When it rains it POURS!

Well Phoenix is getting pounded with water that just left San Diego soaked. It is such a nice change of pace. We broke the 24 hr rainfall record Tuesday that was last set in 1917. We are expected to get 1/2 of our annual rainfall in this one week. WONDERFUL!! I love the smell of rain.

But I wish my title had to only do with the weather. We got a letter in the mail on Tuesday that stated that our landlord has not been paying the mortgage since September and our house goes up for auction in April. Oh joy! We just overcame the great trial of Chad losing is job since he started a temp job (but good paying one) on Tuesday. We didn't even have ONE day of breathing room. I really want my past rent money back from October til now because she is not holding up her end of the bargain. I pay her my rent so she pays the mtg. We might just wait it out until the bank comes with the sheriff to do 'cash for keys' and collect the $1500. We don't think we will be getting our deposit back if she is not paying the mortgage, even though we can go after her legally for it. It would cost us $ we don't have to do the legal mumbo-jumbo and if she files bankruptcy or something we aren't guaranteed to get it anyway.

In the meantime, I am a little grateful since I really don't like the layout of this house. I am hoping that one of our outta state resumés will get an offer and we will have to move outta state anyway. Who knows.

After reading one of my roommates blogs from good ole Dixie College, I am just amazed at her faith. I thought my faith had grown leaps and bounds but she is able to have true blind faith. She is truly an inspiration to me. She knows that some of their journeys have been longer or a little more odd than normal but she has had some of the most amazing experiences. (singing Christmas carols in a field in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve!!) All the while having her children experience these too. All things happen for a reason and I think it will all be for a greater good as to why we have had these countless trials. Ask me again in 3 months but I am hoping things will have worked themselves out for the better in the end.

Seussical Jr - The Musical

Savannah school is going to be putting on Seussical Jr. When she brought home the paper that talked about the school musical (at this time we didn't know what it was) she was so excited. She said she wanted to be in it. I told her she would have to be on stage in front of lots of moms and dad. I explained she would have to sing to the music teacher to audition. She was all for it. We went to the meeting last night to learn what play they were doing and also the parts. She is going to audition for a Who. She is super excited. Plus 2 of her little friends from school want to do it too. I am excited to be able to make her have 'Who' hair. What fun! We will learn next week when her audition is. Since she is not going out for a big part she will just have to sing along with some scales.

What a great way for her to see if this is something she enjoys. I think Aunt Mel has definitely rubbed off on her because she does not get this need to be on stage from my blood. :)

Chores in your home.

Do you have chores for your children? Do they actually do them? We have a few set chores for our the girls. They are still young but have things such as making beds, brushing teeth, cleaning rooms/toys. Savannah has to feed the dog as well. But sometimes these simple chores do not get done. I can across a great website, My Job Chart, that will have their daily chores on there for them and they even have their own log in so that you know they did it. You assign points to each chore and when and also have rewards. Rewards are things you want to set up, dinner out, making cookies, time with mom or dad. You can even set something bigger like, camping, Disneyland or anything of that nature. When they reach the set point level for that reward they can cash in their points. What a great concept and idea.

I really think Savannah will like that she has her own log in to go on and report if she has done her jobs. Plus I can go in if she actually doesn't do it and remove points. I think it will be really helpful for our family this year.

It is free to join and just might help get your family back on track this new year. Be sure to check it out. myjobchart.com

From the mouth of babes

So this morning I was working on the computer doing finishing touches to our new babysitting club schedule. Chad and i were saying something about age. Charlotte is in her chair eating her cereal (which she would eat for all meals if she had the choice). Chad says 'Yeah Mommy is 28'. Charlotte puts her spoon down and yells, '9!' It was pretty funny because I am in fact 29 not 28. She just cracks us up.

Happy New Year

Wishing you and yours a year of
belly laughs…
tears of joy…
fairy tales…
hot cocoa…
iced lemonade…
snowflakes…
fireflies…
fairies…
puddle splashing…
full bellies…
open arms…
peaceful rest…
and the chance to wake up to wonder 365 times and do it all again.

Here's to making 2010 BETTER than 2009.

I hope you all have a fantastic New Year!

Christmas 2009

I have yet to download my pictures. Not sure what my little monkey did with my cord. So you will have to do with a narration.

