I'm off to see the wizard, for real!

Yeah, the most exciting thing to happen to me in a long time, happened last night. Its name is called I got tickets to see the musical "Wicked". I can hardly believe it. I have been dying to go and see it ever since it opened last February. It is playing down in LA, which is just a short four hour drive away. Marion and I are going to celebrate our anniversary. Our actual anniversary is on August 8th, it will be 23 years. It works best in our schedule and we got the best seats, by going on August 14th. I know it is kind of crazy that I would be excited to drive anywhere again, but it will be worth it. So yeah for a fun celebration to come!

Family Reunion in Flagstaff

Family reunions are great, cause guess what, it is where you get to visit and catch up with family members that you don't often see. About two weeks ago we went to a fun reunion with all of my uncles and aunts from my dad's side of the family. It was at a ranch in Flagstaff Arizona. I mentioned the traveling part of the reunion, but now I have my pictures back so I can put those up.
Here is Diana riding a horse all by herself, for the first time. It was pretty cool, because my cousing arranged for a horse trainer to come and give the kids private lessons. After waiting for what seemed like forever to her, it was finally Diana's turn to mount a horse. She really got the hang of it and by the next day she was guiding the horse around like a pro.

Here is Trent ready to ride. Trent wasn't sure he wanted to come to this reunion, but he ended up having a blast riding this ATV and a dune buggy thing that one of my cousins had. He told me about all the jumps he was able to go off on. We could not get him off this machine, even to eat. He was covered from head to toe in dirt. What a fun thing.

This is me with two of my aunts. They are great friends to me and I have lots of great memories with both of them. I am lucky to have them as part of my life.

This is a picture of me with two of my cousins. They are the closest to me in age on that side of the family. We have great memories of time spent at my grandpa's farm in Idaho. One time when Adele and I were sleeping out in the front yard, Glen and my cousin Eric (not in the picture) put a frog in Adele's sleeping bag. We screamed and screamed. It was pretty funny looking back on it. I don't see these cousins very much and it was fun to remeber all the fun times we had growing up.

Here are my children, with the same faces they always give me for pictures. (see last year's christmas card). This was right before we left to go home. We had a lot of fun, but I have to admit that I did not take as many pictures as I would have liked to take. The whole first day I left my camera in the car. Hopefully others will take pity on me and share their pictures with me. A big THANK YOU to all those who helped make this reunion a big success.

Hairspray!

Diana and I just got home from seeing the new movie Hairspray. And guess what? I loved it. If you do not enjoy movies with lots of singing and dancing, then this is not the movie for you. But if you enjoy a great toe tapping story then this is a must see. I don't think I was very familiar with the music in this musical, which is rare for me. I want to get the sound track now and learn the words to the songs. There are some great characters in the movie as well. If anyone else has seen it, let me know what you thought.

There's no place like home!

As I drove home from Utah on Monday, a song playing on my radio had the words "There was never anything as beautiful, as a long journey's end". Amen to that. After traveling like a billion miles in the past six weeks, I am so relieved and happy to be home for good. Yeah me! I figure that since I left for girls camp, June 12th, I have only slept in my own bed about 15 nights, and I have been sleeping in other people's homes for about 25 nights. Diana and I flew from Houston to Phoenix on Friday July 6th, then we drove back to Vegas Sunday July 8th.
We were home for three days and then we drove back to flagstaff, Thursday July 12th and back home to Vegas Saturday July 14th. This was a fun two days with my uncles and aunts. It was fun to see people I don't get to see very much. We had lots of fun, but the trip home was marred by the fact that one of us in the car got food poisoning and threw up about 10 times. Thank goddness I had some zip lock bags to catch the mess and dispose of it.
Then we were home for three days before Jared, Diana, and I drove to Spanish Fork on Wednesday July 18th. Once again we had lots of fun visiting, but I feel pretty tired by all the activities that we had planned. The best part for me was that I got to see the musical Suzzical, put on by the community. I have the soundtrack of the broadway production and love the musical. It was most difficult not to sing along with the actors as I know the words to all the songs. Jared has gone to Seattle to visit my parents, and Diana and I drove home to Vegas Monday July 23rd. Sheesh!
I can't even believe that I went all those places and I was there so I should know. I am so tired of packing and unpacking, I can' even see straight. I feel completely detached from my normal life and friends. Diana keeps asking my what she can eat and I have no idea what kind of food we have because I haven't been to the grocery store for about 2 months. Hopefully now I can try to get back into my life again.
Perhaps it has been difficult coming home, because I have worked for the past two days, and when I wasn't working I was reading Harry Potter. Yeah I finished it tonight. I am so happy that I don't have to work tomorrow, so I can try to get my house put back together. Maybe I will even get to sleep in a little bit. I am glad that I got to go and visit all the people in all the different places. No one forced me to travel so much, it was just unfortunate that it all worked out to be so close together like it did. I am still not quite sure what is so exhausting about traveling. Even if I wasn't driving, but just sitting in the car I felt pretty worn out when we got wherever we were going. Let me just say that I have gained a new appreciation for my home and even Las Vegas. I just feel like I need a vacation from all the vacations I have taken. Diana gets baptized in two weeks and we have some family coming for that. Once that is over, then my summer vacation of nothingness can begin.

