It's beginnig to look a lot like Christmas

We had a great, albeit short, Christmas break up in Utah. 

Ellie's first time sitting on Santa's lap.  She doesn't look like it, but she really enjoyed meeting him!

It's a little colder in Utah than it is in Phoenix.

 Mike's parents took us to Midway to go on a Sleigh Ride to Santa's village!

Making Sugar cookies with the Higbees

On Christmas Eve, Grandma & Grandpa took all the grand kids on the Polar Express.

Showing off their bells.

 We spent the rest of Christmas people, with Grandma Mona & Grandpa Ken.

Grandpa Ken's funny glasses

 It snowed so much while we were in Utah, so Ellie had ample opportunities to play in the snow!

A nice action shot of Tilly.  She liked the snow too!

 We also got to go to a Fun Center in Layton with the Trowbridges.  Ellie loved riding down this slide, and I got to play Laser Tag for the first time in my life.

 

We spent a night with Dave & Tiffany.  Mike and Dave passed the time in the garage with Dave's home-made forge.  They made a knife out of a railroad spike.  Very impressive!

 We also made it to the Natural History Museum up at the U.  It was a really nice museum, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

 Thanks to family and friends for making it a great trip!

I have 3 fingers!

You can tell how behind I am on my blog...

Ellie turned three in December!  When we ask her how old she is, she enthusiastically replies, "I have 3 fingers!"

As always, she had two birthday celebrations: one with my family, and one with Mike's.  

In keeping with tradition, here are a few of the things we LOVE about our 3 year old:

1-  She is OBSESSED with Super Heroes.  I blame it on our babysitting group, which consists of 4 little boys and Ellie.  Every day she is someone new: Batman, Spiderman, Superman...  Even when I get out her My Little Ponies, they immediately become Super Ponies and Bad Ponies.  Some days, she'll only respond  to me if I call her Batman. 

2- She loves music.  One night she woke me up around 3:30 to help her go potty.  She's sitting there taking care of business, eyes half-closed, and starts singing "Hey!  I just met you.  And this is CR-A-A-A-ZY.  Here's my number.  Call me maybe." 

3- She has mastered the art of negotiation, and she knows exactly what I want.  "Mom... can I have some candy, and then we can snuggle on the couch?" 

4- She is one of the kindest people I know, and I hope she never loses that.  We were at a baptism and during the intermission where the people were changing clothes, she decided that she wanted to share her Teddy Grahams with each of the 20+ people in the room.  As she handed one to each person, you could see the joy in her eyes as she learned that giving of yourself brings happiness.

5- I can give her a paper and some scissors and she'll blissfully entertain herself for hours.  She'll cut up the paper into tiny pieces and dump them on the floor so she can collect it in our dustpan and dump it in the garbage. 

6- The girl is left-handed.  She has sort of switched off hands up until just recently, but she has now definitely committed to her left.

7- She loves babies.  She's had 3 new cousins born in the last few months, only one of whom she's met, but... she loves making faces at babies and will work determinedly until she can make them smile. 

8- She's very independent now.  She gets deeply offended if I try and help her do something that she can do herself. 

9- One of her most frequently used phrases is, "Oh, I LOVE (insert name)!  Her so cute!"

10 - She licks her lips all the time, to the point where her upper lip becomes red and chapped.  I'm trying to break her of the habit so it won't be so painful on her lips, but I'll be honest... it's so cute, I think I'll miss it when she stops. 

We absolutely adore our little Ellie, and feel so lucky that she's our daughter!

 

 

 

The delicious Red Velvet Cake my Mom got from Nothing Bundt Cakes

The My Little Pony Cake, made by the lovely and talented Tiffany!

This was a seriously delicious cake!  And I loved the frosting!

What?!?

I have a blog?
Please accept this embarrassing video of Ellie as a promise of things to come.
(P.S. - Why yes, this is how I teach Ellie Korean!)

Do you have 9 minutes?

Every now and then, before turning in for the night, Mike and I will listen to a song or two as we're lying in bed.  Last night, we stumbled upon this one and it brought a smile to my face and it warmed my heart.  I just had to share it!

Just in case you don't know who they are, Flight of the Conchords is a comedy duo/band.

They were asked to write a song for a sick children's charity in New Zealand.  If you've seen their show, there's an even longer version on youtube that has a clip with Murray in it, which is funny.

Oh, and Bret McKenzie (the bearded one) wrote a few of the songs on the Muppet Movie, which they reference in this video, just FYI.   

