Hooray for Back to School!

Emma started up with school again yesterday and she was so happy! She really loves her teacher, Miss Lorene. It's only been a few weeks since the summer session ended, so she hasn't been out for that long. Emma said the cutest thing before leaving for school yesterday. I asked her if she was excited to go back and she proceeds to tell me "Miss Lorene's sad". I asked her why she would be sad and she answers, "Because she misses me". So funny! I know I've already said this before, but this girl just LOVES school. She gets so sad when her homework is all done and can't wait to get some more. She always wants to do it first thing when she gets home. Anyway, I'm trying to really appreciate that attitude while it lasts. :) Her teacher emailed us these pictures from their first day back and I thought they were so fun. She has such a cute class! I can tell this will be a great school year for her.

More Gold Medals, Please!

Warning: Random Post!

Okay - to start. Wo Olympics!! Ben and I are loving it over here! And I'm staying up way too late every night because of it. As with Amanda, we were screaming at our television last night when the men's relay team won!! Wasn't that amazing?! The swimming is by far my favorite to watch - probably because it's easy to understand.. the fastest wins!! The gymnastics is fun too, but I wish I understood the scoring a little better. Tonight we're looking forward to more swimming (hooray Michael Phelps!!), men's gymnastics, and beach volleyball. Woohoo! Go USA!! OH, and a shout out to China for the most awesome Opening Ceremonies EVER!! Incredible!! :)

So, Emma has more or less stopped taking her afternoon nap (she'll maybe still fall asleep 1 or 2 times each week). Well, to keep my sanity, I've done what many other moms have suggested and instilled Quiet Time into our routine. Becca still naps in the afternoon, of course (but no longer in the morning, which is actually kind of nice, as it opens up our day a little better). Emma doesn't have to sleep during Quiet Time, but she has to spend one hour (from 1pm-2) in her room. She can play with her toys or look at books, or whatever - as long as she's relatively quiet about it. I shut her door either way, so I don't hear much of what she's up to in there. Well, as a result, Emma's room is getting TRASHED! So, first is a picture of Emma's room when it is clean:



And second, a picture of her room after quiet time:



AHHHH!! I get to the point where I don't even know where to begin with cleaning it up. First of all, I feel like Emma has too much stuff in her room. I really need to get on a rotating system with her toys. And she has so much little stuff - dress up, makeup stuff, kitchen stuff, coloring stuff, etc, etc. What to do... any suggestions? Should I just throw half of it away? I guess, I feel like she has so much going on in her room that Emma doesn't even know where to begin herself, in helping me clean it. What a chore!

We took a little break from Olympic watching and spent Saturday morning mini golfing. Haven't done that in forever! It was fun - the place was a little ghetto - I was just trying to find an indoor mini golf place that wasn't too far away - but the kids really loved it. They gave Becca a little plastic putter and she devotedly carried that and her little green ball around. She decided that the key to mini golfing was to collect and return as many balls to their owners. So, it kind of turned into a race to get your ball into the hole before Becca grabbed it and handed it to you. She's so funny.

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Last year, I remember thinking that the summer just never ended. It was nearing the end of September and we were still having temps in the 100's. It will be interesting to see how it goes this year. The high temps are at least nice for swimming, so we will continue to do so as long as possible! Below is Emma with some of her friends at Taya's pool. They kept holding hands and jumping off the side of the pool like this.

Fun Amidst Bees

We went camping in Prescott over the weekend - it was really beautiful up there! It's fun to be able to drive just 1 1/2 hours from the Phoenix desert to find yourself in pine forests. It was definitely cooler than here, but still quite warm. I slept on top of my sleeping bag the whole night, because it never really cooled down much. We had a great time just Ben and I and the kids. It's wonderful to have family time, especially as our family grows it gets to be more and more entertaining with just us. Becca really enjoyed herself being able to wander around amidst the dirt and pinecones. She fell a few times, though, and came out of the excursion with many battle wounds on her face. Emma's favorite part was roasting pink marshmallows (we let her pick out the marshmallows at the store and she chose the pink (strawberry) ones). My favorite part was the food - Ben always does an excellent job with our camping menu. We had tinfoil dinners (chicken with rice, peppers, pineapple, coconut and such) and sweet rolls for dessert out of the dutch oven - yum! The only thing to complain about regarding our camping trip was all the bugs - you're probably saying to yourself, "well, you shouldn't have gone camping then!". Well, I usually deal with bugs alright when we're camping, because they are to be expected, but we had a ton of bees at our campsite! They only really hung around during meal times, but it was so annoying! We figured there must have been a hive nearby or something - it was driving me crazy. The bees encouraged us to pack up quickly after breakfast and we drove to the nearby lake to hang out and then to a trailhead to do a little hike. Emma loved climbing up on the big boulders surrounding the trail - it made for some good picture moments. She really loves having her picture taken lately. Becca was very happy to be be able to ride with mommy in the carrier - I thought she'd get squirmy and want to get down and toddle on her own, but she was smart enough to appreciate the privilege of being able to go along for the ride. How nice for her! Not to say I didn't enjoy the exercise myself - it was a good little outing for us.

