out she'll be in school for a long time - I can tell she's going to be such a hard worker, take school seriously, enjoy learning and do some great things! I totally sound like a teacher and a mom, don't I?!
Well, leading up to starting preschool, we looked around at a couple of stores for a backpack and I didn't like most of what I found - there are way too many Dora backpacks out there people! :) Well, we finally resulted to a little internet shopping to find a cute backpack and we could even get her name engraved on it - lovely! Anyway, when we got it I realized that it might be too small to fit anything in it. Well, sure enough, she came out of school, with her backpack on and her school folder that they gave her sticking out the top... but oh well - it's too cute not to use... even if it's impractical! :)
Monday, June 02, 2008
Summer grillin'...
We had the Lee's over again this past weekend (they are so fun!). We spent Saturday watching all 3 of the original Indiana Jones movies. As I already wrote about, we saw the 4th movie on Memorial Day (also with the Lee's), and it put us all in the mood to watch the originals. And isn't that why they make sequels? So, that people will go out and buy all the dvd's? Well, we fell for that marketing ploy and purchased Indiana Jones 1-3 at Costco. :) Anyway, we had snacks and the inflatable mattress out with plenty of pillows as we watched the first 2 all together. We watched The Last Crusade later in the evening after Emily and Ben went home. I have to say that The Last Crusade is definitely the best - it's a much more well-rounded movie - and Sean Connery is great! We tried to keep the kids distracted (since the movies are 
quite scary!) - Adam and Emma really liked jumping on the trampoline with a sprinkler perched underneath. So, the water comes spraying up through the tramp while they jump around in their swimsuits. They loved it! It kept them busy for a decent amount of time, but definitely not a movie marathon's worth. So, in the end, Emma watched some of it and she ended up having nightmares that night. She said that "the skeleton's are too scary!" Yes, Emma, they are too scary - sorry! :/ Well, in between movies we tried out our second attempt at grilled pizza. We tried it last week with the Hunter's and we were glad to see that it turned out great! I have mentioned that
Ben's really into his grill right now, right?? We've had so much grilled food lately - hamburgers, hotdogs, steaks, steak sandwiches, pizza, pineapple, and kebabs. Let's just say I basically haven't cooked in weeks! Wonderful! So - back to what I was saying - we made grilled pizza again with the Lee's - but with different toppings this time... bbq chicken pizza! Last time we did basil, tomato, and mozzarella. Yummy! For anyone into making their own pizzas (grilled or not), Trader Joes sells great pizza dough. We discovered this just recently and it tastes great!
On to other more important things - we were sad to say goodbye to Mike this weekend! :( We're just glad that we get to have Heather around for another month. Remember when I wrote in my last post how lots of our other friends were going to be working out of state for much of this 4th year? Well, we basically won't be seeing the Peck's until March! They're going to come back and not recognize us because we've aged so much - and our kids will be off getting married! ;) Well, thankfully, it's not that bad, but it feels like forever! Anyway, Heather snapped some photos of the guys the night before Mike would be leaving. There's a second picture that was taken that I won't post because it may make my blog PG-13. But maybe Heather will put it on hers. ;)
quite scary!) - Adam and Emma really liked jumping on the trampoline with a sprinkler perched underneath. So, the water comes spraying up through the tramp while they jump around in their swimsuits. They loved it! It kept them busy for a decent amount of time, but definitely not a movie marathon's worth. So, in the end, Emma watched some of it and she ended up having nightmares that night. She said that "the skeleton's are too scary!" Yes, Emma, they are too scary - sorry! :/ Well, in between movies we tried out our second attempt at grilled pizza. We tried it last week with the Hunter's and we were glad to see that it turned out great! I have mentioned that
Ben's really into his grill right now, right?? We've had so much grilled food lately - hamburgers, hotdogs, steaks, steak sandwiches, pizza, pineapple, and kebabs. Let's just say I basically haven't cooked in weeks! Wonderful! So - back to what I was saying - we made grilled pizza again with the Lee's - but with different toppings this time... bbq chicken pizza! Last time we did basil, tomato, and mozzarella. Yummy! For anyone into making their own pizzas (grilled or not), Trader Joes sells great pizza dough. We discovered this just recently and it tastes great! On to other more important things - we were sad to say goodbye to Mike this weekend! :( We're just glad that we get to have Heather around for another month. Remember when I wrote in my last post how lots of our other friends were going to be working out of state for much of this 4th year? Well, we basically won't be seeing the Peck's until March! They're going to come back and not recognize us because we've aged so much - and our kids will be off getting married! ;) Well, thankfully, it's not that bad, but it feels like forever! Anyway, Heather snapped some photos of the guys the night before Mike would be leaving. There's a second picture that was taken that I won't post because it may make my blog PG-13. But maybe Heather will put it on hers. ;)
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