Hellooooo?

This is a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

For your health and safety, you should read thoroughly.

IF your daughter is waiting for a phone call from her friend and brings two phones outside so she can hear it ring (1 phone isn't good enough - 2 is better)...

...and IF in the event that two of your three home phones are placed directly on the hood of a car...

... and IF in the event that several hours later someone gets into the very same vehicle...

...and IF the driver unwittingly drives the car onto a busy freeway...

...and IF she notices some unforeseen object hit her windshield just before merging onto a busy freeway... ...and AGAIN about a mile later the same thing happens on the same place on the windshield...

...and IF the driver comes home to a confused and befuddled husband who is wondering where 2 of his 3 home phones are...

...there's a good chance your phone ended up HERE:

Then, if while driving on the freeway two days later, suspicious that the mystery objects that had hit your windshield were more than a piece of tire or cardboard box, you notice a phone-like object off to the side of the road... ... you would most likely do what I did, and Fight for you Phone. Yes, I pulled off to the side of the road and took a little walk down an I-202 onramp.

Here's what I found... ...Poor Phone. And the other one was most likely smashed to smitherines days ago. Sniffle.

I brought him home. Adam put some new batteries in, and ...


...Voila! It works.

Well, 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

Rockets, Citrus Trees, Light Rail, and Hockey

You know, a good Saturday isn't complete without all of these. So today must have been a Good Saturday! We had a lovely brunch this morning with crepes and fruit and sausage and even fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice!

Then Lynn entertained the kids by showing them how to make rockets.

The recipe is: an empty film canister, half an Alkaseltzer, and a few drops of water...and POP! the top part of the canister goes flying sky high!
The whole neighborhood was entertained for a good half an hour!
Christmas brought us an Orange Tree which Adam planted today with the help of Ward (aka "Fake Shaq" for you Twitter and Suns fans), and a goofy 6-year old who can't get his picture taken with a straight face.

Maybe at our next brunch we'll juice those two oranges and serve them. yum.

Then, tonight, we scored some box seats to the Roadrunners Game. What? Did you say, "Roadrunners Who?" Well, as about ten people in Phoenix Everybody in Phoenix knows, they are our second tier professional Hockey team. Second only to the Coyotes. What? Did you say, "Coyotes Who?" Well, now that's enough. Little boys all over the Phoenix Valley dream about becoming Phoenix Suns Basketball Roadrunner Hockey players because everybody has a frozen pond in their wooded backyard all winter, and really, what else are they going to do outside? Oh, wait, I was mixing that up with Connecticut. Well, anyway, shocking as it may seem, Arizona does have a second-tier Hockey team, and almost as shocking was that the box seats were available. But, you know what? We all had a total blast!

Do you know how we got downtown to the game? I'll tell you...by the Metro Light Rail that just opened up a few weeks ago! It was so fun for the kids (Eli's friend Max came with us too!). And you could tell most of the adults were just as excited, pretending to fall when the train came to a stop, speculating out loud about how many viruses were in the air at any given moment. And it was Clean! So Clean! Riding the Metro was almost as fun as the hockey game!
We're just so Urban. Ivy's so urban, she can't even smile.




Here's hoping that your Saturday was filled with as much citrus, alka-seltzer, Metro stops and hockey pucks as ours was!

Mommies Making it Work!

On Wednesdays, my friend Kim comes over for a violin lesson. We have so much fun together. But our three little girls sometimes don't like that we're not giving 100% attention to them. We have to be creative to keep them playing so we can actually get a lesson in.


Sometimes it turns out to be a comedy of errors. Well, truthfully, most times! But, you know, really, it is an absolute testament to the power of the multi-tasking mother. We're giving out snacks, averting disasterous messes, providing arts & crafts, all while teaching and learning. The amount of times it takes to refocus and then switch gears again is truly an homage to a woman's abilities, if I do say so myself.


Today, I couldn't resist getting out my camera as Ella was climbing up the music stand, I was trying to distract the girls by giving them triangles to chime along with, and Kim was mastering a new concept on the violin. (Ella escaped before I could catch her in the act!) But I love that Kim is still willing to try something new even though it isn't as easy with little ones running around. That inspires me!

Princess School!

Today we learned about Our Body. We had so much fun.

We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," the "Hokey Pokey" and read stories about our bodies. Then we traced each child's hands and feet and then entire body. We drew their faces on.


We also learned about what's inside our bodies with my favorite learning toy ever:


Hooray for Princess School

The Bumpy Spoon, Part 2

Vickie and Alan gave the kids tons of awesome presents for Christmas.

But there was one that stood out above the rest. It was elaborately wrapped and inside was a pretty tin box.

Grandma and Grandpa made them wait till the very end to open it...and when they did, what did they find, but...

Another Bumpy Spoon!