Toddler Follies

An elephant may never forget, but boy thank heavens mothers do. Living with two small children for the past two weeks had brought back a memory or two that I could have done without. If Mothers remembered for long some of the things their children put them trough, I am sure we would all have one child at the most. Let me just say that my two nieces are adorable, like most small children. This does not however mean that they do not engage in normal behavior for toddlers. My niece Allie who is almost two has more energy than me at this stage in my life. In the past week she has done a few things that my sister and I could have done without. But we do want to experience both the good and the bad that children have to offer, don't we? Here are just a few of the things she did this week that gave us pause to worry. On Sunday she ran away from us into the street, once coming too close for comfort to a moving car. She also did not get her normal nap due to church time being changed. This made for a child who had a very hard time going to sleep Sunday night. Monday we went to the mall because it was raining and they have a small play area there. My sister and cousin went to bath and body works to check out their sale. I watched Diana and Allie in the play area. Allie kept losing interest in the play stuff and kept darting out of the enclosed area. I would then have to chase her down. Finally we decided to try to find my sister. On our way there Diana found a store that she wanted to look in. This was not a wise choice because it was full of purses, hello kitty stuff, Dora stuff, and princess stuff. At one time Allie emptied a rack of the Dora purse things and was carrying them around the store. By the time we got out of there a necklace from the clearance rack had been pulled apart. I am not sure if Allie did it, or if it was already broken. The store did not make us pay for it because it was on the clearance rack. That night I took Diana and Allie up to take a bedtime bath. We opened the bathroom door and Allie ran right over and stuck both of her hands in the toilet. It was crazy how fast she manged to do that. I got her hands washed off and started the water for the bath. Diana helped by taking off her diaper, but I did not realize that it was a dirty diaper. Then I had to hold onto her hands while we tried to find some wipes. It seemed fairly crazy. Tuesday night Diana woke me up at 3:30 because her leg was hurting her. I had her lay next to me in bed while I tried to massage the cramps away. After about 20 mins she went back downstairs to the couch. Then she came back in at 4:30 saying that she couldn't sleep and needed help with the tv. I helped her. Then my sister woke me up at 6:30 or so to get Allie's milk from downstairs. I needed to do it so that Allie did not wake her up. Diana has been woken up early before and is quite cranky. So I got the milk. My sister and Allie stayed up stairs for an hour or so and then they went down to get breakfast. One of us had not closed the cabinet under the kitchen sink all the way so that the child latch fastened all the way. Allie beat my sister downstairs and went right over and sprayed Lysol in her mouth. So then my sister got to call poison control. Come to find out Lysol is one of the best poisons that your child can ingest. So be sure to keep that one in the front of the poisonous cleaning supply cupboard. After that was over Allie proceeded to come upstairs and get the door to my sister's room open. The door has a childproof guard on it, but it doesn't work if the door is not pulled closed really tight. Of course she went in and woke the baby up. Now it is 7:30 and I hear all of this commotion going on and so I decide I better get up and help. Next we decided it really couldn't be that bad to take all of us to Wal Mart, and so once every one was buckled in we headed out. This actually went better than I might have thought. The baby slept during all the shopping. The only bad incident was when we handed Allie a bottle of bubble bath to put in the cart. She proceeds to open it and dump half of the bottle on the ground. I waited for someone to say "Clean up on aisle 10, Herb" but there was a worker close by who just took care of it. What kind of crazy place does not have a foil seal on top of the bottle anyway? Today Allie was trying to follow Diana into her room when Diana was going to change. Diana closes the door and Allie's fingers got smashed. I suppose it is a bit of a wonder that this only happened once during the two week episode. All in all I can honestly say that I do not miss the days when all you think about is whether all the doors and cupboards in your house are closed tightly. I have had my turn and well I will leave that fun to people who have more energy than me. They really are darling girls and some day Allie will grow up to be a very sweet young lady.

