Summer—or at least that portion of the summer that Justin will pass among the heady ranks of the employed—is swiftly drawing to a close. This may be our last post from our post within the Beltway. Next Sunday will find us back home with our family in the New Haven First Ward. And, with the inestimable boon of having the Internet in our apartment again, we shall once again favor an expectant world with regular contributions to this the world’s preeminent blog. But first we have some catching up to do.

Cashing in at long last on the accumulated frequent flier miles of several years—which makes one wonder just how frequent those flights were—Justin’s mom (hereinafter “Grandma Patti”) flew out on the 17th for a visit that lasted until the 22nd. How she managed to tear herself away from the Elysian fields of the BYU Statistics Department for so long a period the reader may rightly wonder.

But come she did. The girls of course awaited her arrival with a giddy and joyful anticipation. For Grandma means presents, and presents from Grandma—against the strenuous, repeated, and vehement objections of their father—invariable carry the images of the ubiquitous Disney princesses (hereinafter “The Borg”). Actually presents or no presents, the girls couldn’t wait to see Grandma. She arrived on Thursday; every day for several days before that Julia would point to the calendar and explain to the rest of us that, “Today is Monday. Grandma is coming on Thursday! Grandma is coming in three days!!!” When Thursday itself finally arrived the girls bounced up and down until, worn out by the exertion, they fell down for naps, only to bounce up from their naps and continue bouncing until Grandma finally arrived about dinner time.

The girls duly embraced her and made much ado. When the squealing stopped Grandma posed the superfluous question whether the girls wanted to open their presents right away or wait until after dinner. “Right away!” they roared. Justin fled to his bedroom with alacrity and lay under the covers moaning while his household’s store of princess paraphernalia increased again. The girls were in raptures. Grandma scored a particular hit with a pair of sticker books, which allow the girls to create princess stories of their own through imaginative arrangement of stickers.

On Friday (7/18) Lia, the girls, and Grandma mounted the Bull and drove to Wheaton Regional Park, an otherwise unspectacular place elevated in the girls’ estimation by its possession of a carousel. Even the carousel was unspectacular—no deep history and no authentic carousel music. On this latter point, however, Eli eagerly leapt into the breach, lustily yawping her way through “She’ll be comin’ round the mountain” as she and her auditors made their repetitive way around the carousel. At the park’s playground, Eli mounted a cement camel and favored all within earshot with a stentorian chant of a single line from Aladdin—“He’s got seventy-five golden camels!”—repeated seventy-five times.

Back at the apartment the Lake girls, Audrey (3) and Lydia (1), came over and Grandma’s enjoyment was doubled by being allowed to help watch four girls instead of two. Lydia Lake is a beautiful little girl who adds pudgy, playful charm to the elegant grace of an alliterative name. Such charms, however, are largely lost on Eli, who sees in Lydia—barely one and barely able to walk—an implacable rival. On this occasion Lydia largely minded her own business, but this did not save her from Eli’s remonstrance. Several times Eli would shout across the room to an unsuspecting Lydia: “No, Lydia! You canNOT play with Sleeping Beauty!” Lydia, who could not distinguish Sleeping Beauty from a plastic wallaby—and if she could would probably prefer the latter—could only look around in confusion beneath the onslaught of such unseemly harangues. But the harangues kept coming. Thankfully, Eli benefits from the tutoring care of a big sister. On the date of writing (7/27), for instance, Justin walked into the girls’ room at the end of their nap just in time to hear the conclusion of a lecture Julia delivered at Eli. “That is all I have to teach you,” Julia piously declaimed. “Eli, I have taught you everything that I have to teach you about being nice to Lydia.” One can only wonder what such teaching entailed, but we gather that it at least included an injunction that, if ever Lydia should block Eli’s path, Eli must not try to clear the path herself but must appeal for the nearest adult to effect Lydia’s removal. While the editorial staff fully support kinder treatment of harmless Lydia, we can’t help but worry about Julia’s preternatural penchant for lecturing. We can only hope that the kindly intervention of a benevolent Fate will prevent her becoming another Rosalyn.

[More catch up and pictures forthcoming....we have to take advantage of functioning internet when we can.]