Over the Rainbow

I just celebrated my 27th birthday on March 28th and I must say, it was probably my best birthday in recent history. First, I gave myself the gift of a clean house. Then that afternoon my mom, Art, and I took the girls to the carnival they have annually behind Sierra Vista Mall. You realize as you get older that the thing that makes you the most happy is seeing your kids happy and Keira just loves rides. She is the ultimate thrill seeker. She rode the ferris wheel with Grandma, two crazy spinning rides with me, and went down a gigantic wavy slide with Art three times. When I was on the Tornado spinning ride with Keira, the ride reached the top and got spinning fast and she laughed whole heartedly and shouted, "This is even better than I imagined!" That made my day. :)

Then we went to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner, Plaza Ventana, and had a delicious meal. Afterward, we took the girls home and Grandma watched them while Art and I went to see the new Oz movie. When we got home, the girls were fast asleep. It was so nice to come home to a peaceful clean house. I think what made this birthday so special was that I didn't try to invite friends and become disappointed when no one bothered to show up. It was a beautiful day, the girls were both happy and well behaved, and I just enjoyed fun time with my family and that's the most important thing to me.

I had watched the original Wizard of Oz a few times last week in preparation for seeing the new Oz movie. I think The Wizard of Oz is the best movie of all time. Even Keira and Liana love it. I have never seen Liana be interested in what's on TV until I put on The Wizard of Oz for her. She was absolutely fixated on it. I did have high hopes for the new Oz movie (which is a prequel to the old Wizard of Oz) but I knew it wouldn't compare in awesomeness just because nothing compares in awesomeness to the original Wizard of Oz. It was a decent movie, but we both thought it was too long. Anyway, my point is not to give a movie review, but watching all these tornadoes in the movies this week and riding the Tornado ride reminded me of the time I was in a tornado many years ago...

It was about 15 years ago... I must have been around 12 years old or so (my mom says it was right when we moved in that house which would make me 8 years old, but I could swear I was older than that). It was probably in early spring. The weather was calm that day, but in the afternoon we saw a storm start to come in from the West. Black clouds and pouring rain. Our house was a big two-story home in the country, nothing but crops on every side. My mom and I were sitting on her bed looking out the back sliding glass door to the balcony watching the storm clouds get closer. The wind picked up quickly and was blowing harder than we had ever seen before and suddenly we see a tornado form from the clouds and touch town maybe a quarter mile from our house. There was a farm worker on a tractor out plowing the field and he turned his tractor around and was driving away as quickly as he could, but the tornado was getting closer so he actually got off the tractor and started running toward the street.

My mom and I stood at the sliding glass door and watched the tornado coming straight toward our house in complete awe... like complete dummies. It hit our house directly and the glass on the door bent inward. It was completely curved. Then water started shooting though the bottom of every door and window on the West side of our house about 6 feet in the air. We scrambled to grab towels to stuff into the cracks. After the tornado passed, we saw that our above-ground pool which had been mostly empty in the back yard, had been tossed completely out of our backyard.

Thankfully any tornado that touches down in California is not any more devastating than this one was, because we would have been in a world of trouble standing there by those glass windows. They probably would have all shattered on us. I think the proper tornado protocol is to crack the windows and get to a room in the center of the house with no outside walls or windows, but we didn't know that back then. So, just in case you were wondering, we weren't transported to Oz, nor did we get to meet the wizard... but it definitely gave us a story worth telling.

Walking and Talking

Liana at 9 months old!

In the past month she has been participating in unauthorized acts of growing up... namely WALKING and TALKING. She had been taking 2 steps here and there since she turned 9 months old then at 9 months 2 weeks she got up to 5 steps, and now that she just turned 10 months old she is walking all the way across the room. The way she walks is so cute. She takes the tiniest little slow, steady, cautious steps. She says dada, mama, "guh" for grandma, I have even heard her say Keira. She also says DOG clear as a bell and "buh buh buh" for bark bark bark. This girl is growing up way too fast. Under no circumstances is she allowed to have a birthday in 2 months.

Liana is very self-entertaining. She crawls (and now walks) around looking for cool things to play with/chew on. She doesn't cry for me if I'm in another room. She is very laid back and content, a "go with the flow" kind of girl.

Her new favorite thing to do is empty things, bags, baskets, drawers, cabinets... she just stands there slowly tossing out one item at a time. She isn't playing with the contents, just throwing them on the floor. She will stand in front of Keira's dresser and throw all her clothes on the floor one at a time. Then she moves to the book shelf and does the same thing with the books. I guess she just likes making messes for me to clean up.

Liana is just the sweetest little baby I could ask for. She gives the best little hugs and lights up when she sees us. She is a joy to have as a daughter and I just love her to pieces.

Liana is 10 months old!

Peanut Butter Confessions

When we were kids, Brent and I used to try to be the first person to open the new jar of Skippy peanut butter. Brent, especially, gleaned particular enjoyment from opening the fresh jar and being the first one to mark the previously flawless surface of the creamy peanut butter.

YEARS later, Brent was reminiscing how we used to fight over getting to open the new peanut butter and I confessed to him that I didn't really enjoy it like he did, I just liked to open it and mark it up just to thwart him.

Sibling rivalry at it's finest. Love you, Brenty.

Realistic Optimistic

Art and I have been trying to get our finances in order to buy a house over the past couple years, so we were thrilled to find out in January that our credit was up to par and that with some seller contribution toward closing costs and a down payment assistance program, we could start shopping for a house now. We qualified with our lender, and coordinated with our agent, Dyan, my trusted friend and past co-worker at The Boyd Company.