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Oh, and I was able to get tickets to the SYTYCD tour show in September in Utah. Woohoo! My sister and I will be going and I'm pretty darn excited! :)

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!

I have a crush on a robot...

Stuff we did this weekend:

• 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!

So, Ben is taking his second set of boards on Thursday - he's going to do awesome! He's seriously been studying so hard - I'll be so glad when it's all over with! After boards we're headed to a resort in town with Ben's family for the 4th of July holiday. I'm counting down the days!

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!

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!!

Tempe Splash Park

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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!

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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. :)

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! :)

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. ;)

Thoughts and Movies

I don't have any pictures to post, but I just feel like it's been too long since I put up something new, so pictures or not - here we go...

First of all, I'm just soooo happy to have Ben home again. One month without him was really hard. I'm thankful that most of his rotations this next school year are going to be close to home. I know I'm spoiled in that regard. I feel like with most of our other med school friends, the hubby's will be traveling around the country this next year, and I'm just grateful that Ben will be able to stick it out here at home for most of the time. I'm excited to get going with our 4th year of med school!! I have that mentality right now of being so close, yet so far away from our goal of Ben actually having a job. Residency is right around the corner, but I'm mostly looking forward to when that's all over and done with too. Not to say that I'm not trying to really enjoy the journey of it all. In fact, I'm also sooo sad at the thought of moving on to residency and beyond and having to leave most all of our friends behind as we all go our different ways. I look at my huge blog list of friends and most of them are all people we see regularly and hang out with often and have kids that Emma dearly loves! And most are also med school student families, giving us all something big to relate to each other about. What an amazing support system I have! Anyway, I know this time is fleeting and I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts - because it's quickly coming to an end!

We had a great Memorial Day weekend! We've also been able to get out and see some of the big movies that have been coming out. I love summer movies!! Finally, some good stuff is getting into the theaters! We saw Narnia last week and Indiana Jones on Memorial Day. I'd give Narnia a 4 out of 5. It was great, really... a little slower than the first (I'd give the first one a 5/5!), but entertaining for sure and visually awesome! I'd give Indiana Jones a 3 1/2 out of 5, and in some respects maybe I'd even give it higher than that... it was definitely a little out there - I mean, past Indiana Jones movies are definitely a little crazy - not realistic at all and mostly just to entertain... but this one seemed particularly far-fetched. I'm not sure what it was. Somehow it turned into an alien movie and that kind of weirded me out. But I was entertained throughout - never bored, for sure, and Harrison Ford was cool - and I'm a big Shia LaBeouf fan. I used to watch him back in the days when we was the star of Even Stevens, a silly tv series on the Disney Channel. Anyway, it's fun to see him be so successful in so many big movies! I hope it doesn't go to his head! Other summer movies I'm anxious to see: Hancock, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Get Smart, and The Dark Knight. Movies I am NOT anxious to see: Hell Boy II, The Mummy, The Love Guru, and The Incredible Hulk. General rule of thumb - don't make sequels to movies when the originals were lame!

Plenty to celebrate

Well, I've been home for a few days now, but I've been slow to post about my great week in Utah. I think I've been a little overwhelmed at all the pictures I took! I chose my favorites and made them into a couple of slideshows. It was the perfect time for a family visit - we celebrated my dad's birthday, my brother Aaron's birthday, and Mother's Day of course. As I've already griped about, Ben is still away in Tucson - in fact, he had to work all day on Mother's Day, so I was glad that I had my family to keep me entertained this past week - or I would have been a rather sad Susan. :(

Some notes about our week -

Dad's birthday: Sarah grilled some kebabs and pineapple. She also made an awesome raspberry trifle (per dad's request - in lieu of cake). Dad's birthday actually ended up with a space theme - Dad LOVES space and dreams of traveling to the moon one day. :) I actually bought him his very own acre of land on the moon to someday be used for building a second home. hmmm....

