Taco Mommy Bye Bye!

Amelia has been talking up a storm since Grandpa was here. Greg's dad was up in mid-June and Greg's mom was just here over the 4th. Since they come up for different reasons, they travel separately and we get several weeks worth of excitement. Anyway, we've been able to vaguely understand Amelia's grunts and sounds, but when the grandparents arrived, I guess she felt she needed to kick it up a notch. She started being much more deliberate with her pronounciation, making sure to put the last letter sound on the word, etc.

Yesterday, she even said her very first sentence... it was "Taco Mommy bye-bye!"

For those of you not privy to this lingo, I'll interpret. Our landlady Melinda lives next door and got a new dog several weeks ago. It's an adorable male Pug, only about 8 months old, and his name is Taco. The girls absolutely love him. They can be doing anything in the house (reading, eating, watching a movie, sleeping....) and if they hear his tags clinking outside, they both will drop everything and sprint out the door, shrieking, "TACO!!!! TACO!!!!". Yesterday, as Melinda was pulling out of the driveway, Amelia noted that Taco's mommy was going bye-bye. Brilliant, huh?

In other kid-news, Gwen had her physical exam for kindergarten last week. She is practically perfect in every way, just as suspected. She is 5 years, 4 months old and 47 inches tall (yes, that's only 16 inches shorter than her mom!!). She weighs 52 lbs (Gwen, not Mom! HAR!!) and exhibits normal progress and development. She is starting swimming lessons tonight and soccer camp next week. Now we just have to see if we get accepted to the school we applied at for her. She's been calling it her "new school" since mere minutes after she was done with preschool in May, so we're really hoping it works out.

We spent the 4th in Pelican and in Elfin Cove, saw about 80 or 90 humpback whales (several of which surfaced a measly 30 yards from us), threw birdseed at a truly Alaskan wedding, barely escaped witnessing some crazy ol' drunk Alaskans streaking along a boardwalk, took note of the Alaska rural recycling program, jigged for and caught some spawning herring (Gwen kept wondering why all the bait fish were roughhousing so much), and then caught four little tasty halibut with the herring.

We'll always remember that we were in Pelican when we heard Palin resigned. Somehow, amid all that spectacular and incredibly vast scenery, we didn't seem to care.

Pictures to follow soon.