We got our first Christmas cards today. Two from kc (one for me and one for Annalie, which Annalie loved) and one from Grace. Grace is a member of my parents’ church and has known me since I was younger than Annalie. She is one of those sweet old ladies that every church seems to have. She loves everyone, and everyone loves her. Her personal ministry is sending greeting cards for every occasion. When I went away to college, I got Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday, and Easter cards from Grace without fail, and I wasn’t the only one. Many members of my parents’ congregation have gotten their share of cards from Grace. She writes a letter in every card, too, with news about her husband, her dog, her great-grandson’s latest visit, the weather.

When Annalie was born, Grace sent a card and a small gift. Every Christmas since then she’s sent a small gift for Annalie—usually a book or a little stuffed animal—and every May she sends a card for Annalie’s birthday too. Whenever we’re at home visiting my parents, I make a point of finding Grace after church to say hello give her a hug, and I send Christmas cards to her and her husband, but that’s about all the contact we have. I feel a little guilty sometimes that I don’t make an effort to reciprocate with more letters, but she really doesn’t expect anything in return. She’s sending cards out of love, not expectation. She’s a wonderful lady.

When I opened the Christmas card from her today, I found two ten-dollar bills tucked inside. Inside the card, she wrote that health troubles have prevented her from shopping much, and would I please use the enclosed money to buy a gift for Annalie from her? I shook my head in affectionate exasperation when I read that. Grace recently had a heart attack, and she’s close to 90 years old. I wouldn’t have expected a card this year, let alone a present! But cards are her thing, and like I said, she’s a wonderful lady who gives because she loves.

I read the card to Annalie, and told her that we could go to Target so she could pick out her present from Grandma Grace. Annalie had a few dollars left from some birthday money, so she put that and the two tens into a little blue drawstring pouch that she wore on her wrist. When we got to Target, there was a Salvation Army bell-ringer outside the store. Annalie loves putting money in the bucket, so I expected her to ask me if she could have a coin. Instead she took the pouch off her wrist and fished out a quarter. She held it up, looked at the bell-ringer, then looked back at me with her eyebrows raised, grinning. I nodded, so she skipped off to put the coin in the bucket. Granted, she doesn’t have a strong grasp on just which coins are worth how much, but it still made me happy that on the way to buy herself a toy she didn’t hesitate to give some of her own money away.

We went to the toy section and Annalie wandered up and down the aisles, oohing and aahing over things, checking the price tags carefully. When she saw the Easy-Bake oven she stopped and said, “This is what I want! Can I get it? I have enough money, don’t I?” She did, just the right amount. Annalie insisted on carrying the large box all the way to the registers and reminded me several times on the way there that she was going to pay for it. On the way home, she regaled me with all the things one can make with an Easy-Bake oven. “You can make cakes, and cookies, and even pretzels!” That last one was news to me.

When Annalie chose an Easy-Bake oven, I had two reactions simultaneously:

1. Grooaaaannn, not one of these things! They don’t make anything but dried-out cakes, and Annalie can bake with me in the real oven anytime she wants! I’d much rather do that with her than supervise her using this thing.
2. Yes!!! I’ll finally get an Easy-Bake Oven!

I always wanted an Easy-Bake oven. My mom had one as a kid and knew how disappointing they were, so she always told me that I would likely be disappointed in it too, and that I was welcome to make a real cake with her anytime I wanted. I knew she was probably right, so I dropped it from my Christmas list. Even so, I always thought those tiny pans and little mixes sure looked like fun.

Once we were at home and had the box open, I read the instructions as Annalie bounced in her seat at the kitchen table, exclaiming over the cool stuff (cake & frosting mix, pans, mini spatulas, etc.) that came with the oven. I knew that it would require a light bulb and I knew we had a container full of those, so I wasn’t worried about it. But it turns out that you can’t use “soft white” bulbs with an Easy Bake oven and those were the only kind we had, those and a billion fluorescent compacts. I couldn’t even steal a bulb from one of our lamps because most of those have fluorescents in them.

We hoppped back in the minivan, bedtime drawing ever nearer, and zipped over to CVS to buy a plain old 100-watt bulb…and we couldn’t find one! Apparently the new thing with light bulbs is to shave a few watts off the usual amount and call it energy-saving. So there were 38-watt bulbs and 71-watt bulbs galore, but no 100-watt bulbs except for one of the “soft white” kind which put me back at square one. I went with a crystal clear 95-watt bulb, figuring it would be close enough. And it was.

Annalie mixed up the cake, spread it in the pan, and put it in the oven. When it came out, she frosted it, added sprinkles, and declared that it was delicious. I guess it would be a good idea to add “Easy Bake mixes” to Annalie’s Christmas wish list!

Of the two days we spent in North Carolina visiting my sister-in-law and her family, one of them happened to be Dana’s birthday. I’ve been promising to write more about that day for almost a month now, and by golly I’m not going to flake on that promise. I feel like I’ve been flaking on a lot of things lately, or at least being much slower in getting them done than I’d like. I told myself I can’t watch Glee tonight till I write this post. As rewards go it’s a small one, but it’ll work for me. So here we go!

