Happy Birthday to Dad Dastrup

I love this picture of Dad Dastrup--Grandpa Max Dastrup--holding Lucy on her blessing day. (It's not the clarity of the original, taken by Aaron, because it's a compressed email file.) The focus is intentionally on Lucy, but I love the soft presence of Grandpa holding her on his knee. I think this picture is representative of Travis's dad. He's always there, rock solid and fixed where he needs to be. He's helping to support and anchor everyone else, but he doesn't want the limelight or too much fussing. He wants to quietly be surrounded by the people he loves, and to quietly serve them. The following two pictures are only two examples of the many times he has finished my ironing pile for me. Once was when I was coming home from the hospital with Lucy, and the other while we were getting ready to put our Indiana house on the market. Travis wears a shirt and tie every day to work, and then several white shirts for bishopric duties. My ironing board is usually out with a large ironing pile just waiting for me to have time to attack it without little people pulling on me. This quiet act of service means so much to me. I love you! Happy Birthday!

Music Lesson Thursday

Thursdays are my busiest day. There tends to be some cello cramming early in the morning and for a few minutes after school. Anna doesn't need to cram because she practices almost perfectly from 5-7 every morning. In theory Michael and I practice from 6:30-7:30 a.m. Early morning practices, as opposed to having to do in the afternoon, have been a bit spotty since, well, my pregnancy with Lucy, but September has been pretty solid. We rush to eat dinner at 3:30; otherwise it's 8 p.m. when we can eat or I have to pack a dinner to bring with us--and this just isn't going to happen. Then I take Michael to Kaysville for a cello lesson, leaving Sarah and Lucy with Anna. I race home from Farmington to load my three girls in the van along with Anna's violin, and drop off Michael's cello. Ideally she has played for twenty minutes so she is warmed-up for her lesson, but this doesn't always happen while she's babysitting. I drive to Farmington and drop her off for an hour lesson while I find some way to entertain everyone else (and often feed Lucy). This feels so easy after five years of attending lessons with Anna. I was spending too much money window shopping at a nearby Home Goods and Marshalls, so we've been playing at a playground in my friend Emily's neighborhood. I hope she won't tell the Neighborhood Watch on us. We're also going to show up on my cousins Scott and Elisha's doorstep one of these times--just in time for dinner--I mean a visit. It's an exhausting, but satisfying afternoon and evening. No one can believe it's bedtime when we get home, and unless I'm really grouchy, everyone gets to bed a little later on Thursday nights. I plan to enjoy the playground as often as we can until cold weather forces us to do some more window shopping. One might ask where Travis is for all of this running. He's still at work most of the time, but every now and again he makes it home to take Anna, and that's always a welcome surprise for all of us.

Lucy at 9 months