Busy days in Utah

We're back home after a great week in Utah. I can't believe how busy we were! Being still morning sick I wasn't sure I'd be able to do much during the week, but I really started to feel much better during my stay there. After getting back home, I'm still feeling pretty darn good - it's nice to know I'm on the upswing of getting better and reaching more pleasant times in this pregnancy. So, my parents came on Thursday in the early afternoon - we chatted for a while and gave them the tour of the house - since this was their first time seeing it. They got the lucky privilege of sleeping on the air mattress in Becca's bedroom (while Becca spent the night in the playpen in our big closet). We took a little outing to Trader Joes while they were here. I talk about the place all the time, because it's one of my favorite places to buy great food. They were glad to finally see what all the fuss was about and it was a good excuse to stock up on car snacks for our drive to Utah the next day. The drive went well - I didn't even throw up... however, Becca did! We only had about 10 minutes left till home when she threw up all over herself and the carseat. The poor girl is known for this - we suspect she gets really motion sick and car rides can be rough for her. I guess it was good that we were so close to home, or that would have made for a really miserable trip. We stopped a lot on our drive up - which was much needed considering we each had to take turns sitting in between the two car seats - it was a tight fit, but we made it! We did a lot of fun stuff while in Utah - I'll make a list of our happenings:

• Farmer's Market- They have a great farmer's market in downtown Salt Lake every Saturday. The best part were all the samples! Even better than Costco! Mom and Dad loaded up on produce for the week (peaches, apples, corn, watermelon, salsa, etc) - so yummy. We also bought an eggplant - it reminded me of myself (wearing a purple shirt and feeling rather wide around the middle), so I had my picture taken with it.
  
• Park visits - We spent a couple afternoons at local parks, playing tennis, walking, and letting the kids play. I really was trying to soak in the cooler weather while I could!
• Children's Museum- As is tradition, we spent a morning at the Discovery Center at the Gateway. What a great place! This was the first time that Becca really got something out of it as well. It's fun to see her grow up and really be able to play.
• IKEA- We may have an IKEA in Arizona, but we don't make it there very often since it's about a 30 minute drive away. So, it's always nice to make an visit there while in Utah with it only about 10 minutes from the house. Emma enjoys the play area and it's a nice inexpensive lunch outing. We even bought a few things, including some yummy chocolate.
  
• So You Think You Can Dance!!! - Totally AWESOME! My sister and I got tickets a couple months ago. She's actually never watched the show, but I couldn't go alone! Now she says she'll watch next season, since it was so awesome! The top 12 dancers from this past season performed all the most popular dances from the show. I was just in awe the whole time. 3 of the dancers were from Utah, so there was lots of screaming and plenty of support for the hometown faves. :) It may not be David Archuleta, but c'mon, isn't Gev just so cute! My favorite dance was the Bleeding Love performance with Chelsea and Mark. It was amazing and even cooler to see it live! My other fave was the hip hop dance by Comfort and Twitch - amazing!! The video below is not from the tour show, of course, but one I pulled off of You Tube from the show itself. I wish I could dance! Could that be a show? So You Wish You Could Dance?!

• Hogle Zoo - The weather was so great the day we went to the zoo; it just felt so nice to be outside! Becca loved riding the train and even exhibited her skills in signing train. When we were heading into the zoo, I asked Emma what animals she wanted to see and she said, "Dolphins!". I was sorry to disappoint her with the fact that there were no dolphins at the zoo. But there were penguins and she liked that. :)
  
• Provo time!- It's never a complete Utah visit until we've spent sometime in lovely Provo. :) So many memories. Since my brother Aaron is going to BYU right now, we had a good excuse to drive down for a visit. We met up with Aaron after his workday was over and drove over Gandolfo's for dinner (we call it "creepy basement Gandolfos"... the one on center street.. but it's the best one!) and then we mini-golfed at Cascade. What a great night!
• Wheeler Farm- Another favorite place to visit. We fed the ducks (despite the all the crazy scary geese attacking us for bread!), ate a picnic lunch, rode the wagon, visited the animals, and Emma rode a pony. A lovely afternoon indeed.
  
