She DECIDES to walk! Finally...

Well, folks! Lulu decided to walk yesterday. It was a busy day starting with a very small yard sale (mostly to get rid of 2 strollers and a couch... we sold two strollers and are pending on the couch. So, it was a success!) Anyway, we were talking to our neighbor and Dallan says, "Lucy stood up!" I'm thinking, big deal, she stands up all the time. The catch was she stood up with nothing and no one to hold on to. So my assumptions with Lucy's personality were correct. She had to decide "I want to walk" and she would. So, she then walked a good distance in the grass toward me! We cheered and applauded and made a HUGE deal of it! So of course she did it again, and again and again! And voila! She is walking. It's still faster to crawl, so unless she is wanting praise, she still crawls. But I'm so happy she is walking now! Mostly because it seems less dirty to walk than to crawl. Like the other day at the zoo, we were in the goats petting zoo and Lucy crawled right into a pile of goat poop. It was so disgusting, but if she were walking, I would have been cleaning a shoe and not racing to the sink to wash her hands before they got near her mouth and face. So anyway, all you who say, "You don't want her walking.... its better they don't walk." I just don't believe you. I'm so EXCITED that my Lucy is a walker! Take a look:

Emily Noxon is AMAZING!

I'm so excited for this friend I had to share. It's fun to see people you know and went to High School with do amazing things, and this Emily Noxon is one of the most amazing people I know. I'm proud to say I was in choir at one point with Emily! :) Way to go Emily! This video won her a competition against nearly 400 other people competing to sing with the band Rascal Flatts, and amazing Emily WON!!! I just think that is SOOOO cool! Take a look at her video:

Be a Milk Rock Star with Rascal Flatts! Brickfish

Traveling like crazy

After looking at my friend Kellie's blog, and after her saying how bad she felt for not posting things often enough, I felt REALLY bad! But I have a legitimate excuse for that. We had a crazy fun April, with family visiting and us going all over the place, I am kind of shocked by it being May already because, wait, where did April go?! Anyway, thought I'd at least share some photo highlights of our adventures. First we went to Utah to celebrate our upcoming 5 year wedding anniversary. The girls stayed with Grandma and Grandpa while we played most of the week like we were newlyweds again. Lucy had her first birthday while we were in Utah, so of course we spent that day with the girls. Best moments included a wonderful blizzard in Park city, (and I thought I'd missed my chance to see snow this year) getting a pedicure, Lucy's birthday of course, a chance to go to the Salt Lake Temple, and I finally got to ride the historic Heber Valley Railroad. I learned on this trip that 4 days like without my girls is much too much for me. I really missed them the second half of the week.




When we got back from Utah, we had a trip to the Whiting homestead planned for the following weekend. Dallan defended this vacation saying it was planned before all the rest, and at first I thought it was to fulfill YM President duties. I was under the impression he needed to take his advisor up there to plan an upcoming superactivity. Really Dallan just wanted to go to the Homestead. So we went Simper style "camping" Friday and Saturday. It was cold but beautiful!



And now, we are planning to leave in two days for Idaho to celebrate my Grandma's 90th birthday with the rest of my family. I am very nervous for this because I will be flying alone with my girls. We have bought magic markers and papers to color, along with stickers and I plan to take the girls favorite toys along, but there are so many restrictions on airlines now, and cranky people who don't like or understand kids. I mean, my girls are good, but can I really demand them to stay still and quite for 3 hours of flying. I can't even get that in church!! Anyway, if there are any other experienced child flyers out there with some suggestions let me know. And hopefully you'll get to see pictures from that event (but don't hold your breath)... no, life calms down again after this trip. So I promise, I'll do better!!

Potty Trained

Bedelia is officially, 100% potty trained! Two weeks ago today, Bedelia woke up and declared, "I am big now, I want to wear big girl pants". I had heard that children each have their own wake up call of sorts giving interest in potty training, but I didn't expect it to be this sudden. We immediately went to the store, bought a little toilet seat cover to ease the fear of falling in, some big girl panties, and pull-ups. And then my little girl was potty trained. We spent the first 2 days of this adventure with her pant less, and had an eyeopening experience when she was sent to time out that first evening of potty training wearing her big girl panties. All of a sudden, the crying stopped and she says "the floor's wet right here." I went over to her and instinctively giggled. She had no idea what "tinkle"was! I mean, she knew she had to have her diapers changed, but I honestly believe she didn't understand it until that moment. I took her to the bathroom and happily explained in two year old terms what had happened, so as not to scare her from the experience. That was a big moment, from that moment we would cheer and dance and run around in circles when she would tell us she had to go tinkle -- and it worked. She got excited about it, and minus one or two minor accidents she hasn't had any accidents, can wear panties all the time and wakes up most mornings with a dry pull-up! I'm amazed with her self control, and with her decisiveness! I imagine that this trait will continue with her throughout her life, as it has manifest itself in speaking, memorizing books, walking, not to mention her impeccable memory when it comes to things that are important to her. Anyway, if you are ever in need of a good smile, let me know and I'll have an excited little girl call to tell you how exciting poop can be!

