Milestones

This is a busy weekend for us--in addition to celebrating Pioneer Day with the rest of the state, tomorrow is Dan's birthday and our eighth anniversary (!).

Tomorrow promises to be an active day: right now, though, I'm so tired I just want to put my head down on the keyboard and sleep. But I promised myself I would post (so don't blame me if it's boring!)

This last week my parents came out to visit. It was fun having them here--they got to observe swim lessons first hand. It's clear that neither of my kids is nervous in the water: we could typically see Evelyn bouncing up and down with excitement from her perch on the steps (hers was the beginner class) and Andrew typically spent his time submerged when he wasn't being helped by his teacher. (His teacher, incidentally, is a former student of mine. She must have liked me, because she took both her English 1010 and 2010 class from me, and then told some of her friends to take my 2010 class . . .)

We also got to spend some time hanging out, and, of course, attending some of the festival plays. I went with them to Noises off on Tuesday while Dan stayed with the kids. (The play was hilarious, but the third act was disappointing after the second act, which was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time). Wednesday afternoon, my parents saw A Midsummer's Night Dream and that evening they watched the kids so Dan and I could watch The Music Man. That was truly a pleasure to see--the cast had a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and I got to see my visiting teaching companion (one of the town ladies) throw herself into her role. Thursday, before my parents left town, we went to the Ninja (the local Japanese restaurant) and the kids discovered that they don't mind Japanese food--and that they like chopsticks. It's a good thing, because we went again yesterday (Dan missed out on Thursday).

The weekend has been a little down-key. We spent yesterday mostly doing errands around the house and then we had a lovely dinner on the back patio with Bubby and Poppy. We made this salad, out of the newest Family Fun magazine. It was quite tasty--especially the chicken. A lot of the ingredients were fresh from our Bountiful Basket that morning, and the basil we actually got from our garden. (One of the few things that survived our month hiatus). For dessert, Dan made a fresh strawberry pie using fresh strawberries, again from the basket.

Today, I taught Sunday school (substituting for the 14-15 year old class) and Dan subbed in elder's quorum. The RS room is being remodelled in our building, which means most of the Sunday school classes have been displaced. They put us in the kitchen last week, and we were there again today. Last week, the kids said that being in the kitchen made them hungry, so this week we brought brownies to class. I'm pretty sure this last fact is a large reason why I just got a call from the bishop, reporting how much his daughter enjoyed our class today. :)

This afternoon, we drove nearly two hours to a ranch just outside of Zion National Park to visit with Dan's cousin Jon and his family. Bubby and Poppy and Sarah and Aaron all made the trip as well--we had a nice leisurely dinner and watched the kids play for a while before heading back. (This probably explains why I'm tired--that's a lot of driving for one day).

We listened to the rest of Harry Potter in the car (we'd been reading book one with Andrew). It was funny to watch Andrew's reaction. It took him a little while to process some things--for instance, when we got to the end and Dumbledore was assigning new points to Gryffindor, it wasn't until the colors were changing that Andrew, with the look of someone newly enlightened, said, "Wait. Did Gryffindor just win the house cup?" He was pretty excited about it, although we had to explain how it happened. His final verdict: "It was awesome!"

Evelyn's questions were: "Who is Voldemort?" and "Who is Harry Potter?"