More museum pictures

As I mentioned, I had a few pictures of our museum trip that I was expecting to come from other cameras, and now they're here!

Here's Rosie trying to balance both of her daughters while eating lunch:

Monday at the Museum

We sure were worn out by the time we finished cleaning up at the wedding and made the drive home. And then we stayed up until around midnight putting food into the freezer and cleaning crockpots and things!

My mom and Josie were very happy they'd taken Monday off work! 

Somehow Kelli apparently managed to make it up to Idaho to go to Bear World with her daughter Amy (which was likely a needed break for her as well...but which also sounds like quite a lot of work, so I don't know). We decided we also needed to see some animals, so we went to the Bean Museum.

But first we made a stop at my Uncle Bruce's office, where he gave us the grand tour of the inner workings of BYU's OIT and gave him some lettuce (because we are giving everyone lettuce these days; Kelli prepared way too much food for the number of people we had, but that's okay...I suppose it's better to over prepare than under prepare and there are plenty of people to share around the leftovers with).

Here I am with Uncle Bruce:

Friday visits

I didn't take a single picture of my visit at Grandma Pat's place...but that's okay because Andrew's extended family is really not into pictures. Last time we visited we made people take pictures, but that was for Phoebe to have a picture of herself with her great-grandparents. This time I didn't have Phoebe...so I didn't press for a picture (as much as it hurt the "must take a picture every time the family gathers" gene I got from my Grandma). 

We met at Grandma Pat's senior living center. It was my first time going there and—man!—that place is nice. Like, I had heard stories (it's jokingly referred to as "the cruise ship") but I was seriously impressed. 

Her apartment is darlingly decorated. The amenities are plentiful—a pool, a gym, a games room, a theatre, a post office, a store, a bistro, a restaurant, a bank... You name it, they seem to have it! 

And all the staff were so friendly! 

I was, as I said, seriously impressed. 

Grandma Pat took us to lunch at the bistro (us = me, my mom, Grandpa Frank, Uncle Matt, Aunt Becky, and Aunt Nicki). The food was good and it was lovely to get to visit with everyone!

Getting to Utah

I haven't really taken very many pictures yet this trip, but I have had a few wonderful visits!

Andrew dropped me off at the airport rather than making me ride MARTA (like I make him do). My anxiety tends to go through the roof when I travel, so I was having a frazzled morning with lots of wonderful tummy aches (not that he was planning on putting me on MARTA, anyway). 

Not having to navigate the airport with any children in tow was certainly different than...you know...dragging a number of children through the airport. On the one hand, it was lovely. I didn't have to worry about whether anyone was going to wander off or leave anything behind or pee their pants or sit down and cry and refuse to stand up and walk again or...you know...whatever. 

On the other hand I had to stand in the regular, ordinary TSA line with everyone, rather than being put in the expedited line for those who need assistance, so that process took much longer (but I was all by myself so it wasn't all that bad).

My flight was delayed by about half an hour, but after all the news about cancelled flights this past week I was just glad my flight was going at all. I had never experienced Delta's system of assigning seats...when you get there...that was weird. They put up passenger's names on a screen—just the first two letters of your last name, followed by the first letter of your first name—with your assignment, but you have to read the list quickly because the screen will change and cycle through several different slides of other information before popping back up again for—in my opinion—an absurdly short amount of time.

My seat was 39F (the window seat in the very back of the plane) and I was in zone 8 (the very last zone to be seated) and ended up very near the end of the line because I was helping another girl figure out what seat she was supposed to be in (because the app on her phone hadn't updated to tell her which seat to be in, as mine luckily had since I didn't figure out the seat assignment chart until later). 

Random tidbits

While I was busy in primary, having a pioneer hoedown during music time, President Biden dropped out of the election, which was some pretty good news. 

Grandpa came over for dinner...and to bring back the kids' car seats, which we forgot to take out of his car when he dropped them off on Saturday. We had homemade pasta, which was delicious. 

In less good news, a faulty software update caused practically every flight to be grounded over the weekend. More than 5000 flights were delayed. Delta Airlines was particularly hard hit.

Rosie and I both have flights out to Utah—on Delta—later this week for Olivia's wedding. We're crossing our fingers everything is ironed out by the time we need to fly.

*****

Phoebe can be a real riot. Here are a few stories from her this morning:

Phoebe: Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom…

Me: Mmmm…

Phoebe: Wake up. 

Me: Momma is still tired. 

Phoebe (tickling me): What is this?

Me: That’s my armpit. 

Phoebe: It is so pokey. 

Me: Thank you. 

Phoebe: And you have yucky elbows. My elbows are so smooth. Your elbows are so yucky. Disgusting. 

Me: Thank you. 

Phoebe: Will you hold me? I just want to hug you!

Me: Yup. I can hold you. 

Phoebe: Hold me with your yucky elbows. 

Me: Mmmmhmmm. Wait until you get older…

She still has perfectly soft baby skin. But that will change, I'm sure.

