Tucson and a Little Tiny Bit of Mexico

Calvin graduated high school over Memorial Day weekend and gave us an excuse to get away for a few days.

We are proud of you Calvin.

We spent time in Tucson and even braved the border and went to Nogales for a little bartering. Ben did the Spanish speaking, and I just stood there looking like the tourist I was, hoping they would let me back into the country with only my licence in hand. But I did learn a few new phrases that I have found to be useful assets when it comes to decision making. These phrases are, and I quote:

"Come into my store. You never know."

"Come in for future reference."

The sunglass vendor won me over with this phrase, "You should buy these. These are real fake!" I couldn't help myself. He said, "Real fake" as if FAKE was a name brand. I feel special having real fake glasses instead of fake fake glasses. And he took his price from $25 dollars to just $5. Not passing that up.

It was fun to hear Ben speaking Spanish, and I got to see in real life some of the differences in culture he has been telling me about from his mission. Scout and Boston only wanted the small "cah-tars" (guitars),and surprisingly enough, they aren't broken yet.

Lish and Phil also suggested the Dessert Museum in Tucson, and we spent an afternoon looking at an otter, turtles, snakes, spiders, beavers, fish, mountain lions, birds, and caves.

We missed Danielle, but it was nice to be together with everyone. We stopped and saw Hoover Dam on the way home, and spent Memorial Day swimming in St. George.
I am glad that Ben didn't just fly down for the graduation like we had originally planned. It was fun to jump in the car and go as a family.

If you are ever wondering if you should take a sporatic getaway, just try it. After all...."You Neva Know."

p.s. The pictures of Scout and Boston with blankets on their heads was just me documenting how they were keeping themselves entertained when they just couldn't think of anything else to do on the long drive home. p.s.s. If you are wondering about Boston's poor little nose, it is the nasty impetigo again. She is almost healed now. Rotten stuff. If you have put up with it you know.

We Laugh at This

I know many of you consider this old news, and you have seen it once....maybe twice... Just try it once more.

Nobody but Yourself

The other night as I was making dinner, I pulled some carrots out to be chopped and peeled.
This is exactly how they came out of the bag. As I put them on my cutting board, I couldn't help but notice the striking differences between each one.

Do you think that the third carrot from the left was completely irritated and bummed that she ( yes, it was a she) was put in a bag with carrots like the first carrot on the left? I mean, the first carrot is much taller and thinner. Or do you think she was preoccupied with the fact that the two on the far right were best friends who constantly had their heads together and seemed to be engaged in a whispering frenzy? What were they saying? Were they talking about her?

She probably looked from left to right and thought, "Oh man! That carrot on the right has a much cooler fuzzy top than I do. And the carrot on the left is SO smooth, and has no dirt in her cracks (you know what I mean). It is like she has already been peeled!"

After assessing the situation she definitely didn't want to be in the same bag or on the same table with those other carrots. "What a rip-off!" she thinks, "They aren't even from the carrot patch I grew up in, and now I have to be in the same stew with them?!"

If the carrot really was focused on thoughts such as these, and she really did want to be some carrot other than herself, she missed the supremely important truth that she had the capability to nourish someone that day.

And she did.

She nourished my family.

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
~e.e. cummings, 1955

She's Two and He Graduated

I know this is late little Boston, but you know how April has been.
There are so many things that come to my heart when I think about the day you were born and joined our family, but some of my favorite quotes say it best-

"A mother's heart is a baby's most beautiful dwelling."
ED Dussault

"In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle. The miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby-chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person."
Susan Cheever, A Woman's Life

"When she comes and looks in my face and calls me 'mother', indeed I then truly am a mother."
Emma Hamilton

"Each child adds one extra line to your heart, which no other child can replace."
Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons, The Mother's Almanac

"Few things are more rewarding than a child's open uncalculating devotion."
Vera Brittain, Testament of Friendship

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child."
Emma Goldman, Living My Life

"They weary and restore me."
Marita Golden, A Woman's Place

"We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal (1839)

Happy Birthday Boston. These two years have been full of joy. I love you beyond the creation of words to articulate it.
































Yes he actually walked. Finally. I am so proud. What a great man I married. Congrats Darling. He chose Market Street Grill. We gathered, and missed everyone who wasn't there. We celebrated Boston's birthday and Ben's Graduation. It was a historical moment in the Kamalu family. We were overwhelmed with how blessed we are. (Those last two pictures are Boston's actual birthday morning. It was Sunday and she blew out her candles in the pancakes her Daddy made for her.)