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.

Lernin' with Gaz

The Biology Lesson:
"Hawks believe in people, but they don't know what they are. Hawks think people are their food and they eat them up. And they eat their birdseed very well."
"Before I was born, I used to climb up and look out of your mouth."
"When scabs run away, they leave little pink footprints behind."

Stay tuned for more edyoocayshun!

Bloggy Maintenance

As you who do not read with an RSS thingy can see, I've been fiddling with the layout. Blogger went and got all modern and the old layout wasn't cooperating with their new toys, so I decided to change everything around.

In the process, though, I lost our links, which are probably somewhere, but I'm a bit busy lately to go digging for them. So if there was a link there before that you want me to put up now, just leave me a comment.

And now, back to me doing productive things!

Bulletin!

If you put a crazy straw in the keyhole of Gaz's bedroom door, you can use it as a lever to release the alien octopuses that eat people.

In more sane news, Gaz sends her thanks for all the nice Valentines she received. She's also been making a ton of her own, and we are now practically drowning in hearts. She's having a good time, though, so can't complain too much.

Today

Gaz colored the bottom of her right foot with a black marker and went for a stroll all over our beige carpet. I was more than a little angry, sent her to her room without the markers, and thankfully the Atlantis cleaner thing removed the marks that I found. (I think I just found another one, but the light is strange this time of day.)

I checked on her in her room, and she was busily and cheerfully coloring me a picture (with nice, washable crayons, I might add) to help me feel better.

Then we made a pot of Montana Gold tea (which is, incidentally, the best tea in the world) and drank tea with milk from her groovy 70's plastic teacups. The cucumber sandwiches didn't go over quite as well with the Gaz, who prefers her cukes and her sammich to be prepared and served individually. I sure ate well, though.

Now she's sitting next to me, buried under all the couch pillows, sighing heavily. "I'm having a rest because it's been a hard day!"

"What was the hardest part of the day?" I ask, expecting the morning's drama to figure in somewhere, or maybe all the coloring. Or maybe even all that patience that had to be exercised while waiting for tea to brew, waiting for me to finish some phone calls I had to make. Something like that.

"Drinking all that tea today was REALLY HARD WORK, Mom." Of course.