Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a long one, with lots of driving in it. Tuesday Susan flew back, and stayed with a very nice friend in Effingham that evening. Then on Wednesday I drove down to pick her up. The rest of the workweek was spent getting our lives back in order. Just when we were feeling a bit normal we drove to the temple in St. Louis on Saturday to go to the temple. I am not sure where, but somewhere on the way to the temple, or in the temple parking lot we picked up a nail in our tire. So I then had to spend 15 min in the freezing cold, and my Sunday clothes changing a tire and then the next hour taking it to get the tire fixed. In the end it only cost $10, and about 2 hours of my time.

At least someone was paying attention

I may not have remembered to take any pictures while visiting family in Utah, but thankfully my sister snapped these for me. Alice acts modest in a couple of them and hams it up for a few others. She loooooves the camera.

Garden 2009!

That's right! It's gardening season...almost. Ordered my seeds today. A few goals for my garden this year:

1. growing and freezing all the shell peas we'll eat over the winter

2. garlic, onions, and carrots for the root cellar (aka my freezy cold and moist garage)

3. rhubarb. It's a very appealing fruit when you're trying to eat seasonally :)

4. working in my friend's family farm/garden and getting paid in produce

5. raspberry plants! My mom gave them to me for my birthday

Struggling to Remember...

...what Alice was like before she learned to say "Aubrey" and "Ella." Their names are her mantra, as if asking so fervently will simply plop her back into Utah in the heart of cousin country. When she's upset or crying, she sobs "Ah-bee-Ella house" and sometimes she throws in "baby atty too" for good measure. She says it so much that she even plays with the sounds, sticking out her tongue really far to get just the right "L" sound in Ella's name. She called me "Mommy-Ella" this morning. And sometimes her "Daddy" sounds a lot like "Ah-bee." She cries for grandma and grandpa, too. We try to explain that all these wonderful people live in Utah ("doo-dah?") and we live in Illinois ("noi?") with a bunch of other wonderful people. She just asks to go to "doo-dah" again.

I didn't take ANY pictures on this trip. Don't know why, exactly. Wasn't a conscious effort, so it didn't happen. The flights were much more enjoyable than anticipated. I highly recommend using a car seat if at all possible. Containment is 90% of the battle :)

Happy Family

Alice and I are still in Utah for the next couple days. Alice has re-met a bunch of family she forgot she ever knew. She's talking a lot more, too, which makes these interactions MUCH more fun. Saturday night, Alice, Heather, and I spent a very entertaining few hours with my sister Erin and her darling pet rats, Chet and Javier. Alice is into mice these days, so we just told her they were mice. She fed them treats, gave them hugs, and was only scared once when Chet tried to climb onto her chest.

Driving home that night, I was singing Alice songs to keep her calm. I started singing a song I learned as a child called "Happy Family." It's a fun song because you can insert the names of family members as you go. Here's how we normally sing it:

I love ALICE, she loves me.

We love DADDY, yesiree.

He loves us and so you see,

We are a happy family.

Since Alice is talking more these days, I decided to pause at the names and see who SHE wanted to include in our family. Here's how it went on this ride home:

"I love..."

"Neh-nin!" (Erin)

"She loves me. We love..."

"MOUSE!"

"Yesiree. He loves us--"

"Deh-dur!" (Heather, another of my sisters)

"Uh,  Heather loves us and so--"

"Doggie!" (Heather has a little dog that Alice loves)

"Hm, and so does doggie. We are a happy family."

"Bappy mam-ee!" (Happy family!)

Welcome to the family, Erin, Chet, Javier, Heather, and Sasha!