Thanksgiving Point Gardens: I was sooo impressed by this place. It motivates me to get my own flower garden going... someday. :) My parents have season passes and go walking here often, which sounds absolutely lovely! Emma's favorite part was rolling down the big grass hill - she kept veering sideways, and even started rolling up the hill a couple of times. :/

Aaron's Birthday: Aaron wanted homemade pizza for his birthday dinner - he ended up helping quite a bit with it actually - he even tossed the dough for us! After dinner, presents, and cake, we went disc golfing at a nearby park. Emma loved coming along - she insisted on hanging onto the pink disc (and DON'T call them frisbee's or you'll get in big trouble - not by me, but by those that care). Dad ended up winning - awesome discing dad!

So, as you can tell, it was a great week - Mother's day was really nice too - I got lots of presents from Emma (which she made in Primary - her Aunt Sarah teaches the sunbeams, so even though she's really in nursery she got to spend the time in Primary - and she LOVED it!). Ben also surprised me and had flowers sent to my family's house a couple days earlier. That really made me feel special - thanks cute Ben! Now I'm anxiously awaiting my hubby to come home. His last day in Tucson is tomorrow, so he'll be home for good tomorrow night - hooray!!

David Archuleta!!

So, I totally feel like I lucked out being in Utah the week that David Archuleta came to town! I Love American Idol and 'Little David' is just so cute! ;) I have a total crush on him. Ha! I guess he's too young for me. Anyway, my mom and I packed up the kiddos and headed to Gateway to see him. On our way down, I thought to myself - 'it'll probably be packed with people, but it can't be that bad since it's during a school day and all the little 12 year old David fans will be away at school'. But, I was sooo wrong! The place was swarming with little girls - but, not too surprisingly, also swarming with lots of mommies and their toddlers. Right next to me there was this older lady in her 50's or so, screaming her head off "David! I LOVE you!!". It was hillarious - she kept apologizing to me for waving her hands in front of my camera - she said "I'm just crazy about David! He's just so cute!" Anyway, it was fun and a rather memorable outing. After seeing little David, we ate some lunch and then headed over to the children's museum. I love visiting that place! The kids always have an awesome time! Well, I'll post more about our week in Utah after we get back home. We'll be coming home Monday. We have a fun weekend planned and tonight we're going to see Iron Man!

Finding things to do...

My kids have been so silly lately - it starts with the fact that in the last few weeks Becca has really been making huge leaps in her ability to play and communicate and her personality is just so amusing. I LOVE my girls! I've been so grateful for them these past couple of weeks as Ben has been away on rotation - they have definitely helped keep me distracted and entertained. Anyway, back to the silliness - they have been finding the weirdest things to do. I've been trying to scale back the television watching (I've been working on this for while now - some days are definitely better than others!) and as a result they definitely have more time to experiment with their imaginative play. Emma discovered that she could push Becca around in the little push cart they have. And then the funnier thing was watching as they switched places and Becca pushed Emma around! That made me laugh. Later in the day I found them sitting in the laundry basket full of clean clothes. I just like seeing the two of them giggle together and enjoy each other. They definitely get on each others nerves quite a bit as well, but I like to think they get along more than they fight. This morning I was so amused at the activity Becca found to do. Emma was busy in her room dressing up like a princess and Becca decided to take all the toilet paper rolls from under the bathroom sink and put them in our bathtub. This was while I was getting ready in the bathroom, so I was definitely happy to see her keep herself so well occupied! I just couldn't believe how long she worked on this little project. She could only get a hold of one roll at a time, so getting that much t.p. transferred was quite a feat. It doesn't surprise me really, though - she definitely enjoys this kind of thing. She loves moving objects from one container to another. I'm not sure what that means about her personality - I just know that Emma was never entertained by stuff like that. Oh, and sorry about the crazy slide show - I'm usually not a big fan of pictures that bounce around and make you dizzy - but this time around, I felt it was appropriate, since the kids have been bouncing around the house and making me dizzy.

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