Showin' Off

I really just want to show off how cute my girls are, and I haven't posted new pictures in a while. Here are some summer favorites.

The budding artist in the family.
Specialties include letter A's, circles and giant hearts.

Peace!Is it time to go yet?

You have to admit, she has great hair!

Talk about water-logged!

Aren't they cute? It's so much fun watching these two very different people develop and grow. They have such different strengths and interests, but love each other so much. It's so fun being their mom!

The Throne of Enlightenment

Potty Training... sigh... after 8 months of it, you'd think things would be EASY! Well, some of the aspects of it are, like Amelia is 100% dry all night long, and no longer uses any pull-up products. So that, I am REALLY thankful for! However, the "number 2" part has become less than humorous to me, until today! Amelia loves to take her time, in EVERYTHING! She loves to draw out meal time, clean up and chores, getting dressed, showering and going to the bathroom. The other day we had record time of 1 1/2 hours spent on the toilet at one time. If that isn't enough time to read the readers digest I don't know what is!! Her problem is she had quite a scary bathroom experience two weeks ago where Dallan's trip to the bathroom preceeded Amelia's and the toilet overflowed ALL OVER the bathroom, water was just gushing out while Amelia was in there. That's enough to traumatize any small child (heck, it was my biggest fear as a little girl that the toilet would drown me!), so I could empathize. She's hesitated every time she's needed to poop since then (sorry for the "p" word on my blog... beware, it may come up again as this is a poopy topic). And every time she's needed to poop (there it is again) she has a small accident in her pants. This had happened a few times before the overflow incident, but it's just gotten worse since then. So I KNOW she needs to go! I've basically told her she isn't allowed to get off the toilet until she has finished pooping IN THE TOILET! Thanks to Kellie I've tried to change my attitude about this all and not get mad, so we're making subtle improvements... but today, today was funny! She pooped in her pants again, this was just as we were getting ready to make dinner, so we sent her to the bathroom and Dallan shut the door and told her to have some private time to take care of business. Well, 15 minutes later we went to check on her and found:


Zzzzzzzz........ poor thing!

Olympic Gymnastics Gone Wrong?

I am annoyed and angry for those amazing girls on the USA girls gymnastics team who are being judged very unfairly in Beijing. Watching the girls a couple nights ago in the All-around finals and then tonight watching last nights vaulting finals, I can't help but wonder if there is something jaded going on in that judging panel. At first, I thought, maybe I'm just an unexperienced eye in this and there is more to what they are judging. But after I had thought something was done wrong in the judging, the more experienced commentators make the same comments and are mad themselves, I felt like I had in fact seen something go wrong in the judging. I wonder, if one of the higher up judges had not gone over to the panel of judges in the all-arounds, would Nastia and Shawn been in gold and silver? I don't know. Something seemed to be in the Chinese favor over USA even though the Chinese keep making mistake after mistake. And my heart just aches for Alicia tonight who lost a medal, even though she had superb execution and landing on the vault, and every other person who competed stepped out of bounds, fell on their knees, missed a hand on the vault, and THEY get placed above her?!! It's just wrong and it makes me mad. In my mind, Alicia was the gold medalist tonight, I'm just so sad for her...

Anyway, my apologies for those who aren't as into the olympics as I am and may not know what I'm talking about. I love the summer olympics, this has been such a fun week to watch these amazing athletes do amazing things. They make me want to be better and do better at everything! This week they have round about inspired me to be a better mom, do more and be better in music and keeping a clean house. But it makes me so sad to see something maybe political or maybe just bad judges, making mistakes that cost young girls their dreams which they rightfully deserved to win.

It's War.

This is the Enemy: The Squash Bug.

This is the location: My Garden.
As you can see they are breeding and moving very quickly! I want them all DEAD!

If you have never had to deal with squash bugs before, let me fill you in. They are the smelliest, most nasty garden bug I have ever seen. I came home from Utah last week and found my squash, all dead. My canteloupe trying very hard to survive. And I found THOUSANDS, and I really mean thousands, of these tiny nasty bugs and their offspring everywhere. Some have told me to just give up. Its the end of the 1st summer season here in Phoenix, but I have one canteloupe vine still very green, with many little budding canteloupe on it, and one near ready to pick. So I am fighting for them! The past three days I have spent filling jars full of these nasty bugs and pouring nasty chemicals on them and then leaving them in the sun to boil to death. Today, however I got tired of my hundreds of slow dying pests, so I plucked them off by the handfuls and stomped on them. And another interesting fact about these bugs, they let off the most horrific smell when stepped on, and turn into a greenish gel (some have been bright red, I've wondered if they were the breeding ones), almost like an alien for of some sort that turns into green goo when it dies. Amelia came over to me and said, "mommy, what are you doing?" and before I could come up with an answer, she said "are you dancing?" I said, "yes Amelia, I'm doing the squishing dance." She however, didn't want to join in my dance. If anyone out there knows of a better way to get rid of this nasty pest, please let me know. I did some brief research and found that NO pesticides will pennitrate to kill this one, basically everything I read said squish em till their dead. So that's what I have been doing. And anyone who knows me, knows that I am very squeemish about touching bugs of any kind. But like I said, THIS IS WAR!!!

