It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Superfloof!

I always knew that my little nephew had a special charm, but magical powers!? I mean, honestly, what DOESN'T this guy look cute in!?!?

In addition to being pajamas, these can function as Halloween costumes and objective demonstrations of the primary colors.

No need to even carry a weapon. Just one look at that little pout and chubby face, and the hardest villain's heart would melt.

This looks like a good place for take-off.




And lastly, a video demonstration of Superfloof - aka Eddieloo - 's flying abilities.

P.S.

Look, I'll even throw in my first video to make y'all feel better. Isn't he cuuuuuuuuuuuute?

About that picture post I promised...

It's taking about five minutes on Grandma and Grandpa's computer to load up one picture, so I might just hold off on this until I can use Aunt Shelly's computer. Or y'all can just be satisfied with this one of Daniel and me at the beginning of our trip, in the Salt Lake City airport. Whaddya say?

Saturday Recap - so long ago, does anyone even care?

After receiving FIVE comments on my last post, which snidely remarked that Hoosier was the only (or at least, most) faithful reader of the lot of all y’all, I can draw no other conclusion than that my evil plan to get comments on my blog through any means necessary is working. Seriously, folks—loooooooooooooooooooove the comments.

First, to write about Saturday! I slept in just a little bit—until 7:00 am, if you can believe that, Mom—and then went for a 30 min run. Very refreshing! I came home, showered, and had a yummy breakfast in a relatively quiet house. Grandpa, Daniel, and Joseph had gone to a Men’s Bible Group Study (I believe the topic had something to do with the seventh commandment, of all things!), and Kirsti told me Edward had not had the smoothest of nights, and had kept Kirsti and Joseph up for most of the night. Apparently they had walked all over the house and even outside, and he had even hollered once right outside my door, without my even hearing him. Perhaps I will turn out to be a deep sleeper like Mom after all!!!

After reading scriptures and some more in Fablehaven, I went for a long walk with Joseph, Kirsti, and Edward, taking many pictures which you shall have the joy of seeing in a future post. We walked for over an hour, and enjoyed ourselves very much, but did end up getting sort of lost after finding the entrance to Brent Mead and not being able to wind our way back. Luckily, Kirsti had brought her cell phone, and we called Grandpa, who began to give us directions until Grandma snatched the phone and decided to solve everything by simply driving to our rescue. Edward had a dirty diaper anyway, and I was pretty badly sunburned from the excursion, so perhaps things worked out for the best.

At home, we ate lunch—approximately enough to feed a starving army—and read/slept around (this time, unfortunately, I was very aware of Edward’s fussy protestations against nap-taking) until Aunt Shelly called with the news that we were going for another, longer, more exciting bike ride. I originally had wanted to go swimming again with Joseph, but since Uncle Billy was leaving on an airplane trip the next day, it would be our last chance to do it with him, so I consented—sorry Joe! We can go swimming Tuesday, ‘kay?

The bike ride was fabulous (but not in capital letters and without an explanation point—I shall explain why shortly). The weather was perfect, it wasn’t too crowded, and the path was just gorgeous—all sorts of things to look at on the side of the road, including a big field, a little river, and a one-room schoolhouse where Uncle Bill used to go to school…(ha ha ha), nice and wide lanes (we’ll overlook the few narrow turns), hills that were not too steep and not too frequent, and my goodness, was it ever big! We went for about 40 min. in one direction, and the bike path just kept going on and on.

The only bad part was the seat on my bike (which was actually Julie’s bike), which bruised and banged against my, um, tailbone/seat/gluteus maximus quite violently, to the point that I still cannot sit on anything hard without contorting in pain. We stopped a couple of times to lower the seat, which made it easier for me to reach the handlebars and keep my balance (I even rode no-hands for a good long bit—impressive when you haven’t ridden a bike in over a year, eh?), but didn’t really help the aching tushie/bottom/buttocks problem. Nonetheless, I tried to bite my tongue and stand up as much as possible and squirm a lot, and distracted myself as much as possible from the problem. I didn’t appreciate at all how comfortable Becky’s bike was the other day. Aunt Shelly offered to take me (and Joseph’s coming too, I think—yay!) bike riding again on Monday morning, and this time I hope to subsequently write a report using capital letters and many explanation points.

