Zoo Wonders

For all you Simper's who check our blog, you will greatly appreciate this. We ran into someone very dear to our hearts at the zoo yesterday. Can you guess who from the picture?
You never knew you had such a famous Uncle, did you?!

We also saw a very noisy tree full of birds. I'm waiting for my dad to let me know what he thinks it was. My dad is an avid bird watcher. It's a gift and love he's always had, and he's dedicated a lot of time to photographing thousands of birds! They are beautiful photographs, and I guess you can say his hobby has made me a lot more aware and curious about these feathered friends too.
And then we went to the part of the zoo where the Apes (NOT monkeys!)... to quote silly songs with Larry, "If it doesn't have a tail, its not a monkey... it's not a monkey its an ape... (great song by the way!) and look at the strage apes I found! They said "Sisters" on the sign. They were found wandering loose in the zoo yesterday. Someone really should find and contain them if you ask me!

26 Years Behind Me

Happy 26th birthday to me! We've had a fun morning going to feed ducks and have a picnic with our friends Max, Kellie and Rian. AND I got to have my free birthday lunch from Joe's BBQ, yum! :) The girls are both napping now, :) and I am just feeling thankful for lots of things. SO, for my 26th blog entry on my 26th birthday, I wanted to list 26 things I am thankful for in my life.

1. God and Jesus Christ. I am so thankful I have knowledge of a living God who knows me and loves me and has shown his hand in numerous ways throughout my life. And for a Savior who took all of my sins and shortcomings upon himself so that I have a chance to make it back to them someday. (I think that might have been two...)

3. Dallan. He's wonderful! I love how patient he is with me. He really is the perfect man for me! Not to mention what a wonderful dad he is. And he's cute... ;)

4. Being a mom. There is nothing better (most days). What a blessing it is to have 2 strong, healthy and vibrant girls to raise. They teach me so much.

5. Music. It's played such a significant part of my life, it defines a lot of who I am! It's one of my favorite things to do and be a part of. I am grateful for all the opportunities to make good music I've had throughout my life.

6. Good friends. Everyone needs good friends in their lives, and I have some of the best! My friends keep me sane!

7. Good parents. I am grateful I have a close relationship with my mom and dad. I am also grateful for the way they raised me. They are the best! (I'm also grateful for my in-laws. I married into such a good family)

8. Sisters. I'm grateful for my sister, she's one of my closest friends. I've always looked up to her. I'm also grateful my daughters get to have each other as sisters. It's one of lifes greatest relationships.

9. Brothers. My brothers, all three, just seem so much older and wiser than me. I love to talk to them all and learn from them and their experiences.

(okay, now that I have the sentimentals out of the way...)
10. Technology. (Otherwise I couldn't be typing this blog post right now!)

11. Ice cream. Dallan made me an ice cream cake for my birthday, I'm so excited to eat it!!! (and I need to figure out when I am getting my free b-day cold stone ice cream.) I really am grateful for ice cream! :)

12. Parks. They are free and they are not in my house AND kids can run and not get in too much trouble. I like going to the park.

13. I'm thankful this is half way done... this is getting difficult. Maybe I just need to think more basic...

14. Shoes. It would be hot without them.

15. Being home so I don't have to wear shoes.

16. Good Books. (I'm waiting my turn to read the next Stephanie Myers book... yes I like sappy teenage romance novels!)

17. Quiet afternoons.

18. My house, when its clean.

19. Work = money = bills paid = less stress, so I guess I'm thankful for work.

20. Digital cameras. Do you remember the day when you had to actually develop film?! Wow! Am I ever grateful I'm now part of the digital age!

21. The Whiting Homestead. It has always been Dallan's favorite place on earth, and I do believe it is now one of mine.

22. Fun toys. I think I like toys more than my kids some days. And I'm SOOOO excited for Christmas!

23. I'm thankful the bugs are gone from our garden. I guess the bugs go when the plants go, but at least I don't have to squish them anymore.

24. Laughing. Its life's best medicine.

25. Health. We sometimes take for granted how perfectly our bodies work until you lose some of that perfection. I'm grateful for the healthy times.

26. I'm grateful for 26 wonderful years of living and looking forward to a whole lot more!

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!