THE NATE and MACK DAWGS

When we've had the chance to visit Utah over the years, the best part is being able to see and spend time with all of our immediate family members. This trip definitely had its exceptions...

The first visibly empty chair is: NATHAN WRIGHT, AKA accountant extraordinaire. Nate is Jason's brother, my brother-in-law and my brothers' "out-law"- a title deemed by my brother Preston. He basically is a part of my family, too. Since it is April 15th today, he has obviously been working his little patooty off and could not make his way down and over to Utah to see us (or visa versa). I just want Nate to know that he was greatly missed and we can't wait to see him when he comes and visits us in Tucson when his niece is born! Nate makes us all smile and laugh and he's just a fantastic person. We love you, Nate! Here's a few sweet pictures of this awesome dude.

Nate at Wall Street in NYC - very exciting because this guy LOVES making money.

Nate was taken by this colonial hat that we found in Williamsburg, VA. Hot stuff...really.

Most importantly, the best time Nate and us have ever had - taking a segway tour of Washington, DC. We definitely are big dorks, but you couldn't wipe the smiles off our faces!

The second and VERY visible hole was my brother MACKIE. Mack is currently serving a mission in Vancouver, British Columbia - speaking some mean Mandarin. We missed his invented "cut" talk and his huge bear hugs. Mack is such a great brother and is the peacemaker of our family. We miss him tons, but know that he is exactly where he should be there in BC - teaching the Chinese peeps about the restored gospel! We love you Mack and we're SO proud of you! Here's a little tribute to the youngest of the Smith's.

Here is Jas, Mack and me at Mount Vernon last May

Mack trying to imitate the creepy guy sculpture in Dupont Circle.

Here he is about to open his mission call...he was so excited!

WE ARE IN UTAH!

Many of you are asking, "why are you leaving perfect 80 degree weather to go to snowy, cold and rainy Utah?"

While we've asked ourselves this same question on a daily basis, it comes down to the fact that we love and miss our family and it is worth it to be cold to see them!

We'll post some adventures from our Utah vacation here in the next week or so...we'll be here for a good two weeks. Until then...

COMCAST: A NECESSARY EVIL...

Let me start this post with WE HATE COMCAST. However, we are seeing that becoming a customer, once again, is becoming a necessary evil in our very-near future.

Many of you have noticed that we haven't posted anything for about two weeks. Well, the reason for this is because the heavenly wireless signal that we had been "borrowing" for the past eight months finally disappeared from our lives. Bummer. Huge Bummer.

Let me tell you where this all began. When we moved to Washington, DC, we found out that Comcast was the only servicer in our building - therefore, we were required to use them if we wanted any cable and/or internet connection. We signed up with them with their wooing offers of $19 internet with cable, etc. The first three months were great! Small bill = internet connection. Then our bill hiked to an exorbitant $63 a month...for BASIC cable and internet. What a rip!! After speaking with several other people who were able to get Cox or RCN for about half that, we felt trapped, angry, frustrated, taken advantage of...obviously, "free market" did not apply to us in this situation. Comcast had a monopoly on our building!

Then the big whammy happened. Our internet and cable stopped working. After a week and a half on the phone with them, they finally sent someone out. The man claimed that it was an area outage - something that I did not believe, since our neighbors two floors down from us had a very strong connection to the internet with the same service. So, he left saying that they were fixing the "area" issue that afternoon and our service would be working that night. NOT THE CASE. After calling again and again, taking time from my precious day talking to people who obviously didn't give a darn, they finally agreed to send another serviceman out. So, I took a sick day from work to meet with him. He came, said the same thing about the "area outage" - I politely remarked that this is what the man said two days earlier, and our service still hadn't been working. As he was trying to scoot out my door (claiming he was doing a "courtesy" stop for us because we weren't officially on the books), I put my foot down and told him he was NOT leaving until my service was working again. It had been out for two weeks, (which I reminded him I was paying $63 a month for), and that he was going to fix it because it did not have anything to do with the area outage crap he and others had been giving us.