Anyways, you should watch it.  You'll laugh and you'll... feel inside... and stuff like that!

Long Beach

We had some time to kill between summer and fall semesters, so we decided to make a spontaneous trip to California.  We didn't do much in the way of planning.  We just improvised as we went, and it was a great trip!

First, I have to say that the drive from Phoenix to LA is one of the ugliest, most boring drives I've ever taken.  But it was definitely worth it to see the beach and enjoy the cooler weather!

We stayed in Downey, about 20 minutes north of Long Beach and 20 minutes south of LA.  We ended up spending most of our time in Long Beach and fell in love with it!

We'd gone to San Diego about a year ago, and Ellie wasn't a huge fan of the beach.  But this year she loved it! 

There's a really nice shopping area called The Pike right along the coast where we spent our first evening walking around and enjoying the beach.

We decided to buy a discount bundle of tickets for both the Aquarium of the Pacific, and the Queen Mary. 

The Aquarium was awesome! 

There was a netted-off area where you could hold little cups of nectar and these birds would land on you and eat right out of your hand.  Ellie loved it!

My favorite part was seeing these Comb Jellies.  They have these tiny cilia lining their bodies that allow them to move.  But those cilia also refract a rainbow of light as they propel themselves through the water.  They were beautiful to watch, and almost hypnotizing!  You can see some cool videos of them on YouTube. 

They also had the standard aquarium tidal pools where you could pet certain underwater creatures, but these creatures were so much cooler than other places we've been to!  We pet sharks, and sting rays, and even jelly fish!  I've never pet a jelly fish before and it was so cool!  The volunteer at the jelly fish pool was telling us that with this species, our skin is too thick for them to sting us, which is why we can pet them.  They were a lot more solid and jelly-ish than I pictured them being.  They look so fragile when you see them swimming around, almost like a plastic bag floating in the water.  But these were dense!  It was really neat!

This was Ellie's souvenir from the Aquarium gift shop.  For some reason, she has always been obsessed with Sting Rays and every time we see them she yells, "Look!  It's my favorite!"  So we had to get her a stuffed one.  I suggested we name him Sammy the Sting Ray and she gave me a look and said, "No.  Spunky."  So he is lovingly known as Spunky now, and she sleeps with him every night. 

As I mentioned before, we bought a ticket bundle that got us into the Queen Mary, which is anchored in the bay.  It's an old cruise ship/WWII troop ship that functions as a hotel and a museum now. 

Apparently, it's also one of the most haunted places in the US, attracting hundreds of ghost enthusiasts every year.  The picture below is the longest hallway in the ship.  I had Mike walk all the way down the hall so I could take a picture.  He only went about 1/2 way, and you can barely see him, and I guess he looks sort of ghost-ish in the picture.  I can see why people might think they've spotted a ghostly specter.

We didn't know it when we bought them, but our tickets included a special tour in addition to admission to the ship.  The only tour with openings left was the "Ghosts & Legends Tour" which turned out to be a Haunted House of sorts, with special effects and strobe lights.  There were several small children who went on the tour, but we still worried that Ellie might be totally freaked out by the experience.  But she LOVED it!  The laughed at the loud noises and the flashing lights were "rocket ships".  She was giving her own commentary of what was going on that was making me, and some of the others around us laugh.  All theatrics aside, it was a pretty neat tour.  We got to see parts of the ship that you normally wouldn't be able to, like the 1st Class Swimming Pool, bunk beds where the WWII soldiers slept, and the boiler rooms.

One part of the ship I really wanted to see was the propeller.  They've built a large fresh-water box around one of the ship's propellers so it won't erode, and you can look down 30 feet into the water and see how big they are.  There's a big railing around it, but other than that, it's open water, and looking down into it was kind of scary.  It made me dizzy, a little like how I feel when I'm up high looking down. 

The propeller was down on the lower level of the ship, and you had to walk through the Engine room and up and down a bunch of stairs to get there.  Since we had a stroller, I left Mike and Ellie on the upper decks with the promise that I'd run down to snap a picture and hurry back up to them.  

Even the picture makes it seem kind of eerie, no?

After I saw the propeller, I kept walking through the Engine Room, thinking that I'd make it to the end of the exhibit soon.  But I kept walking, and walking, and walking.  I even got lost at one point in a circular part of the engine room.  Maybe it was the talk of ghosts earlier, or the lack of any other patrons walking around down there, but I started to get kind of creeped out.  After about 15 minutes running around the lower decks of the Queen Mary all by myself, I finally stumbled upon the exit.  When I made it back to the place I'd left Ellie & Mike, all I found was our empty stroller with no one in sight.  I laughed, cause this added to the spooky ambiance of the place.  Mike and Ellie surfaced about 10 minutes later and the only scare they'd encountered was when Mike almost dropped Ellie into the water in the propeller room.  Oh boy!  That would've been a good story. 