Since the last time we visited them, Dana & Paul had moved. Their new house is sort of out in the country but still within easy driving distance of the city. They have a big front yard and a huge back yard perfect for two boys with lots of energy.

Their neighborhood has plenty of tall trees and they even have a front porch perfect for sitting on while sipping a cool drink. Not that they’re doing a lot of lounging on the porch these days, what with those energetic boys around to keep up with, but someday they might lounge there!

For now most of their yard time is spent in the backyard. They climb and swing and slide on the play structure, splash in one of the pools, explore the yard, or blow bubbles on the deck.

Heck, they blow bubbles in the living room too. That’s just how they roll. And why not, bubbles are fun!

Brett was still recovering from being sick earlier in the week, and we were trying to keep Annalie from getting sick. We figured getting out of the house was a good idea, so Brett stayed home with his dad while Dana and I took Leo and Annalie to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The largest museum of its kind in the southeastern U.S., it’s also totally free!

Well, the permanent exhibits are free. The rotating special exhibits charge a not-cheap entrance fee, which is the only reason we didn’t go to Chocolate: The Exhibition. I did a high-school term paper on chocolate once for English class (the teacher told us we could pick any subject we liked, and that we should pick something we were interested in), so I was rather disappointed I couldn’t compare what I remembered from my paper to the museum’s exhibit. We did go into Chocolate: The Gift Shop though, and bought some treats. That helped me forget my disappointment.

There’s a really cool butterfly garden at the museum, a recreated dry tropical forest filled with different kinds of butterflies and snakes and even a three-toed sloth. The sloth and the snakes aren’t roaming freely, but the butterflies are. They flit around from tree to feeding station. I guess they occasionally land on a visitor’s head or shoulder, and when Annalie heard that she got all excited. She was actually walking through the conservatory calling out, “Here, butterflies! I have a head for you to land on!” Sadly, none of them took her up on the invitation, but it didn’t faze her.

She was too busy hollering at us to c’mon, hurry up, let’s see what’s next! That girl rarely meanders when a full-on gallop is possible. Leo was more sedate and didn’t rush, so we spent the afternoon encouraging one kid to slow down and another kid to maybe move along a bit faster.

(It reminded me of when we used to take walks around our neighborhood in Maryland with our friend Angela and her girls Gabby and Annie. Annalie was always rocketing ahead of the moms pulling Annie in the wagon, and Gabby would be a block behind us, moseying along in her dreamy way. Ang and I used to laugh because we were barely walking together, it was more like running a relay. I’d run ahead and wait with Annalie at the corner for Ang and her girls to catch up, we’d cross the street, and Annalie would be off again. Good times.)

One thing on which Annalie and Leo do agree is that loud noises in enclosed spaces are not cool. They both really liked this dinosaur exhibit with an Acrocanthosaurus skeleton and models of some pterosaurs and some kind of sauropod, but the minute it got noisy, they were both ready to leave. Dana and I thought it was funny that both cousins are so sensitive to noise. I guess it’s not that strange. Many kids don’t like loud noises. But that day it was funny because they both froze and clapped their hands over their ears at exactly the same time, almost like they’d rehearsed it. So we said good-bye to the dinos and decided it was time to head back outside and wander down the street to Capitol Square.

I have a thing for state capitol buildings. Whenever I happen to be in a capital city I try to visit the building that houses the state government (although we lived in Tempe for two years and, ridiculously, never managed to visit the capitol in Phoenix all of ten minutes from our house). When I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I often walked the mile from campus to the capitol building. I’d take the elevator up to the viewing deck in the tower so I could look out over the city. That was my thinking spot. And I loved strolling around the hallways of that beautiful building, hearing my footsteps echo and admiring the murals and gardens, knowing that as a taxpayer and a citizen of Nebraska it was my capitol, that I had just as much of a right to be there as any senator or legislative aide.

All of that to say, if I’m two blocks away from a state capitol building, you bet your sweet bippy I’m gonna want to at least go take a look at it.

We mostly just explored the grounds around the building, since neither of us really had any interest in dragging two hot, tired preschoolers into a government building just then. Luckily there are a bunch of cannons (from various wars, I guess) scattered around the place, perfect for climbing on.

And dangling from. And jumping off of. And sitting on.

Annalie thought so, at least. Leo had no interest in climbing on the cannons, thank you very much. He kept telling Annalie, “No climbing!” because we had just been at the museum where he’d been reminded several times not to climb on certain exhibits. Dana and I didn’t see any signs telling us to stay off the cannons, and we did see a couple of keep-off-the-grass signs, so we figured they’d have told us if they wanted us to stay off the cannons. We assured Leo it was okay if he wanted to climb, but he stuck to hovering nearby and looking on skeptically as Annalie monkeyed around.

Leo chose instead to do a little alfresco interpretive dance for us. We all enjoyed that.

One thing that Dana and I both found interesting and a little odd was that there are monuments and memorials to Confederate soldiers scattered all around the square. (This probably deserves a post in its own right, but let’s face it, this thing is already monstrously long so I’m just gonna address it here.)