After this, he obviously knew that I meant business and he went down to get some cables to check out things. Come to find out that the cable box on the floor of our building had been tampered with and our connection from the cable box was "frayed." To me, this looked like someone was attempting to steal our cable. He said there was no way this was happening and assured me that the ONLY people that have access to these boxes are the Comcast workers, to which I replied, "So, that means that one of your workers damaged my line and this is all the fault of Comcast." The line had definitely been tampered with. It was very obvious - even to my layman eyes. It it wasn't anybody else (as he had claimed), then who could it be? Needless to say, he fixed it and said that he was going to make sure that we get a two-week refund on our bill that next month and gave me a confirmation number.

After another eight calls to Comcast, the confirmation number he gave us was bogus, we never got the refund and then they kept trying to charge us for a digital cable box that we had returned after our three-month promotion ended. When all was said and done, they ended up with an extra $150 of ours. No refund from that two weeks of no service...and they got the money for the cable box that apparently we "had" (they were threatening to take us to collections.) So, we just paid the darn bill and said good riddance.

Now, here in Tucson, the only servicer in our apartment complex is, of course, Comcast. After the bitter taste in our mouths from our experiences before, we are having a hard time forking over good hard-earned money to that crooked company. Bitter? Yes. Frustrated? Yes. But what else can you do? I can't live without internet anymore and I can't keep going to Beyond Bread on Campbell to get a wireless signal that I can borrow to check my email! So, here we are at a crossroads. I guess it all comes down to the fact that Comcast is a necessary evil. Sigh.

RALEIGH AND TANDI'S VISIT

Here are some more pictures from Raleigh and Tandi's visit! Thanks for coming you guys! We had a great time with you here!

Outside the Tucson Rodeo

At Windy Point on the way up to Mount Lemmon

Tandi and Stella at Windy Point

The Sonoran Desert Museum - an amazing place to go!

Raleigh, Tandi and Stella in tow - Desert Museum

SoNoGrAm of Baby Girl Wright!

At our last sonogram a few funny things happened.

1. Our little baby likes to move a lot. At each of her sonograms, she's been completely stretched out, taking every inch of space that is available to her as she spins and kicks inside of me. Anyway, on this particular day, she wasn't too active - which was both nice and frustrating for the technician. She wanted to get a good look at the heart and a few other organs to make sure they were developing right -- and to double-double check to see if she really is a girl (this was at 25 weeks.) Even though we'd had lots of evidence that she was a girl, they wanted to check again. So, as she was trying to push her into a position that she could see, little exhibitionist Wright scooted her bottom right into the field of view! It was hilarious. This was the show she gave us...


Look at this picture as if you are changing a baby's diaper and lifting her legs to lift the diaper underneath her bottom/back - and that's what you are looking at! The little arrow is pointing to her girl parts. Needless to say, it's a girl and she was CLEARLY showing so. :-)

2. It was at 7 am in the morning and for some reason, that seems to be the worst time of day for my nausea recently (which has decided to start up again the past month or so.) As I was laying on the table and the technician was busy looking at the baby, I got more and more nauseous and said, "I'm feeling a little nauseous - but don't worry, I hardly EVER throw up" -- which WAS true up until that moment in time. About two minutes after I said that, I looked over at Jason, began to gag and ran (remind you with my shirt tucked up, jelly all over my stomach) to the bathroom and threw up. It was classic. I'm sure I threw up just because I said that I never did. After I returned, she said that she had enough pictures and we were finished. What a climatic way to end a sonogram!

THE JOYS OF WORKING RETAIL

Beware - this one's a long one. On Tuesday morning, I went to work at Williams-Sonoma. I have to say that most of the time, we have really wonderful, nice and polite customers - but sometimes....well, sometimes the devil (literally) reincarnated as a lady walks in. Today was one of my lucky days to meet a lady devil face-to-face.

So, this lady rushes in, snaps her fingers at me (it's just me and another lady working and there were quite a few people in the store at this time) and says, "I need your help! Could you come here and help me?" I walked over and asked her what I could help her with. She said she had called and was told that we sell water filters for these really fancy coffee makers that we sell. Now, I'm still learning my way through all the coffee stuff (since, I don't drink it, it's been a little challenging for me to remember all the differences between coffee, espresso, cappuccino, brew vs. grind, etc).

