Coming Up Roses

Out of all the seasons of the year, Missouri does spring the best. Just the way everything suddenly turns green and starts blooming. On top of our usual busy-ness, we've been outside a lot enjoying the weather – before it turns blasted-hot.

These were the first to bloom: crocuses. And we've been having a spate of daffodils and buttercups. Apparently they like the clay-like soil that we have around here. Shame, since I like tulips better. This morning on the way to church, we were admiring the redbuds.

Drew: Look at the redbuds. ...There's one. ...And there's one.
G: I see them! A redbud over there. ...And over there.

BB: Look, Daddy, there's a green butt. ...Two green butts. ...And some more over there!

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March's pictures.

Losses

I've simply lost track of the last time I posted monthly pictures, so I'll start fresh with January and go from there (February). Look at that, all caught up.

Missing Some

Pictures for most of September – I have yet to load August or any of the Florida pictures. Maybe I'll skip doing the latter, since I already show-and-tell-ed most of them anyway.

Religious Experience

We had a full weekend – and no pictures to show for it. (Content yourself with the June and July albums: there's nearly 200 pictures between them, and that's the pared down version.)

Saturday
One of the Sisters in Jesus the Lord made perpetual vows, making her the first to do so, and another, Sr Damiana, made first vows. Though some elements were similar as at an ordination, the mass for profession of vows was more beautiful in my opinion: veils, rings and tears, oh my. (How cool to get to wear your wedding gown all day, everyday?) And the Benedictines of Mary graced the mass with their fantastic singing as they did at the ordination in May. Afterward, Sr D had a little piano recital at their house. Even though she's been at it only some months, Drew said she was quite good. (I wasn't able to attend because I was busy getting dinner ready.) Segue: G's going to have piano lessons this year.

In the evening, we had two seminarians to dinner. Our parish housed and fed six of them for the summer, and only now did I get around to doing my part. (Can you believe of all the houses they visited, only one other family offered them an alcoholic beverage?) They were delightful company, and I left my kitchen a wreck – i.e. well-loved – after they left, I was so tired.

Sunday
The Sisters held a concert at Redemptorist. We were going to take the girls, and then I decided that we all needed a nap, so Drew went by himself. Although I'm told I missed some great music, including one of Drew's favorite organ pieces, the two-hour nap was totally worth it.

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We've had pictures (links above), so now it's time we had some videos.

Jessica, our physical therapist, has said that bouncing would be good for Z, so here's where the Rody earns his keep – again.


For some days now, Z has been channeling her Native American roots: I call it the Pow-Wow Stomp.

I Can See Clearly Now... Sort Of

The girls took these pictures (G, top; BB, above) of me minutes before our departure for the hospital on Saturday. Even though it was nearly noon, the sky had darkened into a heavy downpour. I wrote the below post Friday afternoon – unfortunately, the eye part is still true.

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Nearly three weeks after first experiencing symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as episcleritis, I still can't see clearly out of my right eye (like glaucoma?), even though the redness (and pain) is finally completely gone. The worst of it was Memorial Day weekend, one week in, when I thought for sure I must be inadvertently closing my eye to the pain and watering – in reality, my eye was so blurred I was practically blind. And last Saturday, at two weeks, I had a horrible flare up (even though it'd been improving considerably in the preceding days) that sent me to bed early. I hesitate yet to make a trip to the eye doc until after the baby to see if it won't really clear up then.

Meanwhile, today I'm 39 weeks and 3 days – and no sign of baby. If I make it to Tuesday's appt (at 40 weeks), my OB will want to schedule an induction. But my money's on Sunday.

And before the deluge of new baby pictures, here are the albums from April and May.

A Double

Maybe you felt something lacking when I forgot to post February's pictures? Maybe you'd start to feel jilted if I forgot March's too.

TOPh: Date That Picture

My mom found these and brought them on her recent trip – she went home on Thursday. She can't remember what year they were taken, maybe 1986 or 1987, or where (in Taiwan) for that matter. There's no time stamp on the back – woe to the pre-digi cam age –, and it's hard to gauge how old I or my cousins are.

But the adults are Shiao YeePoh, the boys' mom, San YeePoh, and AhTai, my AhPoh (from L to R).

And this is me with San YeePoh's husband. Before my own kids, I was pretty familiar with the terms "YeePoh", "grandma's sister", and "AhTai", "grandma's mother", because women tend to outlive men? But now that my own kids stand a pretty good chance of meeting the YeePohs' respective other halves, I'm at a loss as to what their title is. I threw out "YeeGong" once in desperation, which was hilariously seconded by Shiao YeePoh's husband over Skype, but apparently, my mom tells me, it doesn't sound what you might call proper. So until the actual meeting(s) when someone can settle this for us, we'll just call them "Yie-Yie", which is just another term for "grandfather".

One a Day

Though I'm not fully into the swing of taking pictures again, I've decided in a pseudo new year's resolution moment that I'm going to take at least one picture a day of something the girls are doing, so I'll have something to show and tell. I think I did fairly well for January – you've seen most of these already.

Random TOPhs (of 9827)

#5448

Three guesses as to who that chubby-love is. I can't believe it either: it's G! At about two and a half months.

That was fun. I'm going to do another.

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#7735

This one doesn't go as far back, only to our first summer here. I think you'll recognize G there in the striped pink and purple suit with the cup in her hands, and the little boy in front of her is Jude. This was during the KC Irish Fest down at the Crown Center. It was dastardly hot that day, so it was a mercy for them to open the fountain up to the kids.

Okay, okay, one more. I'm going to see if I can't get something "forgotten".

