Saturday

Besides the scorpions that seem to enjoy living here with us we have quite a few lizards who reside in our backyard. It is pretty funny to see the same child who screams his head off when a fly lands on him run up and try to catch these lizards.

Check out this guy's breakfast!

We had our first monsoon storm last week. It was a pretty spectacular one too. One of the reasons I love Tucson so much is that we get to see these awesome storms come over the mountain. The lightning, wind, and rain held Tyler's attention for a long time that afternoon.

Emma has always been such an independent little thing. She has never wanted much help when she is eating. She actually is pretty proficient using a spoon to feed herself. Here she is eating her first tuna sandwich.

Emma loves to kiss right now. She puckers up and makes the cutest "smack" sound. Tyler is a good big brother and lets her kiss him all the time.

Tyler has had a few funny comments this past week. It cracks me up to hear him repeat things that I have said to him. Here are a few of them.....
I picked up something that he had dropped and he said, "Thank you mom, I appreciate that."
When I brought his dinner plate to the table he said, "Thanks dear."
At another meal he said, "Thank you for making this for me Mommy."--(He may be a little Eddie Haskell like but at least he is polite!:)
He asked Marshall for a drink of his tea and Marshall told him he could but that he had to take another bite of what he was eating first. Tyler responded, "Okay Dad, that would be awesome!"
He has also turned in to the world's worst backseat driver. He tells me when to slow down, that I need to stop, and has a comment about EVERYTHING that we pass! There are days when I sure do miss when he wasn't talking!:)

June 24th

I know that I am a wee bit biased but goodness these two are cute!

It must have been all of your good thoughts sent our way because swim lessons have been great the first two days. I am not sure about the quality of the lessons but I think that they are serving the purpose of helping Tyler to get over his fear of the water. I figure I will sign him up for private lessons at a swim school next but at least I will be comfortable knowing that he isn't going to freak out whenever we get in the pool!:) Emma has been doing great too. She was jumping in off of the side to me today. I put her under twice and she never even fussed about it.

June 22nd

We had a much more productive weekend this weekend We put tinting film on the kid's bedroom windows behind the blinds hoping that it will help them to sleep past 5 am---that is when it is light out here! Marshall also put up ceiling fans in both of the kid's rooms. Poor Emma is such a hot blooded little thing that she was waking up in the morning and from her nap sweaty. I keep the house at 77 but she was still too hot. The ceilings in here are not as high as the other house so hopefully the fans will really cool it off for them.

I will very readily admit that I do not have a green thumb. I have no live plants in my house--we have greenery but it is all fake. I just can't keep things alive. My sister, Katie, on the other hand has a deck that looks like it should be in Better Homes and Gardens---Marie has what she likes to call a "hospice garden" so apparently Katie got all of the landscaping talent in our family. Now with all that being said, my lack of talent didn't stop me from planting some flowers in the two flower beds that are along our back wall. I have to tell you that is was 110 today and I had to plant one whole bed in the heat of the day while the kids napped! They aren't much but I am proud of myself for at least making a small attempt at growing something!:)

We also had another date night this weekend. I am trying to get a good pool of babysitters so that I have a few options when I need one. This weekend Jessica and Haylee came to babysit. I also had both of these girls in my fifth grade class. They are sisters and always reminded me of Marie and I as kids. Jessica is the quite straight A student and Haylee was also a good student, but she had to try so much harder---she also REALLY liked to be social----see, like I said, Marie and I! Anyway, we went out and we saw SEX and the City. If you liked the show you will like the movie---both Marshall and I really enjoyed it.

Lately the kid's favorite time of the day is right after bath. Emma has decided that she LOVES running around naked with her towel on her head and Tyler finds it hysterical to chase her. I thought these were funny.

Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow. We start swim lessons at the Y. Tyler has told me every day for the last two weeks that he doesn't want to go, but on Friday I think I may have found the trigger to get him excited about them. We are going to go spend two weeks with Marie next month (so glad we can go to Southern CA and stay for free!) so I have been telling him that we need to be able to swim so that we can go to the ocean. That still wasn't working but when I told him that his Uncle Matt was going to be there and the only way he could go to CA and see him was if he took swim lessons he suddenly decided that he was excited about them. All weekend he has acted like he is ready----now tomorrow when he has to go off with the lifeguard we will see what happens.

