This weekend the girls and I drove down to Junction to visit Grandma, Grandpa & Buddy and on to Cedar City to visit Rachel and my beautiful new niece - Savanna.

Having had a baby sister of their own born just last summer, Autumn & Heidi seemed more excited about Buddy than their new cousin...but Esther and I sure enjoyed Savanna in all her tininess! (Is that a word?)

These were bittersweet visits for me. I never thought I'd live in Utah as long as I have and now I find myself sad to be leaving. I'm saddest to be leaving family and friends I've been able to live close to and visit often. Thank goodness for technology that keeps us connected even when we can't visit! SUCH a blessing.

This morning I packed up my files and hopefully got all the important papers and info that should travel with me. I'm surprised at the amount of papers I found that were trash! I did come across some gems though, definitely worth saving. These are some pictures Autumn has drawn at home over the past few months as well as a letter she "dictated" in preschool (since as you can easily see, that's not her handwriting...).

FIVE is a big deal to Autumn and she talks to us a lot about things she remembers doing and a typical ending to her stories is - "but that was when I was four."

She just informed me that the letter is in fact a band-aid. I'm discovering that there's an art to talking to your kid about their day! Not really an art I guess but more of a consciousness from me to dig a little further when I ask about her day. I had assumed this was a letter...it must be from their "Doctor" or "Health" week.

Yesterday Autumn & Heidi were emptying the dishwasher. Autumn asked me if they could go back outside after they were done and I said yes. She gave me a huge hug and said, "Mom, you're the best!" I told her thankyou -- only to be told by Heidi, "It's your pleasure. That's what you say Mommy, it's your pleasure."

And then as Autumn was putting silverware away, she said, "Ow! A fork poked me." Heidi asked her, "Oh, did it hurt?" and in a "shrug" kind of tone Autumn said, "No."

Today I took the girls to the Hogle Zoo (sans Eric, who was teaching voice lessons). So much fun! And I was really excited to go one more time before we move. We got to see the new "Asian Highlands" exhibit that was still being built last time we went and we also got to the see WHITE ALLIGATOR.


He's on loan from the New Orleans Zoo and his name is Antoine (I think that's hilarious...). I took several pictures of him but they didn't really turn out. This one is from an article in the Deseret News (this is a great article). There has only been one recorded finding of white alligators, in 1987. There were 18 of them and now there are only 10 left. And they're NOT albino's. It's so interesting! Albino's have no pigment at all, so their eyes are pink or red. But these white alligators have pigment in their eyes, just none in their skin. They usually have blue eyes. And they have white skin because of a genetic mutation. It was really trippy seeing a white alligator. And he didn't move at all while we were looking so it was hard to believe he was real!