Why I Love Arizona (even when it's 110+degrees)

The heat and I are not friends, so I thought it would be good to do some posts during the summer to remind me about the good things here.

I love that our local NPR station fundraises two times a year for 4 days each! In Boston, I swear they had a fundraiser once a month. Drove. Me. Crazy.

Fresh Peach Pie

I try to post a recipe at least once a week on this blog. Today, I did a post about my Young Women's leaders and the killer cookbook they put together (and gave us credit for)--included is a recipe for the best peach pie.

Peter Piper Pizza

Asher, Luke, and I went to Peter Piper Pizza this week. They have an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet for $4.95 with kids 3 and under eating free. We stayed there for almost 2 hours with Luke and Asher playing all the games (please note: if you teach my kids that the games use tokens, I'll have to kill you).

But, the best part about this is our allergy experience. I HATE going to new resturants with Asher. I have to speak to the manager, look at their food labels, and I can tell that many of these managers are thinking "Oh, it's one of those crazy moms who thinks her kid is allergic to everything."

Our shift manager, Manuel, totally rocked. He made a special cheese-free pizza for Asher, put it on the pizza buffet so we didn't have to pay for it, AND came and found us 1/2 an hour later to make sure Asher hadn't had a reaction.

So, we'll add PPP to our summer rotation (and seriously, don't tell my kids about tokens).

When we were young...

Nate and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary this week--if you call celebrating sitting in the same room while one person prepared for arbitration and one person prepared a Young Women's workshop. I know, we're hopeless romantics...

In high school, if I had to pick who I was going to marry, well, it wasn't Nate. And, Nate would say the same thing about me. (As Nate reads this, I think he would add--"But, Emily, I totally could have made out with you if I put my mind to it.")

I love him, even when I yell at him or when he's right and I'm wrong.

I woke up this morning and what did I see?

Luke just as naked as he could be (sung to the tune of "Popcorn Popping"--one of Luke's favorite songs)--maybe he got the idea from Little J!

Luke has had a busy week this week.

He called 911 at 7:30 am on Tuesday. I was (ahem) in my garments making Asher's lunch for school when the doorbell rang. I tried to sneak past my front door and bolt for my bedroom and robe, having no idea who was at the door.

After I bolted past, the doorbell rang repeatedly, and whoever was at the door started banging. Scared me to death...

I got on my robe and answered the door to a male and a female police officer, who told me about the 911 hang-up received a few minutes earlier. They were very nice when I apologized and squeaked out (I lost my voice for a few days) that my 1 year old has a habit of making phone calls.

On Sunday, Luke and I were in the foyer at Church, when Luke ran into the bishop's office. I saw Luke gleefully shut the door. I wasn't too worried until I walked to the door and found it locked. Again, scared me to death...

Hoping Nate had keys to the bishop's office, I motioned him out of sacrament meeting to help. (Note: executive secretaries do not have keys to the bishop's office).

Luckily, the wife of the 1st counselor (and my Visiting Teacher) motioned her husband down from the stand. Poor Matt thought someone was bleeding or dead.

Matt had Luke out in a flash, and Luke couldn't figure out why he had 4 adults all looking at him when he came out.

Who's the Boss? Luke is...

Luke has always been the boss, which seems strange to me. Didn’t he know he’s supposed to be the super chill #2?

Since he came home from the hospital, Luke has been able to go from happy and docile Luke to a raging, mad, turning purple because things aren’t going his way Luke in less than 20 seconds.

Now, he’s discovered that in addition to a terrific amount of yelling all he needs is his pointer finger, some grunting, and the occasional favorite word (airplane, bird, kisses, tickles, cookie, strawberry, banana), to get what he wants. He’s rather tenacious, so he’ll keep on whoever is on hand until they fulfill the command.

Unfortunately, Luke hasn’t learned an important word that would help with this process: yes.