One last thing! I already told you about the scorpion sting but I haven't told you about Marshall's response to the whole issue. We watched a news segment about how regular exterminator's spray doesn't always work to kill scorpions. Apparently these freaky little things don't have lungs and can hold their breath for weeks!!:0 They suggested some chemical you can spread that has a reaction with them and will kill them. Another thing they talked about was how the scorpions glow under a back light. So after watching this Mr Brown now goes around the perimeter of the house each night with his his little black light flashlight and finds scorpions and beats them and then torches them to make sure they are dead! You would not believe how many he has killed!!! He also goes through the whole house before bed and checks to make sure there aren't any in here-----he is my hero!

Update

We are done with the bottle!
Tyler's pediatrician told me to be done with it at a year so we took it away from him and he went on a 3 month milk strike! Because of that I have been a little hesitant taking it from Emma. The Dr. we were seeing in Phoenix said to be done with it at 15 months so I was kind of dragging my feet. Besides, she is my baby and I can't seem to accept that she is growing up SO MUCH FASTER than Tyler seemed to do. She really was easy---I just started replacing milk at her meals with her sippy cup and just gave her a bottle in the morning and before bed. Yesterday we gave her morning milk in a cup and a bottle before bed. Today no bottles and no bad reaction---I am throwing the bottles away tonight so that I am sure we are done!
It is definately summer here. Today it was around 108. I can take the kids out in the morning and after 4pm but the afternoons are just too hot. We are starting to have to find more indoor activites. Today we broke out the markers and let Emma taker her turn at drawing. I am not sure if the kids had more marker on them or on the paper--thank God for washable markers!


The kid's afternoon naps are a little staggered when Emma takes a good morning nap. When Tyer goes down first she loves to lay in his bed while we read his stories. Here they are cuddling after we have read.

I am not sure if any other two kids love Elmo as much as my kids do. Whenever Elmo's World is on everything in the house stops for both of them. Emma is facinated with our Chicken Dance Elmo and she adores the TMX one. Teresa, a friend of mine from Neosho, gave me this big Elmo when I was pregnant with Tyler. Both of the kids love to cuddle with him.

Father's Day

What was supposed to be a relaxing day for Marshall started out with a 3:30 am wake-up call from Tyler!:(
Let me start at the beginning. Saturday was one of the most unproductive days ever. We had errands to run but to make A VERY LONG story short, even though we went to each of the places that we needed to go, none of the things that we needed to have accomplished actually got accomplished.
The highlight of the day was that we used a new babysitter for the first time. Catherine, a girl that I had my first year teaching here in Tucson, came over to babysit. She had been over earlier in the week and Tyler took an instant liking to her. She has two younger brothers so she isn't afraid to get down and wrestle, throw the ball, or do any of the other rough and tumble things that Tyler loves so much. She also is just so sweet and loved playing with Emma. She had them outside and had Emma being the baseball coach while she pitched to Tyler---it was too cute!)
I am not sure if Tyler had a nightmare or what woke him but he came in to our room, as I said earlier, at 3:30am. He crawled in to our bed but was very restless and was making little crying sounds. He crawled out at 4 am and went and turned on the TV in his playroom. I got up and told him he had to come back to bed that it was WAY to early to be up. He fussed and cried and carried on so he and Marshall ended up taking a walk outside around the neighborhood shortly after 4:30.
When they got back I got up with the kids while he went back to bed for 45 minutes or so. We went out to breakfast and then planned to come home and nap. Emma took a great 2 hour nap, I fell asleep for about 45 min., and Marshall figured he would lay with Tyler and they would nap together. Marshall slept in between Tyler hitting him on the head, poking him, and playing with his toys---Tyler didn't sleep a wink.
We all got up and headed over to our friend's Mike and Cindy's house. We spent the day in the pool and just had a great time hanging out with our friends. The best part was that when it was time to go we only had a ten minute drive rather than the hour and a half back to Chandler----it is great to be back in Tucson!

