Phineas and Ferb Changed My Life

Last summer, I had a bad attitude, or maybe I was actually clinically depressed?  It was the heat.  I can handle it being hot in the summer.  I cannot, however, handle it being hot in the spring and fall as well.  If the triple digits would mind their manners and stay in their own season, we wouldn't be so much at odds.

Anyway, things started unraveling fast about September.  I remember one specific day, I was in my car, waiting at a light to turn onto the freeway, and the theme song from Phineas and Ferb came on.  This was the extended, album-release by Bowling for Soup and it's actually called "Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day"

There's a part where they sing:

This could possibly be the best day ever
And the forecast says that tomorrow will likely be a million and six times better.
So make every minute count: jump up, jump in and seize the day.
And let's make sure that in every single possible way...
Today is gonna be a great day.

This was the opposite of what I was doing.  My days were not the best days ever.  I was laying down quietly, waiting to be burned to a crisp by the blinding Arizona sun.  (Seriously, though, there is no cloud cover ever, so the sun is always in my eyes... even if it's cold outside.)  I needed to do something to make sure that in every single possible way my summers would be great.

I sort of snapped that day and announced to Tyler that I was leaving next summer.

"So... we're getting a divorce...?" he asked.
"No no no, I love you.  I'm just not going to live here."
"You're moving forever...?"
"I don't know."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know.  All I know is that I won't be here."

My first plan was that I would get a job as a summer camp nurse and take my children with me.  Tyler said he could come with us and work remotely during those weeks and watch the kids during the day.  I applied with several camps and got accepted at a camp in Maine.

I didn't end up doing this because it seemed likely that Tyler would get a job in California AND HE DID!  We leave in a few weeks and I am beyond excited and grateful once again to Phineas and Ferb for making the world a better place.

Yeah, you *thought* you'd just pop over...

Last week was Rodeo Week in Tucson, and Lillian had a few days off school so we decided to pop over to California for a quick Disneyland trip.  I actually wanted to go camping, but it was too cold, and I need 15 pillows to sleep in a bed, so I probably couldn't handle sleeping on the ground.

On the way, we stopped to see my Uncle Jim and my cousins (not pictured) in Thermal.  Jim's pig had babies 2 days before we got there.

Baby pigs = super cute.  Mama pigs = super scary.  Also, did you know that pigs are huge?  Like, I was looking at the daddy pig and then looking at Tyler and I decided that the pig was taller.  And weighed 500 pounds, or something.

We were cooing over the pigs and I wanted to pet one but the mama pig was making it clear that she wasn't even OK with me *looking* at her piglets, when Uncle Jim launched into a big spiel about how he's going to sell them at the Easter auctions because the price of ham goes up at Easter and he can get X amount per piglet inside I was like "I'm never eating ham again!"  Easter Means Carnage!  But then I looked at the daddy pig and he was huge and ugly and I thought that I could eat him.  I'm awful, I know.

This is what the kids look like in the car.

 Waiting for the tram.

Disneyland actually worked out really well.  My sister Anne came so there were 3 adults for 3 kids.  It was convenient that I am pregnant because I can't go on the big-kid rides.  So Tyler would take Lillian on the Matterhorn, or whatever, and the little kids and I would chill out on the kiddie rides.  Except I took them on Snow White, and Ethan will never be the same again.  He still talks about how creepy the witch was.

Then I wanted some nature, so the next day, we headed to Laguna Beach with my brother Andrew for a little hike.

The kids haven't quite caught the vision of hiking.  The hike was probably 1.5 miles, and it took a good 2.5 hours.  There was much rock throwing, flower picking, and asking where we were going and when we were going to get there.

There was lots of grass that the kids kept running over and sitting in.  It's like they've never seen real grass before... oh, wait... they haven't.

 We decided to head over to California Adventure the next day.  This day went slightly worse for several reasons:

1. Turns out I'm allergic to Southern California.  "Didn't you grow up there and never ever have allergies?" you ask.  YES! I developed allergies when I lived in San Luis Obispo and I had a cold that wouldn't go away.  Tyler told me it was allergies and I told him he was nutty.  He persuaded me to just try a Claritin and it worked like a miracle.  Still, I was OK when we went to visit my parents.  Then I moved to Arizona for a few years and now whenever we cross the Colorado River, my face explodes.  So I was a little bit miserable from that.
2. Two adults for three kids is not as desirable a ratio as the above mentioned 3:3.
3. Ethan was like, "Didn't we just do this?" and proceeded to freak out.  Also he told me it was too loud there, and this is kind of true.  The rides are all loud, there is loud music playing everywhere, there are loud people, and as soon as we sat down to lunch, the rag-time band started up 10 feet away.

