2 Month Catch-up

Hello, Blog World. We've been gone a while and lots has happened in that while. There's no way we can recap on all of it, but we'll try to grab some highlights. Highlight 1--we flew home to Utah the last week in August. Here we are eating the lunch that was packed with love for us by Patti and that got us not only back to New Haven but up to the following Friday. The very next day Julia started 1st grade, having missed the first day

of school since we were en route home. We suspected she was the prettiest 1st grade in the whole world; after getting her school pictures last week we are now certain of it.
Julia wasn't the only one who missed the first day of school. Lia is auditing German 110 at Yale which meets everyday, and Justin is TAing a class that hails under the invigorating title, "Europe and the Age of Total War". He teaches two sections of 16 students Friday afternoons and loves it. Here are Julia and Mommy getting ready for school.

After two days of schol we needed another escape and went camping with friends, the Claytons, Cheneys, and Hustedts. It was short but sweet.

Especially since we got to camp in our new, ginormous, $35 tent we got off Craig's List from some people in northern connecticut who race Huskies in lesser forms of the Iditerod. Our kind co-campers dubbed our tent "The Tabernacle" because of its massive size and complex assembly requirements.

Katharine is becoming quite the humorous child. Here's one incarnation of her antics. Others include calling repeatedly for "Cuckoo", otherwise known as "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music, standing before the CD player and bending sideways to say Cuckoo, cuckoo; sitting down at any electronic-type device and explaining to us "E-mail! E-mail!"; running to the Book Nook whenever anyone sits down to read or expresses a desire to read something, emerging with a Dora book in hand and demanding, "Dora first! Dora first!"; singing "I Love to See the Temple" at bedtime; casting sidewards glances at us with her big hazel eyes; and many, many more little things that make us adore her.

She's in very real danger of becoming quite spoiled.



Julia was having a hard time sleeping at night. We figured it was either that her bedtime story was too scary or that she had finally outgrown the infant mattress she'd been sleeping on since her birth. Finding there was nothing tamer than Little Women, we broke down and bought a bunkbed on Craigslist. The girls love it.

Approximately the same week, their winter supply of clothes arrived. Here is just one sampling of the masterful outfitting Patti undertook.

Katharine isn't the only one in danger of being spoiled rotten.




We have a new Institute Director in these parts, Brother Stephen Weber, for whom Justin teaches a Book of Mormon class Wednesday evenings and from whom Lia takes a Church History class Wednesday mornings occasionally taking her turn to baby-sit the children of those who attend since it is unofficially "the Moms' class". Brother Weber decided to take a field trip up to Sharon, VT, the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith and provide lunch for moms and their families who wanted to attend. With turn-out looking to be low, we invited two families in our complex, one from Sri Lanka, one from China, who probably didn't know much about Joseph Smith. We borrowed a 16 passenger van from a member of our stake presidency (who shot a 700 pound moose a few weeks ago and gave us a roast and some ground meat from it, by the way, which was delicious) and drove on up. This is the group of us, minus Eli, who misunderstood what we meant by "going to look at the trees in Vermont". We discovered after the fact that her close-up huggings and hangings (and consequent fits that we were neither joining in nor allowing her to continue) were what she thought we went to Vermont to undertake. Explaining that we meant admiring the colors from the windows as we drove by only partly assuaged her. At any rate, here's our happy party after enjoying a delicious lunch, watching a 70 minute feature film on the life of the Prophet, and enjoying the music playing on the grounds as we looked at the monument.

We all love America.

Even though we never mention it the day of, the girls have somehow figured out which day is Wednesday. After Justin helps put the girls to bed and leaves to teach Institute, Eli inevitably comes out with a whine that he didn't say goodbye to her, or kiss her, or make an I Love You sign at her, or some other maddening complaint. This time I mostly ignored her and continued doing the dishes. She took matters into her own hands, climbed up on the desk, and wrote this injunction on the chalkboard:

Which is to say, "Daddy, kiss Eli [when you get home]." Justin cherishes this time when he's the love of her life and not some other bozo.

Julia was a cowgirl for her school Halloween parade.

For our ward Halloween party Katharine (and two other little girls) was Little Red Riding Hood

Eli was Jasmine

And Julia was Mulan. Eli won the costume contest for the 3-6 years age group. Julia was SO excited for her. She gave her a big hug and exclaimed, "Oh, Eli! I'm so proud of you!" I'm proud of Julia for rejoicing in her sister's successes.

After a Saturday afternoon run to the Goodwill Outlet, Justin returned with the makings of Perseus. His helmet was actually a too-small bowl kitchen bowl, so he wore it only for the picture. We planned on explaining away this oversight by pointing out if he had worn his helmet, no one would be able to see him.

There was no need, however, because while it seemed the most obvious thing in the world to us that someone going around with a girl like this must be Perseus, since the guesses at my identity ranged from a germ to a girls' camper to a tree to Shrek, no one had any clue who Justin was supposed to be or what he ought to have had on his head.

I was Medusa, by the way.

And there we are! With a promise to be much more diligent at our Family Blog History in the future.