September Stuff, Including Groundbreakings And Forehead Breakings

It's that time of year again when life starts to just go, go, go, until January...so hopefully this "grab-bag" blog post will get you all caught up on our family's life (those of you who care, anyway). Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the news--and possibly post more analysis-type commentary filled with my patented snark that I'm sure you all love.

Anyway, our September was eventful and kind of hot! This is the time of year when I wish it would just cool off already; weather-wise, it's my least favorite month of living in Arizona, because I am just ready for autumn by now. Nonetheless, there were many other nice things about this month, of which a few are listed below.

Celeste had her first preschool field trip--to the local (Green Valley) Fire Station:

As you can see, Aurora came too--and they both loved walking through the large fire trucks & ambulances parked at the station!

Lorelai reached a major milestone in September as well; she started losing her baby teeth!

By the end of September, both her front-bottom teeth had fallen out, her two adult teeth were on their way in, and Lorelai was $2 richer, courtesy of the "Tooth Fairy." She was very excited & proud of her "accomplishment," and Nathan & I were happy too...and a little sad, at the same time. Lorelai is just getting bigger and bigger, and seeing those baby teeth pop out reminds us that she is not our little baby anymore!

Another big event in September was the groundbreaking for the new LDS Church stake center, just a few miles from our house! Although the Sahuarita Arizona Stake was formed more than two years ago, our stake is still making do with a small handful of undersized buildings. No longer! (well, "no longer" as in "a year or so hence".) On September 15th, representatives from the Sahuarita Stake presidency, Sahuarita town officials, and construction company supervisors all spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony, and many members of the church showed up to celebrate this happy occasion.

While my children didn't listen to much of the ceremony, they sure had fun crawling all over the heavy equipment!

I am very excited for the new stake center to be built; the LDS Church is growing fast in this part of Arizona, and this new, larger building will help everything church-related run much more smoothly here. It will be interesting to watch it grow!

We also took a family weekend trip to Colossal Cave, but since I didn't have a camera, I don't have any interesting pictures to beguile you with. I personally enjoy the cave, but I think the children weren't quite ready for that kind of outing...Lorelai and Celeste were alternately scared of/bored by the cave. Also, Aurora tripped and bit her tongue in the darkness, bleeding all over our shirts, screaming, and annoying our tour group in the process. SIGH. Luckily there was a treasure hunt to do at the ranch further down the mountain from the cave. The kids enjoyed that. I think we will go to Colossal Cave again...in another year or two, when the kids can appreciate it more.


Besides those events, September was packed with the usual--dance classes, preschool classes (at my house this time), church business, piano lessons, school, playdates, and the like.

The month of September did end with a "bang"...

...to my youngest daughter's head, that is. On the way out the door one morning, Aurora tripped on the driveway and smacked her head into the metal edge of the sliding door of our van, which was standing open at the time. She also hit her head on the sidewalk in her fall. I didn't see any bone, thank heavens, but the cut was quite deep, and the blood was profuse...it was pretty terrifying for wimpy ol' me.

Luckily we were able to drop Celeste off at preschool, then run to the nearby urgent-care center and get poor Aurora all stitched up (while strapped into a mummy-wrap, poor thing!) She screamed bloody murder the whole time, and I felt a little sick to my stomach, but luckily no permanent harm was done; the doctor said the scar should fade almost completely.

The injury seems like a distant memory to Aurora now; she is a real trooper and has rebounded nicely from the experience. I wish I could say the same; seeing that much blood come out of your child can't be good for your heart in the long run! Still, I am grateful everything turned out all right. I am hoping the rest of the year will find Aurora happy--and safe!

Our Fun Resort Weekend

For various reasons (most of which involve the words "I'm busy"), I haven't gotten to writing about our Labor Day weekend. Here we are in mid-October, so I will endeavor to do so.

We kicked off our September 2011 with a bang, by cashing in a deal we'd purchased earlier in the year at the Arizona Grand Resort, up in Phoenix. In a nutshell, the deal offered a one-night stay in one of the Grand's suites, unlimited access to the resort's water park, a breakfast credit, and a spa credit. Sounds like fun, we thought...sign us up!! When we travel, our accommodations are a little more, ahem...modest (read: Motel 6), so it was fun for all of us to "live it up" a little.

