You are the trip I did not take

Patience is a hard-earned trait. It needs to be cultivated and nurtured and takes years of practice to master—I can tell that I am already a more patient person than when I first became a mother four years ago, which tells me that I still have a long ways to go before my patience is perfected. And likely, just when I'm about reach the pinnacle of perfection is when my patience will be tried the hardest. 

Today we visited my grandparents and my grandpa didn't seem as coherent as he did last time. Rachel watched my grandma help drag him to the bathroom and wanted to know why. The answer is that he often forgets what he's doing—his brain even forgets to make his feet go—so he'll get stuck walking places. This happened on his solo return trip from the bathroom. We had all been visiting and forgot that Grandpa was in the bathroom at all until Rachel said, "Uhhhh...what is Grandpa doing?"

He was standing in the hall, staring off into space, halfway between the bathroom and the living room. 

Grandma went and helped guide him back to his chair. 

Later my dad asked her if she would be going to Georgia for the big Duggar reunion there. She said no and pointed out that she's not exactly in a position to go anywhere. Not with Grandpa, not without Grandpa. 

IHOP

This morning Rachel and I were getting ready to attend a baby shower for a girl in our ward, whose baby was born three weeks early and just came from the hospital yesterday. He's a sweet little guy. The present was a couple of packages of baby wipes—a very practical gift. Rachel did not think it was very neat—she turned her nose up at it and sniffed, "Mom, that's a pretty stupid gift!"

I told the new mother that when we presented her with the gift. Everybody laughed and then she made a big show of being so very happy to receive baby wipes to prove to Rachel that they were, in fact, a good gift. Rachel was quite shocked by her reaction.

After the baby shower we headed up to Bountiful to meet up with Emily and Morgan, who were down in Utah for a friend's wedding. Rachel and Miriam have been looking forward to seeing them all week—Empty Emmy and Uncon 'Organ! Grandma and Grandpa took us all out for lunch at IHOP. This was kind of a big deal for me because it was my first successful trip to IHOP. 

Andrew loves pancakes and so we've tried to go on National Pancake Day a few times to get the free pancakes they offer at IHOP. Unfortunately, IHOP is always unnaturally busy on National Pancake Day and the wait is atrociously long so I always ended up pulling the plug on the idea and suggest going home to make pancakes. Andrew will do almost anything for a pancake.

We thought it was funny when Emily and Morgan showed up at the restaurant wearing red. Rachel was dressed in red from head to toe. Grandma and Grandpa were both wearing red shirts, too. Everyone else was in blue or white, except for me (I wore purple) and Miriam (she wore yellow). Emily and Morgan sat across the table from me so I took a few pictures of them with the girls, but I didn't get great pictures of anyone else.

French Friday

This evening at dinner, Grandpa went around the table and asked everyone what they accomplished today. I said that we winterized the girls' bedroom—we put quilts back on the bed and took the summer clothes out of their drawers and replaced them with sweaters and pants. What I should have said was, "You mean when I wasn't cleaning up bodily fluids?"

I can't say what percentage of my day was spent cleaning up bodily fluids, but let's just say that Miriam went through 3 pairs of underwear and had 2 baths before I caved and stuck her in a diaper—and a disposable one nonetheless. It's not that she's un-potty-trained herself. It's just that she has a nasty case of diarrhea. 

It's been no fun for anyone.

But we did get the girls ready for winter. Surprisingly most of their stuff from last year still fits them this year—it helps that everything was slightly too large last year, so maybe it's not so surprising that most everything still fits, after all—we just need to find Miriam a bigger pair of boots and we'll be set. She was so excited to wear her penguin hat again. She said, "Meme's like a pu-en-gu-in," as she waddled out the back door to play.

The silent, sullen peoples

I'm reading The White Man's Burden right now and am just burning through it—as you can tell, because I'm all the way on chapter three and have been reading it for over a month now? Yeah. It's a good book but I do have other things that I'm reading and for some reason this book gets put on the back burner a lot. Anyway, in chapter three there's a section entitled, "I'm Hungry—Let's Invent Free Markets."

With a header like that you know it's going to be a good book, right?

In this section, William Easterly, who Andrew calls Bill because apparently they're tight like that, says, "The freedom of choice and of personal knowledge makes possible the great gains that come from specialization. If I were limited to my consuming only what I could make or do myself, the results would not be pretty. My cooking skills are limited, for example....Without markets, I would be forced to grow the wheat, beans, and rice myself, milk the cow, process the grains and beans into edible form, and make the cheese and pasta. (I have no clue how to do any of the above.) Instead, I trade on the free market my economist services...and get money in return. I use this money to select home cooking items and to order takeout" (pg. 72).