Faithful readers will remember the difficulties I as a mother faced when mediating constant fights this past summer between Lizzie and Eli and our one and only Bumpy Spoon. New and Sporadic Readers may catch up here

So, it turns out that Grandma Vickie was going through a drawer and came across an exact replica of what we thought was the One and Only Bumpy Spoon! She knew this would make a fine Christmas Gift for the Stewart children! :)



Does this mean there will be no more fighting in our house? I certainly hope so! :)

Sad News.

Last week was a sad one in our family.

We had to give away our Christmas Kitty.

When 60% of your family is super allergic, you have to do what you have to do.

We'll miss you Coal!

KR Club

Lizzie has created yet another club: The Kit & Ruthie Club. This is based off of the American Girl Movie, "Kit Kittridge." She decided she (Kit) and Audrey (Ruthie) needed old-fashioned looking pictures to hang on the inside of the clubhouse wall - the "Member-obilia" Wall.

Ivy just looked cute up there - she's not in the club officially, being a little sister and all.


They have a club pledge that includes the words, "Oooga Booga" and that's all I'm allowed to say about that. They also spend a lot of time writing "articles" and trying to get a boy to join in the club as well. To date, all efforts have been unsucessful.

Three Cheers for the KR Club!

Christmas Injuries

We didn't get pictures of Adam's twisted vertebrae, Ivy's several asthma attacks, Eli's and Erin's cat allergies. David had a scratched cornea and had to go to the ER where they told him the pain he was feeling was second only to giving birth. The ER is not a fun place to spend New Year's Eve, Matt, Dad and I found out. Luckily, Matt's concussion from his snowboarding trick wasn't any worse. I did get to ride in an ambulance for the first time! (Hopefully my last!) Dad didn't get much of a break from treating patients during the winter break.

It turns out that it's dangerous to be a Palmer over Christmas.

White Elephant HEAVEN & HELL

Sometimes, after Christmastime, we get a little present-ed-out. Like enough with the wrapping and the buying and the spending and the effort. After Christmas, we're just DONE with all of that.

That's why, when we heard that there was a White Elephant Gift Exchange at our Christmas Reunion party, Erin and I were giddy with excitement. We stormed my mom's basement closet (a veritable gold mine of White Elephant gifts), and dug up some treasures.

Exhibit A:

One of my dolls from at least 20 years ago. We'll call her Rogain Girl. The way she works is that you put the bolt of hair straight through her cranium, where there is a large hole. From the hole in her back, and using the tab at the root of the hair, you pull the hair through until you reach the desired length. You have either Blonde or Purple hair to choose from. We loved this doll. Twenty years ago, that is!

(We caught Deborah trying to behead Rogain Girl)

Exhibit B:

Christmas Card Holder. You have Santa in a sleigh on one end, his reindeer at the other. On his reigns of Red Yarn, you hang your Christmas Cards! Cute! Or, at least it was 30 years ago!!

We also went to the party with some unopened Book of Mormon Character computer games from 1992. We wrapped all the White Elephant Gifts deceptively nicely. heh, heh.

So, off we went to the Reunion Party, swelling with pride at our clever White Elephant Gifts. The way we won the gifts was by playing BINGO. We were totally in, and totally serious. Erin was the first Bingo winner. We were so excited to see what other hilarious gifts others had brought. She chose her prize...opened it...and... it was... a brand new set of cute gloves!!!

YIKES!!!!!!!

Either we had misread the party invitation, or other family members' idea of "white elephant gift" didn't exactly coincide with ours.

We all looked at each other and said, "We have to get that DOLL!!!" Now we were playing BINGO with purpose! We were intense. Adam won and grabbed that doll before some poor child opened it up and screamed. Then we methodically proceeded to win back all of our monstrous gifts. By the time we looked up from the table, we noticed we were the only ones left at the party. I still hadn't won anything yet. My uncle was actually looking over my shoulder and calling out the numbers that I needed.

Finally I won! I got the last white elephant gift, and opened it...it was the Ronald Regan Paper Doll Set from 1984!! Virtually uncut and unused! HA!! Thank you Tyson & Tamara from saving us from complete White Elephant Hell!

Here we are with all of our White Elephant BOOTY! (notice the cute gloves at the front)
The White Elephant craze was hot now, so we decided to continue it through to Adam's unfortunate Birthday.

Exhibit C: Deborah and I have been saving this one for years: The Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal Program! No explanation necessary.

Also from Debs, Exhibit D:

"The Intelligent Body" cassette tape series. 3,496 easy steps to an Intelligent Body. I'm in. Are you?

Exhibit E:

Fruit Smoothie Recipe Book. Fine, no White Elephant vibes there. Oh wait. Look at the smoothie on the front cover. It's Radioactive Green. The most un-appetizing shade for a smoothie imaginable. Now we have a White Elephant Gift.

Exhibit F:

Ha. Tricked you. Adam actually DID receive a real gift that night. An iTunes gift card from all my siblings. But we wrapped it in that HUGE box! Hahaha! :) We're just so clevah!!