The above photograph was the view from our room entrance...lovely. However, there was no time to waste gazing at this "dinky-sized" courtyard pool; the water park awaited! So we headed out...

The girls were all very excited, and we spent hours at the park, which included a couple of large water slides, a small splash park for toddlers, a wave pool, and the girls' favorite, the "lazy river" shown here...

The water park's attractions may have been a bit above my daughter's age range; the wave pool (my personal favorite) frightened Lorelai & Celeste a little. This was a minor quibble, though; overall, we had a great time! There was one small snag; as I was trying to load Aurora and myself into an inner tube on the lazy river, we capsized...with our digital camera in tow. Long story short, the camera doesn't work any more. SAD FACE. I had to buy a (surprisingly expensive) disposable camera to document the rest of our trip...hence the less-than-stellar pictures for the next couple of blog posts.

After a few hours splashing around, we decided to head to the nearby mega-mall for dinner...

...at the Rainforest Cafe! We'd been curious about it for years, and now was our chance. Verdict? Fun for the kids, merely "eh" for adults. It was definitely atmospheric and cutesy, and I enjoyed all the aquariums with their beautiful fish. The animatronic animals and the mock rainstorms were a bit loud, but overall enjoyable (although Lorelai, who is pretty sensitive about loud noises, was bothered by the "lightning" and "thunder" doing the storms).

Here's my dinner! The food was decent, but not all that memorable. I had macadamia-encrusted tilapia (which was actually pretty good), coconut shrimp, stir-fried veggies, and rice (which were all blah). Then it was time to "explore" the restaurant and hang out with the animals!

(those are giant apes on the rocks behind Lorelai, BTW...darn cheap camera!!)

We also "explored" the Rainforest Cafe's gift shop (of course), then walked off our dinner around the mall, occasionally popping into a store to window-shop. After that, the kids were pretty pooped, so it was back to the resort for bedtime. A fun day.

The following morning, we had a wonderful breakfast buffet at the Arizona Grand's Lobby Grill. Yum...one of the yummiest buffets I've ever tried! Too bad we couldn't spend all day there and sample more wares...

...because it was time to go swimming again! We decided to make the most of the water park during our stay, so we went again for a little while the next morning. Afterwards, we headed back up to the suite and cleaned the girls up a bit...with a bubble bath! They had a great time playing in the oversized tub, making bubble hats and unwinding!

After that, we packed our things and headed home, slightly tired & sunburned but refreshed as well. It wasn't a long trip, but it was a lot of fun to hang out as a family together. And that was just the beginning of our September!

What We're Watching This Fall

...Well, besides lots of football, that is.

I'm beginning to realize that I don't watch much live TV at all anymore. I have several things to thank for that: my three kids; my own increasingly busy schedule; my dependence on Netflix and Hulu for re-runs and catching up on older television shows, etc. Probably the biggest two reasons, though, are that I'm cheap AND picky with my TV shows. I'm not willing to pay for cable/satellite, and so I only have broadcast networks to watch live.

All this limits my viewing options quite a bit--especially when, in my opinion, 90% of everything on broadcast TV is junk (I'm looking at YOU, reality TV!).

 

So anyway, here's my (very) brief list:

Community

-My favorite show on TV right now! Plot, in a nutshell--a bunch of lovable misfits form a study group at a community college; hilarity ensues. But there is SO MUCH MORE going on than the simple synopsis implies. Besides being one of the funniest shows on TV right now, it's arguably the most daring as well--it bends genre and convention, and each episode has a very different focus and tone. It skewers a wide variety of genres (fantasy, gangster, suspense, horror, romance, western, etc), & social issues. It has some of the most three-dimensional, well-written, and best-performed female characters on TV. The overall cast is ridiculously talented. It has a freewheeling, "anything goes" tone, and its colorful setting, populated by awesome supporting characters, is Simpsons-esque (I'm referring to Golden Age Simpsons, of course). It is criminal (criminal!!!) that more people aren't watching this show; it's struggled for viewers its entire run. Help it out (especially if you are a Nielsen family!); watch it with me!!

