Happy Thanksgiving!

To commerate Wesley's 1st Thanksgiving and our 10th Thanksgiving away from home, I thought I'd chronicle our day in pictures. Follow along with me...

We start our day by all doing our own thing:

Maya starts her day with a cup'o Barbie.

Jason and Wesley park themselves on the couch for a lil' football, manly time.

Wesley moves on to his exersaucer and a little time with frog friends.

Jason arises from the couch to carve our "giant" bird!

We finally made it to the dinner table about 2:30 pm!

Full of turkey and other goodies, we rest our bodies back in front of football and Polly Pocket.

Daisy and Alley rest right along with us, not quite as full on turkey but dreaming of raiding the fridge.

Hope ya'll had a wonderful holiday!! We sure did!!

Hark! The elusive Snowbirds return...

So, when we relocated to the Valley of the Sun we began to hear several common comments. First was a myth and it went something like this "ah, it's a DRY heat...". Right........ The next thing we kept hearing about was the elusive "Snowbirds". Hmm, new species of bird you might assume. Nope, new species of human beings. Sometime around mid-October you first begin to notice the increase in traffic. It doesn't just happen overnight but kind of sneaks up on you. A short trip out that used to take 10-15 minutes is now taking an upwards of 30 minutes. So, you start to look around and notice them.......the evil out of state plates. And not just the neighboring bright yellow plates of New Mexico but the evil "land of 1000 lakes" Minnesota plates. And the Mt. Rushmore plates of South Dakota and it begins to sink into your psyche......they're BAAACCCCK!!!!

Yes, every able bodied senior citizen (not already residing in the Valley) begins to migrate in. Apparently when you hit retirement age, the idea of winter is so unbearable that it drives one to jump into their Lincoln Towncars and make the long journey to the Valley. And as they crest over the Mogeon Rim (look at me, I've learned local geographic terms!) the speed of those Towncars immediately drops to 15 M.P.H.s. Yep, the Towncars, Cadillacs and other old people cars become mechanically unable to travel more than 15. If they were to hit 20 M.P.H. apparently they would lose their AARP cards or something. But again I digress...

My first encounter with the elusive Snowbirds this season was a fairly amusing little tale...I was late getting somewhere. And that's not even the amusing part because if you were talk to my husband you would know that I'm never late for anything. Anyway, I was in a hurry and needing to make a right turn in the near future. I noticed something was up when I started braking and drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. What the heck? One minute I was going a decent speed and now I'm going 7 miles an hour. So I decide to wait it out instead of being a total jerk and whipping out into traffic just to cut the car in front of me off. Then I begin to notice what type of car it is. Yes, it's a Lincoln of some sort and it looks like it's on auto-pilot. Yep, no driver visible and it hits me. Snowbird. So, I decide that the driver is too close to death to be too mad at me so I make the supreme jerky move and whip out into traffic, speed up and whip back in to the right lane. And as I turned on my blinker to make my right hand turn, the best part of the story occurred. (And for this part of the story you need to know that Arizona doesn't require front license plates so many cars have dorky fake vanity plates in the front). So, I turn on my blinker and look into my rearview mirror at Grandpa in the Lincoln and yes, the front plate on his car reads "2 Hot". Yes, Grandpa, you are in fact, 2 Hot....en fuego, in fact. Welcome back Snowbirds, welcome back.

My kingdom! My kingdom for a....Barbie??

So I left Maya in the playroom for a few minutes while I was off doing something, surely being productive. Ha! Anyway, I rounded the corner and what did I see? A whole fleet of Barbies!! See...

Holy cow! How many Barbie dolls does this kid have? Are they multiplying at night when we aren't looking? Nope, only one Ken doll. So I must actually be purchasing these dolls for her. Oh man...don't tell Dad! And the scary thought is that these are just the ones in the play room...what's hiding in her room?!?! So, we've got a Barbie problem here at our house. Do I call an exterminator? Nope, I think I just let her play away...

