Julia's Spring Break

Julia had spring break this week; I didn't. This meant that the ladies partied hard without me, while the library and I extended our old acquaintance. But before I launch into the chronicle of LJEK's exploits, here are a few pictures.

Here's Katharine running around with a pair of pants in her hands. She has this endearing habit lately of slinkering off in disappointment when I suggest that she needs to get dressed before we go outside, only to reemerge minutes later with beams of felicity corruscating from her little face and a favorite outfit clutched in her uplifted hand. Today, when she was particularly eager to go outside, she dragged my shoes to me, pointed at one of them knowingly, and then repeatedly slapped the foot that shoe needed to go on.

Katharine is also a great immitator of her big sisters. Because Julia and Eli love to write and draw, Katharine loves to as well.

Here's Julia in the middle of an immortal composition:

Eli is becoming quite the little artist. Unfortunately I have no pictures of her original productions, just a parrot she colored from the library. Though Julia and Eli have dozens of coloring books of their own, they were keen to collect a stash of these individual coloring sheets, distributed gratis at the library in one of New Haven's rougher neighborhoods (but conveniently next to one of Lia's visiting-teachees).

When Katharine's creative juices really get flowing, she is not to be circumscribed by conventional postures.

Now for Julia's vacation week:

On Monday LJEK planted a "garden" on our back porch. October's harvest promises to be New England's richest since 1621.

On Tuesday, LJEK went for a walk to Edgerton Park ("The Dog Park," or "TDP") with the inestimable Whitney and the indomitable Rose Pope. In addition to, and leagues more exciting than, the inevitable canine population, were the New Haven mounted police horses, which call TDP home. There were two horses on this occasion, one black and one white. In a fit of endless imagination, Julia and Eli christened the two horses "Black Beauty" and "White Beauty." Julia petted the horses' noses while Eli told them stories about themselves.

On Wednesday, LJEK had a cook-out with the Bostons and the Williamses. Eli later reported to me that, because her accomplice Madi Thompson wasn't there, she "had to play with the Boston children." Because one of those "Boston children" happens to be the swoon-inducing Ethan Boston, Eli was reconciled to Madi's absence.

On Thursday LJEK went to Institute, where Lia endured my lesson on Ezra Taft Benson and the girls played in the nursery. Julia had been bubbling with enthusiasm all week at the prospect of going to Institute (she's usually at school on Thursday mornings), and the fact that Thursday was Earth Day only intensified her anticipation. "Was Institute everything you had hoped?" Lia asked Julia when it was all over. "Well," Julia equivocated, "not quite." You see, the last time Julia came to Institute the kids in the nursery got to watch The Lion King. She had hoped for a repeat viewing. After Institute LJEK went to visit Gladys Johnson, whom Lia visit teaches, and her granddaughter Trinity, who's about Julia's age. Gladys is a formidable talker, so Lia did a lot of listening; Trinity is prodigiously spoiled, so the girls did a lot of playing. Gladys lives by the library that gives out free coloring sheets (see above).

Because Lia, as a counselor in the primary presidency, was assigned to attend the Little Philmont Scout leadership training extravaganza on Saturday morning--and because we hadn't been to the temple yet this month--we went to the temple on Friday. We got a late start because Eli had Joy School in the morning. Up in Belmont we met up with Oliver and Elise Hahl and progeny. Elise heroically watched the girls, as well as her own two boys, while Lia and I went to the temple together for the first time in a long time. The Hahls even fed us dinner.

Somehow in all of this Lia managed to lose her wallet on Baker Street, where the Hahls live. This morning while Lia was at Little Philmont the phone rang and Julia answered. After she handed it to me, I heard an eagerly authoritative voice identify itself as proceeding from so-and-so with the Belmont police department. My initial thought was that I was about to be invited to donate $10 in exchange for a snazzy __ . P. D. window decal, but the word "Belmont" prevented me from preemptively declaring a lack of interest and hanging up. Our officer went on to say they had Lia's wallet. We were obviously grateful to have it found before we noticed it was lost. And we're glad Lia lost it in Belmont rather than New Haven, where it wouldn't have lasted twenty seconds.

Lia spent the morning at Little Philmont, where the cream of the New Haven stake were instructed by the Church's head scouting honcho, one Brother Pack (really his name). Lia came home all aflame with the spirit of scouting, announcing her intention to become the premier Scoutess of the world. By all accounts it was a most edifying conference.

Back on the home front, Lia had assigned me to make cookies for a party/picnic our upstairs neighbors threw this afternoon behind our apartment. I gently put Katharine down for a nap and let the bigger girls watch The Princess and the Frog while I focused all my considerable powers on this culinary enterprise. Inevitably, some parts of the recipe baffled me. "Cream the wet ingredients," I was advised. I hadn't been in the habit of acknowledging "cream" as a verb, and the only ingredients in the recipe logically recognizable as "wet" were vanill and eggs (Lia later explained to me that it is a truth universally acknowledged that all cookie projects begin with the creaming of sugar and butter; well and good, but "wet"?). Anyhow, the cookies turned out, following a desperate struggle, all right in the end. I even took pictures to prove to Lia that I had been obedient (see above).