After our bike ride, I went home (yes, Tar Heel—home for now refers to Gma and Gpa’s place. Hooray, you cracked the code!), showered, and, uhhh….this is what happens when you wait until the next day to write about the previous one.

Anyway, sometime after that we had dinner—grilled chicken and corn on the cob and tomatoes and cucumbers and watermelon and beans and some kind of heavenly chocolate cheesecake for dessert. It was really too good to eat, but fortunately not too good to be eaten (Ba-ba-boom! Thank you, I’ll be here all week!).

We played with Edward after dinner, mostly, and I have trouble recalling whether we did anything else. Probably talked about the way things used to be and how Uncle Billy had to trudge 10 miles (in the snow, barefoot, uphill—both ways) to that one-roomed schoolhouse when he was a boy.

Goodbye, Julius Caesar! Hellooooo, Augustus!!!

First off, props to Hoosier for being the only one with the courage to write a comment on each of my posts. Comments - well, positive ones - are like the food and drink and lifeblood of blog writers (not to mention MOTIVATION!), and I especially love hearing from him :)

Secondly, I ought to tell you that I'm going to write the next series of posts in my bedroom at the end of the day, and then post them the next morning, which means that all the "today"s will actually refer to "yesterday." I could change the time on my blog, so that it would say that it would lable the post as being posted on the right day, yesterday, but that would be a LIE.

Soooo.....

Today we used the camera for the first time in a while, and I hope to do a picture/video post sometime tomorrow, probably entitled “20 fascinating facial expressions and poses of Edward.” Anyhow, it’s getting late here, and I’ll try to write about the day quickly before going to bed.

I got this morning around 7 am, and went outside for a brief but strenuous morning run—it had rained last night and the air was pretty heavy, though cool, so I had no trouble working up a sweat. After taking a quick shower, I ate breakfast—a repeat of yesterday’s—and read my scriptures upstairs.

I spent a lot of time in the morning looking at old photo albums, particularly those showing Grandpa and Grandma as youngsters, which I had never seen before. There was even an old torn, yellow clip from a newspaper with a picture of Grandpa as a little boy and winner of the middle school spelling championship. I had a bit of trouble identifying him and Grandma as babies, but was excited whenever I recognized their features. I also enjoyed looking at pictures of them with their family members, as I sometimes seem to forget that they both grew up in families with moms, dads, grandpas, grandmas, and siblings of their own, and I would like to know if and how their family interactions mirror our own.

Looking at the pictures of Grandpa, I was struck by how handsome he was, particularly as a young boy in overalls in the country and later as a soldier in Japan, and how cute and happy he and Grandma looked together (when at last we got through the sacrilegious pages of Grandpa with an old girlfriend—uuuuuuuuughhhh!). Their marriage of over 50 years is such a beautiful thing to me, and I fervently hope that I can achieve the same kind of warmth and exuberance which they seem to have found in life. I was also fascinated by the pictures of Dad and his siblings as kids. Sometimes, faded photographs seem to have come from another world as well as another time. But then I remember that the short dark-haired little boy in the photo is my living, breathing, 3-dimensional Dad (also, by the way, the most wonderful father in the world), and the cycle of life and all of its mysteries start overwhelming me. I end up feeling sad and curious and sort of lonely, or nostalgic maybe, for a past that I wasn’t even part of. It’s weird.

Anyway, sorry to get carried away, but that’s what vacations are about, right? (Carried away?!? GET IT!?!???)

Grandpa and I went on a quick trip to Wal-Mart, getting some lettuce, two pink yoga mats for Daniel and me (they were out of blue), and a new air conditioner filter (apparently Daniel had some complaints about the old one, which is next to his room). On the way, I got Grandpa to tell me a little bit about the personalities of his grandparents, aunts and uncles (well, not all of them; I think he had about 19—WITHOUT counting wives and husbands!), and mom and dad. It was really interesting and I’m hoping I can get him to tell me more stories.

