More museum pictures

As I mentioned, I had a few pictures of our museum trip that I was expecting to come from other cameras, and now they're here!

Here's Rosie trying to balance both of her daughters while eating lunch:

Monday at the Museum

We sure were worn out by the time we finished cleaning up at the wedding and made the drive home. And then we stayed up until around midnight putting food into the freezer and cleaning crockpots and things!

My mom and Josie were very happy they'd taken Monday off work! 

Somehow Kelli apparently managed to make it up to Idaho to go to Bear World with her daughter Amy (which was likely a needed break for her as well...but which also sounds like quite a lot of work, so I don't know). We decided we also needed to see some animals, so we went to the Bean Museum.

But first we made a stop at my Uncle Bruce's office, where he gave us the grand tour of the inner workings of BYU's OIT and gave him some lettuce (because we are giving everyone lettuce these days; Kelli prepared way too much food for the number of people we had, but that's okay...I suppose it's better to over prepare than under prepare and there are plenty of people to share around the leftovers with).

Here I am with Uncle Bruce:

Friday visits

I didn't take a single picture of my visit at Grandma Pat's place...but that's okay because Andrew's extended family is really not into pictures. Last time we visited we made people take pictures, but that was for Phoebe to have a picture of herself with her great-grandparents. This time I didn't have Phoebe...so I didn't press for a picture (as much as it hurt the "must take a picture every time the family gathers" gene I got from my Grandma). 

We met at Grandma Pat's senior living center. It was my first time going there and—man!—that place is nice. Like, I had heard stories (it's jokingly referred to as "the cruise ship") but I was seriously impressed. 

Her apartment is darlingly decorated. The amenities are plentiful—a pool, a gym, a games room, a theatre, a post office, a store, a bistro, a restaurant, a bank... You name it, they seem to have it! 

And all the staff were so friendly! 

I was, as I said, seriously impressed. 

Grandma Pat took us to lunch at the bistro (us = me, my mom, Grandpa Frank, Uncle Matt, Aunt Becky, and Aunt Nicki). The food was good and it was lovely to get to visit with everyone!

Getting to Utah

I haven't really taken very many pictures yet this trip, but I have had a few wonderful visits!

Andrew dropped me off at the airport rather than making me ride MARTA (like I make him do). My anxiety tends to go through the roof when I travel, so I was having a frazzled morning with lots of wonderful tummy aches (not that he was planning on putting me on MARTA, anyway). 

Not having to navigate the airport with any children in tow was certainly different than...you know...dragging a number of children through the airport. On the one hand, it was lovely. I didn't have to worry about whether anyone was going to wander off or leave anything behind or pee their pants or sit down and cry and refuse to stand up and walk again or...you know...whatever. 

On the other hand I had to stand in the regular, ordinary TSA line with everyone, rather than being put in the expedited line for those who need assistance, so that process took much longer (but I was all by myself so it wasn't all that bad).

My flight was delayed by about half an hour, but after all the news about cancelled flights this past week I was just glad my flight was going at all. I had never experienced Delta's system of assigning seats...when you get there...that was weird. They put up passenger's names on a screen—just the first two letters of your last name, followed by the first letter of your first name—with your assignment, but you have to read the list quickly because the screen will change and cycle through several different slides of other information before popping back up again for—in my opinion—an absurdly short amount of time.

My seat was 39F (the window seat in the very back of the plane) and I was in zone 8 (the very last zone to be seated) and ended up very near the end of the line because I was helping another girl figure out what seat she was supposed to be in (because the app on her phone hadn't updated to tell her which seat to be in, as mine luckily had since I didn't figure out the seat assignment chart until later). 

Random tidbits

While I was busy in primary, having a pioneer hoedown during music time, President Biden dropped out of the election, which was some pretty good news. 

Grandpa came over for dinner...and to bring back the kids' car seats, which we forgot to take out of his car when he dropped them off on Saturday. We had homemade pasta, which was delicious. 

