Grover, Day 1 (Tuesday, July 26)

Well, we're back from camping and I have bucket loads of stories to share. I suppose I'll begin when we pulled up to Aunt Dorothy's cabin. But first maybe I'll say that one day I want a cabin. Or at least yearly access to a cabin. It's nice to be able to go the same place year after year after year.

I first went to Grover seven years ago, before Andrew and I got married, while he was still on his mission, and his family wanted to make me fall in love with them so that I'd fall in love with him. Or something like that. I'm not really sure what their plan was but Andrew and I are married today.

It doesn't really seem that long ago that I infiltrated his family's anual vacation but then I saw Phillip step out of the car. Phillip is the neighbour boy. He also went to Grover seven years ago. Do you know how old he was seven years ago? I'll tell you. He was seven.

Not a whole lot has changed about me in seven years, at least...not that I can tell.

But I can tell you a whole lot has changed about Phillip in seven years.

For one thing, he's not a baby anymore. He's a gangly teenager.

That kind of shook my world. I was like, "Wait! When did he grow up? We just went to Grover seven years ago and he was just a little kid!"

I mean, I knew he grew up because he lives down the street, right? But for some reason realizing that seven years ago he was seven made me feel...old. Except that I haven't changed. Except that now I'm bringing along two little girls to Grover. And where did those little girls come from? Weren't they babies the last time we went to Grover?

Anyway, we pulled up to the cabin and I helped Rachel out of the van and set her on the stone path leading up to the cabin where Grandma was standing in the doorway smiling and waving. I gave her a little nudge forward and said, "Go on into the cabin with Grandma."

Instead of going into the cabin though, Rachel started twirling around in circles, looking rather disoriented. Finally she started walking off to nowhere.

"Rachel," I asked, "Where are you going?"

Swimming

Rachel is a completely different person in the pool—her two week session of swimming lessons certainly paid off. She still can't swim but she's certainly much more confident in the water.

Uncle David took her swimming on Friday at the family reunion. I wasn't feeling well enough to take her so either he volunteered or my mom volunteered him. I can't really remember but somehow or another David and Rachel ended up in the pool together. He had her swimming, solo, with a noodle, (which she wouldn't even do at swim lessons (she prefers when the accompanying adult holds onto the noodle with her)).

Work

What I should be doing right now is packing, but clearly I'm feeling rather deficient in the motivation department. There's a pile of pre-selected, pre-stained clothes sitting on a heap on the floor, ready to be packed...I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. They're our "Grover clothes." We're going camping in Grover, Utah—which is in southern Utah—which means that our children will spend approximately four days rolling around in red dirt.

We don't bring nice things to Grover.

The Call to Prayer

Last Saturday we had a culture night at BYU. It was technically for the singles ward that Reid is the bishop of but we were invited to represent the Middle East. They need representation, and perhaps more importantly they need good representation. Unfortunately being from the Middle East is a bit of an unusual thing in this neck of the woods and often people seem to believe the sensationalized rumours (eg. prejudices, etc.) they hear about the Middle East from people who know very little about the area. 

So we invited Miriam to be an ambassador for her birth country and told her that we'd be behind her every step of the way. We dressed up in clothing that was, minus the flip flops and aqel (the rope around Andrew's head holding on his keffiyah), 100% purchased in Egypt. The shoes were purchased in America and the aqel in Jordan.

Rachel's FOUR!

Just because I neglected to write about my own birthday and Independence Day and everything else in between does not mean that I will neglect to write about Rachel's birthday. She turned four today, can you believe it?

She woke up this morning and ran into our bedroom chanting, "I'm four, I'm four, I'm four, I'm four!"

I pulled her into bed to prolong getting out of bed snuggle and we talked a little bit about her, since it's her birthday and all. I told her that when she was baby she was the most precocious child, determined to learn the next thing, whatever it was, as quickly as possible. She was basically running by the time Miriam figured out how to crawl. 

"Why were you like that, do you think?" I asked her.

"Because I wanted to be a little girl," she answered like it was the simplest question in the world.

"And what do you want to be now that you are a little girl?"

"A grown up," she said.

Apples to Oranges

I gravely offended someone today by suggesting that Ukrainian and Russian are so closely related that speaking both Ukrainian and Russian is a mild attempt at being bi-lingual. Now, I realize that Ukraine and Russia are separate countries and, yes, I also know that their languages differ. However, I kind of have Bernard Comrie on my side. He said in The Languages of the Soviet Union, that Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian are "very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility....The separation of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian as distinct languages is relatively recent....Many Ukrainians in fact speak a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, finding it difficult to keep the two languages apart."

Egyptian Gypsy

This morning the girls got into some dresses we bought in Egypt—we're going to Reid and Karen's ward party tonight, despite our constant sneezing, because it's culture night and we already committed to dress in hijabs and do the hula bring koshari. 

When we're helping

Cloze quiz time. 

When we're helping we're ____________ (happy/grumpy)

And we ____________ (sing/yell) as we go;

And we _________ (love/hate) to help mother,
For we all ____________ (love/spite) her so.

Let's see how you did. If you were answering from Miriam's perspective your answers should have been:

1) happy

What's in a name?

This morning my mom took Miriam to the dentist with her—the appointment was actually for Josie so it isn't like my mom was trying to wrangle Miriam while sitting in the dentist's chair. She was merely wrangling Miriam while sitting in the lobby.

She did this as a favour to me because Rachel's been taking swimming lessons and since the pool is so close we bike there but pulling the bike trailer is a lot harder than I thought. So mostly I try to make sure that Andrew pulls it but there are some days when he just has to go into work.

Bike trailer + Rachel + Miriam = nearly 90 lbs.

That's like nearly 90% of my body weight. And there ain't nobody who should have to pull that much weight around. If I could even tell you how badly my back was hurting last week...

So on Monday when Andrew had to go in to the office, Josie came over and played with Miriam so that I could take just Rachel. That was much better.

Today Josie couldn't come play with Miriam because she was going to be at the dentist, so Miriam ended up going to the dentist.

Apparently everyone at the dentist's office thought Miriam was so cute. In fact, they spent the whole morning calling her Princess Miriam. Why? Because she told them that was her name.

"What's your name?" they asked.

"Princess," she said.

"Miriam," said my mom.

And thus she became Princess Miriam.

I just tried asking her what her name was to see if she'd give me the same answer. She didn't.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Nancy," she said.

Uhhh...that's my name.

More on Meme

Yesterday Miriam insisted on having a pillow for her nap. I suppose she's old enough for one by now since technically she's old enough to be in a big girl bed. Alas, her crib is still a crib and we're not sure when that's going to change since the crib serves as a wonderful protection for her from her older sister. 

Also, Meme's not the kind of kid who will stay in bed once she's put there and I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with having her run out of her bedroom 50 times a night.

For now she'll just sleep with a pillow in her crib.