Desert Breeze Park

Elliot and I took some of our engagement photos at Desert Breeze Park almost 9 years ago, but I didn't realize that it had a water park. We met Auntie Em, Sammy, Clarkie, and Macy and Aunt Kimmie (recently promoted by Stella to "Aunt Kimmie"), Stan and Noelle. It took Stella a while, but she eventually enjoyed the water spraying randomly at her.
The playground was more interesting to her though. At one point while the kids were playing in the playground, Sam sighed deeply and said, "How will I ever catch her, she is just so SO fast!"


It was so fun, in fact, that we went to the park gain the next day with Stacy, Mason, and Jane and met Em and kids and Brooke and Tyler, Justin, and Caleb.

Family

When Elliot's parents got married (almost 35 years ago), they moved from Utah all the way down here to Arizona. ALL of both of their siblings still live in Utah so it's fairly easy to visit them when we go there. I do love it when they come to Arizona for a vacation though because we get to pay more attention to individual families! Aunt Ruth and Seth (Stella's new prince) and Brett participated in our Ball Challenge when they were here:

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We also went out to dinner at the Sugar Bowl, a family favorite! Thanks for coming!

Final Vote

So the results are in and after 53 votes, 79% (42 votes) of you think that the song is called "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and a solid 20% (11 votes) of us who are really correct sing "Eensy Weensy Spider." Thanks for voting!:)

I know you're all wondering . . .

. . . or maybe not. Here's the update on Project: Abyss from a while ago. I was supposed to have the room clean by 6:00 on Friday night. It didn't get completely clean, but most of the stuff was off of the floor (put on my desk) and Elliot even says that he can breathe in there now.

It doesn't matter anyway because we didn't even need to use that room on Friday! ELLIOT TRICKED ME! We added wireless internet to our home and our guests just sat on the couch in the living room. It's only a matter of time before the path to the computer narrows and Elliot's breathing becomes labored, thus unhatching my evil plans to take over the whole house!

BEFORE I was tricked into starting to clean my room.

AFTER I put a few focused minutes into cleaning the room (mostly on Friday afternoon). We can actually open both doors!

Here's what I was doing instead of cleaning all week!

Of course . . .

Of course I would be a Disney character that is sleeping . . . Elliot will love this one.

You Are Aurora! (A.K.A. Sleeping Beauty.)

Thoughtful and loving. Authority figures probably have been sheltering you all of your life. Thankfully you're a very tranquil person who is content with what life has given you, but secretly you want to know how the outside world works.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

It got worse . . .

I am NOT giving Stella that last dose of medicine. I'll talk to her doctor, look up stuff on the internet, go to my witch doctor or do whatever it takes to NOT give her that last dose! Steriods are sent from the very deepest layer of hell! I had to remind myself with every question she asked and every household apparatus she knocked over yesterday that Stella was not herself because of that evil drug! I was ready to sell her to the Gypsies!

The Spider Song

I have a little dilemma. I have recently added the spider song to our repertoire in Nursery singing time. However, some of the teachers sing "Eensy Weensy Spider" and some sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider." So which one is it? I made a little poll to the right!

Tazmanian Devil

Stella started sounding gross on Thursday night, so on Friday (to avoid Urgent Care over the weekend), I took her to the doctor. The doctor was in a hurry and we were in and out of the office in less than 5 minutes with the diagnosis of croup. As we were leaving with the prescription, the doctor said, "She may become a little grumpy or aggressive." . . . great!

She DID NOT sleep on Friday night! Now, some parents are used to their kids not sleeping or have had some experience with it when their kids were babies. Besides currently having difficulties falling asleep, Stella has always been a great sleeper and we can count on less than one hand how many times we've ever been awake with her for an extended period of time in the middle of the night (including when she was a baby). So we took turns with her hourly wake-ups and we're both exhausted.

I was gone most of the day on Saturday, so Elliot got to experience the first signs of aggressive behavior. She slept really well last night. However, this morning when she woke up at her usual time of 6:00, she didn't go back to sleep when she climbed into our bed as she usually does. Elliot was getting ready for church and I was desperatly trying to get more than 6 hours of sleep. She was WIDE AWAKE! She asked me 50 questions about what Dad was doing before she started jumping on the bed. Oh, by the way, croup is an infection on the larynx (voice box) which make the voice a little higher, so the incessent questioning was vexing my nerves!

