E-I-E-I-O (May 30)

It's been raining a lot in southern Alberta this year (northern Alberta is, ironically, experiencing forest fires) which has turned numerous fields more or less into lakes. I snapped this picture (at about 9:00 PM, mind you) on our way to Auntie Colleen's farm:

The gold stuff is last year's wheat stubble. The blue stuff, you probably guessed, is water (except for the sky). And this wasn't an uncommon sight on the drive. I saw more ducks than I've ever seen in my life. They're having a heyday with all this water around!

Goodbye to cousins (May 29)

Luckily Rachel was feeling much better in the morning. She only threw up that one time so we're thinking it may have been something she ate, though what that something was we have no idea. 

We all got ready to go for church, which was somewhat of an ordeal with eleven people trying to use one washroom! We were even only a little bit late. 

Rachel surprised me by wanting to go to class. She went to Sunbeams all by herself and spent most of Sharing Time sitting on Piper's lap. Miriam also surprised me by not wanting to go to class. She usually loves nursery, but this nursery class was small and foreign and she spent most of the time crying so I took her to Sunday School with me. 

Brother Lonsdale taught the class; he happens to be Professor Lonsdale's brother (I know because I asked him). Lonsdale was one of my favourite teachers at BYU—I took my first linguistics class from him as well as theoretical syntax. It's a small world!

Malachi's Baptism (May 28)

The main purpose of our visit to Canada was because Malachi was getting baptized. Unfortunately the kids were at their dad's house all day on Saturday because they were supposed to be having a family reunion with his side of the family (that ended up being cancelled) so we didn't get to see them until Saturday night at the baptism. I may or may not be a little bitter about that; I'm sure I'm not the only one. I can't think of a single reason why they even needed to have a family reunion the weekend we came up from Utah since their whole family lives within an hour radius of each other, except for one sister who didn't even come out that weekend. *grumble*

Anyway, we spent Saturday day playing games, going to the park, and (for some of us) preparing talks for the baptism. Abra has this fun game called Bananagrams. It's like Boggle and Scrabble teamed up and made a beautiful baby. It's seriously so fun!

I think it's the first time in my married life that I said, "You know, honey, my birthday is coming up..."

Let's go to Canada (May 27)

Fourteen hours in a car is a long time. For some reason I thought for sure it was only twelve hours—that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been up to Canada—but twelve hours only takes you to my aunt’s house near Taber. My sister lives in north Calgary so we had two more hours to go when I thought we should be done.

My poor children never want to hear the phrase “we’re almost there” ever again. I think I started saying it somewhere in Montana. Their poor mother never wants to hear the phrase “are we there yet?” ever again. I think they started saying it somewhere before we even turned off of our street.

It’s funny to be on this side of childhood. I remember doing exactly the same things my children do…well, at least some of the things they do. When we were saying goodbye this afternoon (yup, I’m writing about our trip TO Canada on our way HOME) my niece, Piper, was going around hugging everyone and when she got to her mom she hugged her, too, and said, “Goodbye, Mom, see you later!”

My cousins and I did that all the time. And we thought we were both hilarious and creative for doing so. Now my nieces and nephews are doing the same thing. And they think they are both hilarious and creative for doing so.