The old ball and chain

Data entry gone awry.

We got two letters in one envelope a while ago from a very reputable company, with the first saying something like, "The enclosed letter was returned by the U.S. Postal Service and marked as undeliverable."

This is how the original letter was addressed:

The best things about being home

Strangely, the transition from Poland to home has been rather easy. I thought it would be weird to drive a car again, after a year of abstention, or to understand what strangers say to me. But it's not. It feels totally and completely normal. So I guess home will always be home. It's where my thought's escaping, where the music's playing, and also where the heart is, I suppose.

Anyway, blabbity blab, here's a list of some of the best things about being here, in no particular order:

1. Seeing family.

Anna, Natalie (Trevor's sister), and Grandma Ban-k-s (which is how Anna says it)

eating lemons, like a true Banks

the lower face of Trevor's brother Devan and our new nephew Brayden...

...and his twin-sister Xiomara! So cute!

nephew Jedrik, Anna, and Trevor's brother Matt
cousins Emme, Anna, and Grace

some of the Scoresby grandkids

2. The small luxuries. Like making brownies a couple weeks ago and reaching for a wisk before I realized that I could instead enjoy the ease and convenience of a modern electric mixer. Or pre-measured butter or shortening. Or not converting my favorite recipes into metric measurements. Or taking a shower in a shower that's bigger than a telephone booth. Or giving Anna a bath in a bathtub instead of a telephone booth-sized shower.

3. Eating grapes again! I've already discussed this topic to death on here and I'm trying to cut down on the speeches I seem to give every time I eat a bunch, but I still love them so they're worth mentioning here, yet again.

4. Having an occasion to capture this:


5. Making a pie (with my mother closely supervising) for the very first time. It was peach; it was delicious.

6. Catching Anna redhanded. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.)

Don't you love the look of complete shame and regret on her face?

7. Enjoying the out-of-doors as Anna plays in her "pool." Interestingly, baby pools are hard to come by this late in the season...


8. Getting to feed the two cows in our backyard. For the first time ever, I got to feed the cows tonight (only because my parents are out of town and my sister forgot). We've had cows off and on, growing up, and tonight I got to walk in the pasture, among the poo, and feel for just a second like I was going to be trampled. I also unnecessarily used a pitch fork to haul the hay, just because I wanted to feel authentic.

9. Taking Anna to Farm Country. I think I've seen this exact photo, except with different people, on like, a hundred other blogs. But where you display farm animals, there small children will be also. Our cows are cooler, by the way.


10. Having all of our packing done. (Now that I write this, I'm reminded of a few more boxes I still need to go through. But we're so very close to being done that I'm leaving it. Moving sucks.)

11. Seeing friends again. Like the ones who were in our old ward, like old neighbors from my childhood, and like the ones I honestly haven't talked to since 6th grade. Good times all around, folks.

New continent, new hair color

Maybe I was inspired by the many women in Poland who died their hair varying shades of shockingly red red, or maybe I was just tired of the non-color that my hair had become. It was too light to be brown, too brown to be blond, too ugly to be liked. I had gone blonder in the past, but the time had come for a new kind of change. I wanted to try out being an official brunette. The result? A little bit of brown, a little bit of red, and a whole lot of fun.

before

Eating a cookie at Enrichment in Poland. Nice.

and after

There's also the weird curly/straight difference here, so maybe that's going to throw things off the assessment. Plus, you may not be able to take your eyes off my gimpy eye. (What can I say, it's still a tiny bit light sensitive...even 4 years after the virus extravaganza.) So good luck. Let me know what you think.

The Trip Home: Long Waits, Airport Gates, and an Impromptu Stay at Jen's

Here's the next installment of our trip-home saga, as promised. (I know you've all been on the edge of your seats...for like a month, because that's how long it has taken me to get around to this.)

So we got to the airport at about 10:30 a.m. on Monday the 11th. Our flight was delayed 2 hours, so we became well-acquainted with that place, hanging out at our gate from about 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. We did get free drinks and sandwiches, though. Cha-ching.

The best part of all was getting our six million 50-lb. bags checked. FINALLY. We had been hauling them around long enough. I was elated to see them move along the conveyor belt, but Anna was distraught. She kept saying, "No bye bags. No bye!" We truthfully had to turn her stroller around so that she couldn't see them leaving her. We decided that it was tough to see those bags go, bags that had been her friends and travel companions for 10 long months. But we'd see them again, Anna. All in good time.

Another fun story. While we were waiting and waiting and waiting to board our flight, Anna decided to check out another toddler who was toddling nearby. (Actually, it was the other way around. Anna's not quite one for going out of her way to introduce herself, at this point.) Anyway, a teenage girl and her mom were looking after the little boy and Trevor decided to initiate some chit chat. In Polish, he asked the girl how old the little boy was. She stared at him each of the three times he asked, with the feeling in the air getting more and more awkward each time. And then she said, "Oh, I don't speak Polish." So Trevor switched over to English and the chat continued. I had a silent celebration in my head, thinking to Trevor, "Ha! Now you know what I felt like this past year." I was secretly glad that he was going to have to get used to English again, now that we were headed back to the States.

Here is cute little Anna, waiting at the airport gate before we left Warsaw.

Fun with clay on the plane. (After all of the clay colors were good and mixed (read ruined), I think Trevor played with the clay more than Anna did. 9 hours is long for adults too, I guess.)

We were SO excited to see Jen and Sean at the airport in New York! Jen came armed with sandwiches, grapes, chocolates, and a book and a crossword puzzle card to celebrate mine and Trevor's anniversary. At this point in the day (it was 1 a.m. Poland time), Trevor and I realized that we had not said ONE word about our anniversary. We had talked about it a week or so before, but everything had been so chaotic leading up to our departure that it hadn't even crossed our minds for days. Happy 4 years to us.

Since we missed our connecting flight to Salt Lake because of the 2-hour delay, we stayed the night at Jen and Sean's. I'm so glad we got to spend some time with them. It was hard stretching our already-exhausting travels over two days instead of one really long one, but it was so fun to hang out.

This documents the first time Anna's nails were painted. And now she can't stop. She's constantly showing everyone her pretty nails, whether they're painted or not. You created a monster, Jen.

I love the lack-of-a-chin look going on here (for Anna).

Anna also loved Jen's hair. (I believe she even referred to her aunt as "Brown" a few times.)

Love the tongue.

Goodbye, New York.

We finally arrived in Salt Lake, completely knackered and jet lagged to high heaven, at 11 p.m. Tuesday night. It was good to be back.

One of the many reasons why Trevor is the best

A couple years ago, before Anna was even born, Trevor was at work one day and called me to tell me what had happened to his boss. It was his boss's birthday that day and her husband had totally forgotten. She was so incredibly sad about it and Trevor really felt for her. He called me to say that he could see himself forgetting my birthday one day, and he wanted to make this day a bonus birthday celebration to give him a buffer, of sorts, if such an atrocity ever occurred.

So that day he brought home balloons, birthday presents, flowers, and cake and we celebrated like it was 1999. It was so fun. He scored a multitude of points that day and I think there are even still some left over.

I don't know what made me think of this today, but it's such a good memory.

I [heart] Trevor.