Spain pics

Here are some pictures of Aubrey in Spain for the CTY architecture course she took. The first is the structure that she built. Her classmates voted and decided that she had the best design. It even had a spiral staircase! Thus the second picture of her with her Best Design award. When they were done with the course, they all threw their structures out of a second storey window.

In a nook (A on left):

On a structure (A on left):

On a bridge:

At a Spanish vending machine:

In the airport upon arriving home:

Leftover picture from girls' camp:

I can't wait for the new season of Bones to start this week. And we'd better find out the season finale was a hallucination, or I will die of shame for the writers. Here is a promo picture.

vomit please

My favorite ways to say vomit: toss cookies, hurl, up-chuck, reversal of fortune, pyook, projectile vomiting, abstract art, blow chunks, regurgitate, blow your groceries, ralph, worship the porcelain god, spit up, heave, whistling carrots. Help me out here, Guy.

• Here are some more pics from my Utah trip to see Alli get sealed to Guy, Christa, and Lexi, in the temple. First is the family so named.

Here is me, Guy, and mom:Someone once told me I look like Diane Keaton. I never quite agreed until I saw this picture of myself. Poor picture quality because of the scan, but maybe.Below are some pics from the Albuquerque reunion for Gramper's 85th birthday. Won't someone please send me a picture of Gramper and me? I know it's out there somewhere, but I don't have it. Instead, here are Gramper, Rebekah, and Aubrey.Me, April, and April's lovely t-shirt.We four kids at Grander's grave, all acting stupid except Guy, that's not right. I guess if you're tall, you're not allowed to have your entire forehead in a picture of you at your grandmother's grave.Madison and Aubrey

passages

Here is our new (actually used) piano that we got Aubrey for her 16th birthday. Took the piano movers 6.5 hours to drive it to my little townhouse and lug it up my little stairs. They had to take off the stairwell hand rails and call in another guy. I seriously thought someone was going to die at one point. They were scared too. It could easily have fallen back down the stairs as they were lifting it, and smashed some one's bones all to powder. All's well that ends well: no bone powder. And now everyone is gleefully banging away on the thing.

• Quotation of the day, from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, which I am reading now. Maggie, nine, in a fit of misery had just cut off her own hair.

  "...if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy,
  and had the apricot pudding and the custard ! What could she do but sob ? She
  sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the
  slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn
  mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships ; but it was not less bitter to Maggie — perhaps it was even more bitter — than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. 'Ah ! my child, you will have real troubles to-fret about by-and-by,' is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place ; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered suffering of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrevocably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood, and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trowsers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? what he felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere willfulness ; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness ; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already ? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children. "

  
  
• Second quotation of the day: "Panties!" --a 4-year-old boy in our Sunbeam class shouted out, out of nowhere. Everyone laughed, but no one did as much as I.


• Conversation of the day: Rebekah: "I am against sheep shearing." Me: "Why?" Rebekah: "How would you like it if someone grabbed you and sheared you?"


• Observation of the day: Jerry, in a discussion about the amazing special effects churned out by Hollywood these days, said, "If they can make Barack Obama look like a qualified candidate, they can do anything."


• My favorite ways of saying "drunk": foxed, three sheets to the wind, lambasted, pickled, shellacked, soused, wasted, snookered, smashed, tipsy, plastered, pie-eyed. Next time: my favorite ways to say "vomit."

he's 32

Happy Birthday Matthew!

sally forth

15-year-old picture of the day: April, me, Guy

Today Aubrey and I had lunch in this restaurant, Cafe Anglais, in Frederick, Maryland. I have heard from reliable sources that British food is second only to Finnish as the worst food in the world. But whatever I thought of the taste, it matters not: I love the idea of partaking of anything British, edible or otherwise. I had my first pastie ever, something for which I've waited a lifetime. We also had smooshed peas, chips, Brit candies (from Britain, not made of Brits), and lemon barley water. You may have heard of barley water in the Mary Poppins song "The Perfect Nanny", below.


Here is Coldplay's song "Viva la Vida". I listened to it while running and lifting weights the other day. The entire time. Over and over. I've often wondered why no one writes songs like they used to. But this is a definite exception. Classic. Soaring and triumphant on first listen, but so sad if you listen closely. I can't get enough of it. Modern poetry at its best.

• I had a hearing test at Beltone. It was a bizarre experience. The technician dude, as it turned out, was LDS and had lived in Layton. Had heard of the Grahams even. Not your typical LDS dude, if there is such a thing. We ended up chatting for like half an hour. I knew the torrid details of his life and loves by the time it was over. Oh, and I can hear okay. My high frequency sound perception was below normal for my right ear, but nothing requiring treatment. I did show signs, however, that I will inevitably need hearing aid(s) in the future. He told me to drink pomegranate juice like it is water, as the anti-oxidants would delay the need. He also said to exercise my ears (didn't know this was possible!) by turning down the radio in the car so I have to strain to hear it. That will help make my audition (???) "stronger". Interesting. So Amanda take heed, so we don't end up in shouting matches with each other when we are grannies.
• Here are four little niecies. Clockwise from left: Lexi, Sierra, Madison, Alli. They are mine, all mine

Quotation of the day: "Please buy me a farmer too." --superfriend Claire, when Aubrey informed her that we were going to a farmer's market.

she's 38

Happy Belated Birthday Carolyn!

It's the stupid only-recently un-busted scanner's fault this is late. Yup, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Finland pics

Here are a few pictures from Finland. First is Rebekah and cousins Sonia and Tommi.

Here are Kosti (Jerry's cousin), Jerry, Rebekah, Arja (Jerry's cousin and Sonia and Tommi's mom), and Tommi

Starting third from left in front row: Rebekah, Jerry, and Sonia. Look at all the blond hair flying! Rebekah says everyone in Finland looks like a supermodel.

Sonia, Rebekah, and Tommi at the amusement park
Jerry and his aunt Sirkka Jerry and Rebekah on a ride at the amusement park. You can see a bit of Helsinki in the background.

• Jerry has pneumonia. He's had a fever for 5 or 6 days. Today he is feeling a little better, though. He said, "I'm not withering on the vine."
• Daily double: Jerry had a dream about soldiers who were called "Frere Jacques". Later he woke up and came downstairs. Rebekah started playing "Frere Jacques" on the piano.
• Quotation of the day: "If a thing is worth doing well, it's worth getting miserable about." --Hugh Laurie
• Second quotation of the day: "Me and Kitty have a lot in common." --Jerry H.