William holding his sister
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Progress
Anna and William are both making a lot of progress lately. I thought I’d write some of the latest things they’ve learned.
Anna has learned how to smile! When I go to get her out of her crib after a nap (as long as I don’t wait until she’s screaming at my neglect) she’ll smile at me with a big open mouth and coo and gurgle until I pick her up. Of course, if I spend too much time enjoying the smile and pleasant noises, they turn to cries of anger and frustration, but sometimes it’s worth it just to get as much out of the smiley girl as I can. She is also starting to try to suck on her hands. She hasn’t figured out yet how to separate the thumb, but she sometimes calms herself by sucking her hand for a little while when I can’t get to her and she wants to eat. Unfortunately, it never lasts very long.
William is making more and more progress on his speech. One of his latest favorite things is to talk about something being “too hard.” He’ll say “it’s too hard to” do this or that, whatever it is that he’s doing. But then he goes ahead and does it anyway. “It’s too hard to climb up,” he says as I take him up the hill at the park. But he doesn’t stop walking. “It’s too hard to eat this apple.” But he still eats it – core and all. (I gave him an apple yesterday morning. I offered to cut it for him, but he decided to just bite into it. When he realized that that was an effective way to eat it, he refused to give it back. I left him eating it while I made waffles and didn’t think anything of it. Later, he came to me with a face covered with apple juice and apple bits and asked to be wiped off. I asked him where he left the rest of the apple and went looking in the family room expecting to find the core sitting abandoned somewhere. Silly me. How would a 2 year-old know not to eat the core of his very first whole apple? There was no sign of the apple. William had eaten it, stem and all.)
William’s also learning the names of more and more animals. He loves to watch the Baby Einstein videos, especially all the animal ones, and I think that’s where he learned the majority of their names. And he’s getting better and better at making sentences. He was playing with his Sesame Street shape sorter the other day and pointed to one of the pictures on it and told me “Cookie Monster’s holding a pig.” I was impressed. I can’t wait for Anna to start being able to interact with him instead of just opening her eyes wide in terror when she hears his cry of “Baby ANNA!” that usually precedes him slapping at her face or stomach.
Anna has learned how to smile! When I go to get her out of her crib after a nap (as long as I don’t wait until she’s screaming at my neglect) she’ll smile at me with a big open mouth and coo and gurgle until I pick her up. Of course, if I spend too much time enjoying the smile and pleasant noises, they turn to cries of anger and frustration, but sometimes it’s worth it just to get as much out of the smiley girl as I can. She is also starting to try to suck on her hands. She hasn’t figured out yet how to separate the thumb, but she sometimes calms herself by sucking her hand for a little while when I can’t get to her and she wants to eat. Unfortunately, it never lasts very long.
William is making more and more progress on his speech. One of his latest favorite things is to talk about something being “too hard.” He’ll say “it’s too hard to” do this or that, whatever it is that he’s doing. But then he goes ahead and does it anyway. “It’s too hard to climb up,” he says as I take him up the hill at the park. But he doesn’t stop walking. “It’s too hard to eat this apple.” But he still eats it – core and all. (I gave him an apple yesterday morning. I offered to cut it for him, but he decided to just bite into it. When he realized that that was an effective way to eat it, he refused to give it back. I left him eating it while I made waffles and didn’t think anything of it. Later, he came to me with a face covered with apple juice and apple bits and asked to be wiped off. I asked him where he left the rest of the apple and went looking in the family room expecting to find the core sitting abandoned somewhere. Silly me. How would a 2 year-old know not to eat the core of his very first whole apple? There was no sign of the apple. William had eaten it, stem and all.)
William’s also learning the names of more and more animals. He loves to watch the Baby Einstein videos, especially all the animal ones, and I think that’s where he learned the majority of their names. And he’s getting better and better at making sentences. He was playing with his Sesame Street shape sorter the other day and pointed to one of the pictures on it and told me “Cookie Monster’s holding a pig.” I was impressed. I can’t wait for Anna to start being able to interact with him instead of just opening her eyes wide in terror when she hears his cry of “Baby ANNA!” that usually precedes him slapping at her face or stomach.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Camping with the Kids
This weekend was our long-awaited trip to the Yurts of Champoeg (pronounced sham-poo-ee) State Park. A Yurt is an Oregon thing. It’s a round wood frame building with canvas walls and a teepee style roof. The center of the roof is a plastic dome that can be raised and lowered for ventilation and the walls have three screened window openings that are covered with canvas flaps that can be rolled up and tied out of the way. There is electricity – one power outlet and a set of lights – and a heater. Each Yurt is furnished with a futon and a bunk bed where the bottom bunk is a double and the top is a single. There is also a table and two chairs. As far as camping goes, I think Yurts are the best. They are like tents, but you can stand up all the way and you have beds and – best of all in mid September – HEAT! It was really very comfortable.
