The Princesses!!

 

 

 

People Watching....(or why you should be early)

I have more pictures to post but I'm too tired right now...jet lag sucks!! LOL!! I'm glad I planned for a day to do nothing and nap if needed because it was needed!! My kids need naps too, and because of that have been bickering all day, which is making me crazy...I've alternated between wanting to burn their tree house down (because they were making "rules" to try to control each other in regards to the tree house) and wanting to take an Ativan and just go to sleep until they have to go to bed!! Problem is...the Ativan is in the suitcases that didn't make the transition to the Phoenix plane last night and are being delivered to my house SOMETIME today...so I guess I better just go get a blowtorch!! (JK...don't call the fire department on me!!)

Back to people watching...the real reason for this post...

I took my four kids, our four bags (yes, I managed to pack us all into four bags and I'm pretty proud of that...even prouder that I had enough room to bring home all the awesome hand-me-downs that my kids got from our awesome friends that we visited in Florida!!), all their carry-on's (why do kids feel the need to have 800 things to entertain them on a plane and then all they do is beg me to buy the movies??) and get in the security line at the Orlando airport. This is where I found my amusement.

Some people were very bored (well, duh, standing in line for an hour is boring...but you never really see that level of boredom when people stand in line for an hour to go on Big Thunder Mountain)...Some people were angry...some people kept checking their watches, then their boarding pass, then their watches again...as if that would change the time it said so they wouldn't be late.

I sat back and laughed. Don't get me wrong...my kids don't like standing in line anymore than anybody else but we got there two hours early and we were going to make our plane without having a coronary.

I floored a lady who was REALLY late for her flight...flying alone with one child and more carry on luggage than I thought one person could carry...(I wondered if she had a ticket for the TWO GIANT stuffed Mario Brothers that she had with her)...I let her go in front of us. She said no the first time...then I told her, "really, it takes us an eternity to go through security for all five of us...go ahead..."

Then the really funny (sad) thing happened. People got mad at me. For letting her go ahead of me. I wasn't making them any later...she was traveling with a sick child (he had just come from the hospital and I wondered if he was there on a Make-a-Wish but I didn't ask)...and I gave her the gift of a little grace...and people got angry...sigh...

They also had to shut our line down for awhile and this caused all sorts of reactions...They called out "BRAVO" and all the lines stopped cold...now, I assumed this was because somebody had something questionable and the TSA agents would prefer that we not push on and let the bomber on the plane (I have a fairly wild imagination when in comes to flying) and I was quite content to stay right where I was as far away as possible from said bomber with his over 3 oz. jar of hand-lotion-that-might-be-a-bomb.

But no...people were MAD!! I mean really mad...threatening to take out the TSA agent and her supervisor MAD!!

One lady said, " I pay all this money for a ticket, you should let me through"...In my mind I was thinking, maybe if you slipped them $20 they will just shoot you right here...I mean really, do people think they take these security precautions just to prove they are more important than the rest of us??

Another man came up and yelled at the poor girl (who couldn't have been over 20) who was in charge of our line..."you have to let me through, I'm late for my plane"...He didn't just raise his voice, he yelled at her so they could have heard him on the fourth floor.

To her credit she just calmly kept repeating "they're not letting anyone through, I'm sorry."

At one point I turned to this guy and, risking any further opportunities to spread gentleness and kindness in this world, told him to shut up. I told him my theory on the fact that if someone indeed had a bomb at the front of the line we were much safer where we were... and did he want to die?? I told him the poor girl was just doing her job and to be quiet.

Amazingly enough, he was. Quiet that is. I suppose there was an equal chance that he would just haul off and hit me but he was being really rude to the poor TSA agent who was just doing her job.

And I did tell him to shut up in my nicest I'm-a-teacher-and-I-do-mean-business-buddy voice.

I did find some companions in the crowd as well. Two moms, traveling together, with at least four VERY small children between them, two very large strollers and all the peraphenalia that goes with babes in diapers, just looked at me and smiled...they knew...and they had gotten there at least two hours early as well so they were calm...even with babies crying and people shouting all around them. They let the lady-with-the-sick-kid-running-late-for-her-plane in front of them too.

We made it through the line in a mere 45 minutes and had plenty of time to buy drinks for everyone to take on the plane. Then, right after we got seated on the plane, they grounded us!! There was some hold up in Atlanta so they wouldn't let us take off. People started panicking all over again. I mean really....there was a good chance that we wouldn't make our connection and how is freaking out at the stewardess going to make that better??

The answer is, it's not. I called my husband and had him checking on later flights just in case. And they handed out FREE headsets!! It's amazing how happy I can be when I'm given something, anything, for FREE!!! We made it to Atlanta with just enough time to grab my kids and RUN down the gateway with 2 minutes to spare before they called our boarding zone. We made it to Phoenix on time (although our luggage had to take a later flight!) without too much ado about nothing.