Interviews with Miriam

Like most children, my children have changed their minds about Halloween costumes several times this month already. And it's only the 6th of October (Hi, Egypt. And Israel. And Syria. You're all winners!).

Rachel first wanted to be a witch. Now she wants to be Princess Leia. There may have been something else in between; I can't remember.

Miriam's ideas have been a little greater in number. She first wanted to be Dorothy. Then a witch, then Princess Leia—she was keeping one step behind Rachel, apparently—then a pink princess, and now a happy skeleton (not a scary one).



She also decided just the other day that she doesn't like hot dogs. Andrew wanted mustard with dinner and suggested hot dogs and Miriam said, "Meme not like hot dogs!" I tried to get her to say it again but she wouldn't.

Soggy socks

Yesterday, after much harassment and nagging from Rachel, Grandma dragged the boxes of Halloween decorations out of the storage room and let Rachel and Miriam help decorate the living room. They thought it was so much fun! And then the sun went down...and it got dark...and they had to go to bed.

That was less fun.

Miriam was so spooked by the skeleton in the hallway that she could hardly sleep—she won't even walk down that hallway in the daylight today although she boldly professes that the skeleton doesn't scare her.

Rachel had nightmares about child-eaters, which taunt children before eating them—Peter, Peter child-eater! She spent the night in our bed.

It was a long night.

This morning both the girls were still feeling scared so they followed me around like ducklings and I could hardly get anything done. We were rushing to get out the door to get Rachel to school. I finally told them that they would be fine while I went to brush my teeth and that Miriam was to finish eating her breakfast and that Rachel was to put her socks and shoes on. No buts! (And no following me!)

While I was brushing my teeth, and relishing the first few seconds of not having children clinging to me, I heard screaming from the kitchen that could only mean one thing: it was the end of the world!

Since I was pretty sure a meteor hadn't hit the house creating a sinkhole in the kitchen floor that immediately filled up with turbid ocean water and man-eating sharks, I finished brushing my teeth before going to see what was causing the screaming.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Miriam put my sock in her cereal bowl and now it's all soggy with milk!" Rachel complained.

Mmmmkay. Here's a question: "How did Miriam get your sock?"

"Well, I put it on the table by her so that I could put on my other sock."

That explains a lot.

Kind of like how Miriam poked Rachel's eye this morning, also while sitting at the breakfast table. I'm sorry, but I have little sympathy for people who are attacked by someone stuck in a booster seat. Miriam can only reach so far, you know, so if you don't get within her reach she can't touch you. A million problems solved with only one answer. I'm a genius. If only I could get Rachel to stay out of her space...

Fortunately, Rachel has more than one pair of socks so this dilemma was easily solved. I'm so glad that today was not only a preschool day but also a Sunbeam Swap day—that means that Rachel is over at her friend Asher's house for the afternoon. Miriam is napping...and I think that's where I'll be headed shortly.

Willkommen: Bumpa Returns!

Today my dad flew home from Germany, where he's been for the past six months working as an intern with the Department of Defense as an Equal Opportunity Assistant. While he was there he got to go to France, as well as travel around Germany a little bit. He had a great time but he was rather tired so we'll have to let him tell us more about his adventures later.

Rachel, Miriam, and I went to the airport with my mom to pick him up. We left the house a little late so we were hoping that perhaps his plane would be a little late, too. Unfortunately, his flight arrived a half hour early so instead of us waiting for him at the airport he was waiting for us!

Letter for Uncle Jacob

This weekend we spent a lot of time talking about Uncle Jacob. During the Saturday afternoon session, Elder Anderson gave a talk about children and families. In his talk he mentioned the mission president of the Lima, Peru. He and his wife had been married for twenty-five years without children before they were able to adopt two little children. That's Jacob's mission president! 

Uncle Jacob wrote home today and after we read his letter Rachel wanted to write a letter back to him.

Princess Leia hair and General Conference

We try to leave for school at 8:50 AM. On Thursday at 8:51 AM I was hurrying to do Rachel's hair so we could dash out the door when she requested "Princess Leia hair." Let's just say that conversation ended up in tears and regular, ordinary half-ponytail.

This morning we didn't get up until 8:00 AM (or at least Andrew and I didn't get up; I know the girls were up and playing in their room long before that) but since General Conference doesn't start until 10:00 AM we had plenty of time to get ready for the day. Rachel requested Princess Leia hair again and this time I obliged her. I put her tails in loopy pigtails right by her ears, which satisfied her.