Our Yurt trip was planned early in the year by Rachel. She invited us and the Roses to join her in the trip and reserved our Yurts for us. Since that time the Roses moved to Virginia and Rachel and Josh had scheduling conflicts and couldn’t go. We canceled one Yurt and invited the Binghams to use the other one. Luckily, they were available. So, Friday afternoon, we packed up our cars (their one car and both Killpack cars – there was too much to fit in one Nissan Sentra with two adults and two kids in car seats.) and headed for Champoeg. We got there about 7pm, unloaded the cars and settled in.
Our first activity that night was to break in Kip’s dutch oven. He filled it up with grease; we mixed up some dough and had fry bread. It was really good. Then, we headed into the Yurts, turned up the heat, and settled in for the night. Even with both Sentras, we hadn’t had enough room to bring Anna’s play pen, so I decided to make up the futon as a bed for her to share with me. Kip slept diagonally from corner to corner of the bottom, double-bed bunk and William slept on the top bunk. It worked out OK. I kept Anna on the top back corner of the bed bundled in a blanket with a warm hat on. When she needed to eat, I fed her either there in bed or on one of the chairs close to the heater.
Saturday morning we made another Dutch oven creation. Kip cooked sausage in the oven, then took it out and cooked hash browns in the fat. Finally, he topped the hash browns with eggs and the crumbled sausage. It was delicious! Plus, it wasn’t done until 10:30, so we were all starving by that time. Unfortunately, the yellow jackets were starving, too, and were not at all disturbed by our attempts to keep them away. They wanted our food and they would do anything to get it. I think lack of sleep may have made me a little irrational and I got a little touchy about them. Luckily, that afternoon we had a small thunder storm and the rain drove the yellow jackets away so they weren’t as annoying the rest of our stay.
While we were getting going that morning, William disappeared. Kip wandered off to find him and realized that William had discovered a blackberry patch. The poor boy was standing at its edge trying in vain to reach the tempting black fruit and nearly toppling into the ditch in front of the bush. Kip picked him some berries and brought him back. William begged and begged for more, so Heidi and I headed back to the bushes with him. The strip of blackberries ran the length of the yurt area – probably about 75 yards. The best berries were all up higher than most of us could reach. They were even a stretch for Kip. And as we picked we frequently got tangled in the loose branches that reached out from the main bush like arms intended to trap the unwatchful. While I picked, William got himself completely ensnared. When I went to free him, I found myself pinned in, too. But the berries were good and we managed to pick quite a few. William wanted to eat them all, but we tried to keep him under control.
So, after being home from Israel for over 2 months and longing for the cool weather and rains of autumn, they finally arrived on the weekend of our campout. On Thursday it was in the 80s. On Friday it was in the 60s. Saturday, it rained all afternoon. We canceled the walk through the woods we had planned and moved into the Yurt to play games. William and Isaac (18 months) played with the toy cars we had brought. They did OK except that Isaac tried to interact with William and he found that threatening. Of course, sometime that interaction did involve taking William’s toy, but William reacted just as unhappily if Isaac attempted to give him a toy instead. But our card game went well and we had plenty of snack food, so the afternoon was a pleasant one.
The rain stopped around 5:00 and we headed back out to give the kids room to let off energy and to start dinner. Kip made us a Dutch oven BBQ chicken dinner and we ate it with potatoes baked in the coals of the fire. It was great. We had a calm dinner and then cleaned up and put the kids to bed. Of course, I managed to miss all the cleaning up by slipping off into the Yurt to nurse Anna by the heater. I really felt bad about that…That night we (the parents) ate smores by the fire and talked until late about fun things like school and playing the flute.
