Presidential Candidate

This week, Claire's teacher brought me the following ingenious essay. I laughed. I wasn't supposed to laugh. Claire got in trouble.

Her teacher made her re-write the essay. I asked her about it an she said "I would move to the North Pole. The President of the US lives in the White House."

Happy Valentines Day!

Iris and I went to the kids' school valentine's parties. Everyone got thoroughly sugared up.

 Just like life, marriage gets better every year. Especially when I’m married to the most prolific lair in the hemisphere—keeps things interesting. He has started introducing himself as David, the healthcare salesman for exotic pets, because if Obama promises healthcare for everyone, why should it stop at the dolphins?
New pictures I took I took a few weeks ago:

January

We came back from NOLA, and it was autumn in January. The kids had fun in the leaves.

For MLK day, we hiked Camelback and then went to the Gilbert temple open house. The kids really enjoyed it. The temple is beautiful. Elijah was amazed by the crystals in the chandeliers and Claire felt the something special there.

Elijah: Won the Apex run at school. Kids had to run 36 laps (each was 1/16^th of a mile). Elijah was the first kid of both 2^nd and 3^rd grades to complete 36. He went on to complete an additional 28. He refused to walk during the walking lap. That kid was booking it. Elijah will excel at anything he wants to. Currently he excels in armpit farting. Thanks to the tutelage of his father, he can now practice a symphony of popliteal fossa (or knee pit) farting also.
Claire: After pulling her out of dance class b/c all of the major performances were on Sundays (a Suns game, a Globetrotters game, final recital), I paid to enroll her in another group, only to find out it’s performance was also on Sunday, thus dis-enrolled her again. So she has declared me as her dance teacher. I will do my utmost to teacher her to get jiggy with it.
Iris: has started a swimming class and has also started going to Primary in church. She whimpered the first day, but nothing a fruit roll-up couldn’t fix. From her class I have noticed her coloring technique: a few quick scribbles and then an elaborate folding scheme. She hands me a wad every Sunday. Also, her new best friend is Sammy, aka my right hand. Sammy the Spider usually is on the no-shirt patrol, tickling naked bellies. But Iris has taken a liking to the arachnid, often asking him to go to the train park with her and pursuing lengthy conversations.
Me: I have felt absolutely wonderful lately— bizarrely wonderful. I have been organizing closets and mopping daily; those activities are usually accomplished only once a decade. On Friday I decided to run a half marathon the next morning even though I haven’t run more than 6 consecutive miles in almost a year. My time wasn’t great (2:13), but I accomplished my goal of completing 13.1 and not walking. Last week my major project was fixing our dryer which had stopped functioning and gave off a burnt smell. After disassembling it, greasing the wheels behind the drum, and reconnecting a wire, it works better than ever. The other major project was creating Elijah’s baptismal invite in Photoshop—I curse that software and hope to never use it again.
David: always seems to be training for something. It’s his turn for the Phoenix marathon this year and I’d say he’s in the best shape of his adult life.
To finish up, here are a few more pics from the past month:
Iris and I attended the Pony Express exposition. They've been riding over 200 miles every January for over 50 years to deliver mail. I can only guess why, but Iris enjoyed petting them.

Our first trip to the Phoenix zoo.

Cleaning out the phone pics

David has been threatening to get me a new phone for Vday (which of course won't happen b/c we don't get eachother presents), so a purging of pictures is in order. These were are all probably taken within the last year:
The best thing about living in AZ is living close to family. Cousins at Bahama Bucks

This is Memorial Day at Grandpa's grave. David did a good job chopping my cousin, Nick's, head. This is the same cousin Hunt gave monster wedgies to as a kid. It looks like Nick would have the upper-hand these days.

Summer with cousin Katie at the Bounce Spectrum.

Tyler came for a visit and we went for a bike ride to the canal.

This is the pic we sent to Jon from Chicago of the phone that was attacked by our rears.

This is Iris' favorite ride at Walmart. That child can work up some speed.

This must have been a Halloween celebration.

The church Nativity. Elijah was an innkeeper and the girls were angels.

This was the last performance Claire did with this dance group in December.

Beignets in NOLA with the cousins.

Iris and I love to go eat lunch with E and C at school. 

The goal is to get the pics cleared off my camera this week too. I bet you can't wait!

On the road again

Although the trip between AZ and NOLA is never enjoyable (24 hours straight with only a few stops for gas), this was the first time David and I never feared falling asleep at the wheel. We had a secret weapon named Iris' jaws. That girl should win an Olympic medal for teeth grinding. Claire chimed in every once in a while. But Iris' grinding is so horrifically loud and painful that it's difficult to be anywhere near her at night. Think nails on chalkboard times infinity.