Around noon, Daniel, Grandpa, and I went to Grandpa’s yoga class, held at a large church about 20 min. away. The class was relatively small—only about 9 people, in all—but the teacher was friendly and very knowledgeable, and I learned some handy new stretches which I had never seen before for making your toes longer and wider (comes in handy in the annual toe-wrestling tournament, I understand), and one for pushing your arms behind your back which I really liked. We didn’t get into any fancy ballet moves, so I wasn’t able to show off my perfect turn-out or ability to knock myself in the nose with my shin, but everyone was still quite sufficiently impressed with the fact that Daniel and I had even turned up at all. I didn’t mind being the youngest or most limber—the class was still tough enough to make me sweat and ache afterwards! We went about 20 min. over the hour-long class, but I think we probably needed the rest at the end. Afterwards, Grandpa managed to give away all the produce he had brought from his garden to various class members, and the yoga teacher talked with us for a while. We learned she actually used to be a Mormon at one time, and still had great respect for members of the church. It’s good to know that not everyone thinks Latter-day Saints are crazy!

Speaking of which, can I just mention how much I love the friendly people in the South? People who I have never seen or met before in my life will wave and talk to me or my grandparents as we interact with them in the grocery store, jogging in the street, driving past their houses, passing by them in a public building, etc etc etc. The downside is that it takes about 5 min. to say “Hello” to anyone you actually do know (even if the only thing you know about them is their first name), but, eh, I can live with that.

Back at home, Daniel, Grandpa, and I ate a late lunch at around 2. I had the same thing as yesterday, and it was every bit as good. After lunch, I looked at more photo albums until Aunt Shelly called and asked if I wanted to go bike riding with them. Did I!!

I haven’t been bike riding—I mean real bike riding, not just the exercise bike at the fitness center—in even longer time than I haven’t been swimming since before yesterday. So, apart from fear that I would forget which way to pedal or where the brake was, I was super excited about doing it. Since Becky happened to be out, I got Becky’s bike and Becky’s helmet, which fit me perfectly except for being about five inches too tall. Daniel rode Trevor’s bicycle (he’s the giant marrying our cousin Mary Hughes this November), and encountered roughly the same situation. Fortunately, Aunt Shelly—who seemed to be quite familiar with the need for and art of making necessary adjustments for the benefit of a relatively short person living with relatively tall people—was on hand to help us with any difficulties.

The bike ride was lovely. We went down a long hill about three times, and the speed, wind, and exhilaration was terrific. I enjoyed myself so much, I would gladly resolve to ride my bike every week in Utah henceforth, except for the fact that I no longer have a bike. Sniff! At least, if Becky doesn’t mind—or Mary, if Becky gets to join us—I hope to go riding a couple more times before we end our vacation here.

After the bike ride, I went home to read and watch TV with Daniel and Grandma until Joseph, Kirsti, and Edward showed up. And show up they did! Edward positively dripped with cuteness and seemed inordinately cheerful for having just undergone an 8-hour car trip. Kirsti and Joseph looked ridiculous in their matching sets of toe-shaped flippers.

We ate dinner at the Hughes, and it was, as expected, the highlight of the day. At least four different kinds of pizza—cheese, pepperoni, olive, and one with everything, which was the most popular—all homemade by Aunt Shelly, with cantaloupe, carrots, broccoli, and cucumbers with ranch dressing for a salad. To top it off, we had generous portions of Grandma’s world-famous blueberry cake with vanilla ice cream. Seriously, it was like living in a Redwall book tonight, folks.

After dinner, we diverged from our usual after-dinner activity (sitting around at the table for another 45 min, talking about…whatever) to stare at and take pictures of and make noises with and find toys for Edward, who was certainly the star of the evening. He was surprisingly well-behaved and active, and kept us all entranced with his cute little noises, dance-like movements (Grandma calls these “the fancy pants dance”), and tentative wide-eyed half-smile facial expressions. Such a cutie!

After Edward went home, Julie, Becky, and I went to the loft to watch Cheaper by the Dozen. It was fun, but not enough to inspire me to hope for a dozen kids. Six is perfectly fine.