Christmas Eve Savannah was all in a tizzy. She kept running around the house saying, 'We have so much to do. Hang the stockings, make Santa's cookies and milk.' She was very adamant that we 'make' the milk for Santa. So she helped Daddy hang the stockings. I was making acini-de-peppi for Christmas dinner and Muddy Buddys so I was not worrying about the cookies. I remembered we had some Keebler fudge stripped cookies upstairs and she was happy with that.

Once it started to get dark we decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood with the kids and dogs to look at lights. (we are dog sitting through the holidays. Needless to say the other dog is not used to a real tree and I think it thought it was great that we brought a real toilet(tree) in the house). Savannah was so nice to teach her sister the word 'awesome' although Charlie pronounced it a little different. So every house was 'wow' and 'hawsome'!! according to Charlotte. Charlotte loved the snowmen and penguins in peoples yards. Savannah liked the houses that were playing music. It helped to get us a little more into the Christmas spirit.

Christmas morning comes and I get a text from a childhood friend at 7:30a as my wake up call. My kids are still a snoozin. Charlie is the first one awake at 8:15. We recently took her crib down and so she is good at escaping. I bought the little childproof knobby things to keep kids out of things which I put on the inside of her door. The little stinker is smart and can take it off. Some days she is lazy and just yells 'DOOR' until we let her out. Christmas morning she decided to open it herself, although she did not come out of her room. Instead she decided to turn on her cd player full blast with the Chipmunks Christmas blaring. She was sitting on her bed singing along to Jingle Bells. In her version there is a Hey! after every line of song. This eventually woke up Savannah. We brought the scriptures into Charlies room to read Luke 2 and drink our grape juice.

**Grape juice is a Wright tradition from Chads grandmother. During the depression it was a treat to have grape juice so they only got it Christmas morning. The tradition has continued but I have evolved to white grape since I can't stand the purple stuff.**

We let the girls finally come down and they ran to their stuff. Savannah got a LeapFrog Tag system, a boy barbie, an alarm clock, a lite brite and some little tinker fairy Barbie things. Charlotte got the dora castle (totally recycled from 3 years ago with Savannah), a rocking chair, a magna doodle and the little fairy thingys. When Savannah asked to see Charlotte's magna doodle Charlotte layed down on it and yelled, 'MINE'. It was pretty funny. Chad let the girls play with their Santa stuff for like an hour so I went back to bed. Then we finally opened the gifts from everyone else. All in all we had a great Christmas.

We got a few unexpected gifts from unexpected people to which we are truly grateful for. These small gifts really helped to understand the true giving of Christmas. To whomever you are with the cards sent to and from us, we thank you. It helped out more than you will ever know. We are sad we were not in the black to send out cards to everyone this year. Maybe next year or a happy July. We wish you all the best and hope you will have a Joyous New Year.

Charlotte is 2!! ~ little late in posting

Charlotte is finally two!! Since our budget is to tight it squeaks I had to get creative. I wanted to throw her a little party with family and a few of our friends. This way she can get the whole party thing without me having to buy oodles of presents although I did already have stuff for her that I bought in September. Savannah helped me come up with the idea of a 'Winter Wonderland' party. Savannah's original idea was a snow fairy party but that required more $$ I thought. So I went to town with making snowflakes. My sis in law Anna showed me how to make the coolest 3D snowflakes. A lot less messy that the normal original ones I did. We even won a can of the spray snow at a gingerbread house contest so I used it on the windows out front. We also incorporated snowmen into our theme. Charlie loves snowmen so it was perfect!! (I forgot to take a pic of the snowman ornaments I gave out to kiddos, I'll post later)

Charlotte was not too sure about her cake. I decided that I am always going to do cupcakes for birthdays. Then have the special little birthday cake for the Happy Birthday person. Then they feel special and I don't have a huge pan of cake left over. With the help of her cousin she did finally get her candles blown out and stopped trying to grab them. Even though she had already had a cupcake she still wanted to dig in.

These are all the cupcakes I made for the party. I even found stuffed in my cupboard some snowflake cupcake wrappers. I sat and pipped all these cookies the night before. All the kids got to take home 2 cookies as their goodie bag. Two because she is 2 after all. They were yummy cookies and I got the recipe from my friend Debbie. I think I will have to make them again.

Of course this was what our winter wonderland looked like in our house. We will have all the snowflakes hanging up. Chad asked if we can just leave them up through January. When the heat kicks on they start blowing so we feel like its snowing.