 
Apparently, this is just how my face looks.

This ladybug ride is my favorite: the line is pretty short and the ride is pretty fun.  While we were waiting in line, a little girl who was probably 4 or so told me all about how her favorite ride is Tower of Terror.  I have never been on this ride, so I didn't know what it was like, but if this little girl loves it then it must not be so bad.  Both Lillian and Nora were tall enough so Tyler took them both.

I was waiting at the exit when they came out and both the girls looked like they were going to cry.  Tyler said that he was a little bit scared on the ride and Nora looked at me and solemnly declared that we were never going on that ride ever again.  Ever.

For me, at least, the trip would have been 30-35% more fun if I wasn't constantly sneezing, blowing my nose, or spacing out from the medication.  Oh well.

You just never know

When we came back from California, Lillian went over to a friend's house.  "Lillian, what was your favorite part of California?," the mom asked.

"We went to an oil museum! And they had all these oil pumps!"

"Oh," the mom replied.  "Didn't you go to Disneyland, too?"

"Yeah, but at the oil museum, they had a little model of a jack house pump and you could turn the top and the pumps would go up and down, and then we saw one of the big pumps!"

Next to my father's house, there is an old oil office converted into a museum.  It's staffed by an elderly man and his wife, and the inside consists mainly of that little model, several photographs of the surrounding area before all the houses were built, and a workshop full of large wrenches and stuff.  Outside, you can see the original jack house and the pumps.

I've never been, so I decided to swing by on our way to the nearby park.

The stop took all of 20 minutes, but to Lillian, it was the highlight of the trip, apparently.

Right after I got married, I had a guy friend who really wanted to get married, but kept striking out with the ladies.  He stopped by one day and asked me what girls want for a spouse.  I told him my story with Tyler and that she shouldn't try to make himself any particular way, he should just be the awesome guy that he is because you never know. 

Thus, I find that this principle extends past dating to child rearing.  I would have thought Disneyland or Play City or the beach would have been Lillian's favorites because those were the most expensive, most labor intensive, flashiest stops, and  they required the most orchestration to pull off.  But no, it was the low-budget dinky oil museum that made the trip for her.   

Beach Day

A lot of people in Arizona hate California: there's too many laws, too many liberals, too many taxes, gas is too expensive, houses are too expensive, the weather is always being better than our weather, you can't just go out and shoot guns wherever, etc.  However, as much as Arizonans complain about California, everybody loves the beach.  Everybody.

I love California and I can't wait to move back there (someday), and I especially love the beach. While we were there, my stepmother graciously offered to accompany me to Little Corona.

This allowed us to have a completely stress-free trip because I didn't have to cart everyone to the bathrooms every 10 minutes, just one kid at a time.

So precious.  

They are finally reaching an age where they are starting to realize that the long-sleeved swim shirts are uncool.  Too bad.  They will wear them until they are old enough to do a reasonably good job applying their own sunscreen.  So... college?

Thank you, Jeri for making this moment possible.

Phew.

From Here to Claire from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Eight days, two states, lots and lots of juice boxes.

Depressing Marco Polo

My family was having a family reunion last week. We had already decided not to go because I'm hugely pregnant, and contracting, and hoping that I go into labor any second. Then things happened at Tyler's work. They asked us to be discrete, so I can't go into any details, but they asked him to take some furlough time and rather than sit around the house for almost a week, we decided to go catch the tail end of the reunion.

My family was, as always, super fun to hang around. I took only one picture the whole trip: when we crossed the Colorado river into California, Lillian wanted me to take her picture in California because you never know, you might look different. My sister-in-law took a whole bunch, so I'll probably steal some from her. Actually, she was quite dedicated. She followed Nora around for a good 20 minutes in order to get a picture of her smiling. Mission accomplished.

We lounged around the pool at two separate pool parties. Lillian had fun forcing her cousin Soren to play Snow White and dance with her. There was brownies and food and catching up and texas sheet cake and all manner of salads and nothing even close to triple digit temperatures.

There were fireworks, which Lillian almost missed. After we had waited in line for a good 3o minutes to use the questionable port-a-potty and walked all the way back to our blanket, she told me she had to go again. Kyle suggested we walk over to the Von's and use their bathroom because there was no line. It was Tyler's turn, so he took off 15 minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start. Ten minutes went by, they still weren't back. The fireworks started, they still weren't back. Ten more minutes went by, and they walked up; Lillian had picked that exact moment to have some bowel difficulties. I was preemptively stressed out about how much crying and whining was going to happen from Lillian upon learning that she missed the fireworks, but the show was about 30 minutes long, so she didn't realize that she missed anything. Whew.

