Sweet Nothings

Although this week was fairly quiet, we did have some exciting moments toward the end. The middle of the week was spent dealing with sick people--Dan, Andrew, and my dad all came down with some kind of cold. Luckily, Andrew's was pretty mild, and luckier still, we managed to keep him away from Evelyn, who stayed healthy. Since we couldn't go anywhere or have people over while Andrew was sick, I was forced to fall back on my unused creativity skills to keep Andrew occupied (otherwise he has a bad habit of occupying himself--usually with things you'd prefer he didn't do). My best brainchild was to let Andrew play with sudsy water in the kitchen, and he spent a glorious ten or fifteen minutes emptying water and suds from one container to the next until all the water was gone (spreading in pools across the floor, despite my use of towels).

On Thursday we joined my sister and her kids at IHOP for lunch. Fortunately, my mom was able to join us, or we would have been a little overwhelmed with kids. Jacob was more than usually energetic, and Andrew didn't seem to be able to sit still to save his life. Enoch, who was the birthday child of the day, was angelic and Emi was pretty good too, or we would have been in trouble. Enoch was particularly excited by the free sundae they brought him (or it might just have been that he finally noticed Evelyn, who was being held by my mom at the time) and beamed seraphically. The kids were pretty good when the food finally arrived--Andrew demolished most of the food on his plate and some of the food on mine. With her usual impeccable sense of timing, Evelyn woke up just as the food arrived, which meant that my food was mostly cold by the time I got a chance to eat it, and cold eggs--particularly restaurant chain eggs--aren't exactly my favorite. But it was nice to get out of the house for a change.

Friday morning we (my mom and I) braved the mall to take Andrew and Evelyn for a photo shoot. Thank heavens for mothers--after a few obligatory shots of the siblings, my mom took Andrew to the food court and fed him, bringing him back after the shoot was done and I had selected our photos. For most of the photo shoot, then, I just had to deal with Evelyn. I'd forgotten how very unphotogenic most babies are at six weeks--I suppose I had hoped that someone with a better camera than I would be able to take better pictures, but that wasn't really the case. Andrew looked good in all his pictures, despite being a pill up until the camera flashed, but poor Evelyn just looked dazed and confused by the flash. As a result, most of her pictures featured hugely open eyes and fat cheeks as a prominent feature. (Dan said she looked a little bit like E.T.). I don't really want to post a link to the pictures here, but if you're really interested in seeing pictures, send me an email and I'll send you the link.

Today, Dan's sister and her family came for a visit. They'd attended a neighboring ward, since Aaron's uncle was speaking in that ward, and stopped by our place for dinner. Dan made a smashing dinner of macaroni and cheese ala Alton Browne (for you Food Network fans out there). The grownups all seemed to enjoy it, but the kids were put off by the fact that it had *gasp* onions in it. And Japanese bread crumbs on top of it. They seemed to like my dessert better (hyped up blonde brownies with peanut butter chips, craisins, and walnuts in addition to the usual chocolate chips). As usual, Andrew immediately attached himself to Katie. It was funny to listen to him trying to boss her around (she's almost two years older than he is): "Katie, go down the stairs like this! Bump, bump, bump down the stairs!" "Katie, come play trains!" "Katie, put the pony right here!" And so on. I love this picture of Katie, as she looks particularly disgruntled with Andrew's trying to take over her pony operations.


Lydia seemed to enjoy puttering around by herself getting into whatever took her fancy.


Sarah and Jake were more interested in the baby than anything else. Here you can see how sweet Lydia looked while Sarah was holding her.

Jake particularly enjoyed holding Evelyn. This is a bad picture, but he was just beaming most of the time he held her. (Incidentally, for better pictures of the afternoon, try checking the Wells family blog--link at left. Sarah took several pictures and since they couldn't have been worse than some of the ones I got, which, needless to say, did not appear on the blog, you might want to see them).