Sunday morning we all got up and cleaned up our Yurts (I helped this time) and packed up to head home. We picked a bowl of blackberries to take with us so we can celebrate our return with a Dutch oven blackberry cobbler tonight. We got home Sunday just in time to shower, put on church clothes and head to church.
Our Yurt trip was planned early in the year by Rachel. She invited us and the Roses to join her in the trip and reserved our Yurts for us. Since that time the Roses moved to Virginia and Rachel and Josh had scheduling conflicts and couldn’t go. We canceled one Yurt and invited the Binghams to use the other one. Luckily, they were available. So, Friday afternoon, we packed up our cars (their one car and both Killpack cars – there was too much to fit in one Nissan Sentra with two adults and two kids in car seats.) and headed for Champoeg. We got there about 7pm, unloaded the cars and settled in.
Our first activity that night was to break in Kip’s dutch oven. He filled it up with grease; we mixed up some dough and had fry bread. It was really good. Then, we headed into the Yurts, turned up the heat, and settled in for the night. Even with both Sentras, we hadn’t had enough room to bring Anna’s play pen, so I decided to make up the futon as a bed for her to share with me. Kip slept diagonally from corner to corner of the bottom, double-bed bunk and William slept on the top bunk. It worked out OK. I kept Anna on the top back corner of the bed bundled in a blanket with a warm hat on. When she needed to eat, I fed her either there in bed or on one of the chairs close to the heater.
Saturday morning we made another Dutch oven creation. Kip cooked sausage in the oven, then took it out and cooked hash browns in the fat. Finally, he topped the hash browns with eggs and the crumbled sausage. It was delicious! Plus, it wasn’t done until 10:30, so we were all starving by that time. Unfortunately, the yellow jackets were starving, too, and were not at all disturbed by our attempts to keep them away. They wanted our food and they would do anything to get it. I think lack of sleep may have made me a little irrational and I got a little touchy about them. Luckily, that afternoon we had a small thunder storm and the rain drove the yellow jackets away so they weren’t as annoying the rest of our stay.
While we were getting going that morning, William disappeared. Kip wandered off to find him and realized that William had discovered a blackberry patch. The poor boy was standing at its edge trying in vain to reach the tempting black fruit and nearly toppling into the ditch in front of the bush. Kip picked him some berries and brought him back. William begged and begged for more, so Heidi and I headed back to the bushes with him. The strip of blackberries ran the length of the yurt area – probably about 75 yards. The best berries were all up higher than most of us could reach. They were even a stretch for Kip. And as we picked we frequently got tangled in the loose branches that reached out from the main bush like arms intended to trap the unwatchful. While I picked, William got himself completely ensnared. When I went to free him, I found myself pinned in, too. But the berries were good and we managed to pick quite a few. William wanted to eat them all, but we tried to keep him under control.
So, after being home from Israel for over 2 months and longing for the cool weather and rains of autumn, they finally arrived on the weekend of our campout. On Thursday it was in the 80s. On Friday it was in the 60s. Saturday, it rained all afternoon. We canceled the walk through the woods we had planned and moved into the Yurt to play games. William and Isaac (18 months) played with the toy cars we had brought. They did OK except that Isaac tried to interact with William and he found that threatening. Of course, sometime that interaction did involve taking William’s toy, but William reacted just as unhappily if Isaac attempted to give him a toy instead. But our card game went well and we had plenty of snack food, so the afternoon was a pleasant one.
The rain stopped around 5:00 and we headed back out to give the kids room to let off energy and to start dinner. Kip made us a Dutch oven BBQ chicken dinner and we ate it with potatoes baked in the coals of the fire. It was great. We had a calm dinner and then cleaned up and put the kids to bed. Of course, I managed to miss all the cleaning up by slipping off into the Yurt to nurse Anna by the heater. I really felt bad about that…That night we (the parents) ate smores by the fire and talked until late about fun things like school and playing the flute.
Sunday morning we all got up and cleaned up our Yurts (I helped this time) and packed up to head home. We picked a bowl of blackberries to take with us so we can celebrate our return with a Dutch oven blackberry cobbler tonight. We got home Sunday just in time to shower, put on church clothes and head to church.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Anna's 1 month old!