• Great-grandma's house- We love to see my grandma and grandpa in Salt Lake while we're there. Emma loves swinging in their backyard and she helped great-grandpa pick tomatoes and beans from their garden.
• Picnic in the canyon- The leaves are starting to change to fall colors up in the mountains and it was definitely nice to see. We ate our picnic lunch and then walked through the trails a bit.
• Corn Maze!- We did this maze last year at Thanksgiving Point. It's a really great event. They have a ton of kids activities in addition to the big corn maze. We let the kids play first. Emma got to dress up like a princess, jump on the giant inflatable pillow, ride the cow train, and slide down some huge slides. We totally got lost in the maze. Aaron and Sarah split up from us and got out in like 20 minutes, but it took the rest of us an hour I think - and we chose the easy maze. Apparently from above, the maze is shaped like David Archuletta - funny! After the maze we went to Cafe Rio for dinner... mmmm...
  

Anyway, it was a great week - the kids did well on the flight home. There were extra seats on the plane, so Becca got to have her own seat - she enjoyed not being in a car seat and Emma loved watching out the window and drinking apple juice. I loved that the flight was only 1hr and 30 minutes. :)

Lots of stuff on my mind

My parents are coming for a quick visit tomorrow. They've been in Palm Springs this week at a resort vacationing - how nice! So, since they're only 4 hours away from us (as opposed to 10-12), they are going to come see us tomorrow after checking out of their hotel. They'll be spending the night and then the next morning we (the kids and I) will drive to Utah with them to spend the week. At the end of the week we will fly home. So - there's the plan for the next week and half. I'm really excited! I'm hoping I'll do okay on the drive to Utah - I'm still nauseous (not horribly, and I am having many good days intermixed with bad). Today was a little worse, which is probably a good thing, because I don't usually have 2 bad days in a row. Well, seeing as my parents are coming to visit, I needed to make sure my house was clean. Ben's been doing much of the cleaning lately, but mopping and cleaning the bathrooms and such have been more neglected. Ben's rotation this month has been at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale and they have him on a pretty rough schedule. He's spending the night at the hospital every fourth day - he doesn't have weekends off even. Anyway, he's at the hospital tonight which means I needed to really get down to cleaning despite that I am husband-less. Well, I got a lot done and now I don't think I'll be embarrassed by having my mom and dad see my house. I don't really know how I did it, considering I was feeling so cruddy - I must be really motivated. :) I even got Emma's room organized yesterday (or mostly organized - there are still some things to do). I got some great advice from the previous post about my cluttery Emma room woes. One thing that was suggested was to put the toys and such in clear storage boxes and keep them up high. So, the idea now is that most of her stuff is up where she has to ask to get it down. Today for quiet time I told her she could pick one box to play with during the hour - she picked her art/craft box. So, she made a bit of a mess with the stuff in there, but at least it was all easily cleaned up - later in the afternoon she was able to toss all her markers and coloring books and such back into the box and back up on the shelf in her closet it went. Wonderful!! No more scary messes that are too disorganized to tame. So, right now she has boxes for the following: legos, art stuff, make up/princess stuff, dvd's (lately she's figured out how to put her own dvd's in and start movies without asking, so now she can't), and dress up clothes. I still want to box up her musical instruments, puzzles, and a few other things. I'd like the only things left out to be her books and her kitchen stuff, so she at least has a couple things that she can get to easily without bugging mommy. Anyway, I've rambled way too long about this - but I'm just thrilled!

A few more random thoughts - I'm getting mosquito bites like crazy lately! I've hardly been leaving the house, so I must be getting bit during the night or something. I keep waking up and discovering 2 or 3 more itchy mosquito bites. I hate it! I currently have one right on my face - lovely - and a couple on my legs and one on my foot. I'm an itchy mess - as if I don't already have enough issues.
On a nicer note, after the kids bath this morning I plopped them on the couch in their towels while I went to gather their clothes - they looked so cute all wet and wrapped up, so I took a picture.



