Photo dump: Fall 2011! The Haboob, and Mr. Baseball's Baptism

 This is what it looked like outside our front door at about 5:30 pm on Monday October 17.  I had decided to leave work a little early and had walked in the door about three minutes prior to taking this photo.  The QB had just taken her mom to the airport. The sky had been blue and the wind brisk, but we had no idea this was coming.  In about a minute the neighborhood turned martian and stayed that way for twenty or thirty minutes.  As you can see in the photo here, though I didn't notice it when I took the picture, my car window is cracked open and the next morning when I got in it to drive to school, I found a thick coating of red sand all over my dashboard, steering wheel and seats.  Lovely.

Besides the haboob, Mr. Baseball's baptism weekend went off without a hitch and we were very glad to have family in town.  The week was kind of crazy with family trickling in and then trickling out between Wednesday and Saturday, but we enjoyed the close quarters (there were 11 of us all together in our house at the high point) and the chance to spend time with family we don't get to see very often. 

 Papa Fitz flew in on Wednesday. Nana, Grandma, two sisters (amy and Aubrey), and one nephew (Kimball) flew in on Friday; Papa and one sister flew out on Saturday, Grandma flew out on Sunday, Grandma flew out on Monday, and the Amy and Kimball flew out on Tuesday. 

 

The entire trip almost didn't work out because of a variety of logistic and financial issues (and Grandpa Franklin got really sick and wasn't able to come), but in the end just about everything went smoothly and we are very grateful to everyone who helped to make the trip happen. 

 These three boys, separated by three-year increments from one another, all lined up in front of us, smiles and curls and one squared-shoulder suit--they're almost too much to consider.  When Mr. Baseball was born, I thought about the 18 years that lie ahead of us, his formative childhood to which God had handed us the keys and said "drive safe," and "Bring him back in one piece," and it all seemed impossibly long, a drive with a destination so far in the distance as to not even register on the mind, but in a flash 8 years is gone. 

I am too hard on him, too expectant of him, and too skeptical of him. When he was younger he used to be quite good at throwing tantrums, and falling apart when things didn't go his way, and I always read his behavior as selfish.  But as he's gotten older and we've talked through some of his outbursts I've discovered that his anger has always been more directed at himself  than anyone else, that he feels failure keenly and that he takes criticism as a reminder of the perceived failure he is already aware of.  He is a kinder and more sincere child than I think I will ever understand and my only hope is that I can stumble through parenthood well enough that when he's finally an adult, he'll accept my apology in spite of everything.

 

Christ went to John the baptist to be baptized for two reasons. First: to fulfill all righteousness (it's a commandment, after all), and second:  to "showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set the example before them." (2 Nephi 31).  I'm grateful to the Savior for his example of perfect goodness, and I'm thankful to Callan for being Callan. We don't deserve him.