Well, time to sign off! Look for a picture post sometime tomorrow...

Happy Thursday

First of all, a couple of reasons why I am lovin’ the humidity out here:

1. You don’t have to dry off after taking a shower.
2. It takes 3 minutes (tops!) to blow dry your hair (if your hair is brown, over a foot long, and belongs to my head).
3. You have a warm security blanket around you at all times – it’s like snuggling up with a blanket on the couch, only in summer instead of winter!
4. Soft skin – I haven’t had to use my Curel once yet!5. Raindrops falling outside my window and on the roof…it’s such a lovely sound.
6. I no longer feel the need to drink 15 glasses of water a day! I don’t know if that’s related or not, but I’m pretending I do and that it is.

We had a wonderful day today. Despite staying up pretty late (we’ll just say well past midnight), Daniel and I both got up between 6 and 6:30 am (which is between 5 and 5:30 am in Utah time—so there!). Daniel went with Grandpa and Samson for a morning walk/trash picking excursion, and I went for a 30 min. jog, seeing many beautiful houses, trees, lawns, and a couple of cute squirrels along the way.

Back at home, I took a quick shower and ate breakfast with Grandma and Daniel while Grandpa read the paper. I had orange juice, oatmeal with blueberries and bananas, and a delicious peach—the best I’ve tasted all year!

After breakfast, Daniel and I went upstairs to read our scriptures, and both ended up falling asleep again, but Grandma woke us up before 10:30 to get going with Grandpa to their local rec center. Grandpa bought us some visitor’s passes, and gave us the grand tour of their weight room, swimming pool, tennis courts, yoga room, play room, janitor’s closet, and…well, you get the idea. He seemed to know quite a few people in the gym, and was happy to introduce us to each and every one. I was glad the gym was a small one, as Grandpa seemed determined to introduce us to almost every piece of equipment inside, in a fashion such as I would imagine one would introduce the alphabet to a 5-year old. This despite the fact that—alas—after 3 years of navigating the inner labyrinths of at least 3 gyms, I am well aware of the function and title of almost every pain-provoking machine, and even of the appropriate accompanying amount of emotional adrenaline, fear, resentment, or anticipation.

At last, Grandpa went into the weight room/cardio room (I hate it when they’re combined, but what can one do?), and Daniel and I changed into our swimsuits and went to the indoor pool. The bigger section was about 50 meters long and 25 meters wide, and divided into 8 or so laps. However, only 4/5 of them were open for swimming. The rest were polluted by an ancient spell cast by an underwater demon. Oops, been reading too much Fablehaven. Actually, they were closed because a sign and a lifeguard Daniel asked said so. Anyway, fortunately, the pool was not crowded at all, and eventually Daniel and I both got lanes to ourselves. I swam my usual 18 laps of mixed strokes, and enjoyed doing a few special water-stretches and activities between. I believe this was the first time I’ve gone swimming all year, and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve resolved to go swimming at least once every week when I get back to Utah. It takes a lot of time and can be crowded, but I’d forgotten how much fun it is! Anyway, it’s always good to vary your type of exercise so your body doesn’t get too accustomed to just doing the same thing over and over. Speaking of which, Aunt Shelly is taking me for a bike ride tomorrow, also the first time I’ll have been on a (non-stationary) bike this year! Whoopee for change!

After swimming and showering and fooling around with Grandpa (he came in and told the lifeguard that we were his grandchildren, and not to let us drown…), we drove home. I washed my hair, and then ate lunch—a lovely bacon/tomato/lettuce/cheese sandwich with Grandma’s homemade bread.

After lunch, I did a lot of reading on my bed (I can tell already that I’m going to be pretty depressed between the time that I finish the 4th book in this series and that the 5th book comes out), and watched one of my new Best Picture movies from the collection Dad got me for my birthday. This one was the Best Picture winner from 1954, the year Mom and Dad were born. It’s called On the Waterfront, and was definitely winning material. Great cast, great story, lots of believability and tense situations, some touching bits of tragedy and parallelism, a triumphant ending and love/goodness/decency conquers all. It was especially nice to watch the main character change from an aimless, lazy, irresponsible bum to a courageous, independent, moral freeman. I would definitely watch it again, ideally with Kleenex and ice cream.