Anna is now one month old. It’s been a month of adjustments. William really seems to like her, although he struggles with the amount of attention she gets. When he looks at her, he can’t help laughing and calling her ‘baby Anna’ in a high-pitched, happy voice. He gets very enthusiastic about it and frequently slaps her in his excitement. We have to keep reminding him not to touch her face and not to hit her. There are suddenly a lot more things for him not to do. I feel bad for him sometimes. He gets a lot of negative feedback. I have to try to remember to throw in the positives whenever I can or follow up the ‘no’s with a suggestion of something he can do with his sister.
One day I had Anna on the floor in William’s room and was talking to him about the things he could do that Anna couldn’t do yet. I told him that she couldn’t eat anything but milk yet and someday he would have to teach her to eat goldfish (the cracker kind) and everything. He took a goldfish from his baggie and reached toward her. “Baby, open mouth,” he said and then tried to push it in. It was really cute.
When Anna cries, William likes to alert me. “Baby cry,” he says. I ask him why she’s crying and we list some of the possible reasons. Generally, though I think it’s just because she wants to be held. Anna’s quite a snuggler. Her favorite position is upright against my shoulder, where she frequently spits up all over me. After eating, I always lift her onto my shoulder to burp her and she tends to fall asleep while there. Then, I take her to her bed and put her down. Sometimes she goes back to sleep. Sometimes she doesn’t.
Anna’s very strong already. From her first doctor’s appointment people were commenting on her ability to track things with her eyes and head. She’s very good at holding her head up when I have her on my shoulder and she’s already making attempts at rolling over. I’m guessing she won’t take as long to get mobile as William did, but it may just be survival instinct that gets her going, what with William hitting her (not in a mean way) every time he sees her lying on the sofa.
One day I had Anna on the floor in William’s room and was talking to him about the things he could do that Anna couldn’t do yet. I told him that she couldn’t eat anything but milk yet and someday he would have to teach her to eat goldfish (the cracker kind) and everything. He took a goldfish from his baggie and reached toward her. “Baby, open mouth,” he said and then tried to push it in. It was really cute.
When Anna cries, William likes to alert me. “Baby cry,” he says. I ask him why she’s crying and we list some of the possible reasons. Generally, though I think it’s just because she wants to be held. Anna’s quite a snuggler. Her favorite position is upright against my shoulder, where she frequently spits up all over me. After eating, I always lift her onto my shoulder to burp her and she tends to fall asleep while there. Then, I take her to her bed and put her down. Sometimes she goes back to sleep. Sometimes she doesn’t.
Anna’s very strong already. From her first doctor’s appointment people were commenting on her ability to track things with her eyes and head. She’s very good at holding her head up when I have her on my shoulder and she’s already making attempts at rolling over. I’m guessing she won’t take as long to get mobile as William did, but it may just be survival instinct that gets her going, what with William hitting her (not in a mean way) every time he sees her lying on the sofa.
Monday, August 08, 2005
It's a girl!
Anna Carmel Killpack was born 8 pounds even yesterday at 5pm! She is healthy and hungry. Mama is doing great also! Check out the cuties below.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The Return
Well, we’ve been home for a while and I thought it might be time to catch up on the return trip update. We flew out of Israel on Friday, the 1st of July. Our flight was at 5pm, so we had the morning to finish packing and check out with the landlady. Then, we loaded the car (shocked that we were able to pack a Subaru Impreza with 5 stuffed duffle bags, a stroller, three carry-on bags, two adults and a toddler in car seat), and drove to Bowden’s for a farewell lunch. We went from there to the airport, leaving at 12:30. The drive is about an hour and after dropping off the rental car and going through all the check-in and security, we made it to our plane just in time to board.
The airport in Israel is pretty tough on security. You first go through a preliminary bag-screening/passport check line where you wait and wait and eventually someone comes and takes your passports and looks at you suspiciously. Kip had a special letter from Intel informing the airport that he was there from Intel and supposed to leave that day. They took it away, as well as all our passports and made me worry for a little while. Then, they came back and asked the traditional questions about who packed our luggage and if strangers gave us things. We answered those satisfactorily and were allowed to send our bags through the x-ray machines. One was flagged for manual search (I think they do that to everyone), so that was the next stop. The ladies looked through the bag pretty lightly. Some of them were totally emptying people’s bags and searching everything inside, so I was relieved that they just opened ours and pointed to a few things and then let us go.