All in all, it was still easier than driving across country for five days with all my kids in my car!!! LOL!!

I guess the moral of the story is, unless you like stress (and people secretly laughing at you in their heads) get to the airport early.

Bring a book...buy yourself a cup of coffee...and spend a few minutes amused by the poor people creating ulcers by waiting until the last minute to get to the airport.

You'll be glad you did.

Florida...Here we come!!!

We were blessed with being able to manage a trip to Florida (finally!!) to visit our best friends who moved there a little over a year ago!

Here are my weary travelers scarfing down a "Chick-fil-a" picnic in the airport in Atlanta. I was very glad we didn't have to brave the train and change terminals during our layover!!

 

The three little puppies snuggled up together...We got in at midnight on Wednesday, and when we put my two girls down H. was already asleep in her bed. When we went in sometime much later, her bed was made and she was on the floor next to them.

 

Here are the three princesses after their royal treatment at the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique!!

 

 

Here is the only group picture that we have so far...We are at Krispy Kreme somewhere down in tourist land near Disney...

 

The reason we don't have more group shots is because the boys are being less than cooperative about having their picture taken...

 

This little man is LOVIN' the "goduts" though...no worries there!!

 

 

What's in a name??

My friend Laurie tagged me with this fun little quiz!! She thinks she's unique....I'm either extremely unique or I'm dead and so are all of my relatives!! While there are over 200,000 people with the first name of Sally, according to this there are 0 people with the last name Datria. Except I know of at least 5 so that can't be right...it is really unique though, we've done some family history searching and there are less than a dozen traceable sources of the name Datria in the United States.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

A few more wildflowers...

Here's a different orange flower that grows wild in our little dirt lot...

 

 

 

This one grows in HUGE fields on the way up north towards Flagstaff but here in town we get little bursts of bright yellow here and there...

 

More Spring pictures...

 

I apologize that this picture is blurry, I had to blow it way up so you could see the hawk. I watched this hawk fly over my school several times today. Some of the kids said they saw two of them.

I think they are right. I think they are nesting in this bush. As I drove away from school today I saw this beauty on his perch and had to stop and take a picture!! I took a few flying but you can barely see him on the pictures. What an amazing blessing!!

Here are a few more flower pictures (can you tell the kind of pictures I LOVE to take??) I even caught a bee gathering nectar on one of them!! There are clusters of these growing wild in the empty lot next to my school. I will be very sad if that lot ever gets sold and built on!! For now, it's my little piece of heaven during the busy work week!

 

 

 

This picture is a miracle!!

 

This picture is more than a picture!! It is a miracle. At some point after this picture was taken, my camera was lost.

I thought it was stolen because I looked everywhere. I cleaned out the car and checked under every seat.twice.(probably more, and Tim checked a couple of times also).

All that to say I'd written the camera off as gone. The last time I saw it for sure was January 12th. At Josiah's birthday party...

This morning my husband came in shooting pictures on my camera.

It was under the front seat of my van.

I think Sarah had the best explanation...she told me (in a five year old matter-of-fact way) "Mommy, the angels must have found it and put it back where you last had it so you would find it..."

No kidding, I checked under that seat probably 100 times.

I've had something like this happen to me twice before in my life (at least twice that I realized). The first time I was just a kid. I don't really remember it but my mom loves to tell the story.

My mom and I were on the 5 fwy in California and her car stalled in the middle of the freeway. A bus stopped behind her and the driver helped her pull off to the side of the road and then left...when she turned around to wave thanks he was gone, and so was the bus, nowhere to be seen.

Another time, when Tim and I were just dating, we went to a movie. We stopped to buy candy at a store and Tim pulled out his wallet to give me some money. Later, he used his wallet to pay for the tickets. When we left the theater we stopped to get gas in his car and his wallet was gone. No wallet. We called his mom from a payphone to let her know we'd be late because we were goint back to the theater to look for his wallet. We went back to the theater and an usher even took us into the theater with a flashlight to look. We called his mom to let her know we hadn't found it...and she said she had looked in his room and it was in his backpack!

I am fully convinced that angels walk among us!!

One of them found my camera!!

Spring in Phoenix...

People who think that it is always brown and uninteresting in the desert have never been to Phoenix in the spring. Especially a spring after a particularly wet winter. The flowers are just beginning to come out, but the weather is beautiful and everything is GREEN!! Here are a few shots I got (I didn't realize there was a fingerprint on the lens until later so a few have a big smudge in the middle, but you can still see how pretty they are!!)

 

 

 

 

I PASSED!!!

For anyone who is interested....I passed my state teaching exams!! WHOOOOO!!!HOOO!!!! That's all I have to say on the matter, I'm going out to celebrate!!!