Irene is 3

Irene is now three years old.

 Due to Grandaddy's funeral, Irene's party was delayed a day.

It is a strange thing to delay your three year old's birthday party for the funeral of your eighty-nine year old grandfather.

 We ended up having a sort of impromptu party because we were also having Harvest Home at church, which meant that a bunch Irene's friends were going to be there. So, Ellee, in her typical miracle worker way, put together a party that looked like it had been planned for at least 4 weeks in advance. This is why children have mothers. If I'd have planned this thing it would have like one balloon and six pretzel sticks for the kids to eat. And plenty of beer for the adults. As it went, everyone had plenty of balloons, beer, cheese, and cake. And presents. And friends.

I swear she is almost a different kid now. 

She's actually interested in opening every single thing.

Here's some other stuff from the day.

Irene wanted to sit with Grandma on the big chairs at Chipotle.

In typical fashion, the Alaska grandparents showed up on Halloween.

I got stung by a bee but I'm better now.

Cricket

Well, we went against what seems to be conventional wisdom and got a new dog just a couple of days after Katie died. Her name is Cricket. She is a one-year-old Rat Terrier (we think so at least). She likes to chew on toys, and pee and poop on the dog mat. We're working on that. She loves her crack-of-dawn walks with Kyle. She also loves to play with Evangeline and Irene, and went so far as to dance in a circle holding hands with them the other day. Having a dog that is 1 is much different than a dog that is 13.

Smile!

Here are some more pictures. I finally got Ol' Scratchy (our camera) out and decided that having some pictures with scratched centers is better than nothing. Here are some pictures from a little trip we took to Homeland Creamery. It was fun but we saw surprisingly few cows. No one cared, though, because there was a hayride and ice cream at the end.

A beautiful "fall" day for the tour.

She fed this little calf a whole huge bottle of milk later.

A very attentive hayrider.

Evangeline and her friend Lily held hands for most of the hayride.

Where's the cows?

Ice Cream!

This ice cream really was good.

Irene, Carter, Lily, River, Evangeline and some other kids I don't know.

Oh, here are the bottles for the babies.

They got to "milk" (water) a "cow" (replica).

Irene wasn't fooled one bit.

Katie

We are so sad to say goodbye to our dear Katie.

She was hit by a car tonight and died.

She was buried in the garden.

Katie was really the perfect dog. Yeah, she peed on the carpet too much, but she never once bit the kids, even when baby Irene poked at her eyeballs. She didn't bark. She didn't really do much of anything but love us. She was just a little too good at getting underneath fences. This is certainly the end of an era.

Rest in peace little dog.

"Every valley shall be filled, 

and every mountain and hill shall be made low, 

and the crooked shall become straight, 

and the rough places shall become level ways, 

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." 

Luke 3:5-6  

Alaska This Year

(It's been a long time since I've done this.)

Well, I've been in Alaska for a week and a half now, and we got the internet fixed, and have pictures on various cameras, and have a computer that can do this, so I'll give it a try. It should be no surprise that these pictures are all out of order. It will be more exciting that way. So, here's our Alaska Summer so far...

Super Deluxe treehouse. (Beth, does this remind you of the one we had?)

The girls took their maiden voyage with only Grandma to
Alaska.

They fell asleep the last 15 minutes of an 8 hour flight. Grandma was unsure how she was going to get them out of the plane, get the luggage, check in for the last flight and get them into the tiny airplane.

The stewardesses helped carry the girls out of the airplane, and Hero Pop Pop surprised them in Anchorage, anticipating that it might be a struggle to get everything in order. Grandma was quite happy to see him.

Bath pic from 1976.

Enjoying the grounds.

Pop Pop is still crazy enough to do this.

Grandparents, Seahorses, Grand Daughters.

Ammi showed us all up by swimming out to the raft without a peep about the cold water.
(I also discovered that she can easily touch her toes while sitting on the raft. She discovered I can't. I need to stretch.)

GG was the lifeguard.

I remember seeing pictures like this of my sister and me and Grandma T. I thought grandma was old then (sorry, grandma). It's hard to believe she's 90 years older than Evangeline.  

But what a wonderful day. Evangeline is really good at making sand turtles.

GG got into the action, too. 94 years between these two.

Evangeline may be a good deckhand some day.

Grandma teaching the important things. Coffee and solitaire.

Back in Greensboro...we had a few moving concerts before we left.

Of course Irene refused to pose with Evangeline for a leaving picture.

Me, still not believing that my mom is crazy enough to fly cross-country-plus with these children.

Breakfast with Ammi.

Of course.

Of course too.

Irene making sure GG is eating her breakfast. Irene takes great care of GG.

Coming GG's hair in the morning.

We've had a lot more action than this. Lots and lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, saunas, moose, all that. You can imagine it...

Wish you were here.