Practice

Bridget holding her friend's little brother's hand while they wait for some people to pass by.

 We've been talking a lot about what we can do to get another baby.  We're updating our profile with LDSFS and trying to take more pictures of the stuff we do.  Mostly, though, we're praying.  At Family Home Evening last week we informed Bridget that she is the angel in the family and she needs to ask Heavenly Father to help us find her brother or sister.  "I think a sister." They won't be very close in age (at least four years even if we were chosen today), but I know Bridget will take good care of her little brother/sister.  We have a room upstairs next to our bedroom and as soon as we know what we're getting, we'll paint it.  (For now it's Uncle Aaron's Room.  Uncle Aaron has been on a mission for almost a year, but that's still what we call the upstairs guest room.)  Even though it's kind of in the middle of everything, it's the quietest room in the house.  I love taking naps in there.  And we insulated the floor (the ceiling of the office downstairs) when we finished the basement.  Always thinking!

I think we're in the mood to get everything updated right now because all of us "miss" him/her.  That's weird to say...  We feel the absence of another person in our family and it hasn't always felt like that.  Life is busy and happy and will continue to be - we're just waiting in position for the starting gun to go off and begin a new chapter.

Photo Album

When we moved into the house we live in now I decided to make our front room a photo album room. I had a small collection of old family portraits from Brian's mom and I added to it with photos from both sets of my grandparents.
I'm in this room a lot teaching piano lessons. I love looking up to see my grandparents cutting their wedding cake, Brian's great-grandparents looking debonair in their wedding photo, my great-great-grandma holding up her baby and smiling at the camera... Of course we've added our own family photos and a lot of photos of Bridget. In the corner we have two photos from right after our sealing to Bridget in the Salt Lake Temple.
It's fun to have our best memories in the same room with our ancestors.

The Old Neighborhood

When my family moved to North Carolina in 1992 we had to stay in a hotel for a few days while my parents closed on the house. This hotel was right by a Waffle House. The bulbs in the "W" of the sign were always (ALWAYS) burned out. We called it The Affle (Awful) House. Anyway, my Grandpa (he and my Grandma had made the trip out to North Carolina to help us move in) referred to this hotel as The Old Neighborhood.

That's a lot of unnecessary background, I suppose. I thought it would be fun to take pictures along a walk Bridget and I take pretty regularly to a park in the town where we live. It's probably close to a mile away, but it's a very pretty walk. Our town is a nice mix of suburban and rural, as you'll see. Here is what we saw on our walk last Friday:

The pumpkin that grew through the fence on the corner. Bridget squeals every time she sees it.

This isn't the only horse along our route, but he was the only one out to say hello that day.

This old truck is near a barn and some more horses. The sepia makes it look antique instead of junky, don't you think? :)

This is not okay. I don't care if it is Halloween. I couldn't relax knowing that this thing was on my porch. Boooo.

Finally! We're at the park.

Bridget has a very mature sense of humor. She likes to make this face at me when I'm with my piano students because she knows it makes me laugh out loud. And then my piano students don't know why I'm laughing. Hee!

This would be a better picture if my arms were longer. Alas...

We saw these grapes on the way home. Beautiful color combo.

We stopped at a cute pumpkin patch for some mini pumpkins.

More fruit! What a beautiful time of year. That concludes our tour. :)

Take Pictures First

We have a really wonderful and, I think, unusual neighborhood. Brian and I could tell you who lives in every house in our little cul-de-sac (about 25 homes). We even know the names of most of their children. Even though we see each other a lot and we're friends, a few of the ladies in the neighborhood wanted to really do it right and have a big block party. They had a dunking machine, cotton candy, snow cones. Ah, snow cones. It took Bridget the usual 20 minutes to warm up (even when she's with family it takes 20 minutes), then she and Clara were running from one end of the street to the other. She and Brian were watching the dunking machine and I was at a table with some of my friends. Bridget came running over, "MOMMA! I NEED MY TICKETS!" (They had to give a ticket to get cotton candy or popcorn or a snow cone.) The next time I saw her she looked like this:
Her dancing dress and white sweater (nice choice on my part, no?) and face totally covered in blue juice. Ah! We took pictures before we put stain stick on everything and soaked it for an hour. (Good news! Everything came out perfectly clean.)

A Very Very Very Fine House

I want to do posts about our house and neighborhood, so I'm going to start with the outside of the house at my favorite time of year. In fall 2007 I planted hundreds of spring bulbs (tulips, daffodils and hyacinth) and I looked forward to seeing them come up for months. Then we went to see my sister and her family in California the week that the trees (Prairiefire Crabapples) were in full bloom and all the flowers were up. Der. A few weeks ago I planted red tulip bulbs in some of the blank spots. I have more to plant, but I helped my Mom in her yard and I helped one of my friends plant all her bulbs so I'm a little burned out. Anyway! Our house looks amazing in spring. (I'll try to find some other seasons - it looks pretty to me almost all year. Right now everything is dead and we need some snow to cover it up!)