Christmas Parade

Every year we go across the street to watch the Litchfield Park Christmas parade. It's a fun little parade with lots of old people in old cars, lots of little kids in Girl and Boy Scout uniforms, and a few High School bands. It is a fun activity. This year Spencer thought it was great that they throw candy to you. He loved that part. He would yell at them to throw him candy and would get mad that they couldn't hear him, but every piece he did get, he would open right there and stick it in his mouth. I eventually talked him into saving some for later so that he wouldn't get a tummy ache. Lily enjoys watching it, but could do without the noise. Siena still thinks it is fun to go in hopes of buying food and goods at the craft fair afterwards. We found some beautiful glass necklaces this year, but we have to save them for Christmas. They also have snow brought in from somewhere to play in (although it didn't arrive on time this year) and they have bouncy toys to play in. All in all, it is a fun place to be for a few hours on a Saturday every December.

Santa Sightings

Spencer and Lily have seen Santa quite a few times this holiday season. They saw one at Lily's school Christmas party, TWO at the Kiwanis Club Christmas party for Lily, and another one at the mall for Lily's field trip. Then we saw him at the Litchfield Park parade on Saturday. I hear he will be at our ward Christmas party, but we won't be there to see him. I wonder how many more times we will see him this year. That's 5 and still counting...

Here's a picture that Spencer made of him. It looks a lot like him, doesn't it?

Galveston Island Clothing Drive

Siena worked on her Young Women's 10-hour Good Works project by helping to sort and box up clothes to send to Galveston, TX. Apparently Hurricane Ivan washed away a lot down there so our Stake did a clothing drive for them. From the first picture you can see there were a lot of clothes. Those piles were only the men and women's clothes. There was another wall with children's clothes piled up that high, too. We worked long and hard. Siena was complemented by many people for how hard she was working. It made us feel good to do something to help others.
The next picture was how much we got done that night.
Then that weekend she finished up her project by helping to make 8 dozen cookies for the Airforce cookie drive. Their goal was to have 1,000 dozen cookies to give to the military for Christmas. The base is a big part of our community since it is less than 2 miles from our house, so we were glad to be a part of that.
I must say that I am very proud of Siena for working so hard to complete her goals. She is such good person and I enjoy spending time with her in doing such meaningful work.

Giggles

Lily had the giggles when she came home from school on Tuesday. Of course, she stopped as soon as I grabbed the camera, but then she got going again. Lily's giggles are so funny because she laughs so hard that it is sometimes a silent laugh and you wonder when she will take another breath. Then she laughs so hard that they turn into cries. Not happy, teary cries but unhappy, moaning cries. While she is laughing though, I laugh along with her. It's quite contagious.

It was dark in Paul's office, so it might be hard to see.

Turning Lemons into Lemonade

We have long awaited the day that our dwarf lemon tree would produce lemons. We began to think that even though it looked like a lemon tree and smelled like a lemon tree that maybe our barren little tree wasn't really a lemon tree. However, this last spring and summer after about four years of waiting, we noticed that it might actually produce something. Saturday, we had our first taste of the wonders of living in a warm climate (even though it happened to be the coldest day of our Fall season). The kids made some delicious lemonade. It was gone all too soon, but guess what? More were ripe today! So this afternoon Spencer and I made more. Even though this first year of production is small, we will probably have a hundred or more to enjoy. Looks like I had better look up some lemon recipes or we will be drinking lots of lemonade.

Look what else I saw in our yard. The cat scared it away before I could get anymore photos.

Family pictures

Every November we take family pictures to send out with our Christmas cards. This year I sent my cards out early with a picture of my kids. Generally, I like family pictures better, but the children's pictures were so cute, I decided that this year I could live without the family picture. However, my mom has been pleading for current pictures of the families of all her kids so she can frame them for her wall, so despite not really needing a family picture this year, I knew we had to do it.

Usually we are too cheap to have any professional to take our pictures so we do it ourselves. Every few years we invite friends to come with us so we can switch off- they can take ours and we can take theirs. But that usually takes so long that you end up going crazy, or losing the light, or having a kid throw a tantrum. So most of the time we just take a tripod and do it ourselves.

