The Texas Situation

In case you're wondering, here's what's going on with Texas. I haven't really updated you before, because I didn't really know. The good news: we got a house on base! The bad news: our house won't be ready until the 16th of November, so this means living in temporary housing for a few weeks. This also delays Joe going to get our stuff from Colorado. So, it'll be me and the kids, going to the park every day until we move in. But we think it's worth living on base, so Joe will be right there and we'll be close to each other.

We are counting down the days until we are reunited with Joe again. I will actually see him this weekend, because I'm flying down to Alabama for his graduation. I get to wear a fancy dress to a fancy dinner and everything. It will be one joyous reunion, let me tell you. Then, I come home, get the kids, and we leave November 1st.

We're excited to go, but I will really miss my family, and miss the people here in Towanda who have been good friends to us. It's another "starting over," and another period of limbo. But at least we'll be together again.

Religious Freedom

This is a great speech on religious freedom by Dallin H. Oaks, former Utah Supreme Court member and current apostle for the LDS church. I appreciate the legal and historical background in his argument. Read it: http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/religious-freedom.

Emily's here!

My sister, Emily, is here at my parents' house for two weeks! She has made it a tradition of coming for my mom's birthday, which is next week. We've had lots of fun with her and her adorable Baby Ryan. He is such a well-behaved baby. It makes me kinda jealous.

This is Baby Ryan. See the cute dimple? He is usually this congenial; he hardly cries. I pray I may get a baby like this next time around.

We went to visit my mom's friend, Anne, in Scranton. My kids enjoyed running around her backyard.
Yesterday, we went to the Corning Museum of Glass with our friend, Courtney. I love the Corning Museum of Glass. If you like beautiful things, you should visit sometime.

This is turning into one of those sporadic posts. Elliot has made it a habit lately of putting bowls of food on his head. This is usually how he looks at dinner time. We follow up with a bath.

The day Emily came, we made crowns with Dottie's sparkly crayons. Dottie designed them herself.

At the Met

Last weekend, we fulfilled a lifetime goal of a very sweet lady in my parents' ward. Bonnie Carrington is the pinnacle of maternal kindness: she came and helped my mom with at least two of her babies when they were born, she makes us fabulous toffee every Christmas, and she has the wisdom of a sage for new mommies like me.

Bonnie expressed to my mom that she has always wanted to go see an opera at the Met. So, in order to return the countless kindnesses Bonnie has bestowed upon our family, we went to go see "Tosca" last weekend. Amanda met up with us, and afterwards, we spent time with my good friend from high school, Billy Shaw. Billy currently works at the Met.
Here we are! Tosca was magnificent. I'm usually not much for the typical opera voice (hyperactive vibrato), but the voices were well-controlled. This was a very passionate plot, and you can never go wrong with Puccini.
We were really impressed with these sparkly chandeliers. Maybe we can have some installed in our house in Texas?

Me and Ms. Amanda. I can't get enough of this girl. We had so much fun together.

Reunited with Billy!

Billy took us to this adorable little cafe called Alice's Tea Party. We had sandwiches, scones, and (herbal) tea. I felt like a princess. I would love to take Dottie there. They have fairy wings for you to dress your little girl in.

I think we have a gymnast on our hands

My son's new skill: somersaulting. He taught himself, no parental prompting involved. Either he's very gifted physically, or just plain hyperactive.

I Heart Amanda . . . and Boston

Amanda is my best friend from . . . forever. We've been joined at the hip since we were fourteen. I love her like a sister. We went to middle school, high school, and college together. It was a sad, mournful day when I moved away to Colorado Springs. I really could go on forever about our friendship . . . it's such a saga, I've even considered writing a book about it.

Amanda is now married to a wonderful man named Jonathan. They are living in Boston, where Amanda is getting a master's in social work at Boston College, and Jonathan is getting a law degree at Harvard. They were so kind to us during our stay. They even gave up their wonderful king-sized bed for me to share with Dottie and my mom. Elliot also got his own room while Amanda and Jonathan slept on the couch. They are my heroes.

This is going to be a long post, because we crammed a lot of things into three days. Let's start with pictures of Amanda and my pillow that I embroidered for her as an early birthday gift. Remember, I'm a novice.

The square before I sewed the pillow together:
Detail of the ribbed spider web I learned how to sew from watching a video on needleandthread.com:
Amanda with the final product!

We visited on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On Friday morning, Amanda had class, so we traveled from Cambridge to Concord. We visited Louisa May Alcott's home, the authoress of Little Women. I didn't get to do the tour, because my children decided to act horrendous. Luckily, they refunded my money. Instead, we spent our time exploring the grounds, and I took several pictures because I didn't have much else to do.

Notice Elliot trying to break into the Alcott house.
Sitting in the garden:
Dottie had a good time climbing this tree:
Alcott's father was a famous transcendalist philosopher, and he would sit on this bench under the tree and wait for people to walk by so he could philosophize with them. Maybe Elliot's doing the same thing?

Dottie climbing on the front porch. The tour guide would probably be mad at us for desecrating the property. But what can you do when you have two crazy children?
This is the beautiful street where Amanda lives. Apparently, it is the same complex where Mitt Romney lived when he went to Harvard.
On Friday night, Amanda had a concert for her campus choir. It was quite the event! They sang with the Boston Pops and Bernadette Peters! My mom and I went while Amanda's sweet sister watched the kids. It was truly a memorable night. This is Amanda before the concert on the gorgeous Boston College campus.
Before the concert, we had the opportunity to tour Harvard with Jonathan. He took us to the library:
Someone built Winnie-the-Pooh's house in a tree on Harvard campus . . .
And this is Longfellow's house.
We spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday at this little park on Amanda's street. My kids sure had the wiggles on the trip, so the park was a godsend:

Saturday, we walked the freedom trail with Amanda, Jonathan's sister, Lizzie, and her husband and kids. The freedom trail is a walk you can take in Boston that traces Revolutionary War historically important places.

This is me and Amanda in front of the Old State House, where important discussions took place about taxation without representation, and outside its doors the Boston Massacre took place.

This is me and Amanda outside of Quincy Market, where we ate Boston clam chowder:This is me outside of Paul Revere's house, which is the oldest existing structure standing in Boston. The rest of this part of the city was burned, but this building survived.
This is my mom outside of the Old North Church. It's the oldest church in Boston, and it's where Paul Revere ran to light lanterns letting the citizens know the British troops were advancing.
This was a cute part of Boston that the trail went through, an Italian district. It was very European looking, and we had some delicious gelato and biscotti while we were there.

Kee-ko Kee-ko

I tried so hard to get a decent video of Elliot singing "Twinkle Twinkle" (he says Kee-ko Kee-ko). This is the best I got. He really does know the whole song . . . I'm doing this mostly so Joe can see our son's progress.