On the way home, we stopped to visit a few cousins. The adults went out for pupusas and when we came back the kids had created 2 ginormous forts, divided by gender territory, of course.



They fit a whole lot of fun into less than 24 hours.

When we got home we had a small birthday celebration for my mom. David brought her a half-chocolate/ half-lemon doberge birthday cake from Haydel's Bakery with the following frosting message on top: "David is King."

This year I have descended to the worst depths of anti-gift-giving: no Christmas presents. Actually, they all got an envelope with coupons--remember when you used to give those to your parents b/c you didn't want to spend your hard-earned cash? Anyway, one of the coupons was for lazer-tag. Another was for a ride on the Polar Express. A few days after we got home, we drove up to Flagstaff where we took a train that recreated a Polar Express experience. They had the ticket-stamping man, caroling contests, hot chocolate and cookies, and Santa, of course. Elijah drilled Santa's helpers on the logistics of Santa's world. I gave in this Christmas and bought an "Elf on the Shelf" for our house. Santa's spy definitely didn't help the kids behave better, but hopefully it created a little more magic for what I predict is Elijah's last magical Christmas.

There was a North Pole at the end of the line and then Santa came on the train and gave away bells. Can you tell which child was sick that night?

Finally, we came back to Fall in January. The kids have had a great time with the leaves which makes it entirely too easy for me to not rake them.

 

Christmas in NOLA

Pregnancy has enhanced my lethargy, or at least now I have a widely acceptable excuse. Therefore, my camera remained largely in its bag over the break because even snapping a picture was beyond my capabilities. I think even Marcus took pictures of us decorating our tree. I’ll have to get them from him…someday when I’m cured. My favorite tradition this season was that on both the Udall and Garcia sides we caroled to family members. In Arizona we went with my parents and Hunt and Sarah’s clan and sang to my grandpa’s remaining 3 siblings (1 has since passed on) and briefly visited with them in their homes. In NOLA, we went to about 6 family members. A few of them said it was the best Christmas present they had ever gotten. Here we are caroling to the abuelos. Polito, their loved, but mostly hated dog, gave abuela a Christmas present on Christmas morning to the tune of 10 stitches. That was the 5th time the dog had sent one of them to the ER. As usual, various types of clandestine euthany/murder were discussed for that canine. 

The traditional manger scene. I think we got it pretty close to reality. Mary and Joseph (Claire and Aaron) are apparently actually betrothed, but according to David, all is pending Aaron's graduation from Harvard with Honors. I'm sure Joseph had a similar pact.

 Elijah was the narrator wearing a Grace King graduation gown and Iris was whatever the heck she wanted to be, wearing whatever the heck she wanted to wear. Bottom-right: a very traditional look from David to his grandma. She is one of the women he loves most in his life. He gets his Spanish potty-mouth from her and a lot of his spice too. During "Feliz Navidad," David did the token Mexican laugh at such a high volume (all for her benefit of course) that she got up and moved across the room.

My girls, and especially Iris, were enchanted by the newest Garcia: Roxy. Iris even formed her own language for the babe. It was high-pitched, very high-pitched. Iris also got pretty attached to her cousin Josh. They held hands and rode together the whole caroling night. I heard Iris tell Josh, "I'm so beautiful. I'm so cute."

Ashley made shortcake for the kids to decorate houses.

The boys collaborated on one since they had visited the WW2 museum with their dads while the rest of us decorated/ate the rest.

The fireworks are always at the Ortiz house.

These 2 girls were besties for the night.

It was a very rainy/windy night. Some party-goers preferred staying indoors.

A mystery luchador made several appearances, always flexing and showing off his body. That doesn't sound like anybody I know. Nope, I don't know anybody I live with who flexes, shirtless in front of a mirror daily. Wait, what is David hiding under his sweater?

 

Announcement

I wasn’t going to publicize my pregnancy until Christmas: I like time to process the info before I have to talk about it with everyone. But when the children saw me have a violent fit of sickness (Iris even started crying), I didn’t want to lie to them, so I told them what was up, but that they couldn’t tell anyone for a week. They all swore secrecy, Iris was the most fervent. She kept her promise for about 5 seconds (that’s rounding up). The good news is that she told my mom that Baby Jesus was in my belly, so the news was dismissed as fable. And come to think of it, Iris promised me in double negative: “Mom, I promise I won’t tell nobody.” So grammatically speaking, she did exactly what she said she would, that sly little devil. The bad news for Iris is that she will discover that although she has a strong gravitational pull, the world does not, in fact, revolve around her. This is especially considering the due date is on her 4th birthday.