Maui!

See this post, number 17. We got it!! I'm much too excited to type now. More later...

Addie and the Unfortunate Doll

John's parents gave Addie a cute little doll for Christmas and Addie has developed sort of a love/hate relationship with it. She sometimes loves to be really gentle with the doll and treats it like it's just precious. Other times, she loves to just poke it in the eye, bite its head and generally torment it. Last week, Addie didn't know anyone was watching her and she started playing with the doll. At first she was so sweet with it, and she kind of petted it and was very gentle. Then she picked the doll up under its arms, looked at it right in the eyes for about 10 seconds, then she threw her head back and headbutted it as hard as she could. This unfortunate doll does not stand a chance against Addie, who is the queen of headbutting. Stay tuned for more Addie vs the Unfortunate Doll adventures.

Can't Help Myself

I couldn't help it. I know I said I wasn't planting a garden this year, since the house is for sale, but I started to think to myself "what if the house doesn't sell for 5-6 months?" It's possible, in this market, right? Plus, our neighbor a few house down has the most amazing garden ever, which has affected me in two ways: 1) I'm completely jealous and have severe garden envy every time I walk past his yard and 2) this neighbor has decided to start a Saturday morning neighborhood "Farmer's Market" of sorts, where all the neighbors can bring their extra produce and trade for something they may not have grown this year. If I don't have a garden this year, what can I trade with? See my point? Plus, the thought of not having garden fresh vegetables this year makes me feel empty. So I put in a simple garden: tomatoes, tomatillos, crookneck squash, zucchini, cucumbers, jalapenos, anaheims and the usual herbs (basil and parsley are new this year, and there are old perennials like rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, oregano and mint that are back). All in all, I feel good for having a garden in my yard, even if the house does sell quickly and I find out that I just spent two days planting someone else's garden.

Pick Me Up

If you haven't seen the latest Pixar offering "UP", do yourself a favor, drop what you're doing now and rush to the closest theater. We saw this movie last night and loved, loved, loved it. Someone told me that the first 20 minutes would make me cry, and they were right. Well done, Ed Catmull, well done. The short was fantastic too, by the way. I give "UP" 2 thumbs up, 5 stars, fresh tomatoes, whatever. It's just good.

Boring

I received the ultimate insult last night. I was at my friend Lisa's house and she told me "Your blog is boring. You never post anything." Painful, but true. So Lisa, this post is dedicated to you.

It really has been much too long since I posted. What's new, you ask? Here are 20 random things that will catch you up with my life:

1. Addie just got over the worst illness! She had a fever of 103 for about 4 days straight. Then she developed cold sores all over her lips and got them in her mouth, on her tongue and gums. She didn't eat hardly anything for about 3 days, and when she did eat, she would scream because food hurt her mouth. SO sad. However, she's much better now and is back to wreaking havoc and destroying things around the house. Yesterday John caught her eating the carpet in our living room, just tearing up peices and trying to unravel it with her teeth. Oh, and she has also figured out a way to open flip top water bottles, using her bottom teeth as a bottle opener.
   
2. We just put our house up for sale. It made my heart hurt to see the sign out front because I love our house, but it's just a little too small.
   
3. Because the house is up for sale, I have not planted a garden for the first time in 9 years. I'm having some major gardening withdrawal pains and also suffer from garden envy. If our house doesn't sell until fall, I'm going to be ticked about this.
   
4. Had a great time this weekend. Went to the Farmer's Market downtown, bought goat cheese, goat cheese yogurt, farm fresh eggs, fresh beet greens and grass feed beef (lunch today). Also got some great street food and tried Maestro's gelato for an after market treat. Had a good friend over for dinner that night and grilled plank salmon, corn on the cob and new potatoes, and served them with fresh caprese salad. Almost a perfect Saturday. Incidentally, Maestro's is AWESOME! Try it if you haven't been there. They have tons of gelato flavors and both sweet and savory crepes.
   
5. Addie has developed an evil laugh. It's almost like a villain in a movie. She did it for about 20 minutes straight in Maestro's on Saturday, due to their amazing echo in their restaurant. I'm surprised we didn't get kicked out, but the owners were actually very cool and did evil laughs back at her. We'll be going back there for sure.
6. I love "Bobby Flay's Grill It". I'm kind of obsessed with grilling these days and have gotten some great ideas from that show. Several of the dishes featured on last week's marathon have made it to the menu this week.
7. I'm so excited about the new bike trailer we bought from Lisa! She and her hubby sold us their baby bike trailer and I'm excited beyond words to start riding with Addie in tow. She's going to love the canyon rides!
8. John and some friends are planning a treasure hunting trip in a couple of weeks. Should be so much fun! His dad is going with them and it will be a fun boy's day out.
   