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#38
Bah, no one you or I know: a picture of one of Drew's residents when he was a resident assistant at Tech.

Cat-Like Reflexes

G took a real liking to some of those ding-ling ball cat toys (at a friend's house) when she was a todd. So it stands to reason that other cat toys should be as fun. (That's Elizabeth's sister Emily – at their house for Christmas.)

These are December's pictures: not much you haven't already seen before, if you care to have a look-see.

This one in particular I'd like to point out however. I made those for the downstairs bedroom, my second ever window treatment project. When we moved in, that window had only one half-working – as in it came only halfway down – mini blind set on the left side. I don't know why the sudden need to acquire some privacy for our intermittent guests, but I'm sure they'll appreciate it. The hardest part was matching the splotches (sea foam green?) on the wall for which I had to drag Drew to the fabric store with me, i.e. he's more adept at textile color coordinating. After taking this picture, I decided to shorten them another couple of inches.

Random TOPh: #1042 (of 9414)

Using an online random number generator, I pulled this That Old Photo from the archives.

In the summer of 1999, Drew and I took a great road trip (scandalous, I know) through Utah to San Diego; up the California coast to San Francisco via Los Angeles, stopping at all the mission churches we could find; back down through Sacramento to Lake Havasu, AZ, where Drew's grandma lived; and returning to the Denver/Boulder area through southern Colorado (think: Mesa Verde). I'm reasonably sure that this is the Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura, though it doesn't look quite the same: it seems the place was restored in 2005.

Light Duty

As I've mentioned before, I haven't really been in the mood to make Kodak moments lately and it shows in the number of pictures (no videos at all!) I took this month. If it had been one of those old school rolls of film, I might not even have had enough to get the roll developed. I'll try to be better next month, being it's Christmas and all.

School Picture Chronicle

G's pictures came back this week and they turned out much better than last year's. Oh, to remember how difficult things were in Ms April's class, the complete about face since being in Ms Stephanie's. Can you see the difference? We'll actually be able to give G's picture out this year LOL!

Handy Andy

My birthday's coming up this month and I was led to believe that I would be receiving a homemade laundry rack this weekend. After eagerly scouring Lowe's for all the required parts, I was informed that it would be a couple weekends more before I could put my present to good use: other necessities are currently on order: these things take time. I was going to regale you with pictures of the building process, of the lovingly finished product, but it seems you'll have to look at these pictures from October instead.


I think you can see some of the girls' personalities in their singing styles: BB's is a touch of the reckless abandon, loud and carefree...


G's is careful and "exact" even if her tone is a bit off.

p.s. The girls had a fantastic time trick-or-treating. First, we took them to Drew's former co-worker's house – he retired; 31 October is his wife's birthday so she likes to do it up big – for a spell; we hit up their cul-de-sac; and then they did about a dozen houses in our neighborhood. Z, who had fallen asleep minutes after we pulled away from our house, slept quietly until morning, missing everything including the candy. Sure, you may think me mean, but she's got a lifetime of candy-eating ahead of her, what's a few more months.

Z-Blueberry

I can't remember when ago it was that we first started adding "Boo" to the end of Z's name, but it's stuck. More recently, I've been joking that we should change it to "blueberry" or just "blue" in consequence of how much Z loves blueberries, whether sweet or sour. This particular weekend morning, she'd been eating her blueberries and doing a little dance after each bite – you have to fast forward to 1:10 and 2:00 to see it. And you should have seen (prior to the camera being turned on) the fight she put up when she thought AhPoh was trying to steal her blueberries!

Well, since I've already shared the majority of our other pictures from our trips to Shatto Dairy, the Combat Air Museum and hot air balloon rally both in Topeka, our Oktoberfest celebration and AhPoh's visit to date, there aren't many left over to look at this month: a comparatively small album.

TOPh: Stuffed Animals

It's been too long: I'm going to revisit That Old Photo.

Do you love my hair? And my stuffed animal collection (c. 1990)? (I'm sure it's lurking about in its entirety in boxes in my mom's house somewhere.) I remember how carefully I arranged them all so each one could be seen, and that's a painstaking task when you consider how small some of them are. I don't think I particularly loved or cherished any one of them, though I can recall the special circumstances in which some of them came to be in my possession; nor do I remember ever playing with them as you sometimes see only-children depicted on TV playing tea party with stuffed animals (and dolls) as guests. They were simply bed-decoration, an occasional hindrance to space-finding. And now I know them for what they really are: dust collecting germ magnets.

She's a Maniac

Man, I am just crazy with this new camera: so many pictures in August! Although it's not half as bad as July.


A (windy) day at the park.


This is another version of the piggy head bob.


Not my video but hilarious.


Okay, and this one is really cute.

The Cake

Wow, I had no idea how many pictures were taken in July until I began to amass them for this post. You've already seen most of the ones from our various trips, so I'll leave you with highlights and miscellany, and the ever popular video clips (below).




This is the toy, out of the box, that Aunt Christie gave us (see here).

In the First

Looking over the pictures for this month, Z will never be able to complain that I never took any pictures of her. Coincidentally, I was noticing that our iPhoto collection had its 10-year anniversary in June. In that time, we've accumulated nearly 9000 pictures.


I love how Z laughs to herself after she puts the pretzel in my hand.

The Two Month Pile Up

I got a little complacent last month and decided to put off uploading photos for April, and boy what a mistake. Both April and May were busy in terms of photo taking, so thankfully I have a handy little uploader tool, else I think I would have been at it for hours. Well, check that off my to-do list.