Pool Day

Today we hung out with my friends Shannon and Marie--and Marie's sweet boy Evan! The neighborhood that Shannon lives in has a community pool that has a baby pool with a big shade over it. It was wonderful. The water was cool since it doesn't get direct sun. And not having the blazing sun on the kids was wonderful. Emma was loving playing in the water and just walking around checking things out. Tyler played in the water but he did have a breakdown when he tripped and went in. I have signed them both up for swim lessons at the YMCA so hopefully this summer he will get over being so afraid to put his face in the water.

My little diva!

So this morning I was dressing Emma and I thought that I would try on this pair of shiny silver flip flops that someone had given us for her. She is wearing a size 4 but I wanted to see how big the size 5 would be on her foot. She just smiled and giggled at the pretty shoes. I put them on her but of course they are too big. I took them off and she cried! I showed her another pair of shoes and she just shook her head no! I tried another pair and again she shook her head No! When I brought out the shiny silver ones again she she said "Yeah!". So I put them on her and put her down. She was happy until she tried to walk and they fell off! Here she is VERY UPSET that her pretty shoes were not working!

After her meltdown we got another pair on her and again all was right with the world!

Ouch!!!

Ok...I had my welcome back to the desert moment the other night! I was laying in bed asleep around 2am when I thought I felt something crawl on my neck--I swatted at my neck and then laid there a moment trying to figure out if it was a dream or if, GROSS, something did crawl on my neck. My neck started burning like I had a bite so I got up and went to the bathroom to look and see if anything was there. It was a little red but nothing too bad but it sure did burn. I went back to the room and turned on my light where to my absolute horror was a SCORPION!!!!!!!!! I remained quite calm and told Marshall to get up that I had been stung. He got up and killed it for me. He knew others who had been stung and said that really all you can do is take aspirin. I figured I should be on the safe side and call the ER. They told me aspirin and some people say ice others say not to but if it made it feel better to go ahead and do that---they also said I could come in if I wanted-----but if that was all that they were going to tell me I figured I'd save the $150 and just use an ice pack! Marshall went back to bed but I couldn't get back in there! I sat on the couch reading but after 30 minutes it really did burn---I told Marshall it was like when I got my epidural shot--it felt like something hot was going in my neck. I decided I would call poison control just in case they told me something different than the random person that picked up the phone at the hospital! They didn't! They did tell me that it could hurt for up to ten hours but then it would change to just a sore feeling that could last awhile. I still couldn't sleep so I continued to read my book. Marshall got up at 4am to get ready for work and there I sat on the couch!
I am happy to report that it did just burn for about 6hrs and then my neck was sore the whole next day. I am fine now but I have had the house sprayed inside AND out for critters and we now do a nightly check of the sheets on our bed!!!!

THE BIG MOVE!

We are back in Tucson!

We are here and pretty much settled in to our house. My VERY stubborn husband did most of the moving himself. He packed and loaded almost all of our stuff by himself. He got a little help with loading the couches and some help unloading that first big load but other than that it was a one man show! My job was to keep the kids out of his way--my job may have actually been harder!:) I really didn't think that he could do it all in a weekend but Marshall pulled it off and got us down here and settled pretty quickly.

Marie flew out and helped us unpack---she was a HUGE help. Not only did she get us settled in but then she went home and sent us a VERY YUMMY house warming gift! We don't deserve her!:)

The kids are adjusting very well. They love having a backyard that they can actually play in during the afternoon.

Here they are playing in the morning sprinklers.

Since we have afternoon shade I got them a table so that they can have their own place to relax!

They are pretty good playmates for each other. Emma is finally starting to wrestle back with Tyler!

How sweet are these two?

Summer time and the dresses are pretty!

We sing You Are My Sunshime to Emma every night before she goes to bed. Here is a video of Tyler singing it to her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfl8kOQ4jfk

He also has had me reading a book about baseball that has the words to Take Me Out to the Ball Game in it. Here he is singing it before bed tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilInDuOnDOk

And one last video. Emma has suddenly become quite the conversationalist! We have no idea what it is that she is saying to us but she sure does have an awful lot to tell us. Here is a video of she and Marshall talking during dinner tonight!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGxr1irbJDs