Enjoying being home

Our summer is finally calming down - Emma's been busy with swim lessons and preschool for the last while and both are now over, with Preschool starting back up towards the end of August. Emma officially graduated from Level B in swim lessons last week and will be ready to do Level 1 when we do lessons next summer. Level B consisted of everything that Emma could already do, but you have to do B before you can sign up for level 1. Either way, though, Emma really loved it - her class was small with only 3-4 kids coming each day and she had 2 teachers that taught the class together. On one of the days Emma was the only kid there, and boy.. did she love that! Emma loves getting attention! :) On the last day of lessons, they turned the water play area on and let the kids enjoy that - Emma spent most of the time, though, jumping off the edge and swimming back to the side - I guess she didn't want to waste her last day playing with the sprayers as opposed to getting some real swim time in... isn't she so responsible?! ;)

So, I made an executive decision and finally switched Becca into a forward facing car seat. What a joy it is! At her 15 month appt she weighed in at 19.5 lbs - the pediatrician said to wait a little longer before switching her car seat because she should really be a little over 20 lbs before doing that. Well, I figure 3 weeks after the appt, she's got to have gained another 1/2 lb+. Don't you think? Well, either way, I figured the danger of her getting heat stroke from facing backwards away from the AC was greater than any risk taken by being in a forward facing seat at a 1/2 lb too small. And look how happy she is!!

Now that we aren't so busy with all the fixed activities and summer vacay's (okay, I totally got that from TAMN!), I've been enjoying my summer with simple pleasures including -
* Reading: You should all be proud of me and my reading success lately. I've actually read 4 books in 4 weeks! I'm awesome... considering I usually only read 4 books in a year! I've read The Other Boleyn Girl, Life of Pi, Eclipse, and The Time Traveler's Wife. I've really enjoyed all of them - I wasn't as excited about Life of Pi, but it was still pretty good too. We're going camping tomorrow, so my plan is that on the way home on Saturday, I'll stop at Costco and pick up a copy of Breaking Dawn - that will be my next read which I'm pretty excited about!! I'm sad that I'll be missing out on going to one of the midnight parties with all the cool people.
* Not sewing: I feel like so many friends are being so crafty this summer finishing quilts, and recovering stuff - well, not me.
* Thinking about Organizing: I haven't actually done any home organization projects yet, but I'm thinking about it.
* So You Think You Can Dance: I feel like this is the only good thing on TV right now! What's up with that?! Shouldn't there be more fun shows on during the summer? Or do they figure that we should all be doing better things with our time? Well, I probably should be doing better things with my time, but SYTYCD is the best!! Is anyone else interested in the tour?! I realized that I've got two options - I'll be in UT during the showing there (in September), or I could go to the one here in October. Tickets go on sale Saturday morning, but I'll be camping and probably won't be home till the afternoon - what if they are all sold out?!! I'll be sad.

I'm so lazy...

I should totally be doing something other than blogging right now, but my motivation to do so is rather low. :/ In fact, I've been avoiding much of my house chores the past couple days because I finally started reading Eclipse. Such a good book. Now I'm all extra excited about Breaking Dawn coming out next week and the movie coming out in December (I wish it was sooner!). Ben said he would go out and buy some fangs and a cape if I liked that sort of thing. Ha! ;)

On Monday, we went to Ben's fam's house for a rather unique event. Ben's dad used to be in a band back in the day - well, him and his band buddies got together this weekend and had a couple "gigs" lined up. This would be their 35 year reunion tour! Pretty amusing. They practiced for us at the family's house and it was a great night. They are all very talented - It makes me wish I could play the guitar. (Sorry about the sound in the video - I think I must have been putting my finger over the sound recorder or something, because it comes in and out of being a little muffled with the sound quality).



Emma's been really into Fancy Nancy lately. We actually don't own any of the books, but her Grandma Dangerfield does and she looks at them over at her house. Anyway, they have a line of Fancy Nancy products at Target and she's been earning them from getting so many stickers on her chore chart. She modeled her fanciness for us yesterday -


On another random note, Becca's hair has been growing longer and crazier, but it's still just so fine that I can't really put it up or anything. I'll usually put a clip in it at the beginning of the day, but it never stays in very long - and when she pulls it out, she pulls chunks of hair out with it. Well, when she gets up from naps, her hair is super crazy - I think it's cute.

We went to the Kierland outdoor mall in Scottsdale on Saturday. This is one of our favorite outings because they have lots of our fave stores to browse in - they also have fountains for the kids to play in, but I never remember to bring their swimsuits when we go - but this time I did and they really loved it! We went to Cheesecake Factory there as well to eat lunch (thanks to a gift card from the Pecks - thank you!!). This was a relatively free outing, which is what we were looking for - we finally ran out of money for the month (didn't I say that would happen with all the movies we've been seeing lately?!). I was really bummed because we REALLY want to go see Batman, but we don't have any money for a sitter. Ho hum. I really wanted to help contribute to the 150+ million dollars they've earned.