I finally gave up and got up with her, followed her out to the kitchen and somehow she was already bathroomed and dressed (she dresses herself now) and had eaten by 6:11. By 6:32 her clean room looked like this:


By 6:35, she had started on the living room:


By 7:01 she was ready for a snack and got it all out by herself and had gotten feet prints all over my counters. I needed to shower and the only way I could feel comfortable leaving her alone was if she watched a movie (her current favorite is "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"). So I knew I had 25 minutes and 12 seconds to get ready for the day. Three seconds before the movie was over, she was back in my bathroom putting on make-up and then jumping on the bed, climbing on the dresser . . . AAAAHHHH!

She still has her cough, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that her Primary teachers would kiss my feet for not bringing her to church today!

She just burst through the door and said, "Mom! We totally have applesauce!" She's been rearranging the cabinets and refrigerator. She's also had 4 wardrobe changes in the last 20 minutes.

Keep your eyes on the horizon . . .

The author of my favorite book "These Is My Words" was at the Tempe Public Library yesterday afternoon for a book signing, so Elliot and I made a date of it (I love early dates). She was AWESOME! The whole dress and hat thing was a little weird, but she is such a great story-teller and it was so nice to hear how her books came about and all of the changes she had to make to them. The story of Sarah Prine (Nancy's great-great grandmother) started as she read journal entries of her own great-great uncle Alvin Prine, who was Sarah Prine's brother. There were never any journal entries from Sarah, but she was intrigued by the thought of what her story would have been. Long story short (too late), Nancy E. Turner was taking a writing class and ended up writing a short story (first chapter of the book), won 1st runner-up in a competition, wrote the rest of the book, and after going through almost EVERY publisher known to man, ended up publishing.

My mother-in-law wanted me to ask her who she would choose to play Jack Elliot if the book was made into a movie, but someone else asked it. So I asked her if she knew how to shoot a rifle . . . and she does. She said her Grandfather took her out to learn how to shoot when she was 11-years-old. After blowing up her first 2 targets, he threw up his hands, proclaimed "This is no fun!" and walked into the house to smoke his cigar.

So this is Nancy's pick to play Sarah and Jack in her movie, which I think is WAY off:
Ashley Judd
Brendan Fraser







I can't think of anyone for Sarah yet, but these are my two picks for Jack:
Cameron Bancroft (that chizzled jaw . . yum) and Michael Schoeffling (I can't find a picture) from the movie "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken" (although I think he's almost 50 years old now . . . probably still beautiful!)

She said that she's had several producers call and ask for her book, which she happily sends them. She's sent it to Ron Howard, Tom Selleck, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Mel Gibson who actually asked for 5 copies of each book and then went into rehab the next day. I would LOVE to see this book turn into a movie so I could watch it daily. Thanks for the great date Sweetie!

The Bloody Nose and Oxy Clean

This is why I have a testimony of Oxy Clean. On Saturday night we went over to Adam & Xan's for Chinese food and to visit with Elliot's Aunt Ruth who came from Utah with her 2 youngest kids Seth & Brett to visit. I wasn't feeling very well (probably after-effects of the hair-dying experience and lack of sleep), and while we were making smores outside in the fire-pit, Stella started screaming on the trampoline. I went over to rescue her (she'd already had a zipper/hair issue earlier) and found blood all over her face.

One thing I think comes only when you are a Mom is that no matter what disgusting things my own child does (or happens to her), I can still be calm and not freak out about it. Perhaps Stella has trained me for this bloody experience as she shows me her dirty green boogers several times a day (but she doesn't eat them . . . how many Mom's can say that? Not you, I've seen your kid eat their boogers!).

Anyway, Grandma and I calmly cleaned my poor baby's face up and she skipped along her way to play again. She did bloody up her own shirt and skirt and my shirt. Plus I had a little bit of hair dye on another shirt from the other day, so I stuck them in a bowl of Oxy Clean and by morning they were perfectly clean and sparkly! Amen!