It was merely days later that we found a property that caught our attention. Not too old, decent part of town, fully remodeled, huge backyard. So we made an offer on it. This is when I began to learn that the most complicated part of buying a house is the emotional aspect. It became all I could think about. I couldn't even sleep at night. I was so excited- my mind pouring over every detail of the house, imagining us occupying it. Then my logic kicked in after a few days, knowing the seller was receiving multiple offers, I knew I better not let myself get so emotionally attached. But then I felt like I was getting pessimistic- doubting our decision to put an offer on the house, thinking of more of the negative qualities of the house or neighborhood, almost like premature buyer's remorse. How do you be realistic without being pessimistic? And how to you be optimistic without getting emotionally attached? Our offer didn't end up getting accepted, and I am ok with that, but these two questions have been on my mind, knowing we would be making offers on other houses in the future.

All month, I meticulously searched the listings for any properties of interest. With Keira going to school this fall, and Art still working nights, we want to find as safe of a neighborhood as possible. Before I even consider a property, I check it against crimereports.com to see where the sex offenders live and how much crime there is in the area. None of the houses fit our price range and criteria until a new listing appeared last night in a very desirable and safe part of town. Walking distance to two parks, the church, the elementary school, middle school, and high school. We drove by it today and checked out the neighborhood, came back later to see the inside at the open house, and had our offer submitted this evening. Here we go again... excited... distracted... nervous... probably won't sleep tonight... feeling like there's no chance in the world that our offer will be accepted... yet deciding where I'm going to put my furniture all at the same time. I'm hoping someday soon I can master being realistic and optimistic at the same time.

Once There Was a Snowman

Most kids love to scribble and color, but not Keira. She has always had an aversion to it, which makes me more and more nervous the closer she gets to starting kindergarten this fall. She is a perfectionist and since she knows she can't write and color perfectly, she doesn't want to do it at all- especially not on demand. Nonetheless, she would randomly surprise me by writing an occasional letter of the alphabet on my phone or dry erase board or a scribble here or there. She is very creative and has, of her own accord, made alphabet letters out of Q-tips and made a happy face out of jewel stickers on my kitchen counter, but I can't seem to get her to write them on paper. She loves to do other art projects including using scissors, stickers, glue, and paper, but the majority of her coloring projects have been on my couch, walls, and floor.

I have been trying to present her with more artistic opportunities to prepare her for school, without putting any pressure on her to do so. She is the kind of girl who will do things on her own but will put the brakes on the moment she thinks it's your idea and not hers. She has actually started to scribble more than ever before, and any scribble of hers is a work of art to me because at least she is finally using a writing instrument in her own hand to write on paper.

Today, I was cooking dinner and Keira took the unsupervised opportunity to do something she's not supposed to, as usual. She found a purple ink pen and scribbled all over her knee. Then later I asked her why she did it and she said, "Because I wanted a snowman cutie mark." (Cutie marks are the designs on each pony's flank in the My Little Pony cartoon.) I didn't think much of it, until later I was sitting next to her on the couch and realized that her "scribbles" were not scribbles at all, but she had actually drawn a snowman on her knee! She has never drawn anything before in her life, and busts out with a snowman on her kneecap. She went on the explain that the other "scribbles" around the snowman were the road to get to the snow park and piles of snow around the snowman. I was amazed.

I am starting to learn that even if her art projects are done on a surface they don't belong, not to react harshly at first because when I really pay attention to what she's done I realize just how smart she is. She just doesn't want me to know. :)

Conversations with Keira

Keira is extremely smart and often surprises us with her vocabulary and understanding of concepts. Sometimes the things she says catch us completely off guard. For example...

A few weeks ago, Keira demanded that Art get get a drink of juice. I corrected her and told her to ask nicely. She asked again more nicely, batting her eyelashes for added persuasion and when Art agreed to get her drink she muttered deviously, "I knew I could break him!" I was floored. I didn't even know how to respond to that and I have no idea where she would have heard that or how she could understand the concept of "breaking" someone.

Then yesterday, Keira was trying to convince me to retrieve a toy that she believes is in the garage. I told really didn't want to go the garage and she asked me if it was because there were spiders out there. I was like, "Yeah there are yucky spiders out there. I don't wanna go out there. Let's make Daddy go out there another time." So she told me, "You just have to take the broom out there and if a spider comes you smash it with the broom!" I responded, what if there are two spiders? Then what do I do?" She thinks, then responds, "You just step on them with your two shoes!" Then I asked her, "What if there are THREE spiders coming at me at the same time?" She got a pensive look on her face and I thought I may have stumped her then she stated bluntly, "You'll just have to take your chances."

Oh my goodness that made me laugh. She is so clever... a little devious... but clever.

Back to Blonde

Having never dyed my hair dark before, I had no idea that making my hair blonde again would be so difficult. I thought since I am naturally blonde it should be an easy task not realizing it would be just as complicated as if my hair were actually brown. My mom worked at it for over 10 hours and at one point my hair resembled orange sherbet. It took lots of frustration, color remover, bleach, toner, tears, then more toner, but I'm pretty much back to a reasonable shade of blonde. Now I need a haircut to cut off all the damage. As I was gently examining a damaged section of my hair, the bottom inch or so literally just came off in my fingers. My mom has banned me from ever choosing my own hair color again, and Art is very happy to have his blonde wife back again.