Far too much to catch up

The common experience here in Collings land is that when things happen, we don't record them, and when things don't, we don't record them either. So hopefully we'll be able to go back and capture Nin, Kinsi, Aria, and Rori coming to visit us in Florence in May; hopefully we'll be able to report on the glories of having our own pool and thus honing our swimming skills once, sometimes even twice, a day. Perhaps we'll even go back and record the fun pool parties we had with the Florence ward four year olds and families, with the Evertsens and Rocky for FHE, and with the Ferrinis and the Rogers and their nine combined children before we left Italy forever. We would certainly be remiss if we didn't go back and record that we achieved Justin's over-arching goal for our sojourn in Italy: make friends good enough to take help us get to the airport when we had to go home. A big shout-out over the weeks to Salvatore for the car and Tommaso for the luggage, and of course to Silvano and Stefano for taking care of absolutely everything before, during, and after our time in Italy. 

But the show must go on. From the moment we stepped off the plane, it has been party, party, party. We left Florence the morning of June 27th and flew to Amsterdam. Julia recalled that ten years earlier we had also been in Amsterdam. Julia does have an astounding memory equal to that of other family members (Justin, Katharine, Abdiel), but this fun fact was helped by the connection that June 28th is Julia's birthday, and for her the weekend of her 5th birthday, we were exploiting the great hospitality of the magnanimous Ben and Ruth Harrell. Here we were, ten years later, in the same airport, but thankfully not flying Ryanair.

Because it was her birthday the day after an international flight, Julia merely requested as a gift that friends be at the airport to meet her. I tossed this idea aside as impractical. Elisabeth, however, being the loving sister that she is, spear-headed the undertaking, and Julia was indeed greeted at the airport by friends and escorted home in their car. Thank you, Maleah's mom, for driving Maleah, Amanda, John, and Jared! Thank you, Friends! Thank you, Elisabeth! There was also a welcome-home/birthday party for Julia the day after. Julia was so happy to be home.

Soon after fun with friends and dinner at Red Robin (a call back to another pre-international departure birthday Julia had in Connecticut. That time we were headed to Berlin), it was the fourth of July and Elinor's first birthday!!! 

 Julia recalled that a year ago, when I was so, so pregnant, we started a lay-low, easy to maintain fourth of July tradition: buy a movie and a puzzle and enjoy them simultaneously. Since Elinor's birthday will no doubt have some connection with our future fourth of July celebrations (her birthday is July 5th), we started a birthday tradition of buying a ridiculously large float and going somewhere to enjoy it.  This year the float was a sparkly unicorn and the place to enjoy it was Wayne Bartholomew's family farm in Springville. Many other people seem to have our same birthday tradition, because there were a ridiculous amount of people floating on even more ridiculously large floats. The water was icy cold, which ended our festivities in time to catch some of the Collings family swim party being thrown at Jared and Mitcee's house. The kids were grateful for the warm water and time with cousins.

 

Just four days later, this beauty turned five!!! Gwyndelin is on her way to Kindergarten in a few short months, and whoever her teacher is will have the joy of hanging out with this beautiful, witty, smart, funny, articulate, creative, graceful, beautiful, poised, and self-confident girl for three hours a day. What a lucky lady! (All our Kindergarten teachers are women.) We had fun on Gwyn's birthday eating strawberry cake and whatnot, but we had even more fun two days later at her bouncy house party at Classic Skating. She had so many friends come to wish her many happy returns of the day. It was a blast. 

 With one week between festivities (we head to Park City for the annual Collings' family reunion today), we thought it was an opportune time to rearrange the house for the imminent arrival of our German exchange student, Sophie. We thought having four children and three teenage girls share one bathroom would not be ideal, especially since there's a completely free bathroom in the basement. Thus began the arduous task of getting the play room upstairs and Julia and Elisabeth moved into the basement. The kids put on their happy faces and their thinking caps to make this as pleasant an experience as possible. Here's Katharine making Elsa do most of the work. :)

 Julia turned into an exercise fiend after Gwyn's birthday. She ran miles and miles every morning at cross-country conditioning the first week and rowed miles and miles on the Jordan Surplus canal the second week. Very luckily, her cousin Jacob also went to the rowing camp, and since one 14 year old is a much more patient spectator than Elisabeth through Elinor, Aunt Jeni did most of the driving. Thank you, Jeni!

Friday another cousin came to help us work. Katharine and Evelyn once again turned their job into a game, and then we dropped Evelyn back at Grandma's and had Elinor's one year pictures taken.

Here's a sample. She's a doll.

We will have to end this post as we began. There is just not time enough to recount the Lloyd's CT-in-UT party up Millcreek Canyon with so many wonderful people like the Streeters, the Wilkinsons, the Paynes, the Ricks, the Escalantes, the Dynes, the Lloyds, and new friends like the Kellers and the Strobells. No time to talk about the fun Daddy-daughter date Justin took Katharine on featuring an intro to Gothic architecture and a guided tour of the Cathedral of the Madeline with Little Caeser's pizza afterward; the Mommy-daughter and Daddy-daughter dates to the temple we took Elisabeth and Julia on, respectively; the Collings Girls Night Out with Grandma to go see Cinderella at the Hale Center Theater that brought the girls all back by midnight and turned into pumpkins, I mean grumplepusses, I mean sweet girls with a major lack of sleep the next day; the fun Daddy-Son viewing of Toy Story 4 while all the Collings girls were gone. 

As you can see, Gwyn was very happy to turn five just in time to join them. If Italy had unsurpassed views, art, and food, Utah still has a lot to offer. We're glad to be home.