So, the past few days have been spent with me carrying Luke on my hip as he points me in the right direction, I find what he thinks he wants, and then, he gives me an emphatic, “NO!” It’s been puzzling because I’ll then walk somewhere else to figure out what he wants and soon have a screaming, purple Luke on my hands.

It took me longer than I care to admit to realize that Luke doesn’t get the whole “yes,” “no” concept. So, an emphatic “NO” can be “NO, I really don’t want that!” or “YES, now, give it to me!”

Sometimes, I forget he doesn’t have a complete command of the English language because well, he’s the boss.

Musically-inclined?

Lately, I've been thinking that Asher must have an aptitude for music. He loves to dance (and unfortunately, he got all his moves from his mom and not my cousin, Matisse!) and sing (he'll hit a note every once in a while), but it was his music identification that got me thinking, until today...

Listening to KBAQ (classical station): Mom, this is Little Einstein music.
He's right!

Listening to an NPR story that finishes up with some French music: Mom, this is mouse music. Mouse is what Asher calls Ratatouille. He's right again!

Listening to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive": Mom, this is Elmo music.
Um, did I miss that episode of Elmo's World?

Asher has a bad habit of not looking at the camera and saying "Cheese" instead of smiling. Fortunately, my sister, Rachel doesn't give up taking pictures of him like I have. Here's a picture of Asher and his cousin/brother, Evan, in San Diego.

A new addition to the family

I've been neglecting to talk about our new addition to the Clyde family. My brother married a lovely woman--we just finished up the wedding festivities this weekend.

I love Jessica and her family. (The Clydes' have totally been scoring big time with the in-laws and their families.) Jessica is a smart (Math Major--need I say more?), cool and collected BYU senior. I'm impressed that she remained so calm even as a bride.

She's lovely to the nephews. When we were up at BYU in their Student Union (I know, it's called something else, but I can't remember what), I asked my siblings to watch my kids while I ran through the bookstore. I came out to find Jessica chasing Asher and Luke while my siblings all chatted it up at a table, far away from the kids.

She's always easy going and patient with our crazy family.

Dave is lucky to have her; we're lucky to have her.

Ok, I'll really try to stop with the bragging posts about my family now.

Under Construction

Rachel is trying to help me make my blog be blogilicious. Stay tuned...

We're Getting Ready for Broadway! Broadway! Broadway!...

...We’re getting ready for Broadway on the galaxy tonight!*

I don’t talk about my piano students much here, but I had a great group of kids this year. Really truly, I enjoy each and every one of them, even when they don't practice :)

This year, our recital theme was Broadway musicals. But, not just any Broadway musicals, I wanted these kids to learn about some old school stuff. None of this taking a movie and turning it into a musical, or taking a bunch of pop songs and turning it into a musical (although I do love Mama Mia). We did 1950’s and 1960’s musicals, which meant for some tricky fingering moves for these kids (of my 12, 4 have taken less than a year and 4 more have taken less than 2 years). They were good sports, and each did a great job!

Recitals are also 100 times less stressful when they're done with another teacher. I was happy to have a friend do a combined recital with me; Anna is so dependable and a great baker. Hopefully, next year, we'll have some cellists in the program, too.

*Kate and Sara are probably the only other two people in the blogging world (even Nate has forgotten this gem) who will get such a random reference to this song written by a choir substitute who taught us for 2 weeks and then, quit due to death threat phone calls he began getting. Ah, good times…

Hope for any mom

When I was growing up, I didn't think much of my siblings. I fought with my sisters (and threatened to call the cops if they didn't behave while I was babysitting--cursed be the day that Rachel called my bluff!) and wiped my brothers' bums a lot (and flushed the toilet for Tom--hmmm, maybe I better just leave it at that).

But, today, they are some of my best friends. I don't go a week without talking to each one of them. They're each incredibly insightful, and I'm sure I'm not at all biased because we share the same DNA.

I thought I'd include this second photo because it looks like one of those cute staged shots that some families do. This one isn't--we were really all looking that off.