Happy Birthday Adam!

Happy #33 Birthday to my brother-in-law Adam! You’re a little crazy, but I love you too!

Dare

Let me preface this story by telling about an incident that happened several years ago before Elliot and I were even engaged. The year was 1999 and we were young whippersnappers getting ready for our trip to Weiser so that Elliot could meet my parents for the first time. Elliot’s mother was going to take us to the airport and for some reason (I don’t think any of us remember the reason clearly . . . if there was one), Mother Dibble needed to turn the car around to get out of the garage. She turned the entire car around INSIDE the garage! It was nearly a 29-point turn, but it was executed with great ease.

For our trip to California this week, we needed to borrow Mother Dibble’s Durango, so we brought it home tonight and Elliot pulled it into our carport. Before he turned off the car, he decided that he needed to back it into the carport instead for easy loading. As he started to back up, I dared him to turn around without leaving the driveway . . . assuming that this man who thrives on ways to save time and money and tries to avoid all embarrassing situations (lots of neighbors were out watching) would just give me a sympathy laugh and back up quickly. Not so. The man also can’t pass up a challenge when it comes to his driving abilities, so he proceeded to show me how much indeed he is like his Mother by turning the huge Durango completely around in our driveway without crashing into the brick wall or any foliage. Also nearly a 29-point turn and no pictures of the numerous tire marks on the driveway, but still very, very impressive!

Happy Birthday Adam!

Happy #31 Birthday to my brother Adam! I love you!

Happy Birthday Bill!

Happy BIG #40 Birthday to my brother-in-law Bill . . . or in this picture it's Billameana! (to explain, I think he wanted to go to my sister's bridal shower, so he dressed up and went, am I right Marci? and she still married him!)

Classic Pictures of Dad

I can’t wait until Father’s Day to post some of these pictures. I’ve been scanning my Grandma Rose Anderson’s pictures and I have grown so much more grateful for her! I can tell what was important to her by the records that she kept.

Loretta, Linda, Marc (dad) in 1942

Loretta, Linda, Marc in 1943

Marc in 1943 – I can tell that he was mischievous

East-er 1945 – Grandma Rose, Ned, Loretta, Linda, Marc

Dolly the calf and Marc in 1946

Marc & Ned in 1946 – I love this picture. I'm so glad Grandma carried her camera around too!

Pudgy & Puppies 1949 – Marc & Ned

Ned, Bruce & Marc in 1953 – If this doesn’t identify where our buck teeth come from, I don’t know what does!

My Gardens

Look at my CORN! It self-pollinated . . . well, I guess Stella and the other kids whacking it with the golf clubs may have helped some . . . great! . . . now I have to repent for all of the yelling I did at them!

My first zucchini from the garden!

Game Night

It was game night over at Liz’s house last Tuesday and even though it wasn’t very well attended, we had a great time. First . . . just you wait . . . we had a great laugh over the following . . . I know you’re all going to do it now:

Rebecca wasn’t afraid to do hers.


What you don’t see is that Emily also got matched with Wayne Brady, a very low percentage, but still matched nonetheless . . . and hilarious, especially since Emily is a quarter Albino!


I was worried about who I was going to get matched up with, assuming it be someone like John Candy or some Amazon woman. I was pleasantly surprised.


Liz had a good one too, but told us about another picture that she used previously that matched her up with Roberto Bennini (the guy from “Life is Beautiful”). I couldn’t stop laughing!


We played Boggle and Skip-Bo to end the night and took away some great laughs!

Mystery Solved

My friend’s husband watched Stella the other night so that she and I could go to an Enrichment game night. Stella loves Rachel and Kaitlyn, so they were all very excited to play together again. Rebecca and I had a great time at game night (see upcoming post), and I was very grateful to Spencer for watching Stella since Elliot was out of town. When I got home and got Stella ready for bed, I noticed that she was wearing one of Rachel’s diapers and was embarrassed that I had forgotten to leave a diaper for Spencer and was worried about the possible contents that may have been in the diaper he had to change. The next morning I brought Stella back over to Rebecca’s to play so that I could go Visiting Teaching. I asked Rebecca to apologize to Spencer for me about having to change the diaper. Rebecca looked at me seriously and said, “Yeah about that . . . Spencer said that Stella wasn’t wearing a diaper . . . he looked all over the house and couldn’t find it.” I’M A WHITE TRASH MOM! I can’t even clothe my own child properly! How could I not have noticed she wasn’t wearing a diaper? I know I even carried her to and from the house and buckled her in her car seat.

Here is the evidence right by the back door at home. Anyway, I’m totally embarrassed, but at least she was well behaved and didn’t leave her mark somewhere in their house . . . at least that they’ve found yet!

