Eating Tea at Clock Tower

I'm back from the Austin trip. It really wasn't as bad going there and back in one day as I'd thought it might be. The weather wasn't horrible, though there was lots of fog both going and coming. It was a really nice ceremony--very similar to the baby dedications they do in my own church, except that the fathers get to lead the prayers instead of the pastor. The boys were pretty well-behaved throughout the whole thing.

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to hang with Noah, my older nephew, who's really developing a great personality. I've mentioned before about how he's a great conversationalist, especially regarding me and the saxophone. This trip had several more "kids say the darndest things" moments like these:

--When a couple of friends of my sister and brother-in-law's had to leave the post-church lunch, Noah turned to them and said. "You have fun."

--After my younger nephew Caleb came into the kitchen, spinning around and making funny noises, Noah piped up with "Caleb is a wacky baby."

--They made prayer books in Noah's Sunday school class, and some of the pages had blanks they were supposed to fill in. The first page said, "I will pray ________" and Noah put "for a baby snake" in the blank.

Caleb is also talking a little bit now; one of the things he can say is "juice." He also refers to milk as juice, perhaps because he drinks them both out of a similar sippy cup. Of course, Noah pointed out that milk, in a way, is juice...cow juice, that is. Heh.

But one of the best ones came late in the day. Ever since I can remember, my parents will have wine and cheese and crackers at 5:00 in the afternoon, usually while watching the news (although lately it's more likely to be HGTV). They refer to this as "cocktail hour." Noah can't say that yet, so he refers to it as Clock Tower, and he knows that, whenever Grandma and Grandpa visit, they'll have Clock Tower when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the five. He also knows that they "eat wine" at Clock Tower, and he asked me if I was going to do that as well. Notwithstanding the fact that I don't like wine, I was about to drive back home, so I told him I wasn't. He gave me a quizzical look and asked, "Spwite?" I said yes, though I ultimately opted for juice...and that's regular juice, not cow juice.

Kids are something, huh? Man, when I have some of my own, I'll have to make a separate blog for posts about them just to keep this one from redlining on the Sap-O-Meter.

So here I am, a few days to teach and then chill before I head to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving. What a week of driving this will be...

SIGN OF THE DAY: "Please flush twice"-- in the restroom at the church. That seemed most un-Austinlike, considering the conservation-mindedness of that city, but I guess it really was necessary. I was happy to see that nobody had added the middle-school graffito "...it's a long way to the cafeteria" to the sign, which was good, because they actually had a cafeteria only two doors down.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "If you want any cousins anytime soon, you'll watch where you jump."--Me, to Noah, who was jumping from the table onto my lap and occasionally landing way too close to the family jewels.