Potty seats, recipes, and flying!

I have a few things to blog about tonight before moving on at a snails pace about the trip. First thing to cover: The moment that brought Jeremy to tears.

Sunday night, Jeremy and I were sitting at the table talking when Rebekah came out of the bedroom and exclaimed that "Captain Piper" would be coming in to meet us. I had my back to Piper when she came out, but I saw Jeremy put his face in his hands and break out in muffled, tearful laughter (trying to be careful, not to offend Captain Piper). I turned around to see Captain Piper in one of Jeremy's old T-shirts with a toilet seat on her head. I was SO greatful that I had just disinfected the toilet seat less than an hour before! It took Jeremy a good 10 minutes to collect his composure and shake hands with the Captain.

The second point of this post was to share some of the "recipes" that Rebekah has been doing. They did these in her school class last month and she has enjoyed writing them for different members of the family. Here are just a few of my favorite recipes:

"How to make Me" (Rebekah):

• 1 Cups brown hair
• 1 Cups blue eyes
• 100 Cups Xbox
• 50 Cups good helper
• 100 Cups good artist
• 100 Cups nice
• 100 Cups sweet

"How to make Dad" by Rebekah

• 1 Cup orange shirt
• 1 Cup sweet
• 1 Cup nice
• 1 Cup blue eyes
• 50 Cups good flyer
• 50 Cups pinball

"How to make Amalyssa" by Rebekah

• 1 Cup brown eyes
• 1 Cup brown hair
• 100 Cups best cousin
• 200 Cups best artist
• 300 Cups sweet
• 300 Cups nice

If anyone would like Rebekah to make a recipe personally for them, just let me know, she takes requests.

The last thing I wanted to write about was the pictures that I finally figured out how to take! For a long time, I've been wanting to get decent pictures when we go up flying at night, but the pictures never turn out well. I finally figured out that if I set the camera to "aquarium" mode, I can get the pictures I want. Last night we flew out to Fountain Hills and flew around their big water fountain. Here is a bit of info on the fountain:

"At 560 feet high the centerpiece of Fountain Hills, the world famous water fountain, rises into the air 10 feet higher than the Washington Monument when operating at full force. The fountain sits in the middle of a lake surrounded by a 32-acre park at the eastern end of the Avenue of the Fountains.

The fountain has been attracting visitors from all over the world for nearly 30 years, first activating on December 15, 1970. For years following its introduction to the world Guinness Book of World Records recognized it as the "worlds highest" fountain.

Three 600-horsepower turbine pumps deliver nearly 7000 gallons of water per minute through an 18 inch nozzle. Though the fountain is capable of soaring 560 feet into the air, the daily height is generally around 300 feet using two of the three pumps".

I am not great at figuring out how high 300 feet would be so I wanted a familiar comparison, I looked up how high Old Faithful will shoot and it is between 106-180, usually averaging at 130.

I was able to get better video of the fountain than pictures because the lights on the fountain were not great- so.... here is a not-so-great and kinda-boring video of some water. (my extra note: Since I just spent an hour uploading this video, I'm not about to take it down, and I now realize that it is a worse video than I thought!) Just watch it between 00:25 and 00:45... that is the only part worth seeing! =)