Westmoreland Asays

Aaron didn't practice the choir song much during the week, but I still took him to the last practice 30 minutes before church started. He seemed to know most of the words, but he was hesitant to go up by himself for the actual performance unless I accompanied him. About five minutes before the choir was to sing, Aaron whispered in my ear that he would go up by himself. So when the first speaker sat down, the choir director, who was sitting right behind us, walked hand-in-hand with Aaron to the podium, and gave him a notebook with the words in it (not that he can read, but perhaps as a fall-back to hide behind if he forgot the words). I was impressed that Aaron appeared focussed throughout the song--he stood still, watched the director for when to start and stop, and he sang "reverently loud." He was clearly excited and happy when he sat back down with us. After all of our church meetings, one of the members, Dee Carlson, whose older brother once dated my mom back in the d...

Edward really likes sausage. He likes sausage so much that Meg once caught him licking a sealed package of sausage that was sitting on the counter defrosting. He will eat ground sausage from a bowl like it was breakfast cereal. Aaron, on the other hand, plays Yin to Edward's Yang, shunning any kind of meat like he was a vegetarian.

This last week Aaron has been asking how babies are made. We've told him that there are eggs in women that are seeded by men, or something similarly simple. While driving home tonight from delivering baked goods to the boys' primary teachers, Aaron blurted out something to the effect of, "So if you eat an egg for breakfast, do you become pregnant?" He then started laughing hilariously . . . . . . the other day Meg was furiously searching the house for some expensive over-the-counter drugs she had bought to help calm her chronic cough. She last remembers seeing the drug container in the hands of Edward, who (rumor has it) was using it as a make-shift bowling ball. But the drugs haven't been seen since. Meg tried interrogating Edward, and he repeatedly pointed to his diaper (he still doesn't talk much, and when he does he usually doesn't string together many words). Meg reassured him again and again that they were not in his diaper. But the boy persisted to ...

Today's online Statesman Journal had a pretty old picture with me in it. The Capital Mile race on New Year's has been resurrected, but it is being held in West Salem--how lame, and how dare they use a picture of the Capital building? Could there be a better race course than around the one building that makes Salem Salem ?

Our ward is the last to meet for church in our building, so we are responsible for taking down all the chairs used for classes in the gym. My class meets in the gym, and we usually run a little longer than the Primary; our class knows this because Aaron always makes it a priority to come to the gym to help take down chairs as soon as his class lets loose. He always opens the door before we're done, peeks his head in, then closes the door after seeing that we aren't finished yet. He does this every 30 seconds or so. Our class has learned to expect and enjoy this highly-comical act most weeks. Our ward's choir practices right after the last church meeting, so we usually see them congregating in the choir seats as we're putting away the chairs in the gym. After we had finished, Aaron asked if he could sing in the choir. We checked with the choir director, and she welcomed his participation. They will be singing "Away in a Manger" next Sunday, and Aaron picked up ...

We've made it a family tradition to view the Miracle on 14th Christmas light display in Keizer. The weather was decent (i.e., it wasn't rainy or windy) and our schedule was light so we went tonight. I encouraged the family to walk through the display, and everyone was willing, so we parked our car in front of the former Schreiner's house, which by the way is for sale for $280k, and walked down Manzanita, 14th, Rock Ledge, Stone Mason, and Stone Hedge (the street I lived on from age 2 to almost 20). Poor Edward falls asleep in the car like I do during movies Meg gets for us to watch at home, so I ended up carrying the sleeping boy for most of the walk (just shy of two miles)--it was my penance for not bringing a stroller. The lights were nice and more abundant than a typical neighborhood, but the display still don't seem to be as organized as it was back in the late 80's and early 90's. We wanted to drop-in and say hi to the Rafn's (my oldest brother's wi...

A-Ron and I won free ice cream cones at Baskin Robbins at our Ward Christmas party last week, so we all went to the ice cream store tonight. Aaron and I both knew what we wanted and ordered our cones quickly. The store was having a special buy one sundae get one free special, so Meg got one for her and another for Edward. I had licked away about half my serving when the Word finally sat down to eat his sundae, but he immediately demanded my ice cream cone--he had no interest in his sundae--and I had no interest in his sundae either, so Meg and I traded sundaes and I gave my half-eaten cone to the Word. Just before we were getting ready to head out, silly Ed tossed his almost-eaten cone into the trash; 30 seconds later he was whining and trying to fish it out of the trash. He left the store kicking and screaming, but he fell asleep within two minutes of us driving away.