Chain Letter, Blog Style!

So, I don't do these a lot but I did a couple on some friends blogs and it was kinda fun! If you're not into this kind of thing that's OK, I get it.

The rules are: You leave a comment on here of a memory you have of me or my family. Big ones, small ones, what ever, doesn't matter. Then you post these instructions on your blog. If you leave a message for me I will assume that you are playing and I will leave a memory of you on your blog! So have at it....or not but I would love it if you did!

By the way, I'm in good old Orangeville, Utah and thus far have been called Marci (my older sister) 11 times. Only been here since Saturday. At the rate we're going, the Marci calling should max out at some where around 41 times!! I don't mind it that much cause I love my sister and think the world of her., plus she's 25 lbs. skinner than me right now so they can think she's the fat one. If she were a psycho I would make a t-shirt that read, NOT MARCI on it and wear it daily! Love ya Marci!!

More updates on my Utah trip to follow! Hi to all my peeps in AZ. Yeah, I said Peeps!

Good News, Addi pooped on the potty! I'm sure it was totally an accident. She was just in the right place at the right time. I told Crue to go potty and Addi ran in yelling, "Potty, potty, potty!" I asked if she had to pee and she said yes. I put her on the potty and waited...nothing. So I told her to stay there while I went and got her diaper and clothes. All of a sudden she comes streaking through the house yelling, "mommy, potty, pee pee, potty, potty, pee pee!" I asked her if she pee pee'd in the potty and she said yes. I went in to check and there it was! Yeah!!

THE KID'S A GENIUS!

The kids and I went to lunch with Nana at Ruby Tuesdays. Like most days, Crue had the wiggles. He was sitting next to me and would not hold still! I kept telling him to sit up straight, don't do that, stay on your seat, eat your food. Finally I said, "Crue, you're driving me crazy, please don't make me tell you to sit up again." He replies, "Sorry mom, I think my brain's controlling me!" He's brilliant!

Thanks for Putting Some Effort Into It!

Our family went to Cabella's last weekend for something to do. We looked at the fish and the boats, went upstairs and had lunch. Crue and Josh had fun in the shooting gallery. I wasn't really paying attention to them and when they were done Josh made me go shoot to see if I could beat him. I'm not sure what he was thinking. Yes, I smoked him by a good 30 points but that is not the point to my story. The only part I got really excited about was the exotic animal display. For some reason I had never seen this area. Well of course I wanted Josh to take a picture of me and kids with the elephant and since he wasn't really interested and didn't really care, these are the shots he took. I guess the last one isn't that bad. Beggars can't be choosers, right?

Who Needs New Toys When You Have Hampers.

My kids have too many toys! I think that most moms will agree with me that their kids have too many toys. It's crazy that now-a-days we actually have houses that have "toy rooms". Having said that, my kids don't need these crazy toys that are way too expense. In this case, as you can see, Crue and Addi played for a good 45 mins. with this clothes hamper. I also was having fun and pretending to be a gorilla, which if you've seen my legs lately isn't too far off. Sadly, in my own attempt to cage myself with the hamper I was able to take a good slice of skin off the top of my nose. Josh got home from work and asked what happen and it was embarrassing to admit how I had hurt myself but when I told him he thought it was hilarious!

Poop, or no poop? That is the question.

Crue, Addi and I were on our way home from Costco with a frozen bag of blueberries. It's 105 degrees and I'm trying to get home fast so the blueberries don't thaw and we're about 15 minutes from home and a small voice from the back said, "I have to poo!" I said, "Crue, we're almost home can, it wait or is it coming?" He replies, "No, it's coming!" So we pull off the freeway and hit the closest Wal-mart. I get the kids out and run into the bathroom. Meanwhile, the frozen blueberries sit in the hot car waiting. I put Crue on the pot and say, "OK just go fast." I sit and watch as Addi plays with the door lock and Crue keeps yelling at her not to open the door. I keep telling Crue just to rush-it and flush-it. He keeps giving me that look like, "I'm pushing!" I'm sure most moms know that look. Finally he says, "I don't think I have to poop." I sigh and tell him to put his pants and shoe back on. He always takes one leg out of his pants and of course that means he has to take his shoe off. I'm not sure if any other little boys do this when they go potty or if it's just Crue's thing. We get out of the stall, wash hands and jet to the car. That little stop added almost 15 minutes to my commute. Finally we're home, blueberries in the freezer and Crue runs straight to the bathroom. He calls me in and says, "Mom, I just pooped and my poop said it didn't want to come out in Wal-mart, it was scared and wanted to wait till we got home." Strange phenomenon! Good news is, I'm gonna be rich cause my son has talking poop!

