"Rough winds may shake the darling buds of May..."

We wish the happiest of Mothers' Days to the mothers among our readership. Since you have likely all been glutted to the hilt already with the saccharine parade of unmitigated kitsch that is the standarad fare of almost any Mothers' Day sacrament meeting, we shall spare you the poems and platitudes with which we might otherwise mark the occasion and proceed directly with the latest installment of our illustrious review--anxiously awaited, fair readers, we cannot doubt, by both of you.
Monday (5/8)
Although one of our fathers insists that no one can be considered a truly independent adult whose life is not graced by a monumental debt and an unwieldy mortgage, this day did witness an important emblem of our first habitation of a real house--namely, Lia did some weeding and swept our surrounding sidewalks. Eli had the felicitous experience of visiting Wal-Mart for the first time. Lia had the great good fortune of selecting the most dilapidated shopping cart north of the Mason-Dixon line, with one wheel that moved not at all and one that spun capriciously into a perpendicular position. Somehow, the fearless company of three returned home unscathed, though Eli was indignant at her first exposure to unbridled big-business capitalism and the crushing momentum with which it overwhelms the Mom-and-Pop shops that daily go under in this once great nation. Upon returning home, Eli erupted in a violent harangue of the Sam Walton empire; a half a century ago, this rhetorical barrage would have aroused more than the suspicions of Senator McCarthy.
Tuesday (5/9)
Consistent with her resolve to lead the world by her example into a future blessed by better homes and gardens, Lia violently assaulted, with the most fatal of toxins, the myriad dandelions that dance about our lawn. Intrigued Julia took a walk through the dandelion patch thus spread, bobbing her beloved Cookie Monster along by his eyeballs through a bed of poison along the way (an assassination attempt or a science experiment, we must conclude). In the afternoon, the girls were visited by Annie and Kate Ballard, who hailed from Petaluma, CA and our former Wymount ward respectively. Annie had in tow her 4-week-old son, Sawyer. Lia suggested brightly that Sawyer and Eli be placed in a small ring in order that they might "scrap" ("You can never get them scrapping soon enough," Lia insisted. "A kid's gotta learn to defend himself/herself."). Annie declined, the certainty of Eli's victory being manifest from appearances only. We had a surprise visit from Lia's parents in the evening that coincided with a visit from Andrew Stacey, Justin's former mission companion, and his friend and ours, Lauren McCann, recently returned from a mission to Japan. Father Suttner was in rare form, nearly sending poor Elder Stacey to the floor in a fit of violent laughter with the tale of Mother Suttner's perception, upon her first visual encounter with Justin, that her daughter was dating an Indian (the India of Ghandi, that is). When to everyone's regret the Suttners turned once more to the road and to Dixie, we proceeded with the real business of the night, a soaring round of high-stakes speed Scrabble. We shall, quite wickedly we own, leave our reader in suspense with regard to the identity of the victor.
Wednesday (5/10)
When Justin returned from work we submitted to Jini's repeated demands of mounting vociferousness that we visit her "SO-CUTE-APARTMENT!!!!!!!" (her term). It was all that she declared it and more, though her roommate, Ashley, may look with less anticipation to Julia's next visit than do we look forward to the next blessed occasion on which we shall be privileged to view such a gorgeous habitation. We were pleased to note that Trevor and Caci are not the only family members to fill the immensity of space with a bean-bag cushion of absurd dimensions. Kinsi stopped by in the evening and, with characteristic Suttner volume and exuberance, entertained us during the course of a most agreeable hour. Aside from the pleasant conversation, Kinsi taught us the valuable truth that the industrious among us can designate reading out-of-doors with that giddy managerial epithet, "multi-tasking," an appropriate appellation for the happy fusion of intellectual stimulation and oncogenesis (i.e. tanning).
Thursday (5/11)
Eli reached the five weeks plateau today and, after an evening of solemn reflection, grimly but all-too-accurately observed that "it's all downhill from here." This memento mori notwithstanding the day was largely a happy one marked by happy occurrences, including a family visit, aboard the inevitable Big Blue Bull, to the Deseret Industries, that magnificent cynosure of high society. Jini and Kinsi had previously been to the D.I. where they found "SO-CUTE-SHOES!!!!!!!!!!" (Kinsi's term with the exclamations provided, with alacrity, by Jini). Such, alas, was not our fate, though we did find some of our old textbooks on the shelves (we resisted the temptation to repurchase them).
Friday (5/12)
This day marked Justin's final day of work as a research assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Together Justin and Lia have devoted a half-decade of labor to the project; this final separation was a poignant one. Ours has been the privilege of working with the most penetrating students of Latter-day Saint history now living, who at the same time are some of the finest disciple-scholars in the Church. We take some comfort, though, in knowing that, given the project's present rate of publication, there will be sufficient unfinished work in two decades' time to allow Julia, Eli, and children yet unborn to follow in their parents' footsteps as project RAs. In the evening we took a family walk to the Provo Library on the campus of the old B.Y. Academy. For, as the inimitable Horace writes, the family that frequents the public library together, stays together (we have, the classicists among you will note, taken some liberties with the translation from the Latin). Incidentally, at last fall's National Book Festival at the Library of Congress, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough roared heroically that "the portals of the public libraries are the portals of freedom," and urged all cynics and critics of contemporary American civilization to keep in mind that America still has more public libraries than McDonald's restaurants.
Saturday (5/13)
Justin arose with the dawn; ate a hearty breakfast of pancakes copiously topped with peanut butter and strawberries and deluged in Mrs. Butterworth's syrup; then swept away the cobwebs of academic effeminacy to engage once more in the most manly of pastimes: in short, he mowed the lawn while his adoring wife and daughters gazed on in rapture from the windows. Afterwards, fearing that Justin's resurgent masculinity would get the better of his Christianity (he re-entered the house thundering wildly about the opening of elk season, the payment of NRA membership fees, Louis L'Amour novels, and the possibility of a Chuck Heston presidential bid), Lia sent him straightway to the temple. Meanwhile, the ladies of the house attended a block party hosted by the Museum of Peoples and Cultures. Julia, a great patron of both peoples and cultures, was a still a greater fan of the abundance of free food that greeted those in attendance. Julia devoured such a grand assortment of cookies, brownies, chips, hot dogs, and armadillos; imbibed such vast quantities of water, lemonade, and more venerable vintages; and did so with such inexorable voracity that she was awarded an ancient wood carving which she presented to her father upon his return from the temple. His pride new no bounds. While Justin was gone, the girls also took a trip to the duck pond where they saw an assortment of ducks and birds and, most prized of all, a couple of turtles.
In the afternoon Lia cashed in on her Mother's Day present: a coupon redeemable for a free solo shopping trip and a purchase of up to $30 with Eli promising to stay behind to babysit Justin and Julia. Justin entertained the girls at home by promptly putting himself to bed with solemn injunctions that they soon follow suit; which, Justin's nap precluding the emergence of any evidence to the contrary, we must suppose they did. Lia returned home radiant, the bearer of two pairs of "SO-CUTE-PANTS!!!!!!!" (exclamations once more taken on loan from Jini). With our heroine in such happy spirits, and with you, dear Reader, once more in the thralls of unqualified boredom, we take once more our leave.