Following will be several different posts about some of the girls great grandparents. In no way is this a biography of their lives or even guaranteed of being completely accurate. It is just an attempt to represent a bit of heritage and relationship we had with or to each other. The inclusion and exclusion of some of the great grandparents also does not limit their significant impact upon our family, only represents the available information.

We want to honor those who have gone before us and their contributions to our individual lives and to the corporate entity of our families. We also want to thank those who have told us stories of family members we were unable to meet and pass on our own version of stories. Through these stories we have met the people who have shaped our family.

Oh Julia, how you make Mama laugh! When you went to bed last night you wanted to lay on top of all of your blankets. It is January and chilly, so Mama figured when you got cold you would just climb underneath to warm up. This is not what you did. You got up and found the pile of play blankets and drug three of them to your bedside and wrapped yourself up in one of them. Also with the blankets looked to be the clothes you had selected for yourself to wear the following day. Mama came in to check on you after you fell asleep and chuckled as she covered you with another play blanket to be sure you would be warm all night. Mama hopes your dreams were good ones, with your morning organized and your body toasty.

I love food. This is a fact. In the years of travel with my family as I grew up, we would enjoy food from all over America. There is a problem that comes with travel cuisine. When you go home you can’t get the different foods you find that you love. Therefore, when we travel we have to include food as an activity. This is never more true than with a trip to the Southwest where we get our favorite Mexican food. When we travel to New Mexico and Colorado we hunt down sopapillas.

The trick to finding good sopapillas is to ask locals for the best locations. This trip we found out that restaurants are now stuffing them with taco toppings, but the best way to eat them is to fill them with honey. We found two places that served great sopapillas in the areas we were visiting. Restaurants used to serve them in baskets before meals like some do with tortilla chips. The best we could find were that some restaurants served them as dessert and you could buy more individual sopapillas. The ones we ate made our fingers sticky, cut the spicy kick from our mouths, and made our stomachs full. The biggest disappointment was that Julia didn’t fall in love with them. She tried one bite both times, but passed on the sweet dessert. Emily could manage one each time.

Robby’s family traveled to northern New Mexico when he was a child and their family discovered a favorite restaurant in Taos. We had to stop and try it out. After hearing the stories repeated over and over we were sure that it would struggle to measure up to the hype. We are pleased to say that both their Mexican food was fantastic but so were their sopapillas. The girls tried the Mexican French Toast which was Uncle Doug’s favorite thing to eat there at age three.

Emily eating her Mexican French Toast, which was cinnamon nut bread made into French Toast. Sounded pretty good.

Are all the long hours in the car worth it? For us it is. The ride does get long, make our backs hurt, and it is boring for the driver when everyone else has something to do. But, it is also family time. It is time to see different parts of America. We get to talk to the girls about a million different things. We talked about how big the sky is. We talk about how many stars there are in the sky while we are seeing the Milky Way. We get to count rainbows. We were disappointed with only three, but one was a double rainbow. We talked about the wind turbines as we passed miles of them. At night the turbines have flashing red lights which are fun to watch when you are 4. We tried to spot at many trains as we could. The first person to see one would point it out as we continued to play games of counting engines and talking about what each one was hauling. The girls enjoyed hours of book reading, coloring, playing with toys, the occasional nap, cheering with each state we crossed, counting the mosquitoes that traveled with us in our car after stopping at a rest stop, playing running games at rest stops, and asking lots of questions.

We were delighted with an amazing drive in and out of the valley Albuquerque is found in. We did the drive at night and the lights of the the city were beautiful. It was by chance that we turned around and looked as we drove out. If the night lights would have photographed well we would have tried. This memory will have to be one that stays in our head. Another unexpected driving surprise was the bear that ran across the highway as we drove out of Colorado. We didn’t expect to see a bear and this one was moving fast. He was gone before the girls even looked up. What a treat.

The wind turbines are really cool to see, but we settled with a moving photo of them.

Julia had her two year checkup. She was a little apprehensive about the visit and despite our talking about it before hand, I knew she was going to be a handful. To add to the busyness of the day we also had Emily with us.

Julia did well despite quite a few tears. She has increased in the percentiles and the doctor was very pleased. Her length of 33 3/4 inches places her in the 50th percentile. Her weight at 23 lb. 11 oz measures her around the 12th percentile. In 6 months she has grown 3 lb. 11 oz and 3 1/2 inches. Good job, Julia!

Other highlights are the Doctor’s new beard, princess stickers, and lots of shots. Julia had three and Emily two. I guess they shared in the experience. They both did really well.

Julia’s next checkup is at 2 1/2.

Just a few individual things that are happening around here or what we are hearing these days –

• Emily told me that her gas was “singing a little song”
• Emily’s current favorite game to play is Librarian. She brings us a small stack of books that we have checked out. She also spends a lot of time “organizing” her books into piles.
• Emily has taken to caring for Robby. She will have him lay on the couch, tells him to take a nap, and then rubs on his head. He thinks this is the best game ever.
• Emily absolutely loves to play dress up and would live in her Cinderella dress if we let her.
• Emily’s other accessory of choice is a toy crown that she got out of a kids meal. It is even worn to bed if we let her.
• Emily favors her father. She will call out to him in the middle of the night for comfort. She likes Mommy, but Daddy is best.
• Emily is learning how to tell time on a clock face. She knows when it is 8 pm and that it is bedtime. She has also started adopting time-lingo into her description of time. She will tell us that it is “15 till” or “12:30”. She occasionally gets it right, but at this point it is just blind luck. My favorite is when she tells her doll that it is 17:30.
• Emily hasn’t mastered the terms and concepts for yesterday, tomorrow, last week, next week, last month, next month, last year, and next year. Everything is described in years. She will tell us that next year we are going someplace meaning tomorrow. She has told Robby what she did the day before and described it as last year.
• Emily has a placemat map that we use to show her places she has gone and where other people live. To help her find Tennessee quickly we taught her to find the drawing of Elvis, who is placed over Memphis, and then we are on the other side of the state. She now describes where we live as being “at Elvis”
• Emily asks us everyday what we are doing that day or the next day. She is used to going and doing things.
• Emily knows the Tennessee and US flags and when she finds them she likes to point them out.
• Julia is having a few more words pop out of her mouth. She will repeat a lot of things for us, but they don’t sound quite right. She has made these clear enough to understand: no, movie, E (Emily), more, please, cheese, cak-er (cracker), and lunch.
• Julia favorite toy right now is a new slide that we have in the living room. She will sit on top of it and watch TV. She also slides all of the time.
• Julia is interested in helping us do things now. She helped pack Robby’s lunch, has gone to fetch things for Robby that she perceives that he needs, and loves to go and fetch Mommy’s shoes when we are leaving.
• Julia has a pink tutu she loves and wears anytime she can. Mommy made her a new one and so far she has been unwilling to even try it on because of how much she loves the pink one.
• Julia will not leave anything in her hair. She asks for bows to be put in her hair and then removes them while we are out. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of lost bows.
• Julia is still highly attached to Mommy. For her Mommy is best.
• Julia doesn’t mind taking her afternoon nap and sometimes asks for it. Most of the time when she is asked if she is ready and answers yes (with a nod) and then collects her things and meets us at the pack n play where she sleeps at nap time.
• The girls have play picnics. This involves putting toy kitchen food it in baskets or bags and then carrying it around the house. After they have picked a spot they will spread a blanket, sit down, and get the food out for the picnic. A variation of this is when Emily fills a small metal lunchbox and takes it to pretend school. I’m pretty impressed with the lunch she packs for herself.