Chomp!

This is what Julia's leg looks like today after Ella took a bite out of her thigh Sunday morning. If you look closely, you can see 6 or 8 red tooth marks where Ella broke the skin through Julia's pants. Sadly, this is not Ella's first offense, and even worse she seems to bite harder each time.

Sticky special Ella

We got taffy from Aunt Kim a loooong time ago and finally got around to "pulling it out" yesterday. It was un-pulled taffy, so all three girls buttered up their hands to get to work. Ella was very much not impressed. She's always been a bit of a neat freak (often wiping her mouth and fingers after each and every bite at dinner) and so slathering on some butter wasn't exactly her idea of a good time. Adding the taffy and telling her to pull it didn't help much. This picture only begins to show her revoltion at the whole thing. It was pretty funny.

In other Ella news, in the last day or two, her prayers have gotten a lot more special. First she blesses each family member individually to be special, and then a separate round of "bless mommas bones to be special". We just bite our lips and hope that she remembers the food in there somewhere.

First day of work

What did people do before the internet? You can feel free to leave comments below, but since I'm still blogging from my phone, I won't see them for a while. The no internet saga is longer than I want to type withmy thumbs, but just know that ISPs all seem to be incompetent. So instead, I give you my first day of work picture.

It was a bit different going to work after a break that was far longer than any school summer break I've ever had. The first week is over now, and thengsare going just fine. First weeks are always a bit slow until you start to figure out what is going on. Monday morning I'll be at Northwestern for some metrology that should be my first actual positive contribution.

But today is the weekend. I went running without getting lost, and we're tired of unpacking boxes, so we'll have to find something fun to do, even if we're technologically living in the dark ages.

When we moved out of Wymount 7 years ago we reserved a 10 foot U-haul. They did

When we moved out of Wymount 7 years ago, we reserved a 10 foot U-haul. They didn't have any, so they gave us a 16 footer, which was a bit of overkill. We moved to St. George in a 10' truck and all our moves since then have either been in-town or professionally done. Until this one.

I've knows several people recently with 2-4 kids who have tried to move with a 26' truck, only to discover on loading day that they didn't fit. But 26' is as big as they come, so thats what we reserved and hoped for the best. Turns out that all our friends must have a bunch of junk. We fit just fine and were maybe 80% full. So I got to drive the monster 350 miles while pulling our prism behind. I figure we were 45' long or so. Shannon took the girls in the civic which was a whole different adventure. The drive went pretty well, other than the $150 of gas I had to put in, but I think I'll stick to driving little cars in the future.

Yesterday we said good bye to our house. It was a nice house and cleaning it up

Yesterday we said good bye to our house. It was a nice house, and cleaning it up and packing everything left us remembering all of our favorite things. The spacious storage, the swings (outside and in), the space, our manhattan mist bedroom, our big kitchen. Also, we realize that it will probably be a long time before we live somewhere that big again (if we ever do).

I started blogging a virtual tour of the house when we moved in, but never finished. I suppose we move more often than I blog! I realized this week that Ella just turned 3 a few months ago and we're already moving her on to her third state. Even my dad made it to age 5 before his 3rd state (I think).

We'll miss you, house! We hope someone nice buys you! (the sooner the better)