Toads-in-the-Hole

It's another strange time for us. I've gone ahead to Iowa City for my orientation, while Aimee and Adelaide stay with her parents and wait for the current occupants of our house -which is undamaged by flooding (I know that news should have appeared in this a couple of weeks ago, sorry.)- to move out.

Despite the fact that I've only been gone for four days, and despite the fact that it is nice to take a break from parenting, it's hard to be absent from my family. Adelaide is just starting to really converse on the phone, and during my frequent calls she'll tell me about her life and we'll sing songs together, and I'll have difficulty deciding between laughing and crying.

But this time is a nice reminder of how lucky we are not to be separated regularly or for long periods of time. And in celebration of our long period of togetherness, here are some previously unseen pictures of our adventures.

Here's one from our Bemidji trip that I really like. The statue of Paul Bunyan is about three times my height, and Adelaide is a little more than 1/3 my height.

And here we are at Animal Land, the largest private family zoo in the nation (using, I'm pretty sure, a very specific and narrow definition of "private family zoo").

Sartell had its summer festival a few weeks ago, complete with parade. Adelaide quickly caught on to the idea of scurrying out into traffic in chase of thrown candy, and collected quite a bag of barely edible sugary delights. We're now trying to divert her frequent requests for her bag of candy into discussions of potty training and the kinds of sugary delights that are given to girls who use the potty. It's slow going.

My solitude ends tomorrow, as Aimee tells me the moving truck has been expertly packed up, the poopship has been loaded onto a tow dolly, and they are all set to haul our earthly possessions down I-35 and across I-80 for six-to-seven hours and then unload 'em all again. On my end, all the papers are signed, I'm in possession of a key, and no one seems to have thought better about lending us hundreds of thousands of dollars, so very soon we'll all be together again in our new home.