9. I'm loving golf this year. I've been about 3 times so far and I'm getting a few kinks worked out of my game.
   
10. FYI, I am absolutely crazy about my husband and little girl. They are so stinking amazing. I'm very lucky.
11. I'm excited for Charlotte to come out and visit this summer. I want to meet Bri!
12. I was so overwhelming happy at the American Idol results!!!!!!
    
13. I've replaced American Idol with "So You Think You Can Dance". Mary is no Paula, but she'll do for now.
14. Addie's 1 year birthday is in less than three weeks! I need to get her party planned.
15. My new weakness: Ghiradelli's dark chocolate bar with caramel filling.
    
16. We're going to a "Save Rock Canyon" rally on Saturday morning. For those who don't know, Rock Canyon is being threatened by a loser who wants to turn it into a mining operation. This would be a huge tragedy. To learn more, click here.
17. We put in a request to trade our timeshare week for a week in Maui in the fall. Fingers crossed!
18. I hate my allergies this year.
    
19. I'm glad to know where I came from, why I'm here and where I'm going. It's good news indeed.
20. I'm considering adding an "overheard" feature to my blog. I hear the most random snippets of conversations. Watch for that!

Ah, it feels good to blog. I think I'm back on the wagon. Happy Lisa? :)

Overheard

Today while walking Addie through the halls in church, I overheard the following conversation between about five 18 year old boys in hallway (one was talking, the others were listening very intently):

"So he talked back to his dad, nothing really bad, but he talked back to him and then he turned to leave and his dad was like 'Don't turn your back on me!', and he kept walking, so his dad took a knife and threw it at his back, so he had to listen to his dad yell at him for 10 minutes with a knife in his back, before he could take it out. But him and all the kids in his family totally respect authority."

Hmmmmm.

Hooray for Matt!

I'll admit it, I was worried for Matt this week. I'm one of his biggest fans, and still believe that when the boy plays the piano and sings, nobody can touch him (not even you Adam Lambert). However, after his weak-sauce version of "Stayin' Alive", which sadly reminded me the entire time of a parody we did in my third grade school play of Pinocchio in the whale's belly, I didn't have much hope that he'd still be around after tonight. I was even prepared to stop watching the show (although let's be honest, I would still watch just to vote for whoever is competing with Adam) if Matt got kicked off. Then, tonight, when Ryan informed us that Matt was saved again, this time not by the judges, but by you, America, I stood up and cheered! Let's hear it for dueling pianists everywhere! Matt, we still got your back! Make us proud buddy!

Memo to Self

Please don't let me forget that we have Wicked tickets for this weekend. We bought them almost a year ago and I almost forgot about them. Yikes.

682

I decided today to clean off my SD card from my new camera, because it had been about 4 weeks. I had 682 pictures on there. About 4 GB worth. And out of 682, probably 672 are of Addie. Here are some of my favorite photos from last month:

I just love how big her eyes look here!

OK, we laughed and laughed and laughed at this one. I have no idea what Addie's doing here! She looks like a fake doll. She's such a character.

Making eyes at Daddy

Just love this candid shot

This is so her. She's a total prankster!

Ditto.

Getting into trouble....and getting caught!

Happy to be standing up!

Addie is a little thrill seeker. She loves to be thrown in the air, and give John a workout.

Love. this. one. I just adore her cute little smile.

Bath time fun. We call this the "old man face" and she's been making it a lot lately.

Trying to snag some shower water.

Nice and clean and cute!

And here's photo I shot of our "spring" snow storm this week.

Love the new camera. More photos coming soon, I'm sure.

Judge's Save

Oh thank heaven for the Judge's Save!! I knew I was going to like that rule. Matt lives to sing one more week...at least. Hopefully Matt is practicing some killer disco moves and Adam Lambert will suffer a stress fracture in his hip this week, rendering him unable to do his bum-swiveling moves next week. We'll see.

Punk'd

I promise, this blog is not turning into place to report nothing but the crazy dreams I have, but I just had to share one more. Over the weekend, I dreamed that I was at the mall eating lunch at the food court. Out of nowhere, Ashton Kutcher walks up and sits down to join me. We chat for a few minutes and then he says "I apologize in advance for this." I say "For what?" Then Ashton head-butts me, but HARD. As I'm reeling from the force of the blow, Ashton steals my laptop and runs away. End of dream.