Yesterday we had a very low key, relaxed Fourth of July. Here is a picture of all the little girls. We had our cousin over and she made marvelous dutch oven potatoes and dutch oven pineapple cobbler. We also had ribs. Later that evening we were entertained by the $5 worth of fire works that I had bought. It was just perfect for it to last for about 15 mins.



Here are all the girls. With Victor gone much of the time it was quite an estrogen party.

Time in Texas

Life in Houston is definitely interesting. I have not really experienced humidity before, other than the two weeks we spent in DC four years ago. I guess I can now better appreciate what people are talking about when they say that Vegas has dry heat. My sister says that the humidity is great for your skin, and I would have to say I have not needed much lotion or even chapstick since I have been here. That is a bit odd, not needing chapstick. I wonder if my body was lacking in moisture and has been taking in as much of it as possible. The temperature here is not as hot as Vegas and that is nice, but the humidity is not really fun either.
It has been so fun to hold and play with my sister's baby. The baby is seven weeks old. Diana is quite good at babysitting and has changed her first diaper. She still thinks changing diapers is fun and offers to help if she is anywhere around when the changing happens. Diana is also quite good at holding the baby and putting the pacifier back in. She has been loving the chance to be around such a tiny baby.
Diana has also been a big help with my other neice who is 2. Diana loves chasing her around and spinning her around by her arms. She is also a pro at putting her cousin into her car seat and buckling her up. My sister will miss that extra help when we are gone. But maybe my neice will enjoy it when life is a bit calmer.
We haven't done any thing too exciting. Life with two small children is a bit hectic. Yesterday got a bit crazy. We invited a girl over that Diana met at activity days. My cousin is moving to Texas and she arrived in town yesterday also. Our cousin is moving in just 5 mins away from my sister and so my sister was helping her yesterday afternoon. Just as this little girl came over to play, my sister was trying to call people to help our cousin unload. Fianally my sister left to go over to my cousin's new apartment for just a little while. This left me with 4 little girls. At one point Diana spotted a tiny poodle walking by the front door. Before I knew what had happened, the door was open and all the girls besides the baby that I was holding, were outside petting the dog. The lady walking the dog looked at all these girls and asked if they were all mine. She seemed to be saying "Oh my, don't you have your hands full." I smiled and replied that "No, just one of them was mine and that I was babysitting the rest of them." It seemed like the phone kept ringing at the same time as all the rest of the things were happening. It was very crazy trying to keep the older ones entertained, keep the two year old out of trouble, and keep the baby pacified until her mother/dinner returned. In fact it almost seemed like something out of the movie Mister Mom where everything in the house goes wrong at the same time. My sister's husband returned from a two day trip in the middle of all of this. I think he was a bit surprised at the pandamonium. Oh well we survived and I can say that I am glad that I do not have 4 girls, 9 and under.
We are not sure how long we will be staying. We may stay for a whole nother week and they fly right to Pheonix for my husband's family get together. The whole month of July is going to be completely crazy with a trip to somewhere different planned for each weekend. I hope I am ready for all the running around.