Slip sliding away

I took today off work to spend some time with Elizabeth while David is out of town. We had a really fun day together. This afternoon, I introduced her to a staple of childhood - the slip 'n' slide.

Those who know Elizabeth will know what a monumental task this was for me. Elizabeth is not the adventurous type, plus she *hates* to get water in her face. But, when we were at the store last weekend, she saw the "water slide" and decided she just had to have it. So, I figured we'd give it a whirl.

I didn't realize the inherent problem with my plan until this afternoon, after she and I had pulled it out of the box and set it up in the backyard. Elizabeth had never seen anyone use a slip 'n' slide before (at least that she could remember). That meant she needed someone to demonstrate it for her. I quickly regretted the decision to try this childhood lesson while both David and Jonathan were out of town. I also started wondering if any of my friends would let me rent their older children for the afternoon.

But, with nobody else readily available, I assumed the task. I have to say, the design of the slide has improved dramatically since our childhood. The slide stays a lot wetter,and there's a pool of water to splash in at the end. Plus, the top end of the slide is now held in place with circular plastic stakes (instead of the large metal staples our old one used, which I recall contributing greatly to my sister's broken wrist one summer...) And, I think I did pretty well, if I do say so myself. Especially since it had been 20+ years since I'd tried it before. I was just glad it was a work day, so most of my neighbors were gone!

After my inaugural slide, Elizabeth was geared up and ready to give it a whirl. She lined up, yelled "On your mark, get set, go!" and proceeded to run onto the slide and fall on her bottom. We were not off to a good start. But, it was so hilarious, I ran to the house to grab the camera. (Yes, a little twisted, but I figured the world needed to see it.)

So, I demonstrated again, gave her a few pointers, then off she went to try to slide again. Here's what the second try looked like:



Notice how crisp and clear that action shot is? That's because she wasn't moving. She just sat down at the top of the slide and expected to end up at the bottom. Once I stopped howling with laughter, I realized that video would be required to properly demonstrate to everyone the hilarity of the afternoon.

Here's the next attempt:



But, I have to say, she was persistent. And, as the afternoon went on, her technique did improve. Especially considering she weighs less than 30 pounds, so she doesn't have a lot of mass to help with momentum. Here she is with improved form:



And, this was about as good as she got:



In case you couldn't understand it, at the end of that clip, she's telling me I won't be able to take a picture of her because she was going too fast. Yeah, right! :)

As I said before, Elizabeth has always hated to get water in her face. So, she insisted that all of her initial slides be done with the water off, and just re-wetting the plastic after each attempt. But, to my amazement, she later decided she wanted to turn the water back on, which resulted in streams of water falling onto the slide as she want down. And she LOVED it! By the end of the day, she was running through the water to get to the top of the slide, then splashing her way down the slide to the splash pool at the bottom:



(Not to mention having me pull her down the slide about 50 times.)

So, we had a great time, and Elizabeth ended up getting over her fear of water on her face. Yeah! The only downside is my back is killing me now, from pulling a 30 pound sack of potatoes halfway down the slide about 50 times. But, that's a small price to pay for an afternoon of fun with my little girl!

Surviving

I'm now officially halfway through David's weeklong absence, and I'm....surviving. Until I went to work today, I would have told you it was going really well. Elizabeth and I had a great 3-day weekend together. We had fun, shopped, cooked, played, laughed, and did all sorts of other great mother-daughter things together. She really acted like an angel most of the time, and she even slept through the first 2 nights without waking me up. I was thinking we had it made.

Until...I had to work today. Elizabeth must have sensed it, because she was pretty much awake from 3am to 5am last night with "bad dreams" (aka "I can't sleep, but I'll tell you it's a bad dream so you won't get mad.") That meant I started the day exhausted, and she slept late this morning (at least for her), so we really had to rush around to get her to school on time. Then, I rushed to the office to work for a few hours, before it was time to pick her up from school and take her to Gran's house. Then, back home to work some more, until Gran brought her back over in the evening. Throw in a few annoying work issues, and it was a very stressful and not very productive day for me. Before I knew it, it was time to heat up something for dinner (yes, I only had energy for leftovers at that point), take the dog for a walk, play for a little while, then snack, bath, and bed. I also got 2 loads of laundry done somewhere in there. Whew. I'm exhausted! How on earth do people stay on top of everything and keep their sanity without one person home everyday? Hats off to all you single parents and dual working parent households out there!

I truly don't know how I would make it without David around to do everything he does for us on a daily basis. I am spoiled rotten. He cleans the house, does the laundry, runs the errands, takes care of the kids and the animals, cooks dinner, does the lawn...the list is endless. As I've said before, leaving for a week is the best thing he could do to truly make me appreciate him.

It really has made me appreciate having my mom around as well. Unfortunately for her (in some ways), she got laid off a few months ago. But, it has been such a blessing for us. This week, she's watching Elizabeth each of the 3 afternoons I'll be working. They had a great time this afternoon - making milkshakes, watching a movie, reading books, and playing games. Tomorrow, they're going to make jam together. I'm so thankful that Elizabeth gets to experience all of that with her. I know they are making wonderful memories that she'll cherish forever.

I'm also thankful that Gran is so terribly understanding of my little momma's girl. That when I came up from work tonight, she didn't take it personally when Elizabeth looked at her and told her she was ready for her to go. After all, she'd had Mommy non-stop, all to herself, for 3 days in a row before today, then I was gone for the entire day.

David and his team are having a wonderful week in Arizona. I'm so thankful that he's able to go and get the break he needs from his hectic life that centers around taking care of us. It's also awesome to see how God uses him and the other volunteers in the Apache community. But, I'm also thankful that he'll be home on Saturday. I can't keep doing it without him for long!

