Monday night brought us, inevitably, to family home evening. And although I thoughtfully went out and purchased a primary and family home evening manual to aid us in putting together more organized events, Monday evening still found me scrambling at the last minute to put something together. We reviewed Easter one more time, but Andrew was noticeably lacking in enthusiasm (perhaps he could sense my lack of preparedness?). At any rate, the only thing Andrew really seemed interested in was dessert--we went to Dairy Queen and got ice cream cones and then, since the weather really was beautiful, we sat out on the front steps and watched while Andrew finished off his cone. When Andrew was nearing the end, Dan offered to throw the rest of Andrew's cone in the bushes for the quail to eat, but Andrew would have none of that. Quite proudly, he polished off the rest of the cone and then told us that now the quail couldn't have any of his ice cream because he ate it all gone. (And he has proceeded to remind us of that fact several times during the week).
On Tuesday, at loose ends for a means of entertainment, I did what I always do in such cases: I called my sister. She and her brood were on their way to Sam's Club, so we agreed to meet them there and then we retreated to Jeni's house where we fed the kids and let them play in the back yard on the swingset. I think everyone (parents and kids alike) were glad to be out in the sunshine; Enoch particularly seemed to enjoy the swing.This week seems to have been the week for family. On Monday afternoon, my uncle Michael and aunt Judy arrived and stayed until Wednesday. Michael was one of the invited academic speakers at some sort of horror convention in Salt Lake (for those of you who aren't familiar with Michael's incredibly wide-ranging interests, he has written extensively on topics as diverse as John Milton and Stephen King). Incidentally, my dad went up to Salt Lake on Saturday to help Michael with something related to the convention and his report was that the convention attracted some pretty strange types. At any rate, it was nice to have them here (not least because they spent time with my grandmother and gave my mom a brief respite).
Wednesday evening, yet another family member dropped by. This time, it was my cousin Ross, who has sort of honorary family member status in our family because he lived with us for six months or so while I was in high school (much, I think, to my mom's chagrin. Not that she doesn't love Ross--she does--but he used to make her want to pull her hair out on a regular basis.) Ross brought with him his wife Becky and their five kids (who have increasingly unusual names that I don't quite trust myself to get straight). Surprisingly, the evening wasn't too chaotic--the kids had a good time playing together and dinner (pizza) seemed to be a general hit. It was nice to see Ross and Becky again, if only for a couple of hours. (And it probably seemed especially nice for me since Dan kindly took charge of Andrew so I could chat with them). After they left (and Andrew was safely in bed), my mom and I went to a fabric store and picked out some fabric for quilts we're making in enrichment next month--I'm particularly pleased with the color combinations I found, and excited to see how the quilt turns out (which reminds me, I never did post pictures of Andrew's quilt. I'll have to do that sometime). My mom and Bubby's respective passions for sewing and quilting must be rubbing off or something.
On Thursday, Jeni and I took the kids to the Bean Museum, which seemed to be crawling with children (in part, I suppose, because we arrived while their reptile show was in progress). The kids always like walking around and looking at the animals, and the museum is small enough that it doesn't strain their attention spans too much. Afterwards we came back to our place for lunch and let the kids run wild for a little bit before wrestling them into bed (Andrew) or the car, prior to bed (all Jeni's kids). Thursday night, yet another set of family members came visiting: my dad's sister Valerie with her youngest daughter, Rachel, and Rachel's husband Ben.
Friday afternoon we made a brief sojourn southward to Cedar City. We'd told Andrew the night before that we were going to Bubby's house, and he was nearly beside himself. All morning long he kept asking me when we were going to Bubby's house, and I had to keep telling him we weren't going until after his nap. He was so excited about going that he insisted on dragging his Nemo backpack (which held his most precious possessions, Dolly and Puggy, which he had carefully packed for the trip) with us to a visiting teaching appointment. When the end of naptime finally arrived, I went into his "room" to find him sitting up in bed, beaming at me. He announced eagerly, "Now I can go to Bubby's house!" and scrambled out of bed. In fact, he was rather put out because we had to stop on campus to get Dan before we could go to Bubby's house--he was under the impression that we were going straight there. He didn't seem impressed when I reminded him that Bubby was Dan's mom, and didn't he think his daddy would like to see his own mommy? (No, Andrew said). At any rate, we made it safely to Cedar City, where one of Andrew's first orders of business was to play "tea party" with Bubby.
Saturday was a gorgeous day in Cedar City, sunny, with not too much wind. We spent part of the morning helping Bubby and Poppy fix up the lawn: Andrew collected pine cones from the grass and piled them in a designated location next to the house while the rest of us raked pine needles up from the grass (and I took a few pictures).
After our morning exertions, we took Andrew to Discovery Park (a wonderful park built primarily on community donations and fund raisers that was also designed in part by the local children). As you can probably tell from the pictures, Andrew enjoyed himself thoroughly.
Following our stint at the park, we went to Bruno's, a local family favorite. The food is surprisingly good, considering that Bruno's is located in the corner of a convenience store. Bubby split an adult portion of spaghetti and meatballs with Andrew, who, true to form, ate almost everything on his plate. The rest of us enjoyed calzones.
Unfortunately, our stay wasn't long--we left early Sunday morning to get back to Provo in time for church. My morning was just a little traumatic: I went to get in the shower at about 6 this morning and, as I was trying to shut the shower door (they have a sliding glass door in the basement), the door shattered. Needless to say, it shocked me a bit and succeeded in waking me up completely. Luckily (from one point of view), I wasn't cut by the glass, which was everywhere. Following this dramatic beginning, the rest of the day passed pretty innocuously.
And so we leave you for yet another week (or at least, until we next post).
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