Another dozen trips to Home Depot later...

Thing 1 and 2 are in the other room watching TV. I can hear their conversation through the open door. Thing 2 becomes inordinately upset and is wailing about a line on her foot. Thing 1 looks at it and says it’s just a line, just a wrinkle on your foot. Thing 2 says but I don’t want a line on my foot! Why is it there? Thing 1 says “It’s just the way Jesus made you.”

For anyone else this would be normal, not particularly noticeable conversation. But for me, who has too long ignored my children’s religious upbringing, this brings joy to my heart. Somewhere along the line, from Church, from reading, or from me, Thing 1 has indeed picked up a little bit of religion.

This morning Two was quite excited about breakfast. She grabbed the Nestle strawberry milk powder from the pantry and galloped with it to the table. However the lid was not snapped on tightly and in her galloping, she was exuberantly tossing the container around as she galloped, the lid flipped off and about ¼ of a large container of pink powder went all over the floor, which she skidded on, and all over her clothes. Her response, not too unexpectedly, was to start to wail. No matter how many times she is encouraged to not wail as a first response, it is still her first response to anything the least bit negative.

Hubby came back from Italy on Sunday. The girls and I spent most of the previous week in Logan, culminating in a couple of days on Bear Lake with my brother’s family. The girls had a fabulous time, I think their favorite part was riding on the chariot innertube thing with Megan. But they really enjoyed jumping on the trampoline, riding in the boat, and playing in the water. We wore them down to the nub and even Thing 1, who isn’t much of a napper, fell asleep in the boat for a couple of hours. All in all they just had a fabulous time.

Speaking of which, when we were in Logan my uncle Glade and Aunt Vicki came up for a reunion the next day and since we were looking for a babysitter so I could go to the play with Kristin that night, we asked them to babysit. They said everything went well, but thought the girls exceptionally funny and cute. Glade was particularly amused when something happened that pleased Thing 2 and she said it was Fabulous. Apparently they’re not used to three year olds calling things Fabulous.

I came home and put up the 2nd tarp on the fort, so now both sections have shade. This was a no-question requirement for me, as the sun beating down really warmed up the decking, and from about 10:00 a.m. on the higher slide section was directly in the sun, and as the sun moved across the sky, the too-hot-to-stand-on section just got bigger and bigger. Yesterday we all had lunch on the fort about 2:00 pm. before Hubby left, and the whole deck was in the shade. I am very pleased with how the fort turned out. There are about three things left to do: We need to buy and dump in three or so more bags of sand. The two person swing needs to be put on, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to that. The rails are half nice redwood posts, and half shanty-looking cedar planks, but I don’t know if or when that will ever be taken care of. The grassy area below the slide level ought to be planked over with some decking as it is too small to mow, but that might not ever happen either. And finally, there is an issue with the lawn back there. I broke the sprinkler pipe when I was getting ready to lay the sod, and Hubby hasn’t had time to fix it so right now we’re hand watering it. The problem is it’s hard to get out there to do it every couple of days. The other problem is the kids are out there a lot and they’re pretty hard on the grass. In a perfect world we would lay down some sort of rubber chips or sawdust or something, but I don’t know if or when that will happen.

Must Haves

Thing 1 woke me up at 7:30 this morning demanding help to find some weird little bag that my sister had given them filled with toys at Easter. Thing 2 had found one downstairs and had been carrying it around and suddenly this morning Thing 1 woke up the whining and calling that I MUST go down and help her find it. I dragged my feet, knowing the thing was probably not there, and resenting being dragged out of bed for something so inane.

They’ve been just great lately. I’ve been so busy assembling this family cookbook and I’ve been ignoring them to do it. They’ve had to watch more TV, and entertain themselves more than usual.

I did want to write down some funny things they’ve said:

One of the student teachers at Thing 1’s school told me they’d gone on a field trip, looking for rocks, or bugs, or something, and Thing 1 had looked up at the mountain behind the University and told her it is “the Big Stone Mountain of Many Colors.” She said it had a lot of snakes on it, “Snakes of Many Colors.” But not to be afraid, because they’re nice. The girl also told me that they’d been having a unit on Dirt at school, and when asked what dirt felt like, Thing 1 had gotten thoughtful for a moment, and then announced “it feels like Salsa.” The student teacher had found this particularly amusing. I guess most of the other students answers hadn’t been nearly so entertaining. I told her Thing 1 is not a big condiment eater and I am not sure how she even knows that word.

She never says “Remember” it’s always “Benember.”

We were coming down the stairs one morning all together and Thing 2 was chattering on endlessly like she sometimes does. Thing 1 was coming down next to her, one step at a time on her bum and says, completely bored and uninterested, “I see. I see.” She was so obviously just placating Thing 2 I thought it was quite funny.

