We're baaaaa-ack.

So we've returned from our week-long hiatus to California. (A note about California freeway drivers. Those guys are INSANE. I fit right in there.) Spent the first three days at the Disneyland Grand Hotel and park-hopped for those three days (thank you discounted tickets from the army, THE one and only perk to having your husband shot at in foreign lands) and then we made our way to Hollywood. I blogged about that previously, so no need to revisit that subject except to say this: L.A. is a hole. Hollywood? HOLE. I don't care how awesome your celebrity memorials are. I HATE YOU L.A./HOLLYWOOD.

There. That's done. Cheerily moving on!

The last three days were spent lounging around in San Diego. I adore Disneyland, but I gotta say this was the highlight of the trip for me. There's something about the constant ocean breeze, large blobs of seagull poop flying through the air and *juuuust* missing your husband's head, the smell of salt on your skin at the end of the day, and the lack of 100+ degree temps that turns my mind to a lovely and welcome mush. San Deigo melted my brain so much, in fact, that I completely forgot to put on sunblock the day we went to Sea World and I ended up with a second-degree sunburn on my CHEST of all places. Complete with tiny blisters. Frickin' yeowch. (I was also talking to an awesome group of Canadians in the hotel spa one night and may have accidentally and stupidly asked if we could trade a Canadian quarter, which we somehow ended up with at Disneyland, for "real" money. Spoken like a true American with pudding for brains!) We've been home for three days and the skin on my upper chest is now coming off in charred chunks. Attractive. Chad's cousin, who lives around the corner, stayed over at our house with the dogs while we were gone. She's coolio and we love her for doing that for us. Thanks Aubrey!

You can go here (click!) to visit the rest of our pictures from the trip, but here are a few. (I recently discovered the awesomeness that is Flickr. :D)

Emma baits the seagulls with dried banana treats just so she can run at them (RAWR!) and scare them away.

We now enter the next stage of our lives: The Deployment. We had a mandatory family meeting the day we left for our vacation that was supposed to be informative but in true army fashion it was more of a "here, stand in this line for two hours and then when you're done with that go stand in THAT line for another two hours and oh yeah army wives are also expected to take orders" meeting. (Let me just tell you how well the "army wives will take orders" thing went over with me. It didn't.) I'm also trying to decide whether working part-time in the NICU would be an option for us financially. Let's be honest: the thought of Emma spending all of that extra time with her dad and That Stepmother makes me a little nauseated. Since I work 12-hour night shifts it'll be really hard for me to work full-time anyway, since I'll need to be sleeping most of the week when Emma is awake. What to do what to do? I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Tomorrow? Emma's ninth birthday. Every mom says this and I can't believe I'm saying it but here it is. How did my baby grow up so fast? And why has she taken to calling me "dude" lately?

As a final P.S. - CONGRATULATIONS to all of you pregnant people! I love you guys and I can't wait for all of the new family members. (Including those of you I consider family even though we don't have a speck of shared DNA. You know who you are.) Some of my friends/family worried that I would be all weird with pregnancy announcements since Chad and I can't have kids, but I'm not that type of in-vitro woman. Maybe it's because I get paid to work with infants. I love newborns (except for the ones that shoot projectile poop at me and the ones that yank out their ET/breathing tubes. Those little people go on The List. Eh, who am I kidding. I love the naughty ones too!) and I get excited when people make announcements. You can even whine about your morning sickness. I don't mind in the slightest, as long as you will excuse my inadvertently doing a full assessment on your baby the first moment I get my hands on them. Don't be alarmed if you observe me feeling your new little junior's fontanelles and cranial sutures. I'll try to restrain myself from checking femoral pulses or pulling out my stethoscope, but no promises.

Over and out.

Bye bye Disneyland

So I'm sitting here in a Holiday Inn near Hollywood after a stay at the Disneyland Grand Hotel and Spa. After spending THREE WHOLE DAYS immersed in Disney's sterile, overly cheery surroundings, with princess music blasting from every rock and bush, it's a bit of a shock to my Disney-fied nerves to drive through LA and get dumped in the ghetto. (Sing it with me, Cartman fans! "In the Ghettooooooo....")

Never trust online hotel reviews!

We're switching hotels tomorrow.

I'll post pics when we get back.

