As August dawns...

An update of recent events...

• The party over the weekend was fabulous. For all of you who came (and hoo boy, there were a bunch), I apologize if I was perhaps too busy grilling beef to chat for too long with anyone. It's the only problem with having nine million people in your house: you want to chat with everyone and can't quite because you have to mill. (Angela apologzies too, since she had to escape to put Xan to bed. Next time, I'll try to use more brian cells and not plan a party right in the middle of the sleep routine. Nonetheless, what a wonderfully motley crew: between the College Writing crew (with significant others) on the upper deck, the kids running through the garden and throwing part of my driveway at the garage, and my parents chatting with the foreits in the living room, it was quite an event. Plus, as previously mentioned, I cooked meat! Of course, I had to remember how to do it, but it was impressive nonetheless. And, oddly enough, we have leftovers, which are in my freezer.
• Invaluable to the party in general was my mom who (with my dad, lest you think I do not have both parents) are in town en route to a new chapter in Ann Arbor. Though they arrived in the middle of a heat wave (missing one of their ten suitcases... yes, ten...), they have adjusted nicely to the very cool basement of our house. Today, we repacked all their belongings to mail them through the postal service since Amtrak has decided to cut all baggage service to the state of Michigan. (On the minus side, this has caused us worry and Congress should be reprimanded for cutting back funding to Amtrak. On the plus side, now my parents' stuff will go straight to their door, meaning they won't have to carry a darn thing.) Alas, the new Ikea in Canton, MI is not yet open for their shopping pleasure. In the meantime, they are having tons of fun doing the grandparent thing, as you can see:
  Oma and Xan, a few minutes after first meeting each other
  

  

• Speaking of which, Xan is, as usual, just a great kid. (Can you see that smile?? That totally makes me day. And he's doing it a lot these days. Gosh, I hope I have a happy kid.) Today was especially wonderful, since he decided to (a) talk up a storm and (b) roll over on his own. First step to locomotion, indeed. He's getting a huge kick out of Oma, who keeps doing insane things in his presence, which cracks him up like you wouldn't believe. (Me too, actually.) My cousins have called my mom la tía loca and I totally understand why.
• We have some grass in the font yard now. (Wheeeee!) This is entirely due to Angela's hard work and the battle against the evil weeds is not quite done, but we're getting there.
• We have finally decided to return to Telluride this year, although we are doing it sans Xan. This kills us in many respects, but we finally realized that the only reason to bring Xan would be to show him off; otherwise, he will be cranky, grumpy, jet-lagged and disruptive, not to mention, he won't remember anything about spitting up on Roger Ebert. Now all we need to do is finally send our forms in, which are now almost a month overdue... sigh, and I was trying to get all this together ahead of time...
• Less than a month until classes begin again. Sob.

OK, that's it for now. Yawn! Off to bed soon.