The Mesa Temple

A few weeks ago, the primary went on a trip to the temple to go through the visitors center. So I took Crue and Addi. It was their first time to the temple. When I first moved here, I thought the Mesa temple was ugly but that was before I had actually seen it in person. It only took one trip there to change my mind! It's gorgeous!! Now that I've been there a few times I really love it! I think it is so beautiful! If you haven't seen it up close, you definitely need to. I am so excited for the temple that has been announced to be built closer to my home! There are rumors it will be in the Pinnacle Peak area which is about 15 minutes from me! Yeah!!

Check out my Slide Show!

WATER TIME!

Fun at Desert Ridge!

4th of July Weekend

We had a good weekend! Not great, just good. We didn't go to any firework shows cause where we live we usually can take in two shows at once. Lake Pleasant does one and Anthem, which is the community just north of us, usually does one too. You can see the fireworks even though they are kind of small but it's nice to just throw out some lawn chairs and stay at home. Lake Pleasant did their fireworks on Thursday the 3rd and Thursdays I have my very important 'Me Time' where I go play volleyball in Mesa. Josh and the kids were asleep before the fireworks even started. I don't think that Anthem did any this year unless they also did them on Thursday. Therefore, we saw no fireworks.

On the 4th, I talked Josh into going to Water World with Crue, Addi and I. There is the little kids section that is fenced in and perfect for little non-swimmers. When we got there, that little kid section was closed and they weren't going to open it for another 3-4 hours. That stunk! We did take them in the lazy river and in the section that's for a little bit older kids that has some bigger slides. They liked that but I think it made Josh nervous cause it was a little deeper and he's never been around the kids swimming without life jackets. We went home and the kids took naps. Josh's parents, Suzi and Warren, watched Addi and Crue that night while Josh and I went on an impromptu dinner date at Applebees. There was a storm front that was moving in and when we got back home it had already rained pretty hard and was now gone. I was sad to miss the rain since it only comes a couple times a year but when it's gone our yard comes alive. We found a giant toad right next to our house and a little baby one on the grass patch in the back. There was also a giant beetle on our house. It was almost 4 inches long.

The next day we went to the lake again. When we pulled into the 'Make Ready' area there were bees everywhere. I was kind of freakin' out cause I knew someone was going to get stung. Of course that someone turned out to be me! I got stung right under the arm. Not arm pit but right below my bicep. It really hurt! I don't remember my last bee sting but this bee must have been a mutant bee with crazy mutant poison. The good news is, I won cause the bee died. Everything went fine after that except for the part where our anchor got stuck. It must have caught a dead tree cause you could pull it up a little bit and then it wouldn't come any more. We motored around in a circle for a good ten minutes and just as we were about to let it go, miraculously it came free! Everything worked out in the end and that was our good weekend!

WATCH OUT, HERE WE COME!