In the meantime, I'll try to block out the sound of the drug deal going on in the room across the hall and get some sleep.

The klutz gene also runs on the Dixon side.....heaven help the children that might result from our next IVF attempt.

Bowen, Chad's brother's oldest (he's four) decided to try to fly off the armoire in his parents' room this week. The result: a trip to the ER, surgery with three pins and a take-home bottle of Tylenol with codeine. So it's bedrest for Bowen, right? At least until his "real" cast gets put on later this week. So I suggest to Auntie Meg that we take the boys to Schnepf Farms today, where Bowen got to test out the strength of said broken arm by climbing over mountainous clods of dirt in the middle of a peach and apple orchard. I'm such a good nurse aunt, I know. I forgot my camera in the car, so I missed all the other "picking" shots, but I did get a few car ones.

It turns out that you CAN still pick your nose and eat it, even with a shattered radius and ulna!

(Say hello to Tylan, who woke up *just* long enough to decide she wanted nothing to do with my photoshoot.)

My buddy Kael and his cheeeeeeese.

Our haul:

While we're waiting for the next round of roses to bloom......

I found a small someone stalking my garden this morning: (Click for a really cool close-up.)

A few months ago I bought a mantis egg case at the nursery, but unceremoniously tossed it aside into the mint abyss after it rattled when I shook it. Thought everyone was dead. Apparently not!

And I guess he's not alone:

I knew someone was snacking on my sunflowers!

Other small things in my yard:

Happy Spring! Errrrr......Summmer...

Whatever!

Here in the Dixon house two of us seem to fall, drop things, slam into objects and basically just bumper-car our way through life. I'll give you a hint as to who those two are - they actually SHARE genes. (I have my suspicions that all of the Power family children carry this gene. I concretely know of one other sibling who shall remain unnamed (cough -Afton!) that carries this gene for sure. I hold the utmost sympathy for her and her future children.) Here is a list of the injuries - just since Sunday! - that Emma and I can attribute to the Power family klutz gene:

1. I ran over my OWN ankle with a cart at Target yesterday. I was in front of the cart, pulling on Emma's hand (I realize she is MUCH too big to be in the thing but she was only there due to some barfy feelings due to the unseasonal heat we are experiencing here in AZ) and suddenly forgot to remember that physics phenomenon called MOMENTUM. I stopped to look at something in the garden section (oooh, shiny!) and the cart continued on its journey. BAM. Much cursing ensued. (I would LOVE to pretend that I don't have a potty mouth, but come on, let's all be realistic here.)

2. Emma came howling upstairs to me last night, displaying a quickly-swelling purple knee. The report from Daddy is that she was simply walking on the wood floor and then she was suddenly face-first into the tile. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the fall. Not surprising, considering her history.

3. I dropped a can of mousse on my ankle. (My OTHER ankle, we must make it fair for all appendages. Don't want any of them to feel left out.) It's currently in the green/yellow stage of bruise healing. Pretty.

4. Emma's legs apparently melted to the leather seats (CURSE THIS ARIZONA HEAT YET AGAIN!) in the Explorer yesterday and as she ripped her leg away from the cow hide she ended up with a large circle of tiny bruises. (Petechiae, for you medical folks.) HOW? HOW?

5. Was talking to a co-worker Saturday night and walked right into a wall and nearly fell over. Talking and walking are two things I can't be trusted to do together. (I *can* chew gum and walk! Well, most of the time.) I didn't even stop my conversation. Walking into walls? Normal!

Five things on that list, and it's only Tuesday! We're so special.

New post.

Yep, I titled it "new post". Because really, that's all this is. I've blogged before and been in this spot before. Nothing to post about, but the stupid internet makes me feel guilty about not posting. So I am. Even though nothing - I repeat NOTHING - exciting is going on around here.

Well, maybe this could be considered exciting....I'm having surgery! But it's just sinus surgery. Boring stuff. And actually it's kind of gross and boring so maybe none of you want to hear about it. But I'll tell you anyway because you visited my blog and are still reading. (Sucker!) I have a fungal tumor in there that my doc is going to suck out. To be truthful I'm kind of intimidated, because the last time I saw someone go under general anesthesia in the OR she FREAKING CODED ON THE TABLE. But of course she had cancer in her abdomen and I just have mushrooms growing in my nasal passages. There's a difference. But I'm still slightly traumatized. Think good thoughts for me and my nose!

