Miriam's Blessing

This weekend was a bit of a crazy one. Grandpa and Uncle Jacob flew in on Thursday; they arrived at our house around seven o'clock in the evening. Rachel was beside herself with joy but we managed to get her into bed around eleven, I think. She woke up at 3 AM screaming and crying.

"I just want to see if they are still here! Please! I just want to see!"


I assured her that they were, indeed, still here--just sleeping--and that I just wanted her to go back to sleep. And she did. After I sang her some songs.

By the time I got back to bed Miriam had woken up and decided that she was hungry so I got to feed her and coax her back to sleep, too. For some reason she decided that it was kick-and-giggle time instead of sleep time, which is weird because she usually doesn't have any trouble falling back asleep and rather unfortunate because we had to get up relatively early on Friday morning.

The alarm went off at 7:30, just an hour and a half after I had gotten Miriam to go back to sleep. I forced Andrew out of bed since he had to be at the church for choir practice and then rolled out of bed myself. With the help of four other grown-ups I was able to get myself and the two girls ready for church and out the door--we made it to church early, even. Heaven help us after everyone leaves and we are on our own again.

I ran upstairs to practice my part for the duet Andrew and I were asked to sing and then raced back downstairs five minutes before the meeting started.

Miriam's blessing was wonderful, of course. She wore the same gown that Rachel wore, which is the same gown that Auntie Josie wore, and which I wore for my blessing day. She, of course, looked just as beautiful in it. Daddy blessed her, with the help of Grandpa, Uncle Jacob, Joseph, Brother Barton, and President McCallister.

Andrew and I sang O Little Town of Bethlehem and everything went well, except that we only made up the arrangement the day before and weren't very well rehearsed. Oh, well. With it being the last week of the semester we weren't left with much extra time to prepare for things. I figure we get bonus points for wearing matching outfits, quite unintentionally since Andrew left for church earlier than I got dressed since he had choir practice. I hadn't even noticed what he was wearing, so the fact that we're all matchy-matchy was just a coincidence.

Grandpa and Grandma were kind enough to cover as substitutes for the Sunbeams spur of the moment. We like to keep our visitors busy.

After church we took pictures in the backyard, but Rachel was so busy giving Grandpa a mandatory tour that she couldn't join us for a family picture, so it's just Daddy and Mommy with Miriam.

We ran home and quickly packed for our trip to Luxor--we had to catch a plane at 6:00 PM. And that's where we are now. The internet is s.l.o.w. so I'll probably be doing a lot of posts once we get home...