This is 'Super Charlie'!!! My friend Aimee with her awesome talent made her this costume set for her. She looks so cute in it. She runs around the house going 'Da...Da...Da.. DA' with her little arm up in the air. If you want one she will custom make one with different logos (which she designs herself) for ya. I believe they are like $25. She does not buy the cheapo stuff, always the best. I had other pics of her opening gifts and I thought I loaded them but apparently not. It takes too long to load and I am already so far behind. We gave her a sit n spin and some little FP clip dolls. I am glad that I had got 2 because Savannah was good at 'breaking in' all Charlottes toys. She also got a pony, barbie, princess stuff, these fun bath butterflies that she plays with all over the house and some clothes. She was soo funny opening too that she had to get every piece of paper off the package before she would see what it was.

I made these little 'take home cans' for the kids to put their cookies in. We wrapped them in snowflake paper and they got to decorate them with making their own snowman. It was a lot of fun and kept the kids occupied.

When the party was over and we all had our naps, we had another party to go to. Our friend Sophie had her party on the same day. The girls were on the teeter todder together and it was so cute. Then Savannah got on the other side and bucked Charlotte off. She landed on her head. So she fell asleep pretty early into the party. Lots of fun but a little cold. Glad I had my little sleeping heater in my lap.

Wild Weather

We had a doozie of a storm on Monday night. It blew down trees and literally blew the lights off my house!! I had Christmas lights on the second story outside the girls window. It blew one strand completely off!! They were stapled gunned to the house and everything. I have no idea how it was able to unplug it's self and not pull all of them from the house but I am grateful. I guess I should have the simple single lights and not my snowflake ones huh. So if you see a strand a snowflake lights flying through the air they are mine. I guess Mother Nature wanted to make it 'snow' in Phx.

Land of the Dragons

So it has been forever since I have posted on the family blog. Little bit of craziness, plus I like to post pictures and I am a huge slacker when it comes to loading pictures. Here goes

At the beginning of November we went to the Phoenix Zoo since they were having a special day with Fisher Price. They brought in a bunch of toys (which was excellent marketing on their part for the kids to play with then ask for them for Christmas). They had a little station to make little necklaces and just play. Charlotte had fun playing with Dora and Savannah made necklaces for the entire family. They had a huge blow up dinosaur like one of their toys, and Charlotte wanted nothing to do with it.


They also had a power wheels driving course. It was pretty funny to watch all the kids drive. Savannah insisted that she wanted the pink Barbie jeep. Charlotte was just happy to be along for the ride. Savannah was pretty much an A to B driver and hit the rails a few times since she was going a bit too fast and didn't turn in time. They both had grins on their faces the entire time.


We went to see the Spider Monkey's which are Charlotte's favorite. She loves that you get to walk in their enclosure and have them right up close.

We also got to see a sneak peek before all the other crowds at the new Land of the Dragons, with our new Komono Dragons. There is a male and female. They are brother and sister. The male is 7 feet long 150lbs and the female is 6 ft 75lbs. We also learned that they will find a way to reproduce if there is not a male around. A female can lay fertilized eggs all on her own, but they will all be male. If you want to produce a female well then you will need the male.

We also headed over to Harmony Farm. The girls love to play on the little playground which was sponsored by Fisher Price and has all the Fisher Price animals to play on. We also went over to see Jack and Pedro (the horse & donkey). Chad was holding Charlotte and she want to nervously pet Jacks nose and he sneezed. She instantly starting crying and didn't want anything to do with the them anymore. It was hard to just get her to sit on the wooden horses for a picture.

Lastly the Sting Rays are back from their summer vacation. By the time we got there Charley had fallen asleep, but Savannah enjoyed reaching her hand in to pet them.

New Moon

So I was one of the crazy's who bought a ticket to the New Moon movie back in September and went over at 7pm on Thursday night. Met up with a few other friends. Our Harkin's was awesome to do the marathon and show Twilight before. So we only had to wait until 9:30 to start watching a show. Then at midnight it began. I wish I had a camera to take a picture of my friend Debbie's face when it started. She was like a kid on Christmas morning. The movie was well done, but there was so much to cover in that book it was hard to get it all in. I have to say the ending 'leaves you hanging', since it doesn't completely finish the book. I'm sure they will pick up where they left off for the new one coming out in June.

Lots of fun. I really needed some time out with friends so it was great fun.