Riding the Ferris Wheel overlooking the beach! 

The next day we drove to Torrance to visit Mitsuwa Marketplace: a huge Japanese grocery store, gift shops, and food court.  It was awesome!  I stocked up on a lot of Japanese snacks and junk food and we ate lunch at their food court.  The food was incredible and very cheap! I was in heaven!

I love the plastic food displays in lieu of a menu.

Takoyaki: a popular Japanese street food with Octopus in the middle.

And then we spent the rest of the day at the beach!!!  It was so relaxing, the weather was beautiful, and we loved it! 

All wrapped up to stay warm!

We only spent 2 1/2 days in California, but we had a great time!  It was nice to get away as a family, especially since Mike's been so busy this summer.  It was nice to escape the heat too, but it made it horribly difficult to come back home to 110+ degree weather. 

At lunch on the way home we ordered a Bacon Sundae... it wasn't that great, but we got it for the experience!

The Big Decision

I guess I can blog about this, now that it's all over.  But here's how the story goes:

While I was up in Utah with Ellie, Mike called me one night and the following conversation ensued:

Mike:  "What would you say if I told you I was thinking about transferring schools?"

Me: "Excuse me?" 

Mike: "I was talking to this guy at my internship who used to go to Phoenix School of Law, but transferred to ASU and he told me a bunch of things that's making me think about it."

Me: "Ok.  Well, I guess we can think about it."

Mike: "The transfer application deadline is in a few days."

Me: "Oh boy."

So Mike spent the next few days throwing together application packets, writing essays and getting letters of recommendations from professors.  He applied to Arizona State University and the University of Utah.  And he got accepted to them both!  I'm crazy proud of the guy.  His undergrad GPA wasn't the best, but since he worked so hard this past year and did so well, the #26 ranked law school in the nation was willing to accept him. 

Part of the application process is meeting with the Dean to discuss why you want to transfer and if there's anything they can do to keep you from transferring.  Mike got up the courage to say, "I know the school has a policy that they can't offer full-ride scholarships, but I would stay if you gave me one."  After several emails back and forth, Mike finally got one congratulating him on earning the newly created Presidential Scholarship: a scholarship covering tuition and fees for the top students in their class.  We're pretty ecstatic and humbled by such a huge blessing in our lives. 

So after being "bribed" and oh yeah... getting answers to prayers, we're staying in Phoenix for now.  As much as we would have LOVED to move closer to family and friends, this is where we feel we're supposed to be. 

I've also neglected to write anything about Mike's summer internship.  He's working for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, in the Homicide Division.  Glad it's him and not me.  They say ignorance is bliss, and it's true.  I could've happily existed without knowing about all the homicides that happen in Phoenix. 

Part of his internship includes visiting murder scenes (he's been to 4 in the 2 months he's been there), watching autopsies, helping interview suspects, listening to jail calls (apparently even though inmates are warned their phone calls are recorded, they still say pretty stupid things on the phone), and then he does the normal boring paper work.  He also goes and observes different trials in court.  In fact, he walked into the courtroom in the aftermath of the AZ millionaire who committed suicide after receiving his guilty verdict, which you can read about here, if you have no idea what I'm talking about.    

He also has been able to do a few "ride-along" experiences with the police.  One was a Drunk Driving Task force where he spent from 7pm to 6 am the next morning riding with a highway patrolman pulling over drunk drivers.  He told me the coolest part was when they had to get to the scene of an accident really fast.  When I asked him what "really fast" meant, he said he couldn't tell me.  Again, ignorance is bliss.

Then one day, he came home with a bullet proof vest.  I was not thrilled.  He was supposed to go out with an officer in the Gang Unit, and was issued the vest just in case.  It ended up getting canceled last minute, and I can't say I was crushed about that, although Mike was disappointed.  But we did take the opportunity to take family pictures in it, cause really... how many times in my life will I get to wear a bullet proof vest? 

When all is said and done, he's learned that maybe he doesn't want to be a prosecutor, but he's sure had a fun time coming to that conclusion. 

Don't worry, it's an Airsoft gun.

Mike trying to look tough, but looking like he has heartburn instead.