DAY FROM HELL!

The day from hell. Jury duty in downtown phoenix, need I say more?! well, since I am sitting here and bored to death waiting to be picked I am going to journal my thoughts.

The day didnt start out to bad. I had planned on leaving at 8:30am so I could make it downtown, park, catch a shuttle and be on time for my 10am time slot. I got
ready so fast I even had time to help Emma get ready for school and I still was in my car by 8:33am, excellent if I do say so myself. I am headed down McQueen to catch the 202 and I was enjoying my apple as I followed behind several cars all going the same speed as me. What happens next, well that's where the good day went downhill.

A freaking motor cop pulled me over, why did he pick me out of the crowd?! Was it because I was in the back of the pack, because I was the prettiest one out of the bunch or because he wanted some of my apple?! I pull over not really worried aobut anything because my odds for actually getting a ticket are 4 out of 13 (no lie, I am great at getting out of them). I hand him my stuff and he is looking like he is not going to be so cool so I give him my extra friendly smile and say "would it help if I am related to a chandler cop," well apparantly it doesnt cause after dropping a name, explaining how I am a good doobie cause I am going to jury duty, etc I still end up with the ticket. After he hands me the ticket he tells me "drive safe" and I let him know, "I will try but I have to drive fast to make it on time now." Next time the city wants me to vote in favor of upgrading cops equipment, I will have to rethink that one (just kidding).

So I make it on time to Jury duty, get checked into a full room with probably about 250 people, 50% being older men who I thought were supposed to be all full of old time charm and old school manners, I guess I was wrong. No one got up to give the pregnant lady a chair, was it because they didnt notice me or because they could care less and just wanted to make sure they had a chair or was it because jury duty had made everyone grumpy?! Finally, a nice young man gave me his seat, I was very grateful but now that I sit here and type I am not sure it was the best choice for me, the man sitting next to me talks to himself, lovely. I am sitting in a room with mostly people who are old enough to be my parents so seeing as how we are all older, can anyone tell me why the movie of choice on all the tvs is "Alvin and the Chipmunks", perhaps its because the 40 something lady behind me keeps cracking up out loud to the movie. Wow, this is going to be a long day.

Lunch time! yay, I have an hour and half to waste eating lunch, what in the crap am I going to do. Last time I had jury duty downtown my dad worked down here so he took
me to lunch at the Hyatt, now he is retired so I took myself to lunch at a combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut, practically the same thing. Now, I know you all like pictures with your posts so here is a picture of my delicious lunch, its tempting all of you isnt it :)

After lunch at 1:30pm they finally call me into a courtroom, I must confess I am most excited because this means that as soon as I get released I am free to go home instead of sitting in the holding room until 5pm and I fully plan on getting released and not getting picked, I am thinking my pregnancy will get me out of it.
We go into the room and it is a criminal case against a man who shot at 2 cops, hmmm, even though I am totally bitter about my 61mph in a 45mph zone speeding ticket I still fully support cops and back them up. The judge explains about financial hardships and how the case will be at least 3 weeks long and asks if anyone has a problem with this, that's my cue, I raise my hand and explain I dont have any finanical problems but I am 31 weeks pregnant and next week I will measure full term so at any time I could go into labor or possibly bed rest or something along those lines so I didnt know about the 3 week time committment. He responded with a friendly, "thanks, we'll take that into consideration." Later he asks something and for the life of me I cant remember the exact question but myself and 1 other juror raised our hands and basically thats when my freaky pregnancy hormones kicked in. Sobbing (and I mean sobbing) I try to explain that "my brother and cousins are cops and I always side with them, support the cops, when cops get shot we donate money to help the surviving family members, etc so I would automatically side with the cop." Then he asked one more question and said after that we would break and he would dismiss any jurors not on the case, that's when about 15 other hands went up all saying, um ya, my friend is a cop and I take their sides too. Losers, trying to ride in on my crying coatails :) 3:30pm rolls around and I am dismissed from court, hallelujah.

Does the day stop there? Do I get to go home and enjoy my family or sit on my butt, nope. I head straight over to Emma's school so that I can attend a 2 hour meeting about how to be a Junior Achievment volunteer with Jared in the classroom for a whole day, lucky me, totally being sarcastic.

It is now 7:30pm, sorry this post was so long and boring, but now I am going to go and clean up the kitchen and go to the grocery store, I cant wait for tomorrow to come!

COST OF THE DAY:
Money earned to drive downtown and waste 8 hours - $11.00
Cost of a delicious lunch from Taco Bell - $3.65
Cost to drive to and from the courthouse - $12.92
Cost of 8 hours spent wasted at traffic school next week - $135.00
Price for all of you to read this boring blog - $priceless

BEST WEEKEND EVER!