I proceeded to ask her what model she owned because the filter would depend upon the model that you have - and she tersely remarked, "I have the S-7." I grab the printout that we have sitting there and looked for her model to decipher what filter she would need for her machine and it said on the paper, "S-7a". While I only had limited understanding, I still knew we only sold TWO filters and that it was either one or the other. I told her she needed the one that went with the S-7a.

She fell into a rant that she doesn't have the S-7a, that she has the S-7 and kept repeating that her model number was not amongst the listed machines. After she had her little tantrum, I said that I would ask Lynn because she knew a little bit more about the filters and she could answer the question regarding her S-7 vs. S-7a lash-out. So, I walked away, motioned to Lynn (who was currently with a customer) and said to her that there was a lady who had a question about the filters that I felt I couldn't answer confidently. Lynn said she would go help her as soon as she was finished.

And I thought that was that. I began helping another customer at the register and before I knew it, this lady walked over and said in a very rude manner, "Excuse me, can you help me?" Lynn looked over and said, "I'll be right with you as soon as I finish with this customer." At this point, this lady huffed and walked back to where the filters were being displayed. Lynn walked over nearly a minute later and answered her questions - which she heard the SAME answer as I was giving her.

About an hour later, this lady walks back into the store and comes up to the cash register where we were and said straight to my face, "I'd like to talk to the nice lady." As her comment registered in my brain, I was a bit stunned. She said, "the other lady - the one with shorter hair, where is she? I'd like her to help me because she wasn't rude." I told her that Lynn had left and she said, "well, I don't want YOU to help me - you were VERY rude to me." To which I replied, "I'm so sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to be rude to you..." -- and then she interrupted me, "Well, you just left me and started helping someone else." So, to my defense, I said, "I thought Lynn could answer your question more clearly than I could - so I asked her to help you. It was not my intention to be rude or unhelpful at all - I was just trying to get an answer to your question." *Let me remind you that I had NOT been rude to this lady and felt it ridiculous that I had to actually defend myself - but being in retail, you kind of have to be apologetic.

At this point, our manager Cathy noticed the little exchange, walked over and began helping her AGAIN - to tell her AGAIN the same thing AGAIN that both Lynn and I had told her. She, in a gruff, bought the darn filter that I had told her was the correct one in the first place and left the store.

Well, it was all over before I knew it, but the third girl that I was working with, Jenny (she's a little youunger than me) was standing right behind me when this little exchange went on and after the devil left, she said she could NOT believe that that lady talked to me that way and that I handled it very diplomatically and she would have been a lot more rude to the lady.

I have two things to say about this: 1. This lady was a you-know-what...and how can she accuse me of being rude, when she was clearly the epitome of a RUDE person?? Double standard, I think so. 2. It makes me grateful for kind and gracious people who treat people with a mutual respect. Obviously this lady missed that day in etiquette school...that --- or she's from the East or Northest. That kind of behavior is definitely more prevalent there. :-)

"The East and West have terrible storms...and we, well, we live in paradise." - Chuck George, meteorologist for channel 13, Tucson, AZ.

Chuck, I couldn't say it better. We DO live in paradise. I mean, who can beat perfect 80 degree weather in February? Jason can agree - I've always been a fan of the desert. He often refers to me as his "desert girl" because I love to sit out in the heat of the sun and feel the warmth on my face like lizards do! Being in Arizona has been good for my soul.

I remember as a young girl, I participated in the Suzuki violin camp in St. George. At the ripe age of seven, I fell in love with the landscape, the warmth of the sun, the blue skies and the red rock of the mountains there. After living three years in the East, my love for the desert grew ten-fold, after dealing with cold (and or hot) humid weather, wind chill that brought temperatures below freezing and shade in the summer that brought no relief! I'd repeatedly say, "I just want to live someplace warm and sunny." Needless to say, Jason and I had a general understanding that *eventually* we would settle in a nice, warm, arid and sunny climate. I feel really lucky to live here - because, well, weather is a HUGE factor on my moods. Jason can attest to this fact. Here are some pictures of the mountains in Tucson and some of the sunsets. You just can't beat it!!