In other events, we had a fantastic, but low-key Easter. We made a small dinner of caprese salad (with tons of fresh basil from my aerogarden) and lemon chicken. We also visited some friends from Mexico and shared in an Easter tamale feast. They had a huge party complete with "Coscaron", or confetti eggs.

They had been saving egg shells since February, and had filled them with confetti and hand painted them. Everyone ran around the yard chasing each other and smashing eggs on each other's head. At the end of the day, everyone looked like this:

So fun. We were shaking confetti out of our hair all afternoon, but it was worth it. Hope everyone had a joyful Easter weekend!

Subconscious Paranoia

I don't consider myself to be a paranoid person. I consider John to be paranoid (or preparanoid, as we like to say in our family), but I'm generally a trusting person. That's not entirely true, but I do tend to think that while people may screw you over in the business world without a second thought, I don't fear for my safety around most people. Until now...

The last two nights, I have had the most random dreams about scary people. I'm open to any interpretations if anyone is so inclined. Let's start with Saturday night's dream:

I'm driving in my SUV. John and Addie are not with me. For some reason, I have borrowed a random piece of sheet metal, or siding from someone, and even though it's worthless, I feel compelled to return it. I go to this guy's house (didn't recognize him in my dream) and return it. He thanks me. On the way back to my car, I look down at the ground and see my wallet, my bag, and 4 other things that I left in the car just laying in the middle of the road. I take as much as I can carry back to the car and go back for the rest. As I'm heading back towards the pile of stuff, I notice two men approaching me (didn't recognize them either). They offer to help me carry my stuff back to my car. At first I think to myself "How nice and helpful of them". As they get closer, I get this panicked thought: "These are the guys that stole the stuff from the car! This was a setup!" They close in, and I know they are going to grab me/attack me. I panic and scare myself awake so abruptly that I sit up in bed in a cold sweat.

So the next night (last night) I fall asleep again and have this dream:

I'm working as a bodyguard. OK, don't laugh. It could happen. I'm working with a team of people to protect this very important lady (didn't recognize her). There are some very unique flowers in a vase on this lady's desk. We're standing around doing bodyguard type stuff when the secret service rushes in the room. "Who delivered those flowers?" they shout? None of us saw. They point out to us that there is a plastic bag floating in the bottom of the vase and they just ran some test on the air around us, and someone delivered some flowers that were tainted with a chemical that evaporates into the air and renders people unable to fight or run, but only on the second exposure. They tell us to be very careful because this chemical works in two parts, the first part is unnoticeable, but once you have the second dose, you are completely incapacitated. They tell us to be very careful for anything that could contain the second dose. Then they leave. They don't assign a different team, they just tell us to watch out. Weird, right? So we are all just sitting around waiting for the second dose to hit us. We all knew it was going to, we just didn't know how or when. We started saying goodbye to each other and apologizing in advance to each other and to the lady we were guarding, for not being about to protect each other. And then we just waited. Then I woke up.

I have no idea what to make of either of these dreams. I'm really don't think I'm paranoid, but maybe I'm subconsciously paranoid. And such a thing I never imagined. Anyone else ever have crazy dreams like this? Is it just me? Is it? It's just me, isn't it? I knew it!

Watching Conference

A Mini Mission Reunion

Last night I got to have dinner with two amazing sisters from my mission. We hadn't seen each other in years, and it was so much fun to catch up. Marla and Karen, you rock! It was my Alma 17:2 night. I love your examples, what good moms you are, all the good things you're doing in your lives and that even though years have passed, that we can pick up right where we left off, and all the years that have passed don't matter at all. Let's just not wait this long until we hang out again, deal?

Here's a shot with everyone:

We Saved Matt!!

We did it! We saved Matt! We were so upset that he was in the bottom 3 last week that we made it a personal mission to save him this week. And it worked! Of the 36 million votes cast in this week's AI contest, I believe 1.2 million of them came from our family room. I especially loved that almost everyone had two phones dialing simultaneously for at least an hour. Matt, we got your back.

On another topic, has anyone noticed the similarities between Adam Lambert and Elvis in his later years?

I'm just sayin'.

Lastly, the right person definitely went home last night. Megan finally flew the coop and not a moment too soon. You would think I would support the girl from my home state, but I just couldn't. Caw caw!