In less good news, a faulty software update caused practically every flight to be grounded over the weekend. More than 5000 flights were delayed. Delta Airlines was particularly hard hit.

Rosie and I both have flights out to Utah—on Delta—later this week for Olivia's wedding. We're crossing our fingers everything is ironed out by the time we need to fly.

*****

Phoebe can be a real riot. Here are a few stories from her this morning:

Phoebe: Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom…

Me: Mmmm…

Phoebe: Wake up. 

Me: Momma is still tired. 

Phoebe (tickling me): What is this?

Me: That’s my armpit. 

Phoebe: It is so pokey. 

Me: Thank you. 

Phoebe: And you have yucky elbows. My elbows are so smooth. Your elbows are so yucky. Disgusting. 

Me: Thank you. 

Phoebe: Will you hold me? I just want to hug you!

Me: Yup. I can hold you. 

Phoebe: Hold me with your yucky elbows. 

Me: Mmmmhmmm. Wait until you get older…

She still has perfectly soft baby skin. But that will change, I'm sure.

Rachel is 17!

Somehow—almost impossibly—Rachel turned 17 today. 

She (and Miriam) had a game night with friends last night (so it was like a birthday party but without her having to be the very center of attention, which she doesn't particularly enjoy) and Rachel woke up to a flurry of texts from her FSY friends. 

Later in the morning she and I solidified her schedule for next school year. She'll be doing a full course load at BYU-Idaho and is particularly excited for a sewing class we found—Apparel Construction 1. 

Grandpa brought the kids home around noon. We opened presents soon after they arrived. Phoebe has actually been pretty okay with birthdays this year. I mean, the first few were upsetting, but she's realized that her turn is coming and rather than being upset by the ongoing anticipation she's chosen to be increasingly excited for when it's her day.

When she wandered into my room at midnight—soon after I'd finished wrapping Rachel's presents—she said, "Oooh! Are these presents for me?!"

"No," I said. "They're for Rachel."

"Oh," she said, slumping. "Okay."

She perched right beside Rachel the whole time:

Home with Phoebe

Tonight Phoebe and I had the house all to ourselves (which is a rather unusual thing). 

Alexander, Zoë, and Benjamin went to Grandpa's house for a sleepover (Darla is in California helping with her new grandbaby so Grandpa is lonely). Rachel and Miriam had planned to have a bunch of friends over to play games this evening, but they usually play games outside and it ended up storming quite a bit so they decided to head over to the church to play games instead (Andrew went to provide adult supervision, but the church was bustling with activity—a group was there playing soccer and another group was doing something else—so there were plenty of adults around...our teens just took one of the bigger rooms that weren't being used). 

So, yeah, Phoebe and I were left alone together. 

She was a little gutted that she wasn't invited to sleep over at "Gampa-Dala's" house. She packed all her most important items in a little backpack and was all ready to go...and then we crushed her dreams. 

There are just a few benchmarks she has to meet before she can be considered for a sleep over. Things like (1) sleeping in her own bed, (2) ditching overnight pull-ups, (3) not panicking whenever Mom or Dad can't be with her. Simple things like that. Once she understood that Mom wasn't going to "Gampa-Dala's" she was much more okay with the idea of staying home. 

She got to watch Daniel Tiger while I cleaned the kitchen. And then we had some music time and reading time and drawing time and playing time before getting ready for bed. 

"Here’s the deal—" I told her. W need to start getting ready for bed, so it’s time to tidy up."

"Sure hope kids are ‘kay!" she said.

"You…sure hope…" I echoed with a snicker.

"…kids are okay, yeah," Phoebe finished before sighing a big sigh. "Wonder what they’re doing right now…" She sighed again. Evidently she was starting to feel lonely without them.

Anyway, here she is drawing a picture of "my kitty, my Waffles":

Cute Phoebe Stories

Last night Phoebe conducted our Family Home Evening (that is, Phoebe got to decide who did what). Ordinarily the conductor welcomes everyone together (which Phoebe did) and then they invite someone to choose a song to sing and someone else to offer the prayer (which Phoebe did not). Instead she said:

"Welcome to Family Night! I will choose the song!"

