Brian, Julie, 4 girls, and one little dude Elcock
Just a quick update for all you loyal followers. Aaron and Krisanne have started a blog: http://laughingas.wordpress.com. The initial post is aptly titled: I have no clue. Aaron, I don’t think truer words have ever been spoken! 😉
Enjoy.
Speaking of, I haven’t seen anything from Sean: http://sean.photographykeepsakes.com. Promises, promises . . .
More later.
Gwenyth has the gumboo. She started throwing up last week sometime. Lucy got in on the action during the night at about 2AM. She completely emptied out, but hasn’t had anything since then. I guess she was feeling left out or something. Gwen has been feeling pretty lousy for quite a while. We thought that she was on the up and up, but tonight at dinner she really lost all of her cookies. And she’s supposed to have a doctor’s appointment this week to see how we’re all coming on helping her gain some weight. Well, doc, she’s probably lost some weight this go-round. Go ahead and call CPS or whatever it’s called here in Utah. And, while you’re at it, go pound sand as well. Anyway, the poor little girl hasn’t had a very good week, though she has tried to be cheerful through the whole thing. Like the other girls, it’s hard to hide that she’s not feeling well. They all show it in their eyes, especially Gwen and Abigail.
Lucy has her second installment of the Art City Music Academy tomorrow. I think that she’s pretty excited. She started asking about it tonight and was wanting to perform some songs for us. It was great. She’s really going to love it. I get to come home from work tomorrow for an hour and a half or so in the morning while Julie takes Lucy. We didn’t want Aunt Marilyn to come over and get Gwen’s bug. So since I already have it and am immune by now, I’ll take one for the team.
Work is starting to get really busy for me. We’re working on a big project for a company called SanDisk. They’re the ones that make many of those little USB flash drives. It’s been interesting dealing with a new technology product that no one seems to know how to use (including the company that released it, Microsoft) and an outsourcing team that hasn’t really delivered what they’ve promised. So we get caught picking up the pieces while the muckety-mucks at the top figure out how to cover themselves. It’s good experience, if nothing else.
Julie wanted to change the theme of the blog. It was too masculine, or too “Brian” for her tastes. So now we have this pink thing. Such is the story of my life. I don’t really like this theme, but it’s more for technical/nerd reasons that none of you could care about I’m sure.
Thanks for your letter, Grandma. It was good to hear from you. Our weather has sure warmed up. We’re supposed to be near 50 all week. Then it’s supposed to rain/snow for a few days. Hopefully some snow will drop up in the mountains for Mikey and Alison. I hear that they got a little wet at the Superbowl in Miami. And the Bears lost on top of that.
This is Julie. The girls and I had a snowy day yesterday and we were enjoying watching the snow coming down from INSIDE. We were looking out the windows at the beautiful snow dancing and then I noticed we were in the perfect light. Soooo I grabbed my little point and shoot and had a good time. I have been bustin out the camera more because of you Nat. Natalie told me about a website that has beautiful & inspiring photography. Lets just say it whet my appetite. I was taking pictures of Grace and Lucy jumped in suddenly and then the magical shot happened. I love the picture of Lucy sitting on the quilt but I do have to agree with Grandpa Elcock that she looks too grown up. I am a little rusty with the photography but there has been talk of a new digital camera! Gotta practice!
Last night Brian and I were up again until 1:00am watching the final episode of season 2 of Top Chef. Alas no more. He brought home a dvr to change my wayward habits. Jami Wardle are you proud or what? At any rate I am pretty excited and scheduled in today all my favorite shows so they’ll be recorded and we can go to bed a little earlier like normal people. Who am I kidding–I’ll always be a night owl! What would we do without Modern Technology–the world would go on I suppose, but it is so nice to have it all at our fingertips. Today the inversion burnt off and it is a beautiful day–blue blue skies and white snow-dusted mountains.
I took Lucy to her first Toddler Tunes this week. She is with a group of about seven 3-year olds. Leslie, my nephew Morgan’s wife, is the animated and amazing teacher of the crew through Art City Music Academy. She truly has the most amazing soprano voice. Lucy loves Leslie and thinks music school rocks. All the children have a parent or significant other there to guide them and interact with them. They each got to play on their own keyboard learning differences between the black and white keys. They switch activities often about every 2-3 minutes playing drums, shakers, rolling balls, reading stories, etc… Aunt Marilyn was kind enough to come bathe Gwenyth and have some one on one time with her through the duration.
Speaking of Aunt Marilyn, she and Dave are currently digging a pool and she mentioned to me that she might be teaching swimming lessons this summer. To that I say, where do we all sign up! Lucy took the sink or swim survival course last year but could use a little work and the other girls could use some formal technical training. Did I mention that Leslie is also an amazing tennis player and tennis teacher… We are so glad to have such talented family members so near by. I also signed Grace & Abby up for Lindon Elementary Chorus and Ceramics & crafts. Through the city I have Lucy signed up for Toddler Gymnastics and Grace and Abby are taking cooking classes. Wow that sounds like a lot–I hope we haven’t over scheduled. Now I know why I shouldn’t write the blog. I am a horrible speller and it gets dull very quickly so I’ll stop here. Adieu
Just a quick update here, I suppose. We finally had a Saturday that was somewhat our own this past weekend. So that meant we were able to relax. Uh. Maybe not. We used the time to do some much-needed cleanup. We *still* didn’t have a garbage can on Saturday (it did show up in the driveway today), so I took a bunch of trash up to one of the nearby dumpsters. Then, since we finally got a garage door opener, we decided that we should try and put the cars in the garage — which was no small task, mind you. It required that we move the hot tub that was up against the back of the garage. We had to move it about 30 feet or so, which was interesting. It was lying on its side on top of a blanket. We had to kind of drag/push/pull the thing across the garage. I was sore for a few days. We also had to move the freezer and everything else in there. In the end, it all worked out.
As we were finishing up an early dinner around 5:45, we got a call from the neighbors across the street. They were hosting a game night, and we were invited (the girls too!). It was going to start at 6 and I hadn’t showered all day. So we cleaned up really quick and went over there for a few hours. It was fun. All the kids went down in the basement while we played different games upstairs. I think it was good for Julie to get out a bit.
Monday night, we went to Julie’s old stomping ground, Trafalga (or Aglafart, as they used to say back in the day), for some miniature golfing and fun. Miraculously, we made it through all 18 holes without losing any golf balls and without Lucy jumping in the water. I even got a hole in one at the end and got a free round for next time. Abby got a hole in one on one of the holes as well. It was very exciting. Julie put up a few pictures from the outing, so you can check it out.
Susi got her iMac last week and I only got one phone call. That means that she either loves it or loathes it. Hopefully it’s the former. Either way, UM, it’s not my fault. 🙂
The weather has been interesting. We’ve basically been breathing in dirt since the whole inversion thing started. Hopefully we’re getting some wind and snow tomorrow to get rid of it. And hopefully there will be some snow left when Mikey and Ali come to visit us in a few weeks.