Dana and I are both Nebraska natives, and though we’ve both lived in the South and the Southwest, we’re still very much Midwesterners. Perhaps because we grew up in a state that was on the “winning” side of the War Between the States, we both found the Confederate memorials a bit jarring. I know there was more to the Civil War than ending slavery; I know many people insist that keeping the Confederate spirit alive is about Southern pride, not racism. And I guess you could honor the spirit of patriotism that led those men to fight to defend their homes and loved ones, if not the reason the war was waged in the first place. An argument could even be made for leaving those monuments up as a reminder to us to never let something like that happen again, I suppose.

But I don’t get it. To me this is akin to Germany leaving up statues to honor the “brave Nazi soldiers” who fought in WWII. Any Southerners out there care to weigh in? I’m willing to admit I don’t necessarily have all the facts or all the background. I’m open to new thoughts here.

Edited to add: Lynn’s comment made me think about this, and I decided that comparing Confederate soldiers to Nazis is unfair….More in the comments.

Anyhoo. Leaving such weighty matters behind, we grabbed a quick drink of water from this cool old drinking fountain.

I wish I’d thought to look for a year on it somewhere. I love it when stuff like this lasts for a long time, like a signpost pointing to an era when things were made to last. Any guesses how old this is? I think it must be close to 100 years old, but I’m certainly no expert. It might be a clever replica of an antique that was installed two years ago, for all I know.

Back at Dana and Paul’s house, we ordered pizza for dinner and ate some of our museum chocolate for dessert. The kids played happily for a while longer, and then it was time for us to head back to our hotel so Annalie could ditch her lifejacket and learn how to swim in the hotel pool.

Thanks for spending your birthday with us, Dana! We hope you had as much fun as we did.

Whew! I finally wrote about our super-fun day in North Carolina! *cue the streams of light from heaven and the angels singing*

My mom flew back home a couple of days ago. It was wonderful to have her here for so long during the first part of Troy’s long deployment. After a farewell lunch at In-N-Out, we took her to the airport and hugged and kissed her good-bye. Luckily her flights home were uneventful. We miss you already, Mom!

As I mentioned before, when Joe & Kassie were here, Brenda and I took them to paint pottery. Kassie requested a dottery lesson, which was kind of funny, because Brenda and I had been scheming up a How-to-Paint-Dottery post, complete with step-by-step photos. That’ll be coming soon, I hope.

Joe used masking tape and created a pretty cool—and very manly—mug.

Kassie did a great job on her dottery mug, I think! As she said, it sorta looks like fireworks. I love the colors.

Brenda painted this little bowl to use as a water dish when she’s painting. Adorable.

I, on the other hand, had the weirdest day of painting ever. For some reason, everything was just slightly off with me that day. I had the idea to paint this little bowl like an orange, and it wasn’t working like I’d envisioned. I was struggling with the paint (my pottery studio recently switched brands of paint, and I’m still getting used to the new stuff which just acts different than the old stuff) and getting all frustrated. I jokingly called it “the doomed orange.”

Brenda had already finished her pieces, so she offered to finish the last coat of orange and paint the details in for me. I gladly handed it over to her. (It turned out better than I expected it to, mostly because of Brenda’s help, I’m sure.) I decided to paint some dottery. At least there, I know what I’m doing. Right?

Hmm, not so much. I chose pinks and oranges, but these new paints are slightly different colors than the old ones. And these new paints are funky before they’re fired…two of the pinks I used looked decidedly purple as I was painting, which was weird. Then I made a mistake on one of the circles and decided to just go with it, switching up the design and then ending with random dots in the remaining white spaces. Now I know there’s a reason I stick with the same design over and over again, because I do not like the way it turned out at all. Like I said, it was a weird day. Oh well, next time will be better.

At least my crocheting’s going well! I made this green, turquoise, and blue blanket for Erin’s brand-new nephew Christian. Isn’t he cute!?

Christian’s parents are Erin’s big brother Shawn and his wife Carissa. Here’s a funny story about Shawn: I transferred to North at the beginning of 10th grade and didn’t really know anyone. Erin and I had the same homeroom and the same lunch period, so we ended up eating together with two or three freshman girls…and this guy with long black hair and a scraggly mustache. I had no idea why this guy was eating lunch with a bunch of 9th- and 10th-grade girls, but everyone seemed to know him, and he was nice enough if a bit gross, so I just went with it. About two months into the school year, he was messing with Erin one day and she said, “Man, you’re gonna be in so much trouble when I tell Mom!”

Suddenly it all clicked and I blurted out, “Oh! Shawn is your BROTHER!” I got identical weird looks from Erin and Shawn before they started laughing. Shawn said I must’ve thought he was some kind of perv, eating lunch with a bunch of girls four years younger than him. I still laugh when I think about that.

And now that I’m done with Erin’s nephew’s blanket, I’ll be starting another. My brother and his fiancee are expecting their first baby in mid-November…my very first niece!