Choosing the opening song is a great honour, so it's no wonder she wanted to snap that job up.

"Okay," Andrew said. "And who will say the prayer?"

"Also me!" she said. "And I will do calendar!"

"Okay, that's going a bit far," and considering the fact that she can't read or write or navigate a calendar, that's true. "Let's start with song and prayer. What song do you want?"

"Ummmmmm..." Phoebe hedged. 

She's not actually very good at choosing songs. We usually have to suggest a few for her to pick from because she's not so great at thinking about these kinds of things on her own yet. Fortunately for her, the Primary Children's Songbook was open on the piano. 

"Ummmmm...we will sing...this boat song," she said, running up and pointing to the music that was open (which had a picture of a boat a the top of the page). 

Watermelon, Sunflowers, and Pollinators

Watermelon is usually pretty good on its own, I think. 

Andrew, on the other hand, doesn't ever think watermelon is good.

Everyone else in our family enjoys watermelon, though, so in the summer Andrew will often pick up a watermelon when he does the grocery shopping (because he does the grocery shopping at our house). He won't typically cut it (though he has on occasion), but he will buy it for us. 

I have never succeeded in growing one, though we had some butternut squash volunteer in our yard this year (from the one time Andrew made butternut squash soup, I guess) and it is going wild. Well, the vines are, anyway. We've got a couple of lovely butternut squashes developing, but that's all. 

Definitely sick

Rachel and Miriam took the ACT today. When we signed them up we actually chose GSU campus for their testing center because then Andrew can take them in and just...go hang out in his office while he waits for them to finish. We know because...this is not their first time taking the ACT. In fact, the ACT company gave out a two-for-one coupon for each of the girls when they took the ACT the last time, so this was essentially a free second test.

Unfortunately, they cancelled the test at GSU for our testing date and the girls were moved to a random high school way down the the airport. 

Sick, no...healthy, no...sick, no...healthy, no...sick!

Alexander's still coughing from his pneumonia, but he's feeling just fine. But then last week Zoë got sick. And this week Phoebe has been sick. And we've been...doing very little outside of the house. 

But today? Today no one had a fever (and those who had been feverish had been fever-free for 24-hours!) and we really needed to take our glass to the recycling collection point so we (at least the youngest four) took all the glass we've been amassing the past few months (as well as our textbooks, because we're on week two of our school year) and went to the park. 

Here's Phoebe showing off her big-girl ponytail while Alexander sets out his school books in the background:

I can't imagine a more beautiful thing

We planted corn this year.

I don't think we've tried corn since we once tried it in North Carolina..and things didn't work out well for us. I think a big storm came through and flooded our garden and all our corn fell over and...that was the end of that.

Things went much better this year. Our stalks grew nice and tall...and then they got tassels...but I saw no silks anywhere. So I was a little worried we weren't going to get any ears of corn at all. But then my silks started appearing and I began instead to worry about pollination. We went out and did some hand pollinating, but I honestly think the tassels were simply too far spent to have that do much good. 

Still, we got a couple of lovely (little) ears of corn:

Hermes

Benjamin got his hermit crab—Poseidon—about two weeks ago and we've been meaning to pick up a friend for it ever since...but life has just been so...busy. Andrew and I have a lot of work projects and swim team was coming to a close and Alexander had pneumonia and the girls are off to FSY and...I dunno...getting to the pet store just felt a little hard.

But then yesterday we were driving home from the road race and I hopped on Facebook and saw that someone was giving away a full hermit crab set up—the tank, the crabs, everything. So I said we were interested and...the next thing I know we're bringing home a 20-gallon tank stocked with three new friends for Poseidon (they said it was four...but we only found three crabs and the, uh, remnants of a fourth).

Benjamin was over the moon!

