Always More to Do
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Jury duty had been canceled for Collette’s group that morning, much to her relief. Jury duty at six plus months into one’s pregnancy in the striking cold of an unusually bitter February, was not ideal. Another time, perhaps.
For a good part of the day, Collette worked with Rose on GRE material including Tinbergen’s lifetime research on stickleback fish and herring gull chicks.
Meanwhile, Dad, Mom, and Linnea painted the living room at the house – two shades of yellow.
“So, you have a sunshine room,” Dad had commented on it, when he had returned.
They had come back with a bag of heart-shaped chocolates which Linnea ate while playing Nancy Drew.
Joe, Rose, and Frances later left for choir. And Carrie-Bri and Eve went around town purchasing the beginnings of their hiking gear. The first on the list were hiking boots from the Alpine Shop where it took a good hour and a half to be fitted, using everything from measuring equipment, hot water, and hammers, to mold the shoes (selected to best conform to their feet) into the perfect hiking boots.
“They look like clown shoes,” Carrie looked at them on her feet, having a different perspective than everyone else.
But as Carrie and Eve both realized, it probably didn’t matter all that much what they looked like on the trail. And depending on the level of difficulty of the hiking paths, they probably wouldn’t care what they looked like either, provided they survived from one end to the next.
In other news, there had been little gifts brought back from Disney World, including a Donald Duck pirate rubber duck for baby.
And Grandma Combs was very excited to be attending the first of her pottery classes that night, her gift from the Snicketts family that Christmas.
News came that night of Brit and Lilli’s baby being born, delivered by C-section (due to the fact that the doctor had not been pleased with the baby’s heartbeat at the time). And despite the fact that the little baby had not been breathing upon first coming into the world, she was soon brought around and was doing very well. Six pounds, fifteen ounces. Liselotte Thicket (after her mother’s maiden name) Black. Suddenly Grandma Snicketts was a great-grandma, Uncle Hilario and Aunt Corliss were grand-parents, Uncle Clarence and Aunt Galena, Uncle Balthasar and Aunt Tuuli, and Mom and Dad were great aunts and uncles. All of the cousins – well, perhaps there was no real title reserved for the relationship between oneself and one’s cousin’s child.
“In 1859 the great Presbyterian preacher James Henley Thornwell had the opportunity to announce the wedding of his daughter, Nancy. In the weeks leading up to this event, the hundreds traveling would end up at a funeral, not a wedding as she took ill from cholera typhoid and began a rapid demise. Thornwell, overcome, came to his daughter’s bedside in her waning moments and said, ‘Oh my dear daughter, such tragedy!’ She replied, ‘Father, do not weep. I know my Savior.’ He said, ‘But this was to be your wedding, your whole life before you.’ She, the youth, yet with greater maturity said, ‘Father, but I now go to a greater Groom that I am prepared to meet.’ Nancy Witherspoon Thornwell was laid to rest in a wedding gown, and the tombstone reads: ‘As a bride prepared for her Groom.'”
– Tabletalk, February 2007