Bad habits

Per usual I've slacked off when it comes to updating this thing. In my defense, we have been gone much of the past month. We spent the first couple weeks of September in Illinois. We visited family, friends, and familiar places. Even though our house is in Arizona, home will always be in Illinois. Hopefully we'll be able to move back there sometime within the next couple of years. Enjoy some pictures from our trip.




After our Chicago trip we stuck around in Arizona for about four days, then headed off for a long weekend in Disneyland. It was Ellie's first experience with a major theme park, and she did great! I'm happy she's not one of those kids that screams bloody murder at the sight of a life-size Mickey Mouse. To the contrary, she thought he was the coolest thing ever. Some pics for you to enjoy of our Disneyrrific fun:

And the award for the most cryptic post goes to...

I got some awesome and excellent news last night. I don't have time to post much about it right now... Let's just say my mood right now is tentatively happy. :)

I'll be visiting "home" from August 30th - September 9th. Woo! I'll be back with lots of pictures and hopefully more good news to share in a couple weeks.

Fork tales

Ellie has recently mastered spoon usage with minimal spillage. Yay! Last night I decided to let her try a fork. I figured by now she was probably old enough and coordinated enough to not stab her eye out.

Look at that concentration!	"Now I need to get this to my mouth..."
Success!	"On second thought, using a fork is way too much work!"

It's raining, it's pouring

So apparently it actually does rain occasionally in Arizona. Who knew?

We're in the middle of our monsoon season which means glorious storms and a much-appreciated break from the monotony of nothing but sunny skies.

You'd better bet that if the lightning isn't too bad, Ellie and I are outside playing in the rain whenever possible. She LOVES it and throws a fit when it's time to come inside.

Look at that gorgeous rain	She wasn't too sure at first
o/~ Raindrops keep fallin' on my head... o/~	Playing in the rain is FUN!

Traffic boredom = picture fun

What do you do when you're stuck in never-ending, stand-still traffic? You play with the camera on your new phone, of course. Here are some of the fruits of my boredom. None of it is the least bit impressive, but it is what it is.

The traffic that started it all

0 MPH is always fun

What a beautiful day in Arizona...

...except for the huge dust storm

My wedding ring. It's small, but it suits me. I think this is a surprisingly clear pic for a camera phone.

The teething monster

I hate teething.

Big surprise, right?

The teething monster is currently living at my house with no signs of moving out anytime soon. Ellie is constantly chewing on her hands (and anything else she can find), and has turned into a drool machine. Ewwww.



And two more pics I snapped with my new phone just because she's too darn cute not to share:

The gadget geek in me

I finally replace my old, crappy phone with a new one. Woo! I've been coveting a phone that would make texting a lot easier, but they were always so expensive that I always passed them over for another plain old phone.

Well, once I found out what an awesome deal I could get this time around, I finally got myself one of these:



It's so freaking cool! I like to text, but it's such a PITA trying to type using the regular keypad. This phone flips open to reveal a nifty little keyboard inside. Sweeeeet! It also has a decent camera (for a phone) and just about every other feature that I like in a cell phone. It's certainly not the World's smallest cell phone (skip to 0:35 unless you like Mr. Farrell in a thong), but it's not too bad.

Sure, it's not as cool as an iPhone, but it also wasn't $500+.

It makes me happy. :)