Water Babies

We spent the last two weeks in swimming lessons, and let me say it was the best Arizona summer investment ever spent. Lucy loves water, always has, but I needed guidance for not getting nervous whenever my baby tried something new in the pool. And Amelia fed off my nervousness when she was small I'm sure, and was scared to get her head in the water. So I had a goal for swimming lessons and that was to get us all more comfortable around water. It's a necessity here in Arizona with constant 114 degree weather, you gotta spend the day in and around water to stay cool! We went swimming tonight at our neighbors house for family night and, GOAL MET! Yea! Lucy is now TOO comfortable in the water (I had to jump in after her fully clothed after she dove into the water before the rest of us!), but she has learned to kick, paddle, pull herself up on the wall, float and we found out LOVES to be thrown into the deeper parts of the pool. Dallan sat out because of his dental visit earlier today, so he'd throw her in, she'd go under and I'd catch her. She was all smiles and swam frantically back to Dallan to do it again. I was so proud and amazed watching Amelia swim around, jumping in, going under the water. Swimming lessons were the best money ever spent!

Little Girls and their Dolls

I love having little girls. They are so loving, so motherly right from the start. Today at church someone was impressed when they heard Lucy say "baby" quite clearly. Let me just say, she's learned from her sister, we love babies! Lucy got her very own doll for her birthday and she loves to feed it, to give it kisses, and have us give it kisses. She hugs it, pats its back, takes wet wipes and gives her baths. It's so fun to see her and Amelia nurture their little dollies. In the picture of Amelia in the stroller, that is Binky Dolly in her very own carseat, and yes, Amelia is shading Binky Dolly from the sun using a map of the Botanical Gardens! Lucy's baby is yet to be named other than Lucy's Baby. We'll let you know when it gains its identity further. (Be sure to watch the video at the bottom. It's quite cute...)

One of those weeks!

Well, in case you were wondering, the week didn't improve. I love playing the oboe. But sometimes I just have to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why do I keep playing? Every time I have an opportunity to play, it seems to follow the rule "when it rains, it pours". Christmas, Easter, ect are very high in music job opportunities, so I can usually anticipate those busy seasons, prepare for them, but they are still stressful. This week was a fluke in the system for me, busy off-season. I have started playing with a woodwind nonet, and our first concert was this afternoon in a beautiful cathedral in downtown phoenix. About two weeks ago I agreed to also do a musical production of Secret Garden, which meant I had dress rehersal with the nonet Tuesday, dress rehersals for the musical Wednesday and Thursday (with two different casts) and performances Friday, two on Saturday, and the nonet today. On top of that I had previously scheduled for Amelia to have her 3rd year photos to be taken as well as an updated family picture Saturday morning. AND swimming lessons every morning except Friday this last week and next. Just CRAZY, CRAZY schedule. And then on top of all of that... Dallan mentioned Thursday night he has had a major toothache all week, but hasn't said anything because there wouldn't have been time to do anything about it with work and everything else going on. By last night he couldn't move, and described the pain as a 10 on the pain scale. Drugs didn't help at all yesterday, but I was gone all day, he had to take care of the girls all day, so it was a really rotten day for him. We got cute pictures though, on the bright side... I just want to cry! I love to play my oboe, I love to take these opportunities, but everytime I do my family suffers. (Dallan quite literally this time). Poor Amelia got sent to time out in nursery for kicking another child today. She is never a violent child! She just reacts so badly when there is stress in our home, I know thats why she reacted to whatever, like she did. Is it worth keeping this talent, this passion of mine, while raising my family? How do other people do it, keeping something they hold dear to their heart while keeping up with family, home and children? And this is something I feel like I need to keep, my music I mean. I just need to find a way to balance and deal with the stress better. Anyway, Dallan is going to a dentist tomorrow, I'm vowing to let my house go to the pits this week, at least while kids are awake, and see if I can't renew some stability in these poor little girls lives (and my own).