Easter and Abandonment

• Lily learned to like cow milk,
• Elsie pointed out several times how much Easter candy she had in her little bag,
• Timmy kicked a ball all over the soccer field trying to follow his new coach’s instructions,
• Abby planned her parents’ welcome home party,
• Kate decided she actually does like soccer,
• Gina picked her first citrus fruit
• Doug learned that San Diego is a beautiful place.

Happy Easter!

This week,

• Lily daintily destroyed a beautiful lemon cake in celebration of her 1st birthday,
• Elsie helped Gina dry the dishes and put them away,
• Timmy got to play his favorite game (Battle for Wesnoth) after being grounded from it for a week,
• Abby sat down and played pieces on the piano when it wasn’t even time for her to practice,
• Kate voluntarily took a nap,
• Gina got us all outside to make the back yard beautiful, and
• I got to play several rounds of “shoe monsters” on the trampoline with the kids.

Lily’s 51st week

Lily ate a chunk of onion,

Elsie laughed her head off watching a video of herself eating her one-year-old birthday cake and smearing frosting on Timmy and Kate,

Timmy made strawberry cookies,

Abby sang three Spanish songs in her school program,

Kate caught up to me in the Book of Mormon,

Gina got to catch up with a good old friend,  and

I fell asleep in the clerk’s office after reporting elders quorum statistics and before the funeral service ended.

Another dull week

• Lily got tired of avoiding the banana proferred by her mother, accepted it, looked her mother steadily in the eye, slowly swung her arm to the edge of her tray, and dropped the banana on the ground.
• When Gina didn’t give Elsie a band-aid for imagined wounds, Elsie picked up a knife to cut her hand, dropped it at the command of her mother, and got the kitchen shears (which she couldn’t use anyway, that difficult mother).
• Timmy got a new car rug in his bedroom, complete with roads and parking spots,
• Abby took a 4-year-old girl under her wing for 5 hours while Gina babysat,
• Kate read over 2 chapters from the Book of Mormon this week during her personal scripture study,
• Gina survived 5 separate children who each lost the contents of their stomachs between 4 and 11 times, and
• I was able to present some of my more radical physics ideas and convince my adviser and others that they might be worth turning into a dissertation.

Early spring

• Lily ate all the peas from Abby and Kate’s tuna casserole,
• Elsie punished her mother by stripping off her own pants and underpants,
• Timmy asked us addition problem after addition problem,
• Abby put Lily to bed for the night about three times this week,
• Kate swung so violently on the big cherry tree that Gina had her get down to protect the tree,
• Gina started following a byu.tv aerobics/yoga/weight routine, and
• I started exercising outside again.