And if THAT'S not enough pressure, I'm starting The Official Army Wife Freakout. Four months. Four months. That's all that's left until my husband spends a year in Iraq being shot at by terrorists who wear towels on their heads even though it's over 120 degrees out there. (I realize I'm not being very PC here but I don't care. My husband is going to Iraq.)

Four months.

And I have mushrooms in my nose.

And Emma's last day of school is tomorrow so I'll be listening to "I'm BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORED" for the next two months.

And there you have it. My exciting life.

A few things, list style.

Salsa Verde Doritoitis.

A few nights ago Chad and I were indulging in our nightly ritual of Scrubs DVD watching (Rowdy, no!) and I ended up hunched over in pain, howling on the couch. As it was already 10:00, and Emma was finally in bed after finishing a much-procrastinated book report, we called Chad's brother Casey to come over while we ran to the hospital. I kept trying to tell Chad that it just felt like a horrible stomachache, but of course he, being a guy, didn't hear a word I said. (He also tried to claim that the speed limit on Ironwood IS 85 mph.) My stomach was palpated, Vicoden was prescribed, and my gall bladder is the suspect. I also wonder whether my consumption of a bag of Salsa Verde Doritos had a small part in this whole thing. (So burney, but I can't put them down!) Anyway, our ER wait and discharge only ended up being about an hour and a half long and we only had to amuse ourselves with "your mom" jokes and Friends lines (Kidney STONES, KIDNEY stones) (yes, we're also Friends nerds - apparently we do nothing but watch reruns of sitcoms) for a very small window of time. Hooray for non-Banner facilities!

Thanks to Megan for coming over on such short notice, and apparently AFTER you took a sleeping pill (booger!) and to Casey for being your replacement. You guys are great.

You know you live in the middle of nowhere when:

A car accident is narrowly avoided when a CHICKEN decides to take a stroll in the middle of the two-lane road and ends up forcing six cars to slam on their brakes and swerve all over the place. (There was also that time I called Mesa Police and reported a cow rampaging in the middle of another two-lane road out our way.) I live so far from civilization it's slightly ridiculous. And I'm not exactly sure how I would have explained that one to our insurance agent.

The Emma update:

Emma is nearly done with school, and I'll admit that I'm glad this year is almost over. Her teacher's something of a meanie. I'm aware that my little spawn is a bit of a chatterbox (I can guess where she may have got THAT one from) but just because she tried to help a neighbor when they asked for help with math or played footsie with the boy across the aisle ONCE (can we please avoid discussing That Boy who has declared his undying love toward Memma?) does not, to me, merit a "poor" in the behavior category on the weekly progress report. And the call from the lunch aide tattling that Emma didn't eat her entire lunch - oh puh-leeeeeze. I was initially concerned that Emma had a behavior problem but after phoning Teachy and having her assure me that she's having this problem with all the kids this time of year, I simply concluded that the woman is a Nazi. I'm sure I'm just being a normal defensive parent about it, but still. Call me if my child is browbeating others or declares Jihad on the school administrators. Don't bother informing me that my straight-A, top of her class (according to Mrs. Hitler) kid doesn't like to eat her sandwich before she eats her dessert. I already know that. And ask me if I care. (Nope.) On to fourth grade!

Aaaaand I can see that I've spent way too much time on that subject and am starting to sound defensive, so I'll just shut it.

Emma is also in grave danger of destroying her back due to her inability to leave her entire bookshelf at home. Had to have another discussion this morning about limiting her school book-bringing to two books. The little fifty-pounder was hefting around a ten ton Hannah Montana backpack because she had SEVEN books crammed into it this morning. She's informed me that she never really knows what kind of mood she'll be in once it's time for independent reading, so she keeps a broad selection on hand. She may be in the mood for a series about owls (The Capture series), or prefer something from the Inkheart author, or she may prefer a book detailing science experiments (courtesy of Jamie, thanks!). It all depends on an apparent number of factors, none of which I truly understand. She becoming quite the moody little person, which I'm sure will make for exciting teen years. Yay Teen Emma! Sounds like a new action figure. Coming soon to a toy store near you!