I don't know how most families are about getting pictures, but ours seems to be pretty difficult. I hate to give most of the blame to Lily, but she is the hardest person to get a good photo of. We have to take literally hundreds of photos to get one good one of her. She is always looking down, drooling, yawning, floppy, or throwing her hands around. Don't get me wrong, I don't get mad at her because I know she can't help it, but it is very distracting for everyone else. We are all talking to her, tickling her, wiping her mouth, readjusting her just to get her to look up by the time the timer goes click, but then we all end up being contorted.

We don't have a remote to the camera, so Paul runs back and forth sweating and running out of patience. He is always willing to take pictures, but I think he would prefer to pull his own teeth out with a pair of pliers, so that underlying tension is always there.

Siena tries hard to help, but usually ends up getting in an argument with Paul. Spencer is at the stage of cheesy smiles and playing around- which he then gets yelled at for not staying still.

I am juggling everyone's attitudes and trying to keep the peace, organizing where everyone should be, yelling at everyone to stay calm and smiling, making sure Lily's head is up and that my double chin is not showing. We are all worn out by the time Paul refuses to take another shot, but I'm still begging for more.

It is a good thing Paul knows how to photoshop anything, otherwise, you would know the real us! Every year he ends up having to switch heads on at least one of us. However, this year despite the switching of heads, it still isn't that great. But you get what you get and you don't throw a fit! At least no one got killed.

Which reminds me of when I was little. We were about to get our family picture taken when one of our dogs got run over. Is that right, Mom? Or did a hamster get squeezed to death? I can't remember exactly, but we were all bawling our eyes out. You can see in the picture that we all had red eyes, but I think we faked the smiles pretty well.

Now you see the real us. Here are a few of the 124 taken.

Picnic weather

Sometimes when you're in the house you forget about how nice a day it is outside. We watched a lot of TV and played too many PS3 games over the Thanksgiving break until I was sick of it. So we decided to go out and enjoy the outdoors. It's finally nice weather in AZ so we like to have picnics at the lake and play at the park. Last Saturday we took Paul's remote control sailboat out to lake and enjoyed a little bit of cool air and sunshine. Paul sailed his boat, Siena read a book, Spencer fed the ducks and the pigeons, and Lily and I enjoyed watching and participating in all of it. It was a great afternoon.

6 Things You Might Not Know About Me

My friend, Chanel tagged me to write about six things you might not know about me.

1. I chew on lollipops and ice cream instead of sucking or licking them.

2. I think a lot about death. I'm always thinking that someone I love is going to die and leave me, or that I am going to die and leave them. I always worry when Paul and I leave our kids that we will both die and they will be left trying to figure out what to do.

3. Over the last 3 years I have become very afraid of heights while I'm driving-particularly on bridges and overpasses. It is somewhat paralyzing. It bugs me because I never felt that way before and I don't know how to get rid of it.

4. I like equality or balance. For example, when I kiss Lily on one cheek, I always feel like I need to kiss the other side, too. I'm not compelled to do it, I just feel like I should. Like the other side of her face will feel left out if it is not kissed, too. I also like the same for me.

5. I have nightmares that my teeth fall out and I have quite a few other re-occurring nightmares that take place on a stage, at school, or in the Spanish language.

6. My house is usually quite messy, even though I hate it that way, and I always tell Paul that if I die he needs to clean the house before anyone comes over.

Wow, now that I type it all out I see that I have a lot of fears and that I fear the lack of control. Maybe I should see a therapist. Thanks, Chanel.
Now, I'm tagging anyone in my family that is brave enough to tell 6 things I might not know about you.

Muppet Look-alikes

The other day the Muppets took over the "Today" show. Spencer was watching and said that they looked like this.

Then my brother put a Halloween picture of himself on his blog and I thought he looked like a muppet, too.

A day of Nature- Indoors

The kids had the day off from school for Veteran's Day so we spent the day in Mesa. We went to the Bass Pro Shop where they have tons of taxidermy animals and lots of nice aquariums to enjoy.

We think Grandpa Daniels would love to go fishing in these waters. Look how big the fish are!

They also a have shooting range that was fun for all of us.

There was a Christmas display with things for children to do and trains to watch.

