independence day

With my always stellar postpartum memory skills, I have absolutely no recollection of anything that happened before Thursday of last week (although I'm sure *something* must have happened). At any rate, with apologies for my lousy memory, we begin our narrative on Thursday.

Typically, when we go down to Dan's parents' house, we leave after Andrew's nap. This week, we decided to experiment and go before his nap, hoping that he'd nap in the car. He did--but only for half an hour, so its doubtful that we'll repeat this experiment anytime soon. Our ride down was uneventful: we stopped in Fillmore where Andrew's flagging spirits were revived with "zips" from a lemonade and an ice-cream cone (as we drove into Fillmore, Andrew was crying hysterically that he wanted to go home--in fact, he was so distraught that he made himself throw up as we were exiting the freeway). Meanwhile, I fed Evelyn. We ran into Sarah's good friend and her family while we were in the restaurant, which was kind of fun. They were on their way north from St. George.

We arrived at Bubby and Poppy's to find the party in full swing: Sarah and her brood and Matt and Laurie were all hanging out. The guys were planning a fishing trip, so Dan went to get a fishing license and then they all left, leaving Andrew as the resident male in the household. The kids played for a while and then we ordered pizza--unfortunately, since it was the night before a holiday, the demand for pizza was high and we didn't get to eat until nearly seven (so much for Andrew's early night!). After dinner, we enjoyed some popsicles--we stripped Andrew and Lydia down to diapers, and both of them managed to drip popsicle all over. As a result, they needed some serious cleaning; we bathed the kids by hosing them down with the garden hose--Andrew seemed to enjoy it, but Sarah's girls were traumatized (the water *was* a bit cold, and it took a lot more water to wash the soap out of their hair than out of Andrew's). Then, Andrew and Lydia went down (mercifully, they both went down pretty easily). Sarah, Trisha and I hung out in the yard for a while, talking, while Katie played. After Katie went to bed, we got to work making things for Laurie's baby shower (which was to take place on Saturday).

In the meantime, the guys apparently had a successful fishing outing--they caught about twenty fish apiece (although most were quite small) and Jake insisted on touching every fish they caught. They came home late and finished off the left-over pizza while recounting their triumphs.
We were up early the next morning to get everyone ready to attend the Cedar City Independence Day parade, a much anticipated event (although apparently this year's efforts fell short of expectations). Sarah makes a big deal out of the fourth, and her children were all appropriately decked in holiday colors. Sarah and Trisha even made sure that my children were dressed appropriately, picking a shirt for Andrew at Wal-mart and a onesie and shorts for Evelyn (but we opted for a red dress I'd packed instead). We didn't arrive early enough to stake a claim on the shady side of the street, and even at 9 a.m. the sidewalk area was sweltering. And bright, as you can tell from these lovely squinting faces.





To keep the kids occupied, we bought balloons from a vendor. They were a big hit with the kids, although less popular with the grown-ups, especially after we got home and they had to be repeatedly rescued from one of the ceiling fans.




Andrew found the parade a little trying--he enjoyed running around at first, but when he found that he couldn't run as much as he wanted, he started to lose interest. He also liked the candy that was thrown, but there wasn't a lot of it and he wasn't fast enough to get most of it before older children scooped it up, so that palled after a while to. In fact, we opted to leave before the parade was over to prevent incipient melt-down. Ironically enough, as we were leaving the street for the parking lot where we had parked our car, Andrew announced, "That was so much fun!" Hardly the description Dan and I would have given it!

We had just arrived back at Bubby and Poppy's when we got a call that the rest of the gang had left the parade early as well and were waiting for us at the Brown Cow, a local eatery frequented for its cold drinks and ice cream. We ordered in shifts, trying to make the most of the air-conditioning. The kids "played" the arcade games (Jake is the only one that knows you're supposed to pay to actually play) and the grown-ups chatted. Andrew made short work of a rootbeer, a small ice-cream cone, and a hamburger.

We took the kids home for naps and that afternoon we had a barbeque in the backyard (like most of suburban America, I imagine), with yummy hotdogs and hamburgers. That evening, we also spent some time in baby shower prep.

Saturday morning, of course, was mostly taken up with the shower. In the morning, Sarah and Trisha slaved away in the kitchen to prepare the food and Dan and Aaron took the kids to a local park to get them out of the way. Then, we loaded up the car and took everything over to the community center where the event was to be held. There were lots of people there (a tribute, no doubt, to Laurie's general likeability!). And Laurie and Matt certainly got lots of stuff--their little boy will be one well-dressed little boy, at least for his first few months. We played a couple of shower games (including one where you couldn't say the word "cute"--you can imagine how hard that was at a baby shower. I surprised myself by actually doing well enough to be one of the winners.) But I think most people enjoyed the wonderful sugar cookies and good company best of all. Trisha put me in charge of one of the games, so I handed Evelyn off to Dan's Aunt Nellie, who was gracious enough to hold her for me.


Laurie's face as she read our "note" accompanying our gift. The note explained that part of the present was forthcoming--a pirate onesie that reads "Aargh, wipe me booty!" (For those of you who don't know, Matt's nickname is "Booty").

The rest of our stay was fairly quiet--Sarah and her kids left after the shower to visit Aaron's family in St. George, so we spent the evening with Bubby and Poppy, eating left-overs (tacos) and generally hanging out. Matt and Laurie came over in the evening for some games. And of course, we had our second Dairy Queen run of the visit (the first being Friday night). We went to sacrament meeting with Trisha (Andrew behaved abominably and spent half the meeting in the hallway with Dan, crying, and I spent half the meeting feeding Evelyn). Afterward, we put Andrew down for a nap, had a wonderful spaghetti supper, and then drove back home. All in all, an enjoyable trip!

Andrew, wearing the slippers Trisha brought back from her recent trip to Holland. (A funny aside: because he opened the package on the morning of the fourth, he spent the rest of the morning convinced somehow that it was his birthday--I suppose he's been to too many birthday parties recently and since none were his he just assumed that it must be about time for his birthday . . . poor kid. He's still got nearly six months till the actual date!)