Josh and I are not very social people! I aspire to be but since Josh works 80 hours a week it just doesn't leave much time to do anything. Of course like most people, Saturday is the day that we try to do things if he isn't working. My good friend Eden dubbed it "Consumer Saturday", where you just go out and try to keep busy but really all you're doing is spending money on stupid stuff at places like Home Depot, Costco, Target, Sportsman's Warehouse....I could go on and on! Well instead of spending our money on little stupid things, we decided to spend it on one big thing that we hope doesn't turn out to be stupid!! We bought a boat!! Lake Pleasant is about 15 minutes away and we thought "why not" . We're pretty excited about it... we think! It's not a big boat, just enough room for our behemoth family but it totally floated on Saturday when we took it to the lake for the first time, yeah! Yes I was excited that it floated cause we bought it from a lady on Craig's List. Josh and I know nothing about boats. Honestly, this lady could have totally sold us a boat with no engine and I wouldn't have known. I'm too trusting, I don't ever want to hurt peoples feelings which is probably going to get me into trouble someday. Anyways, we get to the lake and we're just laughing cause we literally have no idea how to launch the boat without wrecking or what ever. It was a ten lane boat ramp and every one was just flying through the whole process of launching while we pretended to be launching but we were secretly watching everyone else to see how it's done. I guess we thought what could be so hard, back it into the water, unhook it and you drive away right! If worse comes to worse we abandon ship and go home. Very expensive weekend and we realize that we're not boat people. Lesson learned! Thankfully it didn't turn out that way! We got it in the water, I parked the Tahoe and trailer and ran back to the dock and we were off on our adventure. The day went great!! We did a little swimming, a little tubing and even tried to fish. Josh and I both tried to ski but we were not successful! I think it strained the boat to try and pull us out of the water! (Does anyone notice that I end every sentence with a !, I'm just really excited when I type!!) So our day was wrapping up, kids were tired and our boat was gross. There were soggy, crushed goldfish and pretzels all over, it was pretty gross, time to go home! So how hard was this gonna be, loading the boat? Josh dropped me at the dock and I went and got the car. To my surprise, I am horrible at backing down a boat ramp, huh! I honestly thought I was a pretty good driver no matter which direction I was going but as I was backing up I suddenly realized that I had never backed up any kind of trailer. It is a wonder that I didn't take anyone or anything out. Thank goodness it was a ten lane ramp cause I used 6 of them. I can only imagine what people were saying about me. My poor husband had to sit and watch, I'm sure completely embarrassed at his wife, the obvious drunk driver that was backing down the ramp to position the trail in front of his boat. I did stay in the car for at least a minute so that most of the people who saw me back down had left. When I was able to emerge from our car to see what was taking Josh so long, I found that couldn't get the prop up. He made me sit in the boat and hit the trim button up and down, up, down, up, down, up, down. "Are you pushing the up bottom?" he asks several times, "NO, I'm pushing the down button to see if it will make it go up!!" Not really. So our patience was being tried and we started to get snippy at each other. Literally, it would take other people about 3 minutes to load their boat and head up the ramp, it has now been half an hour that we are sitting there. Every time some one new comes to load their boat, we're like " Hey, are you a boat expert ? We can't get our prop up." No one was able to help and we were at a loss of what to do now. The only thing we could do is pull the boat out with the prop down and let it scratch it's way to the top of the boat ramp. Ooohhhh!! Yeah, this was not embarrassing at all! Every one was like, " Hey, stop, your props down!" We just waved them off, "Yeah...we know." As if we couldn't miss the horrible, nails on chalk board sound we were creating as we slowly proceeded up the ramp. Josh was walking behind the boat and about half way up he just looked at me an said, "Just go" so I hit the gas trying to escape the embarrassing scene. We got to the top and just sat there. Josh was fuming! I was about to cry. We for sure thought the lady who sold us the boat had ripped us off! We realized that there must be a boat mechanic on site here since it was such a big lake. We called the marina and they gave us the number to the mechanic. Josh got a hold of the mechanic and this was the one side of the conversation I heard: Hi, yeah we're out at the 10 lane boat ramp and we can't get our prop up, could you come give it a look... It's a Bayliner Capri... yeah, it will go up a little bit and then back down but just up a little bit... the button's not working, not even a sound when you push it.... where..... let me check... SIR YOU ARE A GENIUS...ok....thank you so much.....OK...... thank you , thank you!!! Yea, so there is a SECRET button that not many people know about. If you push it, it makes the prop go up!! Crisis averted!! Only took us one hour to load out boat but we did it!! Josh and I were happy again. No tears were shed on my part and he wasn't going to have to divorce me for talking him into buying a faulty boat. Over all it was a good weekend!!