Baptism Announcement, Service Activity, Birthdays, Lost Teeth...and more!

I just pulled Miriam's cake out of the oven. 

We did a horrendous singing to welcome her birthday this morning, but we'll sing to her properly over cake and candles tomorrow. 

We left for Athens early this morning so we could paint CASA's (Court Appointed Special Advocates) porch and shutters, clear their gutters, trim their bushes, and so forth. I'm the service chair for our graduate student organization, but honestly Bekah did most of the planning. Her sister is on the board at CASA and when she heard we were looking for volunteer opportunities she quickly came up with a list. It worked out very well. 

We had 22 people sign up and 19 people attend. We had doughnuts and chicken-biscuit

So we spent the morning cleaning and painting. Zoë was working the crowd, getting to know everybody. She lost a tooth and told everyone it was Miriam's birthday. There were congratulations and birthday wishes all around. It was a big day!

Then we went stopped by the botanical gardens to take some pictures of Alexander so I could make his baptism announcement...which I finished just a few minutes before pulling the cake out of the oven. 

He has paint on his arms and holes in his shoes and could hardly stay still for a picture, but I think that speaks volumes about his heart and direction. He's dirty from service and his soles have been worn out in following a good course.

At least, that's what I'll tell myself. 

To be fair, I packed his church shoes! He simply didn't want to wear them because they're harder to play in (and he knew he wanted to do some playing while we were there). He also has a new pair of runners that I got for him over the summer, but he still gravitates to his old pair (and I didn't even notice the hole until today—I mean, I knew they were starting to fall apart, but did not realize they had actual holes on the soles yet).

We got home around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and the day just...dissolved from there. We did chores. We had dinner. We read stories. We had scriptures and prayer. Miriam opened presents and had a couple of friends over. 

I need to get a crumb coat on her cake and finish a project proposal and finish planning singing time all by tomorrow. And then I need to finish a major assignment and a couple of Halloween costumes and plan a baptism all by next week. 

Here are a few pictures of us painting:

Our family was put in charge of painting the shutters, but honestly I think that ended up being the hardest part! At any rate we were painting shutters the entire time everyone else was painting the porch and trimming bushes—so many nooks and crannies!

And here are some pictures of the botanical gardens, where someone (named Millie) was having a birthday party. Miriam pretended that the sign was from her—how did they know it was her birthday?!

They're getting all set up with their holiday lights (I looked at tickets and they're $15 a person so...we won't likely be attending). One of the first flower beds we saw had signs saying "Japanese Banana" or something like that, but was filled with these shiny spiky-looking plant-things. 

Andrew was like, "Wow. I have never seen banana plants like that. That's incredible. How...did they get them to...grow...like that..."

"So...those are Christmas lights," I told him. "The banana plants are here, here and here. See those shoots that look 100% identical to the banana shoots we get in our yard?"

"Ohhhhh," Andrew said. "That makes a lot more sense!"

There's just something about an absent-minded professor that becomes so very true for so many, I think, as if professors—and researchers—are always preoccupied with a million other thoughts. Their common sense seems to...take a while to bubble up to the surface. Talented people, intelligent people, curious people...but sometimes they just miss the basics. 

We (my siblings and I) were teasing my mom earlier this week because she said some girl was standing in the library entrance handing sheets of paper to everyone who entered. Like, she just had a ream of blank printer paper and was eagerly passing them out to everyone, chasing them down to make sure they got theirs. 

Josie figures it was some weird psychology assignment.

Anyway, this girl handed my mom a piece of paper and my PhD-holding mother goes, "What is this?"

"It's a piece of paper," the girl said. 

My mom stared at her. 

She stared at my mom.

"You can do whatever you'd like with it."

Weird, right? But so funny that my mom had to ask what it was—because it was clearly a piece of paper! Anyway...I just want her to know that she's not alone. Andrew makes those kinds of mistakes. I make those kinds of mistakes. I think most people do. But sometimes I think absent-minded professors make them more. 

Busy brains and what not.

But, anyway, we headed over to the children's area to take some pictures. Alexander likes the bridges:

He's a good looking kid!

This one—that we chose for his announcement—was one of the last pictures we took as we were leaving. He asked me to snap a picture with my phone, so I did, and he looked so joyful that Andrew pulled out the big camera as well (he'd already put it away because we were finished). And...I'm glad we took it.

Here are a few pictures of the other kids playing around while Andrew and Miriam were busy taking more serious pictures of Alexander (which will end up on the wall, probably with some silly ones as well).

This bridge wobbles and Phoebe loves it.

Phoebe had a hard time on this twisty slide...

These musical mushrooms are always a hit! (Get it?) They're a percussive instrument installation and come in different shapes and sizes. You hit them to make notes. You can use your hand or a stone or a stick. We suggested to Phoebe that she find a stick to hit this mushroom with and...boy, did she ever! 

She hefted that log and bonked it against the mushroom—and it did make a good sound for her, as unwieldy as it was! 

Phoebe was a little nervous about this other twisty slide because of how terrible her previous experience had been...but she went down just fine!

The three kids in the backseat were a little grumpy on the way home. Traffic had us going a bit slow (Miriam bravely drove both there and back and all around today) and they were worn out from a long day of doing. Even though we had lunch and water and books and drawing pads...things were just a little tense back there. Everything anyone did was bugging someone else. 

Alexander looked out Zoë's window to see something, so she held up her sweater over it because that's her window. Phoebe put her feet on the cool and Zoë didn't want her to do that. Phoebe put her feet on the back of the chair on Alexander's side and he didn't want her to do that. Alexander put his arm on Phoebe's car seat and she didn't want him to do that.

At one point Phoebe loudly complained, "ALEXANDER IS AIMING HIS FACE AT ME! MAKE HIM STOP!"

So I started a round of the alphabet game.

If there's one thing that's true about my kids it's that the alphabet game can solve about any squabble in the car. Auntie K knows! We literally played it the entire way to Tennessee.

We were pretty close to home when the bickering got un-ignorable, so we only made it through a couple of rounds, but it seemed to cheer everyone up (or at least get them off each other's backs). 

And it's fun to see Phoebe figuring the game out as well. I don't think she found any letters in the wild, but she certainly had fun naming things she knows starts with each letter. 

"What letter are we on?"

"F."

"Feet! Face! Frog! Four! Fountain!"

"None of those things count."

"They all start with F!"

"But we have to see an F."

That's all for now. Tomorrow: expect a birthday post for Miriam!