Fourth of July Fireworks

We started our homeschool year this week so we can get some school days under our belts before the real chaos begins in the fall. Did I give my children the day off today? Well...no. We didn't have any big plans, so we we hung out at home, did some schoolwork, played some games, and had a wonderful barbecue dinner. And then we headed out to watch fireworks with the neighbours. 

First we went to some friends in the ward who have kids around Phoebe's age (so the fireworks were a little bit earlier). Here are the kids enjoying some sparklers:

2024 Peachtree Junior

We woke up bright and early this morning—and, in fact, prior to it being bright—to head downtown for the Peachtree Junior Road Race. My neighbour sent me a link about it after she saw Benjamin and I running earlier in the year and I went ahead and signed Benjamin up...and then when I learned that the race was sponsored so fully by Microsoft (as in: the event was free)...and because I figured the littler kids would be tagging along anyway...I went ahead and signed Zoë and Alexander up as well. 

Alexander could have run the mile race, but I decided to just sign him up for the dash because he's a pretty timid kid and doesn't like to be out of sight. I wasn't sure he'd make it through the mile course on his own. And it turns out this was a doubly good call because...evidently he's getting over pneumonia. 

Anyway, backing up a little bit...

We left the house at 7:15, aiming to arrive when registration opened at 7:45 (and knowing we wouldn't be there until more like 8:00). Things really slowed to a crawl, however, and by 8:15 we were still sitting in a long line of cars waiting to turn into the parking garage. So at a red light—and a mile or so away from our final destination—the runners and I hopped out and started booking it to The Meadow in Piedmont Park (where packet pickup was). 

We speed-walked down Monroe Avenue and then jogged down Amsterdam Avenue. Our goal was to hop on The BeltLine Trail but when we got there it seemed to be completely closed for construction. Luckily there was a "gravel trail detour" that we could jog along. Unfortunately, we then had to sneak through the fence, across the trail construction, and through another fence in order to reach the meadow. 

By the time we arrived on the field we were hot, sweaty, and ready for our participation medals already. And we were still a field's length away from the registration tent! 

I rushed the kids across the field and then we stood in line and got our numbers, which was ultimately a very smooth process. They didn't preassign numbers for the kids, but we got an email with a QR code for each of them, which they scanned at the desk, then pulled out a bib and scanned that number to connect it with their racer information. You can see that Benjamin's number starts with a 12 (he ran with the 12-year-olds and all his signage was navy blue) and Zoë's number starts with a 9 (she ran with the 9-year-olds and all her signage was yellow). That made it easy to find where to go and gave me peace of mind about collecting the kids after (though we made sure to also fill out the safety information on the back of the bibs and I wrote my phone number on their arms...just for good measure).

Here are the kids after getting checked in: 

In the first five minutes Phoebe was awake...

"Tan we doe to the pool?" Phoebe asked, stumbling out of bed.

"Good morning to you, too!" I said. "Unfortunately, we can't go to the pool right now because we have to take Alexander to his doctor appointment."

"Oh. How 'bout you not tan tate Alexi to dotor. Daddy tan do that."

"Daddy can't do that because he's taking the girls to FSY right now. So Mommy needs to take Alexander to his appointment. You can come, too."

"Okay. I will choose some clothes."

"Good idea."

"What are you doing!? I want shirt and pants!"

"Of course, I see that you have both a shirt and pants here and I will help you put them on, but in order to do that we have to take off your pyjamas."

"Otay. This is such a busy day! This is not a church day!"

"No, it's not. We went to church yesterday, didn't we?"

"We have Luna today. We have dotor pointments. *sigh*"

"It is a busy day, but I don't think we have Luna today."

"Me so hungry! You so hungry, too? You have not eaten breakfast yet."

"I have not eaten breakfast yet. We can go get some breakfast together. What would you like?"

"Mac-roni and cheese."

"That does sound good. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to make macaroni and cheese for breakfast so you're out of luck there. Let me give you some options. We have leftover waffles in the fridge. We have lots of leftovers in the fridge! We have watermelon that's all cut up. We have oatmeal. We have cereal. We have..."