Just Now

15 minutes ago:
I cut the kids each a piece of fudge (Chocolate orange fudge tastes like Christmas and I can't stop myself from eating it. Which is neither here nor there, but I said it anyway.). After she finished hers Evie asked if she could cut herself another (I was feeding Spencer). I said yes. She asked, "A sensible piece or what?" I looked over her shoulder at where she was holding the knife poised to cut and I said, "Yeah, that's a sensible piece." She replied, "So. . . bigger than that?"

20 seconds ago (as I typed that last paragraph):
David screams "SPENCER'S UPSTAIRS!!!" A minute ago he was down here with us and then suddenly he was upstairs in my bedroom. He "learned" (i.e. started trying, a few days shy of 11 months old. I tell you, my kids are not overly adventurous) to climb the stairs two days ago. We are vigilant (obviously. . .) about not letting him. Our stairs are terrifying: hard wood, foot-wide gaps between the rails (you can see in one of the pictures here), even all around the landing at the top. We need to do something about it. Like get a gate.

10 minutes ago:
Looking through David's books for homework I noticed they were all covered in crumbs. I helped him clean out that nasty backpack on Monday and today it's all full of crumbs and wadded papers again, so I very calmly and patiently (ahem) ask him what on earth happened. He replies, "It's not my fault, mom! I did not put ANY crumbs in there!"

Then I look through his English homework (they're learning how to tell time, or rather translate it "It's a quarter past two.") and see that probably 40% of the words he's written are misspelled. This is awful and much worse knowing that he was copying off the blackboard. As I point out some mistakes one by one, he says, every single time, over and over, "That's how my pani (teacher) wrote it!" He's such a punk.

This afternoon/evening:
Greg is gone. After getting home from driving back from Germany on Sunday, Greg decided to make a 4 hour round trip journey on Monday to visit a church leader who's having some life struggles. Today, Wednesday he is making a 6 hour round trip drive to a training meeting/fireside. Tomorrow he's agreed to participate in a discussion with investigators: 4 hour round trip drive. On Friday he drives 5 hours to Wrocław for a meeting and from there flies to Prague for an area meeting on Saturday. Sunday he conducts a training meeting back in Wrocław and Monday teaches a class on church history at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, before coming back home. (Hours given are just the drive, not including meetings.)

That's some driving/meeting/teaching/etc.ing. A good way to spend the week after spending a week at the temple.

Right this minute:
I quite love my family.