Also, Grandma Marti put Lillian's hair in braids like Jesse on Toy Story, and then this morning, Lillian wanted ME to do it. Turns out, I'm still really, really awful at french braiding hair. There was a lot of "OUCH! YOU'RE HURTING ME," and "I DON'T WANT YOU TO DO IT ANYMORE." Maybe I can get one of those beauty school heads to practice on.

One word about Tyler's job. Yes, he might lose it. About 10 people in his office of 50 have gone so far, and it's not over. We won't know for sure for a while. He said it's like some depressing game of marco polo where he's sitting at his desk with his eyes closed calling out "marco," except if you catch the people calling out "polo," you get fired.

If it does happen, we'll figure it out.

Disneyland

I took maybe 4 or 5 pictures of these kids in this teacup, and this was the best one.




I like Lillian's complete aversion to being touched. I can't imagine where she got that from.



I grew up right next to Disneyland and had an annual pass every year starting when I was about 15. In high school, we went all the time. We'd go right after school, go on a few rides, listen to the Dapper Dans, eat a churro, then go home. We'd go on Saturday night and go swing dancing at the Carnation Plaza. We knew the best spots to watch the fireworks and where you needed to stand if you wanted to see Tinkerbell crash into her big mattress in the Matterhorn. I haven't been back since. I got burned out on the crowds and tourists and the Disneyness of the whole place.

But, as soon as we walked through the tunnel and on to Main Street, all the great memories came flooding back to me. It may just be the pregnancy, but I almost started to cry as I looked around. "It really is the most magical place on Earth," I exclaimed.

And, there really was something special about taking Lillian. She had several moments where she almost peed her pants because There. Is. Jasmine. Right there. Talking to me. She was so excited about everything and pretty well behaved, for the most part. Nora had a hard time sleeping in the stroller and was very crabby by about 3. I was also pretty crabby by that time. It may have been the heat, or all the walking while pregnant, but I almost fainted on our way to ToonTown, where we were going to go see Mickey, which was to be our last activity. And by "almost fainted," I mean it- my legs turned to jelly, my head felt light, and I yelled at Tyler that I had to sit down Right Now. I seriously considered just laying down right where I was and closing my eyes, but forced myself to walk 20 feet to a bench.

So, by the end of the day, the magic had worn off, the crowds were pressing in, it was hot, I didn't feel well, and Nora was freaking out. But, I'm really glad we went. Maybe we'll go again when I'm not pregnant and can walk around for more than 10 minutes without having to rest. Or, we should just get a wheelchair next time.

Mom's Beach

We went to California last week. It was kind of last minute, and really fabulous. Our friends the Allens that used to live next to us when we lived in Tucson proper, but have since moved to Flagstaff, drove out as well. We started the week off, as any week in California should be started, with a trip to the beach.

Wow, my kids are white. That's Rachel and she's just trying to provide some shade for her baby, and not nursing, not that there's anything wrong with nursing babies at the beach. I just probably wouldn't post a picture of my friend nursing without asking her. I probably wouldn't post a picture of myself nursing. Have I talked about this too much? Moving on.

I love the beach and miss it so much. Lillian, apparently, does not remember the countless hours we spent at Avila chillaxing in the warm sand because as soon as we got to the bottom of the hill, and the waves were in sight, she freaked out and said she wanted to go home.

Tyler's brother lives in Huntington Beach, which is not terribly far from the mom's beach (is that it's real name, or just what everyone calls it?), and I was jonesing for Wahoo's so we made plans to meet him for lunch at Fashion Island.

After we had been at the beach for like 2 hours, the Allen's baby got some sand or sunscreen in his eye, so we had to leave a little earlier than we planned and walk around the mall for a bit. Rachel felt really bad that we had to cut our sand-time and apologized a lot. I didn't care too much. That's kids, right? When we got in the car, Tyler turned to me and said, "you know, I don't know why Rachel feels so bad. I really only expect outings with the kids to last 45 minutes before someone gets sick or hurt or poos through every diaper and outfit we brought. I thought our beach trip was pretty successful."


Tyler's brother came with his wife and baby, so we had to take some cousin pictures. Carlie's grown quite a bit, so there better not be any more jokes about Nora eating her.


I'm not sure these fish needed any more food (because look at the size of those things), but there was no sign saying not to, so we fed them a whole bunch of animal crackers. Maybe I shouldn't put that on here in case all the fish at Fashion Island are now dead and now they can track us down. I've heard that those koi fish can get pretty pricey.