Then we went to lunch with our friend, Pearl, at the Rainforest Cafe. It was a very entertaining place to eat with elephants, waterfalls, starry skies, thunderstorms, and monkeys hanging from the ceiling.

After running to the bookstore, we picked up our favorite Bahama Bucks snow cones to eat on the way home.

That night I went to a very nice dinner with my friends to "celebrate!?" our release from the Young Women's organization.

What a fun day. It's hard to get back into cleaning the house today.

Time Out for Mothers and Girls

My sweet friend, Beckie, had tickets to go Deseret Book's "Time out for Women and Girls" on Saturday, but she couldn't go because her recently-turned-insane husband wanted to compete in an Ironman competition in Las Vegas on the same weekend. She, being the dutiful wife that she is, went to support him and have a little vacay in LV at the same time. I suppose she thought she might have to drag his dead body home in the minivan. (just kidding-David is The Man! I'm sure he made it through alive.) So Siena and I were the lucky recipients of her tickets to this day-long devotional of inspirational talks and music.

First, we met up with our friends, Trea and Kabria, for breakfast, and then spent the day in Phoenix being entertained and uplifted and seeing many friends from our current and previous wards. It was really nice spending the day with Siena, and so sweet of Paul to take care of Lily and Spencer for the whole day without any complaints. Thanks Beckie! You are awesome!

TMI- Too Much Information?

Some like to read, some may play games, does anyone else sit backwards and play games?

After taking this picture he told me he was freaking out? Why? Not because I took his picture, but because he couldn't get his guy to climb up to the top of the ladder on his gameboy.

When I showed him the picture he said, "Cool, I'm going poopoo on the potty and playing games!" Way to multi-task.

Feeding the Lories

Since Spencer was feeling better on Tuesday after being sick for a week and because the 75 degree weather was so nice, I took him to the zoo. We got there just in time to fee the Lories apples out of the palms of our hands. Fun stuff!

This lady was having so much fun she didn't even seem to notice that I was poking her in the stomach!Next we played on the playground, and then went to the petting zoo and Spencer got to name a brand new chick. He didn't quite grasp the concept, but he liked the named "Fluffy" when it was suggested. It was a Japanese Silky, I think.When I told him that we would be eating turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, it didn't even phase him. That's the farmer's blood in him.We ended our visit with a walk by the monkey cages. They have some baby monkeys that are so cute. We only stayed a couple of hours because I bought us a year pass last Spring. Of course, it is really only a six month pass because the other half of the year is too hot to go. Not kidding. This December they are opening up an aquarium. That will be nice in the summer, but they are also raising the prices, so I'm not sure we will sign up for another year. It is only a few miles away, so I love being able to for only a couple of hours instead of the whole day. Going to the zoo is one of Spencer's favorite activities.

Obama Wins!

I got teary-eyed last night as I watched the news and took part in this momentous election. The United States has elected our first black President. It was only forty years ago that Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred as he sought for the civil rights of black people. It was only 150 years since slavery was abolished. This is historic. Of course, I didn't vote for him because he was black. I voted for him because I feel like he is our best chance at getting out of the mess that Bush put us in. I hope that this new President will help to mend our broken relations with the rest of the world. I hope that he will lead us out of Iraq. I hope that this will give the United States a new start. It will be a battle for him to make a difference in our trouble times, but I have hope that he can do it.

I was so impressed by McCain's concession speech. He was very gracious. If it wasn't for his huge mistake of choosing Palin as his running mate, he might have made a good President, but Bush probably ruined his chances anyway.

I've enjoyed how everyone has been so excited about this election. As I sat outside reading on my porch yesterday, I smiled as I heard school children arguing about who they wanted to win the Presidency.

We have an unknown road to travel. Let's hope Obama is a good driver.

