Phoebe and Alexander on campus!

One of my earliest memories—or perhaps one of my earliest memory of a memory—is attending a horticulture class at BYU with my mom. 

What I remember remembering is that I was sitting under a desk eating Froot Loops from a little cup. The classroom was dark, except for a screen at the front, which was showing slide projections of various plants. 

That's it. That's the memory. 

After verifying this memory with my mom, I learned that I would have been about two years old when that memory occurred. The teacher of the class was Dr. St. Clair (who I would later work for in the Integrative Biology (or "InBio" as it was then called) department shortly after Andrew and I got married). 

I wonder why that memory stuck with me so firmly through all the many years that it did—and the feeling of the memory as well...just of...feeling content and safe. 

And I wonder what memories my children will take with them moving forward. 

Will Phoebe remember getting to come to campus with me today? She was terribly excited to get to come...only to be required to be still and quiet. She played with her felt boards and drew on her drawing pad quite happily through most of the poetry readings.

I had talked to her about protocol when it was my turn to read my poetry—that I would be going up and she would be staying where she was—but she followed me up to the podium anyway. Here's a video of the poetry reading (in loosely alphabetical order by last name—I'm up at around 37:00).

Dr. Misha said it was alright for her to be there. And I appreciate that. It is good, I think, to see mothers doing scholarly things while mothering. Or to see scholars doing motherly things while scholaring. 

Alexander and Rachel were there as well. They both behaved perfectly well and didn't make me hold them at the podium. 

After the reading—of many beautiful poems by creative and brilliant poets—we had pizza and fruit and vegetables for lunch, which Phoebe and Alexander enjoyed immensely. (And which Zoë was jealous of at home. "You had pizza?" she asked. "For lunch?!" We typically only have pizza for dinner; any lunch pizza at our house is leftover pizza). 

Then we went to check out my office, which was basically the best thing ever, as you can see from Phoebe's grin:

I took the kids to the book room and had them help me take down some signs from yesterday's book giveaway. I had marked off all the books that we were not giving away so that students could come in and choose from the books that we were giving away. I could have taken these papers down yesterday, but I saved it for the kids to help with and I think they liked that.

And then I let them choose a book to bring home from the books leftover from the book giveaway. Here's Alexander already reading the graphic novel he picked out, Phoebe carrying some important keys, and Rachel carrying her own things:

On our way out of Aderhold Hall we took a picture by the EduDawg:

Then we walked up to the student center to get some passport pictures taken. For our American passports we've always just taken our own photos at home. It's much cheaper that way! But for our current purposes we needed verified digital copies from a professional photographer...so...that's what we did. 

Andrew took three of the kids to CVS yesterday to get it done. And then I took the other three to the student center today. It worked out great (even if it was much more expensive than just doing it ourselves).

Phoebe had to have about ten photos taken of her. She kept looking all around the room or scrunching her shoulders up to her ears or, at one point, lifting her dress up over her head. It was a little ridiculous but eventually we got a picture the photographer said should work. 

Alexander and Rachel both took one shot. 

Once we had our pictures and verification we started walking back to the parking lot. We ran into some missionaries in the student center, who had a booth set up, so we stopped to talk to them. And then we walked out of the student center and were heading toward the stadium when a car pulled up and stopped nearby. 

"Hey! Where are you from?" some young men called from the car. "What ward are you in?"

We stopped in our tracks, rather confused, and turned around to see yet another pair of missionaries sitting in the car. Noting our confusion, they explained, "She's wearing an FSY shirt!"

And indeed Rachel was wearing an FSY shirt (a "For the Strength of Youth" shirt, from a church summer program). Rachel was like, "Could I have a better beacon than this?" 

It was like a Mormon homing device today!

Anyway, just a ways down from the stadium is the Georgia Museum of Natural History. The entrance to the cemetery is also close to the stadium and Rachel's been wanting to poke around there a bit, but I told her today probably wasn't the best day for it. And then was like, "Oh, but let's do stop by the museum!"

Fortunately, Rachel is flexible and understandable. By 3:30 in the afternoon (with still a good twenty minute walk ahead of us to get to our car) the kids weren't really in the mood to respectfully amble through a cemetery. But they were in a perfect mood for a quick pit stop at the museum—it's just one room, so it's not like you can spend hours there, and the kids thought it was interesting.

Phoebe wanted to hug that "reindeer," but there's a sign that says to look and not touch. We managed to keep her away.

She was particularly intrigued by this octopus in a jar:

She sang, "I love you, octopus! I love you, octopus! I love you, octopus...because you are...dead."

She later told me that was because if it was dead it couldn't sting her and had to just be nice. So I think she was mixing up jellyfish and octopus. We talked about that a little bit and she remembered that octopuses just squirt black ink (though, I mean, some are truly dangerous).

Speaking of things that she remembers...she was a hoot in the car on the way to campus. At one point, completely out of the blue, she said, "Many, many years ago there was a comet that came and hit the earth and that's why there are no dinosaurs today."

And then Alexander piped up with, "Actually...there are many theories about mass extinction, including volcanism..."

Like, I don't know if you've ever listened to a three-year-old and a seven-year-old have a big debate like this, but it was highly entertaining for me! 

Oh, and while we were walking—quickly—past the stadium, Alexander read a sign...off in the depths of a dark, dank, and fenced off entrance to a parking garage...that said "Violators will be towed." But because he was reading the sign so quickly while being forced to walk so quickly, and because the sign was in what looked like the entrance of a spooky cave...he saw the word "volcano" there and got very excited/nervous about it. So we had to talk about how it was "violators" being towed, not volcanoes.

He's just had volcanoes on the brain lately!

Anyway, here are some weird black drum (fish) teeth:

Here's a baby alligator:

Here's Rachel helping Phoebe examine a drawerful of bats:

And here's Alexander picking a drawer to examine as well:

It was a good, busy day with lots of walking (Phoebe was in her stroller)! Now to finish up this semester so we can officially start doing summer things (including some summer classes)!