Next, we got in the British Air check-in line. It was a long line and I’d been standing too long already, so William and I went to a vacant check-in spot and I sat on the luggage scale while William ran back and forth between a big ceiling-supporting column and me. He would hit the column and laugh and run back to me, only running into people every now and then. When Kip got up to the front, William and I joined him and checked in. After finishing, we started to walk away, but our checker girl ran after us and asked me how far along I was. I told her 35 weeks and she looked concerned. So, I pulled out the note I’d gotten from my doctor the day before saying I was fine to travel. She took it to her supervisor who shook her head “no, no, no” and Kip and I started to look concerned. It turned out they just weren’t aware of the travel-while-pregnant policy and had to look it up, but we spent a few minutes really worrying that we would have to stay in Israel another 2-3 months and have a baby there and I REALLY wanted to go home. Finally, they brought back over the note, having made a copy for their file, and sent us on our way.
The flight from Israel to London was fairly uneventful for us. There was another woman who went into some sort of medical trauma and the flight attendants asked people not to use the rear restrooms, but I was fine. William got a little stir crazy and the woman in front of us gave me significantly dirty looks several times. I thought she ought to be happy that she wasn’t sitting in front of an Israeli family because the prevailing child-rearing attitude there seems to be one of non-intervention. About 2 hours into the flight, I decided that Kip had been inspired to give us a lay-over night in London because the thought of getting on another plane that evening made me sick. All I wanted to was stretch out on a soft bed and not have anyone glaring at me or pushing their knees into my back.
The night in London was great. We rode the bus to our hotel, not far from the airport, and snuggled into our beds. In the morning, I took advantage of the large bathtub while Kip and William explored the bus and subway system around the airport. They had a blast. When they got back we all took a nap and then headed to the airport for our long long flight.
Check-in this time was easy. We already had our boarding passes and only had one back to check, so we got to go through a short line and then on into the airport. We got a nice lunch and then went to our plane.
William did great on the flight. We bought him a model double-decker bus at the airport and pulled it out about an hour into the flight. He spent the next two hours driving it all around in our set of seats. It was the best toy purchase I think I’ve ever made. Then, he fell asleep and slept about 6 of the 9 hours we were on that flight. Kip and I got to watch a lot of the movies. I chose two light-hearted love-comedies (I can’t handle anything intense when pregnant and especially not when pregnant and uncomfortable on an airplane seat) and Kip watched some action/drama shows. Then, when I couldn’t handle any more movies/TV, I read my book and slept a little bit. And, of course, I made frequent trips to the bathrooms or just stood up and stretched my legs. I was really impressed with the fact that my ankles never really swelled up and I can still wear my wedding ring. With William, I had to take it off long before this point in the pregnancy.
Anyway, we landed in Denver at 6:30 and had 2 hours to get through customs and out to the domestic terminal to catch our next flight. We nearly didn’t make it. Customs went just fine, but we were at the end of the line and it didn’t move very fast. Unlike in London, where they let us through an alternate passport check line (the one for locals instead of foreigners), in Denver they made no exceptions for the largely-pregnant and obviously-uncomfortable. Everything has to be fair in this country. It kind of bothered me. So, we waited and waited and finally got our passports looked at and sent on to collect our bags. That part went pretty fast. We found all our bags, rolled them to the right spot, loaded them on another conveyer and sent them away. Then, the girl at the conveyer counter pointed us in the direction to our connecting flight. We went up and through security again. This time, they made us all take off our shoes. I had forgotten about that part of flying. They didn’t ask us to do it in London or even in Israel. Why would Denver have to be so picky? Especially with a pregnant lady who can hardly reach her feet. It made me mad at the American flight system yet again. But maybe I was only so hard on them because I’d already been traveling too long. So, we made it through the security check and onto the subway to the other terminals and rushed out to our gate only to have the doors closed right as we got there. They had just given our seats to some standby travelers. We weren’t happy. So, they called back the people they had just put on the flight and let us get one instead.
Three hours later, we were in Portland. Our neighbor gave us a ride home and, at 11pm, we were finally there. It was wonderful to be back. William was wide awake, having slept the majority of both flights from London, so we went to Winco and bought food to restock our empty kitchen. We got some funny looks for being there with a toddler at midnight, but I was a little too out of it to care much. It was just good to be home.