She's decided she no longer wants to be a witch for Halloween. Now she wants to be Princess Leia—Daddy watched the girls while I went to the Relief Society broadcast last Saturday and they had pizza and popcorn and watched Star Wars and now the girls can't wait for me to leave them alone with Daddy again.

When Miriam saw Rachel's hair and Rachel told her that it was Princess Leia hair, Miriam requested that I do the same thing for her.

And then the girls went off and put the dishes away with Daddy. Happily. Because Princess Leia would never behave otherwise.

When Andrew got his breakfast he put the jug of cold milk on Rachel's bare neck. Then he apparently forgot about that, poured some cereal, poured some milk and, fortunately, put the lid back on the jug. Then next thing I know there's a bunch of screaming and banging and stomping and then Rachel ran into where I was (which was not in the kitchen) for protection, violently lugging the jug of milk with her.

"What is going on here?!" I demanded to know.

She was trying to get Daddy back but was a little too intimidated to actually follow through with her plan. He was chasing her. Fortunately the lid didn't pop off the milk jug or we'd have milk all over our house!

After breakfast Daddy took the girls down to watch the last half of Music and the Spoken Word. I worked on the Hancock Hummer, our family newsletter, but I did sneak downstairs to check on the kids. They were snuggled right up to their Daddy.

They were too cute!

Conference was good, of course. The girls spent the whole opening hymn colouring...and that's about how long that activity lasted if that gives you any idea of how many activities I had to come up with to keep these girls occupied!

It helped (or didn't) that we had a bunch of BYU kids over to watch conference with us. The girls were showing off for them which helped to both entertain the girls while at the same time distracting them from the activities I was trying to get them interested in.

Rachel drew a Star Wars picture that makes Andrew's nerdy little heart burst with joy.



From left to right you have Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, C3P0, R2D2, Chewbacca, and Han Solo.

Today I learned than Han Solo's name is Han, not Hans. My whole life I thought he was German.

Miriam drew Rapunzel over and over and over again. That's pretty much all she ever draws. Ironically I cannot find a paper with Rapunzel on it, which is odd because nearly every scrap of paper in our house has Rapunzel scribbles on it. Next time.

For lunch we had waffles with buttermilk syrup and approximately 30 BYU kids! It was a little crazy over here! My mom came with Patrick, as well, and Rachel's new friend Emily and her family came over, too—Emily's parents just moved in with their parents who live down the street and we couldn't be happier about that because they have double the population of children living on our street. We now have four kids, ages 1, 2, 3, and 4. Emily's come over to play for the last two days and she's lived here for two days so that's a pretty good track record, I think.

The second session of conference was pretty uneventful. Miriam took a nap—for the whole session—and Rachel, Andrew, and I built this marble run together. Ignore Rachel whining about not being allowed to take the picture and focus on our awesome construction skills.



We used an Archimedes-style marble run that Karen's father made (it's resting on the table) and then had the marble drop off into a funnel we built and ran it down the marble track we made. It was awesome—a little distracting, but awesome. I figure we wouldn't have been able to pay more attention if we hadn't been building with Rachel, anyway, because she'd be distracting us in some other way.

I'm so glad they put conference up online so soon after it's broadcasted because then I can read the talks at my leisure! For some reason shoving ten hours of conference into one weekend doesn't yield high absorption rates for young families.

Five Temples

Remember when the Provo Tabernacle basically burned down on mine and Andrew's anniversary? It made me rather sad.

Well, today when President Monson finally showed up to General Conference—since when is the prophet late for conference?—he announced a few new temples:

Paris, France.

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Durban, South Africa.

Star Valley, Wyoming.

And...

Provo, Utah!

They're going to rebuild the tabernacle to resemble its original architecture but they're going to turn it into a temple. I'm very excited about this, although I hear the church had to purchase a historic landmark from Provo City to get enough land for the temple grounds—I hope they keep that building and turn it into a visitor's center or something instead of demolishing it.

It will be beautiful, even with the NuSkin building behind it. I hardly noticed the NuSkin building when we'd have stake conference at the Provo Tabernacle so I don't see how it will ruin the view of the new temple.

This will make Provo the second city in the world to sport two LDS temples (the first being South Jordan). But since the first temple is called the Provo Utah Temple, what will the second temple be called? I kind of like Provo Utah Heritage Temple or Utah Valley Utah Temple for conventional names, though I'm partial to Provo Templenacle and Seven Peaks Temple for silly names.

They're in the process of building a meeting house near BYU that will be strictly for stake conferences so we won't need the tabernacle for stake conferences anymore—not that we've been using it for conferences since December of last year, anyway.

I'm just a little bummed we won't likely be around to see it be built. Maybe we'll come visit for the dedication. Or maybe we'll still be living here (but hopefully not).