New pix and such

Hello! We're still around, starting to stir from our winter hibernation. Okay, so the winter hibernation has mostly been in my head, but we really are spending more time outdoors despite the chilly temperatures that continue to plague us.

We've just last week returned from a trip down Tennessee way, for Grandpa Great's interment. We buried his ashes in this gorgeous little cemetery, in the Montgomery family plot right next to his wife. And when I say we buried, I mean that rather literally. Since this was a small affair and a small cemetery, the minister (a distant cousin) handed out shovels and he and Mark did the hard work while the littlest ones (Evynn, Gaz, and Merynn) helped by tossing in handfuls of red Tennessee earth. It was perhaps a bit morbid, but still very sweet. If I can't manage to finagle a sea burial for myself, I would love to be buried by my grandchildren and great-grandchildren (though that's getting very much ahead of myself on several levels!)

Sadly, the pictures from the cemetery did not turn out very well at all, so I haven't uploaded those yet. I need to do some work to try to fix the weird color/exposure issues with those, but I did upload a bunch of other photos from before and during the trip.

The first part of the trip (can't do anything in order, can I?) we stopped through Evansville for a night and had an early Easter egg hunt with Nana and Pehpaw, then headed down to the Nashville area, where we spent a couple of days visiting the Sandersons and their kids: Fletcher, Lily, and Malcolm. Lily was born just a few weeks after Agatha, and they combined their unholy affection for all things pink and princessy into something truely awe-inspiring. And loud. But they had fun and little Malcolm wasn't too traumatized, I hope. (As for the adults, we all had a great time too, but we wore many fewer loud clomply play shoes and did less fighting over mermaid costumes.)

We met up with the Mitchell clan at Henry Horton State Park, down by Chapel Hill, TN. When we weren't at the aforementioned cemetery, there was a fantastic dinner at a Mexican Restaurant, and a spontaneous trip to Lynchburg for some of us legal folks to go check out the Jack Daniel distillery. While Mark, Emily, Kyle, and I were there, the kids and Grandma and Grandpa planned a show for us, with singing and some acting, and a side of ham. Gaz had a really fabulous time, considering the funeral overtones, but she is still trying to grasp mortality.

On that subject, she found a dead squirrel in the park a couple of weeks ago and had many questions about what "dead" is. This has come up enough over the past year that I'd hoped I would get a break from those questions, but no dice. I guess it's part of the deal.

Other than the above events, life here is much as it ever is. There's a lot of art projects going on, a lot of singing of strange little narratives, and a lot of toys everywhere.

Festivities and Frustrations

Sorry there are no pictures up yet. There are technical difficulties. Rest assured that pictures exist, and I'll get them uploaded as soon as I can.

So Halloween has now passed us by, and this is the source of my biggest frustrations. First off, the costume itself did not go well. I had a lot of errors to correct, because I have been extra exhausted lately, which translated into inattention and clumsiness. Another issue is that Gaz has a huge growth spurt to the tune of an inch or so immediately after her birthday, so she ended up a bit too big for the biggest size of the pattern I had from last time. There were problems with the plan I had, too, which is annoying because the whole plan was for this to be easier and less hand-intensive than last time. The long and the short of it is that I spent a whole month and no small amount of frustration and blood and banjo time to make this thing.

After all this, she wore the Mothra costume she insisted on for all of ten minutes on Friday before complaining that it was itchy and made her "a little pink" (which I think means it was hot), so she frantically demanded that I get her out of it. I did get some pictures of the finished costume. I took it with us to the Halloween event we went to up at our old favorite park, but she refused to wear it, even after seeing all the other kids dressed up. She got her bag of treats there, courtesy of Ald. Gene Schulter, and then was totally done with Halloween. She already had a bag of candy, so why would she need to dress up in that itchy old costume and go out in search of more?

I have resolved to not make Halloween costumes anymore. I'll make play clothes and assemble play costumes, and she can just pick from those next year.

Complicating Halloween this year is the passing of Mark's grandpa, whom we call Grandpa Great now that there are a bunch of great-grandchildren in the family. He lived a good, long life (he just turned 95 earlier in October) and died peacefully and without pain. It's not a surprise and he's definitely in a better place now, but it's never fun to say goodbye. I'm going to miss his thrilling tales of working at NASA.