The airport in Israel is pretty tough on security. You first go through a preliminary bag-screening/passport check line where you wait and wait and eventually someone comes and takes your passports and looks at you suspiciously. Kip had a special letter from Intel informing the airport that he was there from Intel and supposed to leave that day. They took it away, as well as all our passports and made me worry for a little while. Then, they came back and asked the traditional questions about who packed our luggage and if strangers gave us things. We answered those satisfactorily and were allowed to send our bags through the x-ray machines. One was flagged for manual search (I think they do that to everyone), so that was the next stop. The ladies looked through the bag pretty lightly. Some of them were totally emptying people’s bags and searching everything inside, so I was relieved that they just opened ours and pointed to a few things and then let us go.
Next, we got in the British Air check-in line. It was a long line and I’d been standing too long already, so William and I went to a vacant check-in spot and I sat on the luggage scale while William ran back and forth between a big ceiling-supporting column and me. He would hit the column and laugh and run back to me, only running into people every now and then. When Kip got up to the front, William and I joined him and checked in. After finishing, we started to walk away, but our checker girl ran after us and asked me how far along I was. I told her 35 weeks and she looked concerned. So, I pulled out the note I’d gotten from my doctor the day before saying I was fine to travel. She took it to her supervisor who shook her head “no, no, no” and Kip and I started to look concerned. It turned out they just weren’t aware of the travel-while-pregnant policy and had to look it up, but we spent a few minutes really worrying that we would have to stay in Israel another 2-3 months and have a baby there and I REALLY wanted to go home. Finally, they brought back over the note, having made a copy for their file, and sent us on our way.
The flight from Israel to London was fairly uneventful for us. There was another woman who went into some sort of medical trauma and the flight attendants asked people not to use the rear restrooms, but I was fine. William got a little stir crazy and the woman in front of us gave me significantly dirty looks several times. I thought she ought to be happy that she wasn’t sitting in front of an Israeli family because the prevailing child-rearing attitude there seems to be one of non-intervention. About 2 hours into the flight, I decided that Kip had been inspired to give us a lay-over night in London because the thought of getting on another plane that evening made me sick. All I wanted to was stretch out on a soft bed and not have anyone glaring at me or pushing their knees into my back.
The night in London was great. We rode the bus to our hotel, not far from the airport, and snuggled into our beds. In the morning, I took advantage of the large bathtub while Kip and William explored the bus and subway system around the airport. They had a blast. When they got back we all took a nap and then headed to the airport for our long long flight.
Check-in this time was easy. We already had our boarding passes and only had one back to check, so we got to go through a short line and then on into the airport. We got a nice lunch and then went to our plane.
William did great on the flight. We bought him a model double-decker bus at the airport and pulled it out about an hour into the flight. He spent the next two hours driving it all around in our set of seats. It was the best toy purchase I think I’ve ever made. Then, he fell asleep and slept about 6 of the 9 hours we were on that flight. Kip and I got to watch a lot of the movies. I chose two light-hearted love-comedies (I can’t handle anything intense when pregnant and especially not when pregnant and uncomfortable on an airplane seat) and Kip watched some action/drama shows. Then, when I couldn’t handle any more movies/TV, I read my book and slept a little bit. And, of course, I made frequent trips to the bathrooms or just stood up and stretched my legs. I was really impressed with the fact that my ankles never really swelled up and I can still wear my wedding ring. With William, I had to take it off long before this point in the pregnancy.
Anyway, we landed in Denver at 6:30 and had 2 hours to get through customs and out to the domestic terminal to catch our next flight. We nearly didn’t make it. Customs went just fine, but we were at the end of the line and it didn’t move very fast. Unlike in London, where they let us through an alternate passport check line (the one for locals instead of foreigners), in Denver they made no exceptions for the largely-pregnant and obviously-uncomfortable. Everything has to be fair in this country. It kind of bothered me. So, we waited and waited and finally got our passports looked at and sent on to collect our bags. That part went pretty fast. We found all our bags, rolled them to the right spot, loaded them on another conveyer and sent them away. Then, the girl at the conveyer counter pointed us in the direction to our connecting flight. We went up and through security again. This time, they made us all take off our shoes. I had forgotten about that part of flying. They didn’t ask us to do it in London or even in Israel. Why would Denver have to be so picky? Especially with a pregnant lady who can hardly reach her feet. It made me mad at the American flight system yet again. But maybe I was only so hard on them because I’d already been traveling too long. So, we made it through the security check and onto the subway to the other terminals and rushed out to our gate only to have the doors closed right as we got there. They had just given our seats to some standby travelers. We weren’t happy. So, they called back the people they had just put on the flight and let us get one instead.
