Greetings from Virginia!

 Hi there! This past week has been a blur of jet-lag, diaper changes,

 cooking, cleaning up, feeding, putting to sleep, going on walks and

 playing - in short, I've been a Grandma. Haha! Little kids keep you

 hopping - in this case literally, as Grant and I have jumped on his

 birthday tramp nearly every day.  Brooke's doing good and finally 

getting some energy back to get out a bit. Yesterday, she got her 

hair cut (me too! We both went short!) and then did a spontaneous

 date with Josh. And the day before she went to lunch with some

 friends so that's good.  I went to her ward's 'recipe club' last Tuesday 

night and had fun. The theme was Elvis and I thought of Lisa Mott. ;)

 One of Brooke's friends picked me up to go and the women were so

 hilarious! A few were sarcastic and joking and a little crazy had us 

all laughing. It was so fun to be able to make comments in English.

 My teasing is kinda limited in Portuguese....
 


 Here we are passing out Africa presents. Ellory's sporting her new necklace!
 Ok, she's trying to take it off....but sporting Grant's African pants!!

Saturday, Brooke's friends gave her an awesome baby shower! 

 She has a a lot of friends and whenever someone hears that I'm her mom, they tell me how great she is. It was evidenced by the super cute shower and all the people that came. She made a haul!

 

The gals that hosted it:

 

That night, I babysat a couple extras while they went on a double-date. I was too busy to take a picture but I should have taken one of Grant and his friend after they got soaked on the rainy tramp. When I had them change out of their wet clothes, the little girl refused to wear Grant's "boy clothes." She wanted to put her wet clothes back on. She got the 'trembly lip' so I had to think fast! I told her I'd look in Ellory's closet. There wasn't anything but a princess costume that was big enough for her. Princess it was!!

Me jumping with Ellory. Looks like she's giving me a piggy-back ride....

 

 

Grant and I tried to take a picture that looks like he's Superman flying in the air. But he kept dive-bombing on the tramp.

Stealing my shoes

 

Right before she tripped - almost. She caught herself!

 

Sleeping Rockwell.

 

On the quilt Grandma Snelson made for him:

 Sunday, a week ago, I asked the Relief Society sisters to donate clothes for the local Mozambiquen missionaries. They were awesome and brought me ALOT yesterday! I hardly brought any clothes (thanks for the loans Brooke!) because I had so many souvenirs to bring home and wanted to take stuff back to Africa but I don't if I'll be able to take all this:

 

Today, we went to Grant's new preschool and I talked about Africa. Grant was my assistant and described our cool things, like the porcupine quill and hippo tooth. He was a confident little speaker! Brooke has those pictures on her phone but here's a picture of Grant as we were leaving.

 

Here I asked him to say "Shima!"

 

Ok, gotta get cooking. It's shish-kabobs tonight!

Love all y'all sugar-babies! (Love the being in the South!) ~ mama