I have to put a plug in for this blog that Brittanie linked to recently. It's really hillarious! I had to read a few entries before I finally started to get the gist of it - it's basically a spoof on the typical LDS mom blog. Now let's all be honest here and admit that we are all totally like this! ;)

Emma can read!

Well, almost... I've been so proud of my little Emma lately - she's just been really growing up on me all of a sudden. She's been loving her swim lessons and is getting to be such a good little swimmer. She's been doing great in preschool, with big strides in her writing (she can finally write her name by herself!) She's also becoming such a great conversationalist. She says the funniest things to me... I love it. Also, for the past few months we've been working on her reading. Ben's family (full of educators!) has a reading program that they follow which starts with learning 40+ sound symbols - many of which are the actual letter in the alphabet - others are new symbols which each represent a different sound in the english language.... so to sum up, it's basically a unique phonics program - there's a long string of books you start with (once they know all the sounds really well) that utilize the sound symbols to make words and phrases (in the video below you can kind of see what I'm talking about). At the end of the book series you transition to the traditional Dick and Jane books which no longer use the symbols, but by this point, the transition to all regular letters is quite smooth. I've been so impressed with Emma's cousin who was reading Dick and Jane books on his own before turning 4 - I really was excited to get Emma doing it to. And Emma is the type of girl that loves this kind of thing - she loves sitting down to the school time with me and loves doing her preschool homework. Wonderful! That will definitely make things easier when she starts kindergarten and beyond! She also gets lots of incentives (stickers, prizes, etc) for reaching certain milestones within her reading. She zipped through the first 3 books really quick, but we've been working on this 4th book for quite a while now - it really jumped up in difficulty with a lot of new words - we had to go back and work on her basics and do some more sound review... but just yesterday she finally did it! And all on her own! Emma also shows off some of her quirkiness in this video. She's so weird, but I love her. :)

100 Year Old Dress

We took Becca to get some photos taken in a dress that's been being passed down through generations within Ben's family. We have Emma in a picture wearing this dress when she was Becca's age as well. I just think they turned out so cute... and so vintage! :) Here are a few of our favorites-

One year older...

I've had just a splendid weekend! I turned 26 on Friday and I really had the best birthday - although, my special day started with a trip to the DMV to get a new drivers license. But thankfully, there was a very short wait, so we didn't have to spend very long there. :) You may be wondering why I would go to the DMV on my birthday, but that's because my Utah license finally expired that day. I've been really procrastinating getting an AZ one. But, now that I do, I can finally register to vote here. I would hate to miss out on the presidential election come November! Ben was working all day on Friday, so after our early morning DMV outing, we headed to Gilbert to spend the day with Ben's family. My wonderful mother-in-law took me shopping at my favorite clothing store and I got so many cute things - I ended up with 3 new skirts, 4 new tops, and pair of shoes. Happy day! Ben's dad and sister met up with us for lunch and then we took the kids on the double decker carousel they have there at the mall. It was pretty cool - we of course took the upper level. Becca screamed with fright when I tried to sit her on one of the horses, so she sat with me on one of the stationary benches. She loved that! Emma and Adam, of course, enjoyed riding a pink horse and elephant. :) Ben met up with us later in the day and we went out for a date while the girls stayed with grandma and grandpa. We went to Oreganos on their end of town (weirdly enough I ate at Oreganos a week earlier with friends, also as a birthday outing!) - anyway, I wanted Ben to try it because I was so impressed by their yummy food. The wait ended up being really long and our pizza took forever to come out - needless to say, we ended up rushing our waiter, boxing up our uneaten pizza, and hurrying out of there to make our 8:00 movie. Keep in mind that we got to the restaurant at 6:00, so you would think that would leave plenty of time to eat and get to our movie on time. I guess we've learned our lesson - don't eat at Oreganos if you have a movie to catch. Thankfully, we were plenty filled up from the huge salad we got. We really enjoyed the movie - we saw Get Smart (I've been really checking the movies off my list lately!). It was so funny! I love Steve Carell. He's just hillarious! I really miss The Office, btw. When we got home after driving back across town, I was TOTALLY surprised! I didn't think Ben had gotten me a b-day present yet, because he's been so busy with boards and then immediately starting up a new rotation. Well, he fooled me and when I came in the house he led me to the kitchen and the table was just filled with new kitchen stuff - like a new food processor (because the old one broke), electric griddle, waffle iron, and toaster oven, plus a few little kitchen gadgets to help with my cooking. I was so excited! I just LOVE new kitchen stuff! And the next morning Ben made us all homemade waffles for breakfast using our new waffle iron. Thanks cutie Ben! You are so fun, especially for birthdays - call me spoiled! :)

On Saturday, we went swimming at the rec center again - it was Ben's first time over there and we all loved it! The slides are fun and Emma really enjoyed going around the lazy river a couple times. Later we went to the mall, where I was able to spend the rest of my birthday money (from grandparents, and my nice sister-in-law) - I got some makeup and a couple new pairs of flip flops (I pretty much wear flip flops all year long, so they are very important!) For dinner, we used a gift card to Applebees (thanks mom and dad!) - it was yummy and the kids really enjoyed coloring on their kids menus. :) We spent Sunday evening at Ben's parents house again. We had a great dinner and then the boys helped hang their swinging bench that's been out of commission for some time now. The kids love it!

