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Saturday, July 04, 2015

Reunited and it feels so good

On Thursday I said goodbye-for-now to my family (which is infinitely easier than goodbye-until-who-knows-when) and my mom drove Zoë and me up to Salt Lake.

Here's my dad saying goodbye to Baby Zo:



Our first stop was at my grandma's house. She was happy to see us, though I'm not sure she knew who I was (and she certainly didn't approve of the name Zoë ("Zo-ee," she repeated slowly with a grimace)). She'll be moving into an assisted-living home next week, so this was one of my last times in her house. She's really not clear about what's going on anymore. She can't keep a conversation going and would keep deflecting to old pictures.

I was telling her that my husband and children weren't here because they were driving from North Carolina to Utah. She nodded her head, pointed to an old picture of her and grandpa and their seven children, and said, "That's my family."

But, like I said, she thought Zoë was beautiful and was certainly proud of her every time we reminded her that this was a great-grandchild of hers.


She filled up her diaper more than once while we were visiting. Here's my mom taking a turn with Zoë, who wasn't very happy about needing to poop again. She's like, "Do I seriously have to do this multiple times every day?!" She's quite regular, much to her consternation.


Our next stop was Reid and Karen's house. My plan was to get there before the van of noisy children arrived so that Grandpa could hold Zoë in peace and quiet for a bit but when we'd calculated how long it would take for Andrew to drive from Laramie, Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Utah, we failed to realize the speed limit was 80 mph (it's lower in Utah and pretty much everywhere else in the country). We ended up beating them there by about ten minutes (but those ten minutes were blissfully peaceful).

Here's Grandpa holding Zoë for the first time:


And here's Naanii saying hello-goodbye to the kids:




I think the kids were all most excited to see Baby Zoë and Grandpa and the Wii, though they did give me a passing hug on their way to play with all those other things.


In the evening after dinner we went down to the lake and waded (though that's a little bit against the rules); I stood by and worried about the kids contracting beaver fever (giardiasis) the whole time (and I guess I'll continue to worry until they're satisfactorily symptom free in a week or so). They had fun, though, swimming with the ducks...







I was happy to see my children again, but I was especially happy to see Andrew again. I feel like I haven't seen him in, like, three weeks!





Zoë slept the whole time her siblings were having a blast splashing around in the lake.


Everyone was freezing when they got out of the water, especially Benjamin who could hardly stop shivering long enough to put his shoes back on.

"I'm super cold," he said through chattering teeth. "Need somebody to pick up me!"

No one wanted to pick him up, though, so we made him walk the whole way back to Grandma and Grandpa's house, where we had all the kids take a nice, warm bath/shower (depending on their self-cleaning skill level).

We're trying an experiment and are having all three kids sleep in Grandma's office together. So far it's worked fine having them all together.

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