The Mistake

Whoops! Next time, someone arrange for us to have some supervision! Em and I decided to have a girls day/night out with our girls (Macy and Stella) on Friday while the boys went to the Father & Son's campout. Our plan was to simply eat, watch Pride & Prejudice, eat some more, stop off at the Girls party at Stacy's, finish Pride & Prejudice, eat more, and then sleep.

We started with lunch at Red Robin with Rebecca and Heidi, and then stopped at Target for our treats. Emily needed some soap for her house, so on our way to get that, we saw the hair dye [insert gasps]. "Let's dye our hair!" says Emily to her easily pursuaded friend.

So we bought the blondest blonde hair color that we could find (no reason) and headed home to fry our heads. After the confusion over the phrase "up to 90 minutes" had gone by and my head was sufficiently burned, this is what we get:

The picture doesn't quite capture the whiteness of my hair. Although mine was shocking, it was at least even. Emily had a bigger problem. Some say that the problem was the friend doing her hair, but others would say that she has so much freaking hair that one box isn't enough! There were splotches all over her head, except in the middle back where I did really well.

We started making phone calls to our hair professional friends and ended up at Sally's Beauty Supply picking out new color to fix our hair. A lady working there told us that we couldn't do our hair for another 2 weeks . . . um, I'm sure that there are more people that just us morons that do this to themselves all the time and then seek the professionals for help immediately, not waiting 2 weeks.
So we decided to stop off at Stacy's house for shock value and funny pictures. Here were some of our responses:
Stacy had her sister Brittany (also a hair professional) on the phone and driving over to her house before she even let us over the threshhold!
Kimmie and everyone else in the living room were all laughing, including Corinne whom I had called earlier to get some hair advice.
I didn't get Mari's initial scream, but there was still some whimpering when this picture was taken. Emily got to hide her hair under a hat (cheater).
Even the babies couldn't look away!

Corinne agreed to help us fix it and sent Emily back to Sally's Beauty Supply to get another bottle of product. Myra and Kimmie decided that they wanted to highlight their hair too (see we can still be inspirational to others), so they went with Em.

Myra and Ellie
I never realized how long Kimmie's hair is.
Am I leaving few to wonder why Stella is so crazy?

So our simply planned night turned into this, but we had fun, still got to watch a little of our movie, and learned (or realized) these 3 things:

1. We are grown, mature women in our 30's.
2. We have successful husbands and can certainly afford to get our hair done by a professional.
3. We are pretty sure that we can still be friends.

I took a little accidental nap on Saturday morning while Stella was playing Carebears on the computer, and woke up with a little tiara on my head.

The color is not as shocking, but I still have only had 1 person say that they liked it (fairly sincerely). You can always tell when people don't like your hair when they say or do these things (all of which have happened to me over the last few days):

"Do you like it?"
"Look at you!"
"You got your hair done!"
"What did you do?"
. . . or take one look at you and walk into the back room without saying a word (thanks Sweetie)
among others . . . .

Project: Abyss

Did anyone see those episodes on Oprah about horders (people who keep a lot of crap)? Well, as I was sitting there thinking "I'm not that bad," this room flashed in my head. It's full of unfinished projects, scrapbook supplies, old Primary stuff, old Enrichment stuff, and current Nursery stuff, plus a lot of other peoples stuff (pictures, albums, folders, etc) that I borrow because I have a project in mind for it. Well, no more friends! I will not become that lady who had the 4,000 square foot home full of piles and breathing problems because she couldn't get rid of her stuff!

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My cleaning deadline is this Friday at 6:00 p.m. because we have our ward Family History Consultants coming over to teach us and another family about Family History. So who wants to watch Stella so I can actually get this done?

Hershey Squirts

Stella and I got sick on Saturday, although Stella's sickness never gets her down like it does for me. Stella still had a little runs on Sunday when we were at Grandma's. After a little pooper, Stella hopped off of the toilet, looked at it and said in a most concerned manner, "Oh, Honey!"

Aunt Ruth, Seth & Brett

Grandpa's sister and her kids came to visit during their Spring Break. How did the Dibble and Gregory families raise such great kids? We played some wicked games of Snatch (sort of like Scrabble . . . not really though) and Set. Stella absolutely loves the boys and Aunt Ruth and they are great with her!

"But the sun is so bright in my eyes!"

Stella is so high maintenance.