Nap Nazi

You know how I’ve had a little break down for the past seven months because of the sleeping change that our sweet girl has gone through since learning how to climb out of her crib, getting a new bed, and refusing to sleep perfectly as she once did? Well instead of trying to retrain her to take a nap, stay in bed, or just behave in general, I gave in to her crying demands and let her stay awake and do whatever she wants to do, all the while being completely jealous of other mom’s who still have napping children (I know you can sympathize with me as to the complete necessity that nap time is). I blame this entirely on myself (ok, occasionally I’ll transfer blame to whomever is in my way).

So last week I decided to retrain Stella to take a nap, especially since I had been staying up until 1:00 a.m. watching season 3 of 24 while Elliot was gone. Girlfriend needs a nap! I am happy to report that Stella is taking a nap as I sit here blogging (only took 5 minutes to fall asleep this time) and also took 3 successful naps last week since I decided to become a Nap Nazi!

Kayla at the Prom!

I can’t believe that my niece is old enough to go to the PROM! She’s gorgeous! I hope Bill gave him the grilling of his life and somehow attached a bug/electric shock system before he let his little girl leave the house. I hope she had a great time and I can't wait to see the rest of the pictures!

Swimming and Sliding

If I’m to find gladness in this forsaken heat so early in the year, I guess I can be glad that it’s warm enough outside to play in the water! I invited my friend Rebecca and her girls (Rachel & Kaitlyn) over to play in the little pool that I still haven’t given back to Emily since last week’s Play Group. Sam and Clark were over too and they all had a great time taking turns sliding into the water. I could just giggle for hours watching them play!

Happy Birthday Claire!

Happy #1 Birthday to our favorite little Claire! I love you!

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all great Moms and Mom’s in spirit! (I’m stealing Nat’s idea from last year’s Father’s Day)

Happy day especially to my own Super Mom! I love YOU!
















. . . and all of my other favorite Mom’s that I just don’t have pictures of! Happy Mother’s Day!

Miss Dibble

Bethany graduated today (summa cum laude . . . that means she is smart) from Arizona State University with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Education in Elementary Education! Congratulations Aunt Beth!

Random Stella

The other day we invited Anabelle to come and play at our house for a while until we were to eat dinner at her house that evening. For some reason, Stella thinks that she needs to show off and be a heathen when Anabelle is around. I was in my office when Anabelle came in and said, “Whitney, Stella is throwing all the cookies.” Hummm, I thought to myself . . . we don’t have any cookies in the house. So I got up to find Stella standing on the counter with my bucket of white flour opened and she was throwing heaping handfuls of it into the air and all over the dining room and herself! I don’t have a picture for documentation because I was pretty upset at the time.

Elliot was able to baptize Azia yesterday afternoon. On the way to the baptism, Stella and I had a little discussion about what baptism is. Elliot and Azia were both suited, of course, with those flattering white jump suits. Right before Elliot was to say the prayer, Stella said (not very loud), “Is Daddy wearing his jammies?”

After a year and a half of never having to change Stella’s diaper during church and no emergencies from nursery, for some reason, the nursery workers have been bringing Stella to me several times on Sundays. Phantom poops (stinky gas), real poops, saggy wet diapers, and a bleeding forehead is what we get now. Stella was climbing on the tables in the nursery today and when one of the workers reached out to get her down, Stella thought that was her cue to jump into her harms. Her forehead bashed into Sister Morgan’s teeth and the chaos began. All of the sudden I hear my name frantically whispered in Relief Society as I was about to stand to bear my testimony (the Spirit works the opposite way with me). I went into the bathroom to see Stella transitioning from her real cry to her fake “I still want more attention” cry. She was perfectly fine with a little cut on her head and quite honestly, just wanted to see the bloody paper towel. Sister Morgan’s teeth were still in tact when we went back to the nursery to apologize. You can see the little cut in her hairline. She's already forgotten where her owie is.

Happy Anniversary Ian and Natalie!

Happy #7 Anniversary to Ian and Natalie! Holy Moly, has it been that long already!?

04/27 – Karaoke Party

I wish everyone could just sit with me and look at all of the pictures and video I got of this night. Elliot, of course, couldn’t have been more uncomfortable while looking at them, but I couldn’t stop laughing! Our ward Priesthood Commemoration (Father/Son outing) was last weekend, so we planned a girls night at my house. There was plenty of food, a great turn out, and to top it all off, KARAOKE! My face and sides hurt so bad from laughing for the 6 hours we had it on!