I went over to Aunt Shelly’s in the late afternoon, and talked with her and helped to fix some green beans which Daniel and Andy had picked from their garden. Daniel was teaching Andy some chess strategies, but I believe they had already played MarioKart for the allotted hour of the day. I was not too sad to have missed out, I must say. Eventually Uncle Billy, Grandma, and Grandpa joined us for dinner, which was beyond fabulous. We had sweet potato French fries (which I absolutely loved!), squash and green beans, and what appeared to be giant hot dogs, but were called bratwursts by those-who-knew. I had a big fat turkey one, and it made every hot dog I had ever tasted pale in comparison. By the way, be prepared to read a lot about meals in my account of our vacation—Southern dinners with our relatives in Tennessee are pretty much the stuff of legend in the Miller family.

After dinner, we talked for a long time, as you may expect, and had dessert, which was cold banana bread with chocolate chips—very chewy and yummy, though I had to drink a lot of water to keep from getting thirsty.

After another half hour or so of talking about…whatever, we ended up playing Catchphrase in the Hughes’ living room, with Daniel/me/Uncle Billy/Aunt Shelly on one time, and Gma/Gpa/Andy/Becky on another. We played three games, and our team won all of them, though the last game was close enough to be settled by a matchpoint. Very intense. Julie came home when we were winding up, and we talked for a little bit while the boys played pool. She had to do two presentations in the past two days, and seemed happy to be done with them.

At last, around 9 pm, Daniel and I headed out, and we’re now stalling before bed time by reading, checking our email, watching TV, and writing long blog posts. I’m actually impressed that I finished this in less than half an hour.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow—yoga class with Grandpa at noon, bike ride with Aunt Shelly, and we get to see Edward, Joseph, and Kirsti! Plus another one of those infamous Southern dinners—I’ve heard rumors with the word “pizza” in them, but nothing more…

And I'm back...EAST!

Hey y’all! So apparently, I only write in my blog when I leave home and have to exert myself to labors beyond staying in my bedroom all day with a book. Anyway, my brother Daniel and I are on vacation at our grandparents’ house in Brentwood, Tennessee for the next week or so, and I will do my best to give you (y’all, I mean – excuuuse me! Try-ain to get back in mah Southern belle dialect heah) daily reports.

My day started out at 6 am, when Mom woke me up to go running on the track. It was cool and dark and kind of fun, except that we found out that one of our neighbor’s houses had been robbed last night – yikes! I made a mental note to not ever leave our door unlocked, even for a short period of time.

After exercising, I took a shower, fixed my hair, ate breakfast, and completed all the last minute packing. We left the house a little after 8 am, and ended up arriving at the airport a little flustered, after Mom took a wrong turn to get to a parking lot, rather than the parking garage, and Daniel and I argued the benefits/disadvantages to the latter option. Anyway, we made it inside without any difficulty, and checked in our bags (and I managed to assure Mom that my rather large—but still within the size limit—carry-on bag would not, in fact, be sufficient cause to weigh the plane down and cause a tragic crash in the vast desert between Salt Lake City and Phoenix). My bag had a lock on it, which I thought nothing of, since both my bags on the flight to D.C. had locks and I had never had my attention drawn to it. However, this time there wasn’t a line at the check-in place and the airport security guys seemed pretty bored, so they decided to have me open my bag and to rifle through everything. I was more than a little embarrassed at having my stuffed purple elephant, Derrick, which Daniel insisted I bring on the trip for the sake of old times, bared to the sight and mockery of all the airport security personnel—particularly since I had purposely put him in my large suitcase for the sake of avoiding such an exposure—but fortunately, no laughs were heard, no jokes were made, and both Derrick and my suitcase were able to continue the rest of the trip without further shame.