Cat-tastrophies

Last week we thought our cat ran away from home. We had gone to watch the fireworks at the city's Halloween party. Why would the city have fireworks at their Halloween party you might ask? Well, we were having a wind storm on July 4th, so they postponed the fireworks for their next event which happened to be Halloween. Anyway, the fireworks were fabulous because it was around 8o degrees instead of 105 degrees like it is at night in July and because they were so, so, so VERY loud. They made our bodies rumble. It was a lot of fun, but when we got back we could not find our cat anywhere. We looked and looked. We assumed she got out without us noticing and then got scared from all the noise because it was less than a mile away. Siena and I searched the neighborhood and we all searched throughout the house. Siena ended up crying herself to sleep. The next morning there was Blue Bella asleep on Siena's window seat. She has some hiding place in the house that none of us could find. We were so relieved and it made me not so mad at her for the other catastrophy she cause to my life. A few weeks ago she dented my new lamp when she was walking around on the end table and knocked the lamp off. Then Spencer knocked it off the next day (really, the cat saved Spencer's hide by knocking it off before he did), and then the cat did it again the day after. The lamp is dented, but the beautiful lampshade survived. Since then they have both learned to stay away from my lamp.

Funnily enough, I heard my mother's voice in my head yelling, "I can never have anything nice with you kids!" I understood her pain.

Kid-tastrophies

Spencer has been sick for a week now. I think he might have Strep, but I haven't taken him to the doctor because he keep thinking he is getting better. Anyway, on Friday he was upstairs watching PBS and when I went to check on him I found him with the toothpaste (which is a common occurrence) and with an empty bottle of infant Motrin which I had left on the counter from the night before. The childproof lid was laying beside it. How is it that children are able to open up childproof mechanisms when parents always struggle with them? So some of it had poured into the carpet, but since it was a relatively new bottle I was worried about how much he had ingested. I called the poison control center which was listed on the bottle and they said it sounded like I just needed to get him to eat and drink something and to watch how he acted for a few hours. They called me later to check on him. He seemed fine, but he got a rash that continued to worsen. When I called them again they said that if he had trouble breathing or swallowing to call 911. His rash eventually lessened and he made it through the 4 hour mark of danger with overdosing on ibuprofen. That was Halloween so then came trick-or-treating. When he took off his sweaty costume he was covered in a rash again which I'm assuming was a heat rash. My Dad said the rash could be from the Strep virus.

Here is a picture of him with his first rash. He also had it on his back, arms, and checks. With new spots popping up every few minutes.

He is doing better today (at least I think so), so I will delay a visit to the doctor again in hopes of an even better tomorrow.

Halloween has come and gone

I wasn't that excited about Halloween this year. Maybe it is because it is 10 degrees hotter than average or because my family has been sick with colds for a while, but we only got around to decorating about a week before Halloween. On Wednesday we had a trunk-or-treat at the church, but Siena and I were the only ones to go. We only went because I had to help the Young Women with their haunted house. Spencer was too sick to go so he and Lily stayed home with Paul. Then on Thursday night we made Jack-o-lanterns. It's good to wait until right before Halloween to cut them up because they only last a couple of days here before they sag into themselves and rot or dry out. Halloween night was about 83 degrees F, so Lily became a Hula girl instead of a furry unicorn. Spencer was a tiger and he was worn out after just our street. His head was soaked and he had a heat rash when came in and stripped of his costume. Of course, part of it could have been because of his sickness. I'll add more to that in my next post. He enjoyed it while he was out though and was amazed that everyone would give him so much candy. Lily always enjoys going for a walk and has a good time every year. Siena and her friend Erika had lots of fun, too. And they dragged me around the rest of our neighborhood. By 8:00pm the streets were pretty empty and lights were turning out. I love how trick-or-treating only last about 2 hours. I can't take more than that. When we got home Paul only had a couple of pieces of candy left and a few more rocks to hand out to kids who don't dress in costumes. Spencer was asleep in front of the TV and Lily was patiently waiting to go to bed. Halloween was over. Time for Thanksgiving.

Potty Training Update

Well, it has been over two weeks now since I buckled down and got serious about getting Spencer potty trained. He has done a fabulous job. With a few minor accidents, he won the race to the potty and gained his reward. He loves his racetrack and shows it to everyone who knocks on the door. We are all so proud of his accomplishments. Now if he could just figure out how to wipe!

Music in the dark.

Here is another surprise I found on the camera.

Pint-sized Photographer

While I was downloading pictures from the camera, I was amazed that there were over a hundred pictures on the camera. I found that Spencer had been taking all those pictures. I picked out some of his best. I deleted pictures of my bum, pictures that were out of focus, and pictures of of me on the toilet. This is beauty from his point of view.