I Met Superman!

I substituted a Kindergarten class on Friday and I was surprised at how well behaved they were for me. They completed all their work and they actually listened when I gave instructions. (I'll take Kinders over 8th graders any day.)

Anyway, I was talking to one of the girls in the class. She was asking me questions about the assignment, when one of the little boys ran over to me shouting, "Mrs. C!". I kind of ignored him at first because I thought he was going to tattle on one of his classmates. But he grabbed my hand, looked me right in the eyes, and said, "I have something really important to tell you." I said, "Oh. Okay." I got down on my knees at his level and asked, "What is it?" With the cutest, most serious expression I have ever seen on a kindergartener, he looked me straight in the eye and announced (in a low, serious voice), "I... am... Superman." Then quietly walked back to his desk.

I laughed for a long time. Who knew that the real superman would be in kindergarten?

Kids say the funniest things. It really made my whole day. :)

The REAL Superman

Sister-in-laws are cool

I love being married because Seth's family is MY family. I grew up with only sisters and my sisters and I are very close. It has been a little difficult for me to not be able to see them as often as I'd like since we all live in different places. But, I have 4 NEW sisters that I can hang out with and have fun with as well. I am so lucky. :)

Last Saturday, two sister-in-laws, Jenny and Sarah came to Phoenix to hang out with me. I was so excited and I think I talked about it all week -- which probably drove Seth crazy. Seth was excited too because having me out of the house meant that he could play video games with his brother. Boring.

Anyway, the three of us went to get pedicures. I have never been to a nail shop up here, but we really liked the one on Glendale and 35th Ave. I had them paint my toes purple and put a flower on my big toe. The girl also put a red jewel inside the flower.
**side note - I have gotten so many compliments this last week from students I taught about my toes. One 1st grade boy on Friday could not stop touching my toes when we were sitting on the carpet. I think he liked feeling the jewel, or he thought my toes looked cool. I told him to stop 3 times, then finally asked him to move back away from me. Ha ha.

Later that night, Seth and I were going to meet some friends for dinner at Chino Bandidos. We invited the sisters to come along and I was so glad they did. Jenny told me about the Chocolate Volcano cookie Chinos has that I might not have gotten if she wasn't there. Thank goodness. It was the best cookie!  

I had a lot of fun with my sister-in-laws and look forward to hanging out with them again.

Seagulls like Sun Chips

Summer is almost over (thank goodness) and I was just reflecting on a particular summer about 5 years ago. This was the summer that ruined my perfect legs and caused me to be self-conscious about them for the rest of my life. I will NEVER again think that putting sun tan lotion (SPF 2) on my white pasty skin while at the beach is a good idea. Especially if I am tired and think I might fall asleep.

Don't let the smile, and warmth of the sun fool you . . . he's dangerous.

White-pasty skin + the sun + sun tan lotion + 19 years old + friends that were "doing it too" + falling asleep on the beach = SUN POISONING!!

Now, I am a major freak about putting sun screen on before I do outdoor activities.

I use SPF 50 now. Although I did see that they make SPF 75 and 100. I'll have to try it.

This particular summer, my 2 best friends from high school and I decided to go to San Diego.

The Incident

We decided it would be fun to pack a lunch and go play in the ocean the first day we were there. We packed sandwiches, sun chips, a few other snacks, and water. I was so excited for the Sun Chips. (They were my favorite chip at the time). We ate some snacks and then left our stuff to go swim.
When we got back to our stuff, we noticed that there were quite a few seagulls flying around our site AND someone had clearly been messing with our stuff. We searched our things to make sure nothing was missing. Sure enough, the sun chips were gone. I was so sad. I was really looking forward to eating those. We ate our sandwich and that's when I looked up. It was a little unnerving to have seagulls circle us like vultures. But, I pushed it out of my mind. After a little while, I noticed that the seagulls were slowly closing themselves in on us. We were completely surrounded. And that is when I saw it. I saw it in the beak of one of the seagulls! "A sun chip!" I shouted, "That seagull has our sun chips!!" That's when I grabbed a fork, and started digging in the sand, right where the seagulls were trying to go. Guess what I found? A whole pile of chips. Sun Chips. The bag was missing though, so our conclusion was...

The seagulls saw us leave our site to go down to the water. They probably figured they had 20 minutes or so to rob us. They crept up to our cooler. Opened it. Took out the Sun Chips. Pecked with those ferocious beaks of theirs at the plastic bag (which at this time was not the really noisy recyclable bags) until it tore open and sun chips went everywhere! They saw us on our way back to our site. In a panic, they buried the Sun Chips hoping to cover up that it was them. Then, thinking we weren't watching them, they tried to creep close to us to reclaim their treasure.

Don't let their innocent looks fool you. They are a sneaky bunch of birds.

It's funny because I thought I saw a sun chip bag blow by us while we were walking on the beach and I thought, "Why would someone litter on a beach?" Turns out it was the seagulls the whole time. They are smarter than they look. Watch out.

Consequences of Stupid Actions

It wasn't until we got back into Mesa that I realized how sun burnt I was from laying on the beach. As the days went by, it got worse and worse - until it was so bad I had to go see a doctor. My legs were so swollen that I couldn't get pants on OR shoes. Not even flip-flops fit. My legs were a bright purple color and I waddled when I walked. For the first two days of being back from vacation, I called in sick to work because I couldn't walk... it was that bad. I finally saw a doctor. He said, "Hmmm... ya, that's bad. It looks painful. I'm going to prescribe some steroids for the swelling and something else for the swelling." (I can't remember what it was). As I tried to get up and waddle out of there, he stopped me and says, "You know what -- I'm going to give you 2 weeks worth of pain pills." He looked me up and down, "Make that a month's worth of pain pills." Yea! I never would have made it through without those pills. My family and co-workers/bosses made fun of me for awhile after that calling me elephant legs. So rude. I learned my lesson. Sun screen, sun screen, sun screen!!