Happy Father's Day - Take 2

David left early yesterday morning for his Arizona mission trip. It's the second time he's gone on this trip, and I know he'll have a great time, he'll be a great influence on the Apache people he works with, and it will be a truly awesome experience. He'll be gone for 8 days, during which I get to play "single mom" - trying to take care of the house, the kid, and get some work done in the process. I found out last year that this is the best thing he could possibly do to make sure I truly appreciate him and everything he does for me on Father's Day. :)

He got his "real" Father's Day present a few weeks ago - a big, new flat screen TV. But, Elizabeth and I worked up this little tribute for him today.













It's a repeat from last year's present. I thought it would be fun for him to see how much his little girl has grown in the last year. Of course, she's never been one to sit and smile for the camera, so I guess cheesy smiles are as good as he can expect.

Happy Father's Day, sweetheart! Thank you for being such a wonderful husband and father!

The magic of Disney

David, Elizabeth, and I just returned from a week at Disney World. It was such an awesome vacation - everything about it was perfect from beginning to end. We took advantage of the deals Disney was offering to upgrade to a one bedroom apartment at one of their luxury resorts. The accomodations were absolutely incredible, and I'm afraid we've now been spoiled for all future vacations. Plus, staying on the Disney property gave us quick access to all of the parks. We were able to peruse the parks at our leisure during the day, then still have time to swim and relax back at the hotel in the late afternoon and evening.

Elizabeth has recently become obsessed with all of the Disney princesses, so it was a perfect time for her to go to Disney World. One of our favorite parts was just watching how excited she got over everything. Her very favorite place at Disney World was Cinderella's Castle.



This was how she looked when she first saw it:



Then, she spent several minutes just standing and staring at it:



Her obsession with the castle continued throughout the entire week. Anytime she saw it, she would yell out, "There's Cinderella's castle!" If you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom, you can probably understand that we heard that A LOT, because the castle is in the middle of everything and you can see it from almost everywhere. In the evenings, the castle also changed colors, and she thought that was just spectacular, especially when it was PINK.



She also loved the rides. She wanted to ride everything she could, and was quite disappointed whenever we told her she wasn't tall enough to ride one. She fell in love with the one rollercoaster she was tall enough to ride (the Barnstormer), and we ended up riding it about a half dozen times throughout the week. That was funny in itself, because she'd spend the whole ride telling us it was going too fast, then as soon as it was over, she would beg to ride it again!

Other favorite rides of hers were the Snow White ride, the Peter Pan ride, and It's a Small World. That's another ride that we probably rode a half dozen times, and I think David and I will be singing the song for quite a while:





Before we left, my dad asked us to take a picture of Elizabeth with the "pink elephant." I tried to tell him that the elephants on the Dumbo ride were gray, but he insisted that he remembered a pink elephant. When we saw this in the It's a Small World ride, we had to take a picture of it, just to show Dad that he may not be entirely senile yet!



The Tea Cup ride was also another one of Elizabeth's favorites:





Unfortunately for David, that ride makes me sick, so he got to ride it with her every time!

Elizabeth also asked to ride the Dumbo ride several times:





But, we finally figured out that was mainly because of the great view it gave her of Cinderella's Castle:



All of the rides were so much fun that we actually had to coax her on her typical favorite - the carousel:




One of the rides that was an unexpected hit with both Elizabeth and David was the Toy Story Midway game, which used 3D graphics and let you pretend to play all the carnival games:



Elizabeth also enjoyed playing on some of the very cleverly designed playgrounds throughout the parks:






It came as a surprise to David and me, but even more than the rides, the highlights of Elizabeth's week were getting to meet some of her favorite Disney characters. Fortunately, we had scheduled several character meals, so we got to sit in the air conditioning and wait for a lot of them to come to us. Here is the Disney menagerie that she encountered at meals throughout the week:

June and Leo from The Little Einsteins:







Along with Goliath the lion (from the JoJo show, which none of us was familiar with):



We also got to eat with Mickey and his crew:












As well as the Pooh characters:










Her absolute favorite meal was the lunch we got to eat inside Cinderella's Castle. Beforehand, she got to meet Cinderella's Fairy Godmother:



Then, we all met Cinderella:



Then, throughout the course of the meal, which was set in a neat castle setting:



She met Snow White:



Sleeping Beauty:



Belle:



And, her favorite princess - Ariel (as a human):



To wrap up the show, they gave all the "little princesses" present, their own "Wishing Star" and wand, and helped them all make a wish. Elizabeth took it very seriously:





She was very disappointed when her wish did not come true!

As a testament to the inexplicable appeal of the characters, Elizabeth also chose to stand in line for quite a while to meet her favorites, including Ariel (as a mermaid):





And Tinkerbell and her friends:







She would have waited to meet even more characters if we had let her. But, by the end of the week, David and I were just happy to not have to hug anyone in the middle of a meal or wait in the heat for any longer than necessary, so we started to quickly shuffle her by anyone we saw in costume. (Although, Dick Vitale was also staying at our hotel, and I think David would have stopped and hugged him if given the chance...)

And, with the weather so hot, she also got to enjoy a lot of yummy cold treats:






We also took advantage of some of the shows to sit in air conditioning for a while and relax. She absolutely loved the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King shows. I think we have another future Broadway fan on our hands!


By the end of a day at the parks, we were all exhausted:



So, we spent a lot of time cooling down and relaxing at the hotel pools in the afternoons:







Elizabeth's swimming skills and confidence actually improved very dramatically over the course of the week, so David's going to continue to take her to the pool throughout the rest of the summer just to get her even more used to the water.

We all had a fabulous time. It's going to be hard going back to reality!