Ward Picnic

Piper and I attended the Ward Picnic last night while Peter took the young men on a campout. I think the entire ward was there, it was crazy! Piper enjoyed all the attention and herd of screaming children to watch. There was also an ice cream contest. I tried an all-natural non-dairy ice cream that was cashew-based. It was the richest ice cream I think I've ever had. Right up there with frozen custard, but twice the flavor. Piper and I came home sweaty and exhausted but thankful for the distraction during another lonely evening without Peter. I wanted desperately to finish the third Twilight book, but alas, I passed out on the couch watching the Olympics. What am I going to do without Twilight and the Olympics? They have been defining how I spend my time for the past couple weeks!

Excuses

So, here are my excuses for avoiding my blog lately.

1. My free time has been devoted to reading the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. Almost done with book three, then onto book four.

2. I've been accumulating piano students at a ridiculously fast rate. Now I'm up to ten. I deleted my ad on Craig's List, no more piano students, thankyouverymuch.

3. Peter worked approximately 100 hours this week. Okay, that's rounded up a little, but not much. I actually went to church without him for the first time since we were married minus me going to church out of town. How does this relate to my bloglessness? It's much easier to focus when he's here for some reason.

4. I've been working a great deal on the computer applying to substitute two days a week. I'm just getting tired of the computer, okay!

5. Blogs aren't as fun to write without pictures and I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately.

6. I've been in a boredom depression ever since Lauren left and blogging doesn't do it for me.

7. The amazingly addictive Olympics.

I'm sure I'll think of some more...I think my next excuse is with ten piano students and subbing twice a week, I'll be too busy! I'll try, honest, I promise, cross my heart...

The Knights

Kristen, Piper, and Mac.

Since I've been neglecting my blog so much lately, I think I'll go with a story about the only pictures in my camera, something I've also been neglecting.

These pictures are from a trip we took to nearby Eudora to see the house our friends, Mac and Kristen Knight, bought. For those of you who don't know Mac and Kristen, I met Mac at K-State as a music major. A couple years later Kristen came along, another flautist like myself. One summer Mac announced to me that he was thinking of asking Kristen out. I told him I thought that was, and I quote, "an excellent idea!" So, he asked her out and we went on our first date with them: dinner and snipe hunting. Poor Mac, he's the only one who had never been. Mac and Kristen got married last year when Piper was about a week old. We were in the wedding and it was beautiful! Mac is now in his fourth year as the band director in Eudora and Kristen is starting as an elementary music teacher this year in the same town. Their extended family is taking bets on when they will have a baby.

So, about their house. It's a four bedroom, three bathroom ranch with a two car garage and a laundry room. Plus, they have a full walk-out basement and a large deck above the patio. Their yard is gigantic and they also have a shed. It's pretty much awesome. We're hoping they get a ping-pong table or something and invite us over for sodas from the wet-bar, as Kristen says that's all that will be served there besides juice. Way to go, guys!

Piper's Latest Antics

I really shouldn't say antics, because Piper really is a fairly docile baby. She does have her moments, but I'm certainly not afraid to add another one to the family (no, I'm not pregnant).

On Monday night, Piper finally put the whole crawling thing together. When we went to take a video, all she wanted to do was grab the camera, so we had to use the phone to lure her away into a nice long crawl for documentation's sake. So far, I don't think she quite understands the full extent of her powers. She mostly crawls from toy to toy and proceeds with her usual routine of reading books to herself and using various objects as a phone.

Originally I thought that any similar object would suffice as a play phone according to Piper. This was after she grabbed the remote and began having a conversation with it up to her ear. No big surprise, since the phone and the remote have basically the same shape, a whole bunch of buttons, and are granted many uses by mommy and daddy which automatically turns them into the best toys available.

One day I thought I'd see what happened if I let her play with a box of dominoes. I took out all the little Mexican trains and let her go to town. After emptying the metal container, I heard her having another conversation. When I turned around I noticed she had a domino up to her ear! How strange, I thought. I came to the conclusion that since the domino was rectangular and had dots, it could possibly be considered a phone to Piper if not one that really is a better fit for her size wise. She prolonged the cuteness by tossing the domiphone aside and picking up another one, an action she repeated about three or four times. Don't worry, I've got a video of that, too...

After a few days I had a new hurdle to jump in trying to understand Piper's rapidly expanding imagination when she was having her morning snack. I'd chopped up some banana for her (yep, she's eating banana again) and went into the kitchen when I heard her strike up yet another conversation. It looked like just her fist was over her ear until she finished the conversation, opened her fist, and ate her "phone"--a tiny piece of banana. Any ideas?