Emily was the scroller through all of the songs and would survey everyones faces to see who lit up when a certain song was highlighted and encourage them to come and sing. She kept stopping on “My Give A Damn’s Busted” and “9 to 5,” and kept looking at me because apparently it was my turn to sing. I totally wanted to sing, but none of the songs suited my fancy. So I accidentally made my rather embarrassing debut trying to sing 9 to 5. This certain time on the karaoke game, I was being judged by the audience. I nearly got BOOED off the stage! Sure, I can sing the chorus, but the rest of the words (even though they were on the screen) were a different story! It rained on me and I got a 23%. Humiliating, even with Mari and Kimmie as my back-up singers/dancers. But I made up for it later when I sang “I’m Saving All My Love” and got a 95%.

It’s Kimmie’s dream to sing Tina Turner’s Proud Mary with all of her friends as back up singers (I’m sure there is full costume to top it all off).

Kimmie sang nearly every other song. When scrolling through the list of songs, it gives you a short little 10 second snippet of the song. I got video of Kimmie singing EVERY song, and it wasn’t just a little sing-a-long . . . you could tell that she also had a dance routine to go along with every song! It was so funny because her baby boy Stan was most relaxed and comfortable when he could hear her singing and when she was bouncing around dancing.

When we ran out of songs to sing, Emily called her brother who brought over 2 more discs of songs for us to choose from. When the list got to “Killing Me Softly,” Mari didn’t hesitate to stand and retrieve the microphone to be the lead singer (after everyone left, I also did very well singing this song).

Stella was everyone’s biggest fan!

So my friend Melissa is pregnant, as you can see. Every time I ask her how she’s doing, she always says that she just feels like she’s so big . . . wah, wah, wah . . . and since I’m so smart, I just think that it’s because she’s never ever had a belly in her life. So she had her ultrasound on Friday to find out if the baby was a boy or girl. She got a 3-D ultrasound and showed us the picture when she came over for the party. Well, I didn’t exactly know what I was looking at, and when I assumed what I was seeing was a boy, Melissa corrected me and told me that I was looking at the arm and also pointed out the head . . . and ANOTHER HEAD! She’s having TWIN GIRLS! I’ve told her and Geniel to start filling water jugs for me so I can be next with the twins!

Stella wanted it to be her turn to sing all the time and had a few minor tantrums, but was surprisingly enjoyable all night until she finally fell asleep at 12:05 a.m. I could tell that there was a lot of negative talk when we were asked to sing because every once in a while, Stella would grab the microphone, sing for a second, and then drop it to the floor and run off shaking her head and saying, “I can’t, I can’t!” She’s so dramatic.


Emma sang “Popcorn Popping” and it was so cute and had such a great time with the girls!

There were several group songs and dancing routines. Azia, a new sister in the ward (who was actually baptized yesterday), brought a friend and they were both totally into the karaoke. Azia wouldn’t sing, but she danced and had a great time!

Emily got 100% when she sang “Hungry Like a Wolf” (that song freaks me out).

It’s so fun to see friends get so into this. Meagan wore Stella’s cowgirl hat while she sang “Redneck Woman.”

Corinne was into the Dixie Chicks and sang “Goodbye Earl” and also sang a SheDaisy song.

When we could peel the microphone out of Kimmie’s hands, Crystal got a chance to sing a few songs. She was also a willing back up singer/dancer for Kimmie's Proud Mary number.

Baby Hudson was trying to sleep until Stella needed to give him some hugs and kisses. After that, he just watched the crazy ladies sing and dance around.



Stacy sang and danced in between feedings for baby Jane. These pictures make me laugh SO HARD! I don’t know what song they are singing, but it’s obviously a stirring rendition.

Tiffini finally agreed to sing a song after mostly everyone left and made sure that everyone was singing with her.


Some of them tried to do the dance moves that they saw on the screen. Also a great time.

People started trickling out and leaving, and before we knew it, 6 hours of singing had gone by. Emily passed out on the floor for a while before she remembered that her comfortable bed was 20 feet away at her house. Mari, Tiffini, and Crystal (and baby Elliott who slept through the entire party) spent the night. We ate a yummy breakfast of licorice and scrambled eggs and then Stella and I tried to get through the day without passing out from being so tired!

If you'd like to scroll through the pictures again and think of everyone singing these other songs, you might just get another kick out of it: Crazy in Love, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?, Endless Love, Fame, Greatest Love of All (which I would have done a duet with Lindsay, had she been here), Material Girl, A Natural Woman, Flashdance, Love Shack, My Immortal, Heartbreaker (so funny to see Kimmie sing), More Than Words, She Bangs, What a Girl Wants, Don't Worry Bout a Thing, How Do I Live, I Like It I Love It, Wide Open Spaces, and Suds in the Bucket.