Three hours later, we were in Portland. Our neighbor gave us a ride home and, at 11pm, we were finally there. It was wonderful to be back. William was wide awake, having slept the majority of both flights from London, so we went to Winco and bought food to restock our empty kitchen. We got some funny looks for being there with a toddler at midnight, but I was a little too out of it to care much. It was just good to be home.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Our Final Weeks
So, the end is drawing near. We head back to the States on Friday. I am excited to head home, though I know there are many things I will miss. This is really a beautiful place—if only it weren’t so hot or I weren’t so pregnant.
We’ve spent the weeks since our trip to Jerusalem doing pretty normal things. We’ve done laundry, played at the parks, gone to the beach one morning after dropping Kip off at work. The beach at 8am is absolutely perfect. The breeze is cool and the sun is not yet too hot. William loved playing in the waves as they rushed up the sand. He didn’t throw rocks the majority of the time we were there that morning, having too much fun splashing in the water. The only problem was that I got worn out pretty quickly. I’m not used to standing up following him around for a full hour. If I turned my back on him, though, he ran off straight into the oncoming waves and I had to run after him. So, there was no chance to just sit back and enjoy the waves and the weather. I’d like to go back with Kip, but we’ve run out of time.
Kip went biking for his last Friday here. He had a great time and I feel bad about taking him back to Oregon where there really aren’t any good mountain-biking trails nearby and no mountain-biking friends to go with either. I know he’ll miss his rides, although we’ll go through fewer bandages and first aid supplies. When he got home Friday, we headed off for a final time to the Carmel Center Park and dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Habank. (Yeah, the name is pretty lame, but the food is good.) It was super hot even though it was getting late. I’ll enjoy getting back to Oregon, at least until the heat hits there. The weather here now is probably comparable to the hottest weather Oregon gets and we’ll get back to Oregon just as that weather gets going. But at least we won’t be here for it to get hotter than it already is.
It was sad to say goodbye to our little branch. They got us a going-away gift and were very sad to see us go. I’ve got a lot of respect for the members here. They have incredibly strong testimonies and are generally very intelligent and interesting people. I will miss them.
But it will be nice to be back home!
We’ve spent the weeks since our trip to Jerusalem doing pretty normal things. We’ve done laundry, played at the parks, gone to the beach one morning after dropping Kip off at work. The beach at 8am is absolutely perfect. The breeze is cool and the sun is not yet too hot. William loved playing in the waves as they rushed up the sand. He didn’t throw rocks the majority of the time we were there that morning, having too much fun splashing in the water. The only problem was that I got worn out pretty quickly. I’m not used to standing up following him around for a full hour. If I turned my back on him, though, he ran off straight into the oncoming waves and I had to run after him. So, there was no chance to just sit back and enjoy the waves and the weather. I’d like to go back with Kip, but we’ve run out of time.
Kip went biking for his last Friday here. He had a great time and I feel bad about taking him back to Oregon where there really aren’t any good mountain-biking trails nearby and no mountain-biking friends to go with either. I know he’ll miss his rides, although we’ll go through fewer bandages and first aid supplies. When he got home Friday, we headed off for a final time to the Carmel Center Park and dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Habank. (Yeah, the name is pretty lame, but the food is good.) It was super hot even though it was getting late. I’ll enjoy getting back to Oregon, at least until the heat hits there. The weather here now is probably comparable to the hottest weather Oregon gets and we’ll get back to Oregon just as that weather gets going. But at least we won’t be here for it to get hotter than it already is.
It was sad to say goodbye to our little branch. They got us a going-away gift and were very sad to see us go. I’ve got a lot of respect for the members here. They have incredibly strong testimonies and are generally very intelligent and interesting people. I will miss them.
But it will be nice to be back home!
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