...which leads me to my next thought. And this is where I begin to wonder if airing all my weird thoughts is a good thing or not?!?! But anyway, honest to goodness, my next thought was about my...home owners insurance. Yes, insurance. Now follow me here...both times I've bought a home we've had to get home owners insurance. Ok? Ok. When filling out the paperwork to get said insurance they always ask about valuables inside the home, i.e. jewels, furs, stocks, bonds...you know, all those things that 30-somethings have in abundance. And they always want to up our coverage based on how many of these valuables we have and I always answer that we don't really have too much. Honestly, my main jewels are in my wedding ring and hopefully they are always on me. But here's where I get back around to Barbie...just gazing at that picture what do you think I've spent on Barbies?!??! I don't know...8, 9 thousand?!?! Ok, maybe not that much but A LOT!!!!!!!!! I want insurance on our Barbies!! Now there is something that would definitely need to be replaced if the house goes up in flames tomorrow!! Insure our Barbies State Farm!!!!!!! Dare ya!! Ok, so maybe in the morning I'm going to have to start researching a new home owners policy.......

Is there anything cuter...

...than a sleeping baby?

Beware: more cuteness coming...

Ok, maybe an awake baby is pretty cute too...

Wesley Allen - 4 months

Sparkles the Love Turkey

What do you get when you cross a construction paper turkey with $20 worth of glitter, sparkles and jewels?!?! Sparkles the Love Turkey, that's what you get!!

So Maya came home from kindergarten with this sad brown construction paper turkey. Our assignment was to decorate the turkey any way we wanted. The only rule was that we couldn't simply color the image. Off to Michael's we went! Maya, being the extreme girly girl, immediately fixated on anything shiny and sparkly. Oh man...this turkey was bound to look like a cast-off from some glitterly Vegas show. And, judging by the above picture, I think we MORE than exceed that goal!!

And so thus, Sparkles the Love Turkey was born. The name Sparkles is kind of obvious. Plus if you know anything of my daughter, every stuffed animal is named Sparkles--with the minor exception of a rogue stuffed penguin named Freddy. We still ain't sure where he came from. But I digress. The Sparkles and obviously the Turkey part of the name are obvious. Where on earth the "love" portion of the name came from...only the mind of a 5 year old girl could explain that. And it's WAY past her bedtime...

I won't peek behind your toilet, if you don't peek behind mine!

No, I have not lost my mind. I've just been watching too much HGTV. Sadly, since becoming a stay-at-home mom again, I've discovered that daytime television is not so good. So, I watch HGTV and "ooh" and "aah" over all the nifty home renovations.

Well, today I drank a little too much of the kool-aid that HGTV was servin'. I decided that the cabinets and base boards in my half bath were looking a wee bit sad. Jason had painted our lovely half bath immediately upon moving into this house but the small details (cabinets and base boards) were too much to ask of my not so patient husband. Ever since I became un-pregnant, I've wanted to tackle the job. The experts on HGTV claimed that with a simple coat of white paint old sad cabinets could look new and beautiful. I'm now up to my 3rd coat of paint on those babies and they are kind of looking better.

But the true revelation of the day came while I was standing on my head, contorted into a position that I know is illegal in some Bible belt states painting base boards behind my toilet when it hit me...EDITING!! The "experts" on HGTV have a little something something called editing. They stop those cameras, let little elves sneak in, paint behind the toilets and then holler "roll 'um" and we see a beautifully painted bathroom, including the real estate behind the toilet.

What did I learn? I learned to make a deal with all you lovely friends who will cross the threshold into my half bath on the first floor of my house. And that deal is...I won't peek behind your toilet at the bad paint job in that area, if you don't peek behind mine. Deal? Deal.

Hello Cyber World!

I've officially been inspired by all of you who share your exciting lives with those of us out in the cyber world. You know who you are so I won't bore the rest of the world with mentioning you all but please know that I take my inspiration from those of you who can express their thoughts out here in the cyber world in such a cool way. So cool that I wanted to imitate you! And as you know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

So, as I listen to my 4 month old son babble away to Matt Lauer (shh, don't tell Wes that Matt isn't really in the room with us!), I hope to start something that will serve both as a means to keep up with friends and family all over the world but also as a place for me to babble on endless. As I've discovered in my 32 long years, it's cute when the baby babbles on and on, not so much when Mom does it. Unfair...so unfair...