This morning Emma started swimming lessons. I tried to take a picture, but it was from pretty far away, so it's not a good one. If you click on it to make it bigger, you can see her practicing her kicking on the far right. She's so excited to be taking swimming lessons. I wanted to get her started with them last summer, but I waited too long to try to sign her up. Her lessons are every day for the next couple of weeks. The class goes from 8:30-9:00, so we get going pretty early to be out the door on time. On Tuesday and Thursdays she also has preschool at 9:30, so it's going to be race to get her showered and dressed in the locker room after swimming and then get her over to school in time. I'm feel like I'm starting to get a taste of what some moms say about living in their cars, taking kids from one thing to the next. Right now, it is tolerable because I only have one kid with classes, but what will I do when there is more?! I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

This is turning into a rather long post. So, to make it even longer, I have to share a great recipe I tried out last week for key lime pie. I got it out of the Real Simple magazine and it was so easy and I thought it was sooo yummy! Click here for the recipe. Keep in mind that the recipe calls for only 6 oz of frozen limeade concentrate. I bought a 12-oz container and almost put the whole thing in before I caught my mistake - that would have been a really intense key lime pie!

My Little Dancer

Emma's been taking a little dance class at Jill's house for the past 2 weeks. She's been really loving it! Today was their last day, so they performed for the parents. I was so proud of my Emma! She was so proud of herself too. She actually practiced once with the music at home last night (so daddy could see) and she could do most of it all by herself. So, here's one of the dances they did - Sorry my video skills are so poor. Oh, and for those that don't know Emma very well, she's the one on the far left, closest to the camera.

Surgery?!

My poor little Rebecca had to have surgery today! Okay, it sounds a lot worse then it really was, but I was still nervous about it. She finally got her tear ducts properly opened up. This child has been the goopiest little baby - there's always goo coming out of her eyes because her tear ducts never opened up like they were supposed to when she was a baby. Anyway, the protocol at my pediatrician's office is to wait till they're a year old and then refer them to an eye specialist. I guess this problem usually takes care of itself by then, but for Becca it didn't. It was a really simple procedure but they had to put her to sleep to do it, which made me a little uneasy. But Becca did just great! I'm glad it's over and poor Becca can avoid having her mother poke at her eyes all day trying to keep them clean.

We went to see Hancock over the weekend with Aubree and Craig - it was an alright movie - I'd say I was just as satisfied with it as I was with Indiana Jones... it got a little weird in parts with an unexpected turn in the plot, but it was definitely entertaining and very funny. I still want to see Hulk (even though that was on my original list of "do not see's" - I hear that it's actually really good) and Get Smart and I'm excited for Dark Knight to come out soon... too many movies and I'm running out of money!

Today Ben officially started up his 4th year and is doing a critical care rotation at the VA in Phoenix for the month. Does that mean that summer is already over?! What a bummer!

A much needed holiday break

Happy Fourth of July everyone (a little belated)! I'm happy to say that Ben finished his second set of Boards on Thursday. He still has the DO boards to take on Monday (sigh), but he feels a lot of relief having gotten the USMLE (MD boards) all done.... but now he's just stressed about his scores, which he won't get for 6 weeks. I'm willing to bet he did AWESOME, because he did awesome on the first set he took. Ben is such a great test taker (and I am not!) - I guess it's good he has that skill, because he's had to take a lot of tests in his lifetime so far. :/ Anyway, we were happy to take a little holiday break from all this testing - we left after Ben got home from his Thursday test and headed to the Squaw Peak Hilton Resort in Phoenix (I love resorts in town, because you feel like you're really getting away, but still only 20 minutes from your house!). We shared a large casita with Ben's family - it was a seriously good time! We lived in the pool while we were there - it was fun because the resort had a fun mini water park (lazy river, super fun slide, and various pools)... we also had a small pool and hot tub right next to our room (which was only to be shared among a few other casita's) - so it was fun having a more private pool in addition to the big one. I was so proud of Emma and her swimming! She's been a real wuss this summer and not wanting to practice her swimming much without arm floaties (is that a harsh thing to say?) - well, she did so great this weekend swimming all on her own. She starts swimming lessons in one week, so I was glad to see her finally be brave and have fun in the water. She went down the water slide a few times too! On Friday we went to a movie - we saw Wall-E again! None of the rest of the family had seen it yet, so we got to see it twice. I liked it even more the second time - and I was glad to see my robot crush again... I was missing him. ;) Eve sure is a lucky girl. Friday night we played games and watched the fireworks on the tv. :) What a relaxing holiday!