Digital Scrapbooking

I haven't put up a new post in a while because I've been busy! I discovered a fun new way to scrapbook, that I can do WHILE being a busy mom of two. It's the wonderful world of digital scrapbooking! I discovered a great, FREE software online called Scrapbook Flair, which has given me a new scrapbooking freedom I haven't experienced since Lulu was born. In two and a half weeks I completed a 90 page book. The two weeks was partly due to a deadline of sale through winkflash, which by the way was a killer deal. They were offering their digital 8X10 book printed for $19.95 with a limit of 100 pages. Normal this would be a $50 book through winkflash. This sale motivated me (to say the least) and I got to work putting together a fun book I titled "Simpering Along January-May 2007." I just got the finished product in the mail yesterday and it looks FABULOUS! I can't tell you how much it felt like Christmas to look through that book yesterday! Well, I want to tell you all, even though I know a lot of people (scrapbook guru's...) who think paper scrapbooking is the only way to do it or not at all, digital scrapbooking is cleaner, faster and just as nice looking. I do like paper scrapbooking for my kids, but that's because I love them. It takes a LOT of time, planning, money, TIME... to make a full on scrapbook, and I hardly have any of the above!!! The only downside I found to my new found art is the printed books from places like shutterfly and winkflash are unprotected from tiny hands. The pages bend as easy as their story books and can smudge, so not as child friendly to pull off the shelf and look through unsupervised, but I am just so excited about the idea of actually getting caught up in my personal family history. I have decided I will still make paper books for each of my children for them to take with them later in life, but these digital scrapbooks make it possible for me to journal and make my own book of life with very little money or time! I love it! Here are some of my pages.

An Eventful Week

What can I say? I'm exhausted. This last week was a killer... nearly literally! My poor husband worked a very full week before Christmas. He took me on a date while me parents were still around to watch the kiddos, and then woke up Thursday in the middle of the night throwing up. So Friday was a sick day followed by a 4 day weekend for New Years. He felt better Saturday and we had a nice weekend as a family. Spent some time with Dallan's brother's family, went to a couples home for New Years to play games, even went shopping with the girls New Years day. But that afternoon Dallan felt really tired and thought if he just took a nap he'd feel better (seeing as the night before we were up late partying) but one nap wasn't enough, he then laid on the couch and said, I feel terrible. Wednesday he woke up much, much worse, coughing, no voice (well, the voice he had wasn't his own, it was more of a Barry White sort of voice), feverish chills ect. I've never seen Dallan this sick ever! So he called in a sick day and it was all I could do to keep girls from bugging him and let him sleep. It didn't get better. Wednesday he received a Priesthood blessing from our hometeachers and Thursday when he was worse, I told him I was taking him to the doctor. I had read online the symptoms of Pneumonia and he fit the tab perfectly. The doctor wasn't originally going to give us an appointment for Thursday, but when I proceeded to tell them his symptoms they said to bring him in immediately. We never were sure 100% if it was pneumonia (they would have had to x-ray his chest to know for sure) but they gave him antibiotics to treat it or whatever infection it may have been. He ended up taking off the remainder of last week sick in bed. Drugs are wonderful though. By Sunday he no longer sounded like Barry White and isn't coughing nearly as much. Hooray for modern medicine.

Ok, the rest of the story. In the middle of all this chaos, I was trying to make dinner (Thursday night) while Dallan slept, the girls were both hanging on my pant legs and I was tired! Well, I was making this casserole that has a sort of egg based custard in the center, and I must have chosen too small a pan to put it all in. Well, when I went to put it into the oven it tipped and egg batter went oozing onto the inside of the oven door! I had a paper towel already in one hand and thought it wasn't too hot yet, I'd just quickly wipe up the mess with the paper towel. Totally flustered I didn't even realize I was holding a flaming paper towel until my 2 year old says "mommy, what's that?!" THEN I realize my hand is getting super hot! I dropped the flame onto the tile and began whacking it with a kitchen towel (all very curious and exciting to my two witnesses.) Once satisfied the house wasn't going to burn down, I cleaned up the rest of my mess and started the dishwasher. When I reentered the kitchen, minutes later, I noticed an unusual drip under the dishwasher, so I stopped it to open it and see what was going on and a massive gush of water spilled out from under the dishwasher!

It was all very commical looking back on it! Dallan didn't even know this story in full until a couple days ago since he was so delirious during it! So I put the girls to bed and went dishwasher shopping by myself that night. I learned (although it didn't really take all this to teach me) I love my husband. I need him in so many ways, and I don't like it when he's sick! It wasn't fun at all. I was really greatful for the blessing given by our hometeacher because it blessed the rest of us to not get the same infection Dallan had. I can't imagine what would happen if I were to get sick, or the girls for that matter. Lulu has a pretty bad cold and I took her into the doctor on Monday worried it was turning into an infection, but she was clear. The blessing was fulfilled (even if I still have to wade through sick waters with my kiddos, I'll take this over what Dallan had any day).

.... week's contiuation later: Judging a youth concerto competition. Highlights: piccolo playing Vivaldi and a poor clarinetist (#13) who broke his mouthpiece moments before playing... more to come.

Christmas with the Waltons

I did a mass upload finally of my favorite pictures from Christmas. If you are interested in seeing them, there were way too many favorites to fit individually on a blog post, so you can click the link below and view the entire album:

A Simpering Christmas 2007

I hope everyone had a very Wonderful Christmas! We surely did. It was fun to have my family with us. Enjoy the pictures, and I'll be sure to give an update about life soon. This weekend you can look forward to stories about starting a fire in my kitchen and moments later flooding the dishwasher. My poor husband hasn't been to work all week because he somehow contracted pneumonia (If you have been reading, my theory is that his really terrible demands at work finally caught up and he couldn't take anymore) along with some other fun things, I'm exhausted and tomorrow get to go and listen to high school musicians compete to play with the Phoenix symphony for 8 hours! What a blog entry I have coming up (if that wasn't exciting enough!) Anyway, check back for more stories and excitement later.