After kissing Mama good-bye and making it through security extraordinarily quickly, Daniel and I had a 2-hour wait until our flight. We used a good part of the first hour reading our scriptures, and took a long walk around the airport during the second hour. There were a lot of art displays, and I particularly liked a series of photographs showcasing ballet dancers in exotic locations. Daniel didn’t much like looking at any of them, but did say that his favorite was the only picture which didn’t have any females in it (it had, instead, three males in Russian dancing costumes and poses).

Finally we settled down to wait out the last half-hour before our flight, and Daniel struck up a conversation with a guy named Matthew, who told us he had converted to the Church 3 years ago because of his wife, who was Peruvian, and that he lived in Mexico, and that he had done a session in the Salt Lake Temple, and that he used to be pretty wild before he joined the church, among other things. He also thought Daniel and I were married, and asked how long we had been with each other – ha ha ha!!! We thought about saying “Oh, 21 years or so,” but ended up telling him the truth, which seemed to surprise him a good deal. I guess it’s a pretty natural assumption, given that we’re together and the same age, but you’d think more people would check to see if the girl was wearing a wedding ring, at least!

After chatting with Matthew, we rushed to board our plane, which was already boarding “B” passengers (we were “A”), and then Daniel suddenly decided he had to go to the bathroom. I tried to talk him out of it, but only succeeded in making him hesitate for 20 seconds or so before racing off, leaving me with his bag at the end of the line of passengers, which was rapidly moving up. Result? We ended up being the last people to get on—so much for our one chance at boarding first with “A” tickets. However, I was grateful that we made the flight, and it was actually very nice—as in “not crowded.” We both got window seats and a whole aisle to ourselves, and the staff were fun and pleasant. All the flight attendants were men, which surprised me a little. But they were all nice guys, and seemed to be capable of knocking down any passengers who tried to cause any trouble, so I was okay with it.

I didn’t do much on the flight—just read the magazine, which had changed since my trip home from D.C., ate my peanuts, drank my orange juice, and read a little bit in my new favorite book of all time, Fablehaven. I liked the first one, LOOOOOOOVED the second one, and am immensely enjoying the third one.

In Phoenix, we called Mom, ate our sack lunches, and figured out that we could get free Internet. That made the time pass rather quickly, and soon we were ready to board our next flight to Nashville. This flight actually was very crowded, but we still managed to find two seats together, almost at the very back of the plane. I sat in the middle seat, Daniel sat in the aisle seat, and across the aisle sat two teenage girls with two tiny dogs in a carrier. I guess you can now flight pets with Southwest…for a fee of $75, as we overheard. They seemed to be very well behaved dogs, at least, and small enough to fit in a regular sized purse. I was impressed at the lack of messiness and smelliness.


The flight wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I was very tired and couldn’t get in a comfortable position to fall asleep. I read a lot in my book, which helped to pass the time, and they gave us quite a few snacks (more peanuts, crackers with cheese, those Oreo crackers which are NOT in the least bit like Oreos, and bland, dry, sandy animal crackers), which helped since I had only eaten half my lunch in Phoenix. The flight attendant who did all the talking was also a bit of a character – he cracked a lot of the usual jokes, about us being on a flight to New Orleans instead of Nashville, and thanked “all 15 of you who paid attention” to the safety instructions. He also got a loud round of laughter when he introduced the lifejacket bit with “Should we happen to fall into one of the vast oceans between Phoenix and Nashville…” Good stuff! All in all, it didn’t seem like it had been that long when we landed in Nashville 20 min. ahead of schedule. Oddly enough, the 10 minutes or so we had to wait before we could leave the airplane seemed INTERMINABLE! But once out, things were good. We found Aunt Shelly, picked up our baggage, met a tall, handsome stranger and a taller, white-haired giant who claimed to be Andy Hughes and Uncle Billy, and drove to Grandma and Grandpa’s, where we were treated with a dinner of vegetable soup, homemade bread, tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, and zucchini bread with ice cream for dessert. Delicious!

We talked after dinner for a good long time about everything from what Dad’s favorite food was as a kid (strawberries) to what Grandma’s father did in Germany in World War II, to what riding a camel in Australia was like. It felt a bit like time travel, but was fun all the same, and I look forward to having more conversations around the table. Well, time for bed, and to read some more in my new favorite book! Goodnight!