Tangent, Secant, Cosine, Sine, 3.14159!

The recap mountain looms ever larger!  We'll go briefly.  Yesterday, Pi day, was highlighted by a Skype Pi(e) Party with our Connecticut relations, the Tolleys.  Since our household has germs running all amok we thought this the most sanitary way to celebrate.  So, after playing a few cross-continental math games via our Webcams, we busted out the chocolate strawberry pudding pie I had thrown together for the occasion.  (The Tolleys had been more precise in their pi day revelries and enjoyed their pie at 9:26 that morning.)

Other 3.14 happenings: Julia and Katharine spent the morning at a dance rehearsal while Eli and I attended a multi-stake Family History conference for about an hour.  We actually only sat in on about 30 minutes of a session, but it was enough for Eli to wow the collective crowd.  At one point the presenter asked, "Who knows how to say, 'Where is Wuerttemberg?' in German?"  Eli shouted out the answer from the back.  Later, when he had a power point slide demonstrating the difficulty of reading German schrift, he asked Eli if she could translate this.  "Yes.  'Once upon a time there was a cute little girl whom everybody loved....'"  Eli was quite flattered at his quip that she must be reading an autobiography.

Thursday night (3.12) we drove to a Provo Chapel for Julia and Katharine to perform Irish dance for a group of youth with special needs.  While the dancers were getting changed and orientated and the youth were congregating into the cultural hall, Abdiel was dancing at the head of hall and then running to me and Justin for high fives.  A half hour of complete command of the stage was all he needed to be very well-behaved for the actual main event.  Not too much to ask at all.

Monday night (3.9) we had the Bishop, his wife, and a woman from Long Island over for FHE.  Julia was a little nervous to teach the lesson to so eminent an audience, but she did a fantastic job, as did Katharine performing on her cello for the talent.  The treat, provided by the girls through the Krispy Kreme report card program, was also delicious.

Sunday afternoon (3.8) Julia and I visited the BYU family history library and had the most successful research trip ever!  It's so nice to actually find something once in a while!

The Saturday before (3.7) we aborted our tentative plan to visit Goblin Valley due to another low/flat tire on the Silver Bullet--just one of many reasons Justin feels like the 80 mile per hour Utah speed limit signs suppress small chuckles as we drive by--and headed to Manti instead.  Usually we while away long car rides with books on tape, but since the girls prefer their father's voice to that of any professional narrator, we often have reactionary activity rise up from the back seat if the professional does not pass muster.  So on this ride we took along all three girls' reading-time books (The Witch Family for Katharine, Number the Stars for Eli, and The Midwife's Apprentice for Julia) and Justin read a chapter from each while I drove.  Next time we will try this when Justin and I have had a better night's sleep; had the effects of The Witch Family been equally powerful upon the driver as it was on the reader, we would be writing this from the grave.  Justin knocked himself out cold.  (This is not a commentary on the book; The Witch Family and everything we have read by Eleanor Estes is truly delightful.  If a child reads nothing else by her, she should at least read The Hundred Dresses.)

After an hour and a half through small-town Utah, the children were only too happy to evacuate the Bullet when we finally got to Manti.  We unloaded at a Pioneer Memorial park and took advantage of the amphitheater to perform for one another and of the melting snow to cool one another off.  The children appreciated these activities to varying degrees.  The highlight performance was an arm-flapping, foot-stomping, gorilla-dancing duet rendition by Eli and Abdiel of--you guessed it--"The Eye of the Tiger."  I really wish we had had a video camera.  When everyone was sufficiently unhappy about snow on their necks, we drove around the block to the temple hill itself where the girls sneaked a few rolls down the hill before being scolded by authority figures; Abdiel plodded patiently up the hill, lifted both arms into the air, and then galloped back down only to do it again; and Eli challenged Justin to a footrace.  It occurred to me that playing on castle grounds must run deep in our blood.  If we're not near one in Deutschland then we'll hunt one up in Utah.  We grabbed six ice creams for a trifling $3.39 before heading back to civilization.

In an effort to get out of the house more for date night, Justin bought us tickets for the Friday night (3.6) BYU performance of A Winter's Tale.  When Justin does anything he does it very well, and in his attempt to get us out of the house more he scheduled two dates at the cost of one.  We did not discover this until we entered the darkened and empty theater, looked about for a moment to see if we had gotten the time or place confused, and then finally saw on our tickets that indeed we had.  A Winter's Tale would not be starting for another two weeks.  So instead we went to the Media Lab at the BYU Library and checked out and viewed the German film Rosenstrasse. 

That is all we can manage today.  There are, of course, a hundred small moments of joy that make up the bulk of our little life.  But there are just too many to put down anywhere but in memory.