Last weekend was the best ever and totally worth saving all my birthday/christmas presents for. It started out Friday night as the regular Jon Bon Jovi foursome headed out to his concert. Daughtry was the opening act which I didnt care about so I was fine that we were missing some of it but some of the other girls wanted to see it so since 1 of them was a cop she called her cop friend who was on duty and he came and met us and lead us through all the traffic barricades and had us park right at the front with the other cops so we basically got out of the car and walked into the concert, it was lovely. Can I just say that I am a lame concert goer these days. Check me out, I'm the only fat person sitting, there was even an old man probably in his 80's standing up and rocking out. Thanks Jon for another great concert!

Then after the concert we headed back to Randi's second home to stay the night and rest up for our big day on Saturday, even though we didnt go to sleep until 4am, sorry Jared that I can stay up late with the girls but I cant stay awake and watch a movie with you at 9pm. We got up in the morning and headed to the resort for our day of pampering and relaxation. While we waited for our spa services we hung out by the pool, yes that is my stomach, not a watermelon shoved up there, I swear I am pretty and not that fat in real life :) Can I just say I love sitting around in the robes and getting pampered. I got a facial (sorta, dont get me started on my poopy boys who ruined it for me), pedicure and manicure. Next year, the works! Jared and mom, start saving for my presents :) Finally, when we were all done we got all ready to go out to dinner at the Melting Pot but then we were so relaxed we just picked up food from Carrabbas and went home and ate it. It was the best weekend ever, the only sad part was pulling into my drive way that night at 11:30pm and realizing it was all over. Can't wait for next year and hopefully no more dead people in the spa, story for another time!

CALLED TO SERVE...

We are very excited for my sister Ashley to serve a mission. She happened to be down here from Utah this week and her letter arrived in Utah so her roommates overnighted it down here so we could open it together with everyone and have some dinner. She reports to the MTC July 23, 2008 and will be serving in the Atlanta, Georgia mission. Emma doesnt want her to go and gets sad when she thinks about her leaving. I am sure she will get over it though when she realizes her aunt will look like someone who belongs in the FLDS compound ... just kidding Ashley! Congratulations Ashley on your mission call and on graduating from BYU next week!

STOP TALKING!

What happens while mommy is gone...
Jared: "Emma, please take your clean clothes to your room and put them away."
Emma's reaction; whining and complaining about having to do something.
Jared: "Stop whining, you dont do any jobs around here you can put your clothes away."
Emma's reaction; pouting and disapearing to go do her own thing. Then Jared tries to explain to her about putting her clothes away, not complaining and sassing, etc. and all Emma is doing during this time is ignoring him and writing in her notebook. A few seconds later she gets up, goes to her room and hands him this piece of paper...

HANNAH HOMO!

Who is going to come and save me from myself and help make me cool again?! Long past are the days of rocking out in my car to Metallica and Ozzy or going to Punk concerts, etc. On Monday night as I was driving to a PTO meeting (yes, I know I need help with that too) I realized the radio was set to Radio Disney, ordinarily since Emma isn't in the car with me I just change the station, well not that night. They were playing a Miley Cryus song which I secretly like so I sang along to it and then when it was over I was about to try and be cool again but before I could change the station a Hannah Montana song came on that I also secretly like and what did I do next? I turned up the radio even louder and sang until I got to my meeting. Someone save me from myself please!

Here are the most recent pictures of the boys. This is baby "A", Tyler. They can never get a picture of his face because he constantly hides it. But after almost passing out again and having the room filled with medical people to help me, I think they felt sorry me and tried extra hard to get a picture of his face for once. They finally went a got a beeper and held it up to my stomach and that made him move but he was NOT happy about it and made a pouty face and covered his ear with his hand.This is baby "B", Tyson. No fun stories about him, we got his face as usual.
This picture just makes us laugh. Some day when the boys are older I think Tyler will get great joy out of it because he will always be able to say to Tyson, "you've been a butt kisser since the womb!"

CONTEST WINNERS!

This morning we went to another Radio Disney event in the valley (because they are free and great entertainment for Emma) and Jared had never been with us before so Emma was extra excited to have him along and hopefully get to participate in one of the dad and child games. All the way there he refused to play things with her and as soon as we got there they were looking for parent/child combos to play their next game and Emma really wanted him to do it with her but he wouldn't. Thank heavens Emma has her dad wrapped around her finger because after her sadness as soon as they did their next parent/child game Jared grabbed Emma and they went to play. They did so good they won! It was at a bike thing this morning in Tempe so the prizes were related to that and they won a helmet, knee pads, wrist pads and a t-shirt. Emma was so excited for their big win :) I apologize for the picture quality, they were taken with my phone.

SPLISH SPLASH!

Our neighbors across the street have a pool party every Friday night and we go over there for dinner and swimming (in their heated pool, otherwise we wouldn't go) and Elias is becoming quite the fish. He is totally in heaven when he is in there. He will kick his legs, blow bubbles, jump off the side into the pool, go down the slide, chill in the hot tub, he just loves it and the best part for us is afterwards, he crashes hard and we wont see him until the morning :)
I was going to include another picture of myself but I am too lazy to get prettied up so here is my fat info: 28 weeks, 28 pounds gained and my belly is now 10 1/2 inches bigger.