This week has been marked primarily by the diversity of relatives passing through my parents' home. (I toyed with titling the blog "a redundancy of relatives" but decided that didn't reflect so well on my relatives.) The cause of such familial felicity? Well, some were passing through town because of the church's General Conference; others were here because my Grandma Collings has been in the hospital this week--she was due for surgery earlier in the week, but from one cause or another, the surgery has been postponed.
My aunt Judy and uncle Michael (my dad's brother) were the first to arrive, late Monday night. As my aunt Judy is generally one of the happiest people I know, it's always a pleasure to have them around. Unfortunately, their stay was of short duration: by Wednesday morning they had set off for Idaho again. My dad's sister, Valerie, showed up on Thursday and left this morning: she spent the bulk of her time here in the hospital with her mother (who, we're glad to report, seemed to be doing a little better this morning).
Friday afternoon we had lunch with my cousins Gwen and Lauriann (sp?), from my mother's side of the family. Since they were staying with my aunt Tera in Salt Lake, they also brought two of Tera's boys, Nolan and Traven. Since Gwen and Lauriann are reasonably tall, and Nolan and Traven are huge (at sixteen, Traven is about 6'7), I was easily the shortest grown-up there. Thank goodness for all the little kids we brought with us (between my one and Jeni's three, we had quite a collection), otherwise I would definitely have been the shortest in the group. With all those people--me, my mom, Jeni, my cousins, Gwen's friend Mary, and the munchkins--lunch was pretty chaotic. But fun, on the whole.
Saturday morning, Dan's parents showed up bright and early (around 7:45 a.m.) to take Dan and I to the Saturday morning session of Conference, which they generously provided tickets for. Andrew stayed with my parents (and apparently didn't miss us at all--when I tried to get a hug when we got home, I was ruthlessly denied). Conference was a wonderful experience--it's pretty amazing to be in that huge conference hall (half the size of Yankee stadium, Dan tells me), with people who share your faith. Probably one of the funniest things that happened (which no one watching the broadcast on TV would have seen), happened just after the newly-called President Eyring took his place on the stand. President Hinckley, who had announced the callings, took his cane and "knighted" President Eyring as he went back to his own seat.
After Conference, we had lunch at a wonderful Italian deli (whose name I can't remember at the moment). The cheese and the bread were incredibly fresh, and the sandwiches were enormous. (The ciabatta bread sandwiches were all made from half a loaf of bread!). And of course, we had to take a few canoli for the ride home. Full as we were, we still managed to find room for a few bites of desert. As always, with the Eves family, the food was wonderful.
We still had one more stop to make before heading back down to Provo: Trisha, in search of the Dutch chocolate letters that helped define her childhood, insisted that we make a stop at the Dutch store in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, the only address we had didn't help us much (27 Highland drive isn't very useful when you're not familiar with Salt Lake and don't know where Highland drive is!). We had a nice scenic drive around Sugarhouse, though, and admired the old houses. We finally found the store--of course, this was scant seconds after we had decided that the cause was lost and might as well head back to the freeway. Dan and I splurged and bought some Milka chocolate (some of the best Swiss chocolate, I think) to share with everyone; it wasn't until we were in the car passing the chocolate around that I realized that we'd picked up the sugar-free version for diabetics! It was still pretty good.
Robert, Trisha, and Sarah (who had come to Salt Lake with them to visit her boss, who had been in a car accident and was in the U of U hospital) stayed for dinner at our place. Then, while the boys were at the priesthood session, we packed Andrew into the car and embarked on a round of shopping: Gymboree (for Sarah), Williams and Sonoma (for Trisha), and the Deseret Book store, for it's semi-annual conference sale. The mall was crazy--I've never seen it that busy or spent so much time looking for a parking spot (except, possibly, right before Christmas or Black Friday, but I usually make it a rule to avoid the mall then). We had a good time, but, possibly in a mark of divine displeasure with our hedonistic consumerism, I lost my car key. We had to wait until the guys returned from priesthood so they could come rescue us.
The only other things of note concern Andrew, who seems to have developed a distinct preference for being "naked" (as he calls any state without shirt and pants, even if he's still wearing a diaper). He's also discovered that he can take his pants off. Monday, after putting him down for his nap, I could hear him playing in his crib instead of sleeping. Then, I heard a peculiar ripping sound, followed, a few moments later, by another. Curious and somewhat annoyed, I picked through a crack in the door to discover that my son had pulled his pants and his diaper off, and was sitting, naked bum and all, in the middle of his blankets. He was quite proud of himself, and tried to repeat the feat that night. Luckily, I stopped him before he got his diaper off. The next night, we tried to put him in footie pajamas, thinking that would prevent the pulling off of the pants. Instead, this meant that when I checked on Andrew about 10 pm, just before retiring, I found him in no pajamas at all, just his diaper. He'd apparently figured out how to unzip the footie pajamas and take them off. Since the basement can be rather cool, I then spent a rather breathless five minutes trying to put pajamas on him without waking him (I never realized how hard it was to put a shirt over his head when he's limp!). We finally figured out a temporary cure, thanks to a tip from my sister: we put the footie pajamas on backwards, so the zipper runs down the back and out of his reach.
Andrew has also, in the waxing spirit of fall, become fascinated with pumpkins. Thus, he has learned a new color: orange. (So now everything is either orange or blue). My mom has been growing some baby pumpkins in her garden, and Andrew loves to help her harvest them. Earlier this week, he came into the house and announced proudly: "pick a punk." It took us all a while to figure out that he meant "pick a pumpkin." Now, he points out pumpkins wherever he sees them. Maybe we'll have to introduce him to the Great Pumpkin.
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