Micky D's

We went to McDonalds for dinner. Zoe is big enough to crawl around in the playland, but she gets scared sometimes and needs a little help. She had a little bit of trouble getting up the stairs and stuff at first, but after a while was going up and down just fine. At one point Grace was outside the playland playing with some other part of it and I heard Zoe’s voice hollering “I can’t get out! Mommy! I can’t get out! Help me, Mommy!” She was really distressed. I ran over and got Grace and asked her to please go in and find Zoe.
Usually she doesn’t pay too much attention to this sort of thing but this time she took off like a girl with a mission. As she crawled in she started yelling, “I’m coming, Zoe! I’m coming! I’ll rescue you! I’m coming, Zoe!” It was just the cutest thing. Zoe stopped crying pretty quickly knowing the Calvary was on its way, and Grace found her and led her out.

Grace and I were playing. I was smiling at her and she stopped, pointed at my cheeks and said “Look mommy, you have nipples.”

Mother's day

We both woke up pretty early, before seven. We got up and went to Ruth’s Diner up Emigration canyon for breakfast, and had a really nice meal. The folks brought the girls home that afternoon and they were pretty happy to see us. They are quite the darling little souls. Then we met at the park up by Scott and Karma’s for a mother’s day lunch with my family. It was a very nice mother’s day.

London day 10

Pat, bless his heart, volunteered to drive us to the airport. And we were too appreciative to say no. He was at the hotel before 7:00 a.m. Our flight left at 10:10, and frankly we probably would have missed the flight if we would have gotten ourselves to the airport. We hadn’t realized it would take as long as it did, and this way we didn’t have to lug our luggage all the way around London’s transportation system. So we had a very nice ride to Gatwick with Pat, who must have left his house at o’dark thirty to get to the hotel that early.
In the airport bookstore I found the next book in the series I’d been reading, in fact I’d just finished up the previous one the evening before. So I had interesting reading material. Jeff dozed and watched the movie on the way back.
He had to switch seats with someone to sit by me on the way from Cincinnati to Salt Lake, giving up a first class seat.
We arrived about 6:30 at night, but as we were loading up the suitcases into the car he realized he’d grabbed someone else’s bag. We had to go back to the airport, where they phoned the person whose bag we’d taken, and then wait for them to return to the airport with our bag. We got home close to 8:00, maybe 8:30 at night. Jeff went for dinner, and while I was waiting I thought I’d just wither away. I felt pretty wrung out. He stayed up that night until about 11:00, but I went to bed before 10:00. I just couldn’t stay awake anymore.

London day 9

This was my last real day in London. I could have hit a bunch of museums that I hadn’t made it to before, or even gone through the Tower of London. Odd how we’d gotten so accustomed to it that we didn’t even look at it as a draw. It was just the Tower that we walked by every time we went somewhere. Instead I went shopping. I walked up to Liverpool underground station to Julia’s shop and blew one hundred pounds, or close to $200 in jewelry. I bought a necklace, matching earrings, a pin, another pin and matching earrings, and a pair of earrings for Mom. Considering I had 50% off from Julia, I guess that means I would have spent $400? No way… now I can’t remember which it was. If I spent 50 pounds or 100.
Then I went to the Covent Gardens tube stop and found the Underground gift shop. I bought Tee shirts for the girls, a couple of metal plaques, and a toy double-decker bus and british taxi for the girls. I think that was it. Then I walked to the London ThoughtWorks office and waited for Jeff, who was in a meeting.
We had tickets to the musical of Chicago that afternoon. It wasn’t tops on Jeff’s list of things to see, but I’d seen it before and really liked it, and more importantly it was one of the only plays showing that had a matinee on Friday. Turns out we walked near, but not by, the theater about five times, but never found it until it was getting time to go in and not be late. The play was okay, it wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered, but it still has good music and kind of fun dancing.
After the play we were meeting Angela, a friend of Jeff’s from New Zealand who stayed with us for a conference a couple of years back. She now works for ThoughtWorks in London too.
She suggested a really good Dim Sum restaurant called Ping Pong. I had a couple of quite nice dishes, and I think it was about the best meal out we had. Jeff and Angela could have talked all night about work. She is a very nice person and is fun to listen to, just with her accent and all.

Did I mention our hotel was right by the Tower of London? It was awfully pretty walking around it late at night.

London day 8

Jeff took the day off and we slept in. He decided that of the options we had, he was most interested in the Tate Modern Art museum. We walked over to the museum, and took a nap on the lawn with a bunch of other people eating their lunch. Jeff considers that the best day of our vacation.


The museum was fantastic, too. I got to see a lot of art I’d only seen in books, and the Monet water lilies that took up a whole wall were just incredible. I really enjoyed myself.
We bought a doodle book for Thing 1 in the museum gift shop, and some other stuff for both girls.
This is the view from the museum shop balcony, out over the Thames, where Hubby bought a latte. Any day is much better for him if he can stop somewhere and have a latte.

We walked back to the Tower bridge and had dinner at an Indian place that we’d found before.