Graduated

As of one weekend ago, our Rebecca has graduated to walking. Apparently she finally decided it was worth her while, and now spends more time on tottery feet, arms outstretched, hugging the walls as much as she can, and falling the last few inches towards her final destination,

Lake Washington, 80F

 
 
 

Destination: Barlow Point

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We had a lovely Memorial Day adventure. At the end of the Mountain Loop Highway--the rest is still impassable due to our cool spring--we parked and played around in the snow. Most of the snow, it turns out, is in the parking lot, and the hike is clear and dry. Grandma & Grandpa played with K & A, leaving us to hike alone. It turns out that 1 mile & 1000 ft are more longer than they used to be.




 

 

Becca and books

Today, instead of eating books (we have lots of board books with the corners chewed off), Becca learned how to rip them. We left her happily ripping apart a grocery ad. When we came back, she'd started on the books in the bookcase. She managed to get at least one page out of:

More, More, More Said the Baby
Zin Zin Zin, a Violin
Bearymore

Maybe I should have let her keep going with Bearymore.

"Mother's day" dinner?

Today after a long day at church (played the organ, sang in the choir, gave talks), I came home and collapsed in my sun chair out on the lawn. A few minutes later Katherine brought me a banana--nearly the only kind of food in the house she can actually reach. "I brought it because you're hungry, Mommy," she told me. A few minutes after that, she came back out with a bowl of dry cereal and a spoon (we haven't trained her in milk-pouring yet). Her impromptu meal gave me the boost of energy I needed to get up, go inside, and prepare snacks for everybody else. Clever girl!

California Trip

Highlights of Loralee's quick trip to see California grandparents:

--Wonderful old photos of all sorts of people, including my college-age parents kissing!!!
--Learning that Grandma, a former Air Force secretary, suspected her commanding officer of espionage because of the mysterious coded postcards he kept sending and receiving, with mysterious messages like Q to 3C. Turned out he was a chess player.
--The Mystery of the Locked Room: Why was there a room right in the middle of our hotel room with a locked door and a metal mesh security door? Why, if the contents were so important, did it also have a sliding glass window that anybody could reach through if they knocked out the screen?
--Ceviche at the Mexican restaurant across the street
--Watching Grandpa play "Peek-a-boo" with Rebecca
--Enforced playtime with Rebecca on the plane, with hits like Hide the Cookie in the Bib, Hide Behind the Magazine, and Cookie Packet Puppet
--SUNSHINE!

Mother's Day

How my kids filled out their Mother's Day cards in Primary:

Katherine
My mom's favorite thing to do is
read
My mom is 33 years old (33 is backwards)
My mom's favorite food is
fruit
Heavenly Father gave me my mom because
He wanted her to take care of me
The thing I love most about my mom is
She makes pizza with us

Alex
My mom's favorite thing to do is
laundry
My mom is 23 years old
My mom's favorite food is
hamburgers
Heavenly Father gave me my mom because
for the month of May
The thing I love most about my mom is
We go on outings. We went to the big beach.*

The Big Beach

I was so excited that Alex remembered going on an outing to the beach with me (see above), I wanted to know which outing it was. Was it the trip to the Santa Monica Pier in February, when we road on the Ferris Wheel? The beach in San Diego where we watched the surfers? The lake by Daddy's work? The Pacific coast, where we spent a wonderful family week last summer? The beach where we explored tide pools last June?

Extensive interview uncovered the following clues:
--It wasn't the ocean
--We were with Roxy's family
--He and Katherine got little green books
--It was raining
--It was by the trains

At this point I started wondering if the big beach trip had grown in his imagination, like his house in Mexico. Then Katherine elicited the final clue: It was the park with the statues.

Suddenly it all came flooding back: our trip with friends to the Sculpture Park near Puget Sound in Seattle last February, with temperamental cloudbursts, trains chugging under the pedestrian bridge, and little green kiddie workbooks. 14 months of beach adventures, and that's the one he chose.

Dance steps

Dance steps Alex invented on our Utah trip, after I tried teaching Katherine the triple step at a rest area:

TROPLE STEP: stand with legs wide apart and step from side to side, tipping upper body. Better if you're holding hands with a partner.

TRUPLE STEP: kicking your feet backwards

WONK: stand with feet wide apart, then jump to face the other way

Sunny Saturday

 
 
 

Goals

This week's goals:
Wash and fold all laundry
Scrub the bathrooms
Wash/Vacuum floors
Finish article

This week's accomplishments:
Washed some of the laundry--now it's in huge piles
Edited Mom's family history book
Finished article


Today's goals:
Clean the kitchen OR
organize the storage room OR
clean the study OR
pack up baby clothes

Today's accomplishments
Scrubbed the bathtub
Wrote a "This I Believe" essay
Bought 5 pairs of shoes/boots for a killer deal

All in all, not bad.
And there's always next week.

Chasing a string of failures?

Picking this week's biggest waste of time:

--Buying a ticket for a raffle that had already ended
--Writing an essay for a radio contest whose final broadcast was last Sunday
OR
--Making a job calendar?