We're also getting ready to put Becca in a toddler bed (which we'll be moving in with Emma closer to when the baby comes) - We decided to put a pillow in her crib to sleep on for the next few weeks before we throw her in a bed so she can get used to using one. She seriously loves it and I'm really surprised at how well she stays on it - when I check on her before going to bed myself, she's usually still snuggled in on her pillow. Last night was really funny - she lately really likes her baby dolls and this random squirrel friend, so she took them to bed with her. Well, when I checked her a few hours later, she had them nicely placed on the pillow beside her - so funny. I had to take a picture and she shielded her eyes from the flash when I did so. :) And another very random thing - I saw this video this morning. I thought it was so amusing - I really don't enjoy cats (or dogs for that matter), but this just made me giggle, and kind of creeped me out. :)

3 is a crowd

Well, the time has come to finally post about the fact that I'm prego with number 3! Most of the people that live around me and see me often already know this, but for all my lovely friends that live elsewhere that I don't get to see much, this should be new news for you. :) We are very excited about the idea of having a 3rd little one to terrorize our house... honestly I get a little overwhelmed if I think about it too much, but I just love our girls so much, how can I not be anxious to have another! Not to say that this one will be another girl - I'm holding out hope, for Ben's sake, that this will be a boy - but I really would be thrilled to have 3 girls. I love girls! Either way, I'll be pretty excited. We should be finding out the gender around the beginning of November - the due date is April 10th (according to the most recent ultrasound I got). So this puts me 10 weeks today. I've been anxious to blab about this on my blog, so that I can stop pretending that I feel great and everything is super. I've been feeling pretty crappy lately and very tired. My nice hubby has been doing all the cleaning for the past month. I'm truly blessed... and also very anxious to be feeling myself again. And I guess the best part of officially announcing this is that now I can put a baby countdown on my blog! Hooray! ;) I've opted against the floating fetus one and will try out a cute one I've seen around lately of a rather shapely mommy-to-be. I wish I really did look like that!

And even though I've been feeling blecky lately, Becca's been staying rather chipper - her latest love is bananas, and they make her very happy indeed. :)

A good excuse for cake

My blogging has become rather irregular - sorry! I've been pretty lame lately. But, I have some fun pictures on my camera, so I have a good excuse to post something. Happy Belated Birthday Jodi! Lovely Jodi turned 30 on Monday - woohoo! We had a fun little swim party at Taya's house in honor of the big day. Jodi was lucky to get to blow out her own candles... she had a lot of competition! Now, I only hope I look as good as you when I turn 30. :)



On Tuesday, we went to the new Phoenix Children's Museum. We met up with Taya, Trevi, and Ezra to play. It was a fun morning. There's still construction going on with several exhibits still to be opened in the coming year, but there was plenty to keep the kids busy. Emma, of course, loved shopping for groceries. This seems to be a staple attraction at any children's museum I've ever been to. Becca joined in and picked out some of her favorite foods - popsicles and macaroni and cheese. Such a clever girl. Emma was a little more practical and grabbed plenty of milk and Bisquick. :) At the end of our visit, we went ahead and purchased a year-long membership. This will be in place of the zoo this time around. Three years of a zoo pass and I guess it's time to try something else - at least the children's museum is nice and cool!

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Red Boots

In an effort to not let too much time pass between posts, I'm currently avoiding getting ready for the day while I put up some cute pics of my Becca. She's been so funny lately - she LOVES shoes and is often trying to get everyone to put on their shoes so we can go somewhere. She likes to bring me my shoes in the morning as well as her own for help in putting them on. This morning she found these random red boots in her shoe box and she very excitedly handed them to me to put them on her, so I did - even though she wasn't dressed yet. So cute! She's also started smiling on command (when she's in the mood, that is). She gives the funniest crooked teeth/scrunched nose smiles. Anyway, I asked her to smile for the camera and she gave me a few of these priceless grins. I also discovered that her hair is long enough finally to put it into some little pigtails - she has so little hair, but I think she looks so cute with her piggytails... they match her personality splendidly. And I also think she's super cute naked - a little ribby, but huggable nonetheless. ;)

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!