Parks And Recreation

This show took a while to grow on me; I initially watched an episode or two of the (pretty blah) season 1 and checked out after that. However, after many glowing recommendations, we Netflixed the whole thing over the summer, and we're completely hooked now! Like Community, Parks and Rec has a very likable, talented cast, and the fictional town of Pawnee, IN, where the show takes place, looks like an awesomely weird place to live. And while the show may be a bit more timid with its comedy conventions than Community, it has a refreshingly positive tone that is unlike most comedies today. Although the characters of Parks and Rec are imperfect, and they sometimes act foolishly, you get the sense that they genuinely like each other, respect each other, and want to support and help each other through thick and thin. It's nice to see a show where the humor is rarely mean-spirited and demeaning (like too many comedies today, including its fellow "mockumentary"-style brethren The Office and Modern Family to an extent).

 

Speakin' of which...

Modern Family

This is my "comfort-food" sitcom...I often find myself smiling and nodding at the characters' antics and the situations they find themselves in. It's a show that's meant to be relatable to anyone with a family (aka, most people). I don't think there's anything particularly groundbreaking about Modern Family comedy-wise (no, not even the gay couple; for the most part, their plots follow the same relationship tropes as everyone else's, but with different window-dressing). In fact, the family sitcom has been pretty much done to death over the last couple of decades. However, this show manages to keep things (mostly) fresh with polished production values and a great, talented cast, even if its premise is kinda weak on occasion. It's a good show to unwind with at the end of the day.

I almost forgot...

30 Rock

...probably because it's on hiatus right now (darn you, Tina Fey, why'd you have to have that baby over the summer?? Curse your biological clock!). Anyway, when 30 Rock is back on the air, I will be there with bells on. It may have lost a step or two, but it's still one of the most rapid-fire, off-the-wall absurdist comedies out there. It pokes great fun at gender, race, politics, and (most of all) the entertainment industry and even NBC itself--yes, the very network which gave it life. And no discussion of 30 Rock is complete without a special shout-out to Alec Baldwin, who has made Jack Donaghy one of the most hilarious, charismatic sitcom actors ever. His chemistry with Tina Fey (completely platonic, by the way) is one of the show's greatest strengths, and one of the more interesting relationships in television.

And...that's about it for my shows. Pretty meager pickings, wouldn't you agree? I think I will probably watch The Office once in a while, but without Steve Carell, it feels pretty soulless. I really need some more dramas in my TV diet as well; since LOST went off the air, I haven't found any drama to replace it with. Nathan tried the new crime drama Person Of Interest last week, and I watched a little with him. On paper, it sounds pretty neat (Michael Emerson as a mysterious billionaire with a murky agenda? And his sidekick is former Jesus-portrayer Jim Caviezel as a disgruntled butt-kicker? And they fight future-crime? COOL!). However, in execution, it came across as does almost every show on CBS to me--static, dull and formulaic. Maybe it will improve with time...

I need your help, gentle readers! What shows should Nathan & I be watching? We welcome your input...but first, our (somewhat restrictive) criteria:

-We only have the regular broadcast channels, as well as a few basic cable channels (note: we do have AMC!)

-We steadfastly refuse to watch any reality TV. We find it to be either putrid garbage (aka 90% of reality TV), or--despite an interesting premise--unable to hold our attention.

-We don't have a DVR--however, we are regular Netflix subscribers and we often use Hulu, so there is the possibility of us streaming a show that's still currently on the air, or a show that recently left the air.

Speaking of Netflix, here are a list of shows we already plan on watching in the near future (we've seen little to nothing of any of these shows):

Mad Men

Arrested Development

Supernatural

Friday Night Lights

The Sopranos

Game Of Thrones

Cheers

Sports Night

Thanks for your help, everyone...we'll see you in front of the boob tube!!