Stuck on Campus

Early, early this morning we all got up and ready for the day. I was so prepared and grabbed everything on our list: Rachel's passport application, her pictures, her birth certificate, our ID, diapers, extra outfits, lunch, toys, a book, the stroller, blankets, sweaters, baby wipes, Cheerios...

We packed everything in the car and struck out for the Utah County Clerk's Office to apply for Rachel's passport. Since we both had to be there, we had to do it before Andrew started class because the office closes before he's done for the day.

When we had almost reached the office, I realized that we had forgotten our checkbook, our only way of paying for her passport. When will the government realize that paperless transactions are better?

We didn't want to drive home so I phoned my mom's office to see if she had arrived on campus yet so that we could borrow a check from her. Luckily enough she had, so we went up to campus, which was a lot closer than driving all the way back home, got the check and headed back to the Clerk's Office.

Rachel has now officially applied for a passport. With that task done, we headed off to campus to spend the remainder of our day. While we waited for Andrew to get finished with his classes, Rachel and I had a blast.

We played in the fountain at the JFSB. Rachel loved the fountain. Even though it was really cold, she kept trying to climb in. She crawled almost the whole way around the fountain trying to get in, while I held onto her sweater, pulling her off her course and away from the water. Although she never got in the fountain she did get a whole lot of splashing in.

Popping bubbles

When her hands were beyond freezing and I didn't want her near the water anymore we went to play in the grass of the courtyard for a little bit. I was getting ready to take a picture of Rachel playing by a bench when all of a sudden a crazed maniac started rushing towards her.

Who is that man?!?

He scooped her up and twirled her around. Fortunately, I recognized who he was before I beamed him in the head with my umbrella stroller.

It's just daddy!

After daddy left us to rush off to class, Rachel and I took a long, meandering walk to the botany pond. She loved the ducks and wanted to get in and swim with them. Every time her little feet touched the ground she tried to crawl off to the pond. I tried not to let her down on her own very often because there were duck droppings everywhere, but she did get away from me once or twice--she's such a wiggle worm!

Watching the ducks

Watching the ducks with mommy

Rachel and the duck pond

These ducks weren't afraid of anything! They would come right up to us and quack for food. Unfortunately, we didn't have any so they spent most of their time flocking around another group of little kids, all of whom had a bag of bread. Sometimes, though the ducks just assumed we had food so they'd come and crowd around us. Rachel loved when they got in and out of the pond, flapping their wings and spraying everything with water.




When we were too cold to be outside any longer we went back up to the main campus to visit everyone we know at the library. Nani was busy with meetings, so we only got to visit her office briefly. Then we went to see if we could find Uncle David's office. We couldn't find it anywhere, so we started to go downstairs to visit Special Collections...and then we heard his voice so we followed it back up the ramp and found him talking with Garrett. They'd just gotten out of a meeting.

In Uncle David's new office

When we had visited all the people we could think of to visit it was just about time to go home! We went back to the JFSB and sat outside daddy's classroom for awhile. There's a really cool staircase in the JFSB and we played around that and then we strolled around and around and around the hallways.


It was a good, but very long, day! Mommy's feet are sore from all that walking!