Rachel is 17!

Somehow—almost impossibly—Rachel turned 17 today. 

She (and Miriam) had a game night with friends last night (so it was like a birthday party but without her having to be the very center of attention, which she doesn't particularly enjoy) and Rachel woke up to a flurry of texts from her FSY friends. 

Later in the morning she and I solidified her schedule for next school year. She'll be doing a full course load at BYU-Idaho and is particularly excited for a sewing class we found—Apparel Construction 1. 

Grandpa brought the kids home around noon. We opened presents soon after they arrived. Phoebe has actually been pretty okay with birthdays this year. I mean, the first few were upsetting, but she's realized that her turn is coming and rather than being upset by the ongoing anticipation she's chosen to be increasingly excited for when it's her day.

When she wandered into my room at midnight—soon after I'd finished wrapping Rachel's presents—she said, "Oooh! Are these presents for me?!"

"No," I said. "They're for Rachel."

"Oh," she said, slumping. "Okay."

She perched right beside Rachel the whole time:

Home with Phoebe

Tonight Phoebe and I had the house all to ourselves (which is a rather unusual thing). 

Alexander, Zoë, and Benjamin went to Grandpa's house for a sleepover (Darla is in California helping with her new grandbaby so Grandpa is lonely). Rachel and Miriam had planned to have a bunch of friends over to play games this evening, but they usually play games outside and it ended up storming quite a bit so they decided to head over to the church to play games instead (Andrew went to provide adult supervision, but the church was bustling with activity—a group was there playing soccer and another group was doing something else—so there were plenty of adults around...our teens just took one of the bigger rooms that weren't being used). 

So, yeah, Phoebe and I were left alone together. 

She was a little gutted that she wasn't invited to sleep over at "Gampa-Dala's" house. She packed all her most important items in a little backpack and was all ready to go...and then we crushed her dreams. 

There are just a few benchmarks she has to meet before she can be considered for a sleep over. Things like (1) sleeping in her own bed, (2) ditching overnight pull-ups, (3) not panicking whenever Mom or Dad can't be with her. Simple things like that. Once she understood that Mom wasn't going to "Gampa-Dala's" she was much more okay with the idea of staying home. 

She got to watch Daniel Tiger while I cleaned the kitchen. And then we had some music time and reading time and drawing time and playing time before getting ready for bed. 

"Here’s the deal—" I told her. W need to start getting ready for bed, so it’s time to tidy up."

"Sure hope kids are ‘kay!" she said.

"You…sure hope…" I echoed with a snicker.

"…kids are okay, yeah," Phoebe finished before sighing a big sigh. "Wonder what they’re doing right now…" She sighed again. Evidently she was starting to feel lonely without them.

Anyway, here she is drawing a picture of "my kitty, my Waffles":

Cute Phoebe Stories

Last night Phoebe conducted our Family Home Evening (that is, Phoebe got to decide who did what). Ordinarily the conductor welcomes everyone together (which Phoebe did) and then they invite someone to choose a song to sing and someone else to offer the prayer (which Phoebe did not). Instead she said:

"Welcome to Family Night! I will choose the song!"

Choosing the opening song is a great honour, so it's no wonder she wanted to snap that job up.

"Okay," Andrew said. "And who will say the prayer?"

"Also me!" she said. "And I will do calendar!"

"Okay, that's going a bit far," and considering the fact that she can't read or write or navigate a calendar, that's true. "Let's start with song and prayer. What song do you want?"

"Ummmmmm..." Phoebe hedged. 

She's not actually very good at choosing songs. We usually have to suggest a few for her to pick from because she's not so great at thinking about these kinds of things on her own yet. Fortunately for her, the Primary Children's Songbook was open on the piano. 

"Ummmmm...we will sing...this boat song," she said, running up and pointing to the music that was open (which had a picture of a boat a the top of the page). 

Watermelon, Sunflowers, and Pollinators

Watermelon is usually pretty good on its own, I think. 

Andrew, on the other hand, doesn't ever think watermelon is good.

Everyone else in our family enjoys watermelon, though, so in the summer Andrew will often pick up a watermelon when he does the grocery shopping (because he does the grocery shopping at our house). He won't typically cut it (though he has on occasion), but he will buy it for us. 

I have never succeeded in growing one, though we had some butternut squash volunteer in our yard this year (from the one time Andrew made butternut squash soup, I guess) and it is going wild. Well, the vines are, anyway. We've got a couple of lovely butternut squashes developing, but that's all. 

Definitely sick

Rachel and Miriam took the ACT today. When we signed them up we actually chose GSU campus for their testing center because then Andrew can take them in and just...go hang out in his office while he waits for them to finish. We know because...this is not their first time taking the ACT. In fact, the ACT company gave out a two-for-one coupon for each of the girls when they took the ACT the last time, so this was essentially a free second test.

Unfortunately, they cancelled the test at GSU for our testing date and the girls were moved to a random high school way down the the airport.