Home Again, Home Again

For those of you with no children, I'll tell you a secret you probably already know: when you fly, you can take your stroller right up to the gate and just leave it right there at the bottom of the jet-way, and it will be waiting nicely for you at your next destination. This is called "gate checking." On our return flight today, we were on a smaller airplane, so a lot of people's carry-ons didn't fit in the overhead bins and had to be gate-checked.

Usually, it's just me and maybe one other mom waiting for them to bring up our strollers, but this flight, there were about 30 people waiting for bags. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. Probably 15 minutes. I always find it so interesting to watch people in semi-stressful situations. Thirty people standing around in a small space, all cramped after flying for two hours, hungry because it's lunch time, and just staring at each other.

I have a pretty solid No-Complaining ethic, (see earlier post where I discuss how I am not a squeaky wheel) so I held Nora and chatted with the lady next to me. But, other people... I'm amazed at the lengths they go to make themselves upset and miserable.

We were only there for 15 minutes, and by the end I thought these people were going to riot, led by a grumpy old man and a middle-aged man who kept complaining how cold he was (when we just came from the bay area and it's at least 20 degrees warmer here... like the temperature in the jet-way is the airline's fault as well). "I CANNOT believe they are making us wait for our bags! You would THINK that they would know how to do this and that they would have the STAFF for this sort of thing!" "It's ridiculous that I had to gate-check my bag. I've NEVER had to check that bag. EVER!" "The reason I DIDN'T check my bag was because it had fragile things in it. And now, they're probably BROKEN!" "I'm NEVER flying this airline ever again!"

Does that really make people feel better? The staff who is responsible for this problem are most likely underneath the plane, rummaging around for our bags, and they can't hear you.

So, chill out.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember when I thought Tyler had died

*Sigh* We used to live here. This is a place called Montana de Oro (there's supposed to be a tilde over the second 'n' but I'm on Tyler's computer and I can't figure out how to make one) and it's my favorite place on earth.

That's the ocean.

Look at us: so young, so... unencumbered by children. It was a lazy Saturday just a few weeks after we were married, and we decided to hike Oats Peak. Just like that.

When we got to the top of Oats Peak, it was really, really foggy. We thought it would be funny to take a picture of Tyler falling into the mist.

One second after I took this picture, Tyler fell off the side of the mountain, which was not a small distance. My heart stopped. I screamed. I ran over to where he disappeared to find that he did not, in fact fall off the side of the mountain. There's a gentle slope behind him which he stepped down and into the fog to make it seem like he fell off. Jerkface. I really did think he fell and died and that I was a widow at 21.

I don't think I've quite forgiven him (five years after the fact) because one of us brought it up a few days ago, and I was mad all over again.

Visit Home.2 or Mom's Wedding

My mom got married last Saturday. I'm really happy for her because I can tell she's ridiculously happy, and every mom deserves to be ridiculously happy.

My sister Amy sent me these matching dresses for the girls. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold off eating Nora, she's so cute.


Anne held Nora and entertained Lillian during a lot of the reception. THANK YOU ANNE!

"You may now kiss the bride."

I was not able to hold/entertain the girls because Tyler and I were somehow put in charge of the chocolate fountain, which was a surprising amount of work to keep going... but so delicious.





Lillian and Mia are BFF. She asks me every day when we are going to go back to Amy's. Today? After nap?


Sorry for the blurriness of this picture. I stole it off my sister's Facebook page and she must have uploaded the 10 KB picture, but how cute are my sisters? I also love how Mia and Lillian are cracking each other up.

Sometimes people will tell me about their families and about how this sibling isn't talking to that one, or that the family collectively shuns one of the brothers because of whatever, or blah blah blah. And I think, it's just not like that in my family. I have three brothers and three sisters and we all get along. Sure we fight sometimes and argue other times, and I specifically remember acting as ambassador in 2002 when two them swore they would never speak to each other again, but it all worked out (they probably don't even remember the incident). And now we really are one big happy family. I love it. Before I had children, I wanted to recreate that sort of big-happy-family love for my own kids, but since having #2, I realize that if we want to have a lot of kids, I'll actually have to bear all those children and then, more importantly, raise all of them. Aaaand, that's sounds like a lot of work. So we'll see how that one goes.

Just one more reason why my mom is awesome.

Newport Beach Temple

On the way home from the beach, we stopped at the temple. It was clear and beautiful by the time we got there.


The flowers were simply beautiful and everywhere. The desert has it's own beauty, but I just kept staring at all the green and all the colors.








Lillian woke up right before we left, so I made her get out and take some pictures with me.