The bloom is off the rose...

The newness of the blog thing has obviously worn off (the 'bloom is off the rose' as they say. Who are 'they?' Well, I don't know, actually...) Hence the tardiness of this most recent post, not that I think people out there are living in agony, wondering day to day when I'm finally going to get around to posting some juicy new tidbits about our lives. But if you are out there, speak up! I might be more motivated to keep things current. And now that I know that people can and actually DO make comments on this blog, your voice will be heard! As a matter of fact, it was just last week my sister Jo told me that people have been commenting on the blog all this time and I had no idea. So if you felt like I was ignoring your comments, I was not, I just didn't even know they existed. However, in the future, I will ignore some comments, such as those requesting pictures of me with a big belly, because in the words of my friend Megan, people just don't need to see those. Or maybe I need for people to not see them. Either way.


So on to the interesting things...


Can you find the teacher in this group? (He almost looks like a student)

In April I accompanied Will to Portland, OR with his jazz band (7th and 8th graders) where the band was competing in a jazz festival/jazz competition. Anyone who participated in music festivals in high school or middle school will remember the joys of trips like this: flirting on the bus, eating practically nothing so as to save the money your parents gave you for food to use for other things, trying to come up with as many inside jokes as possible, more flirting, forgetting to bring crucial pieces of performance attire or equipment to the performance...and that was just Will and me! Hah! Oh, but it did bring back a lot of memories, especially since Will and I actually did flirt on the bus on a band trip in high school. We, of course, were not nearly as annoying about it, I'm sure :) It really was a fun trip, though, and Will's students are all really good kids, whose awkwardness was not nearly as annoying as some teenagers' can be.
The picture below is Will and Charlie at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, with a statue that somehow relates to the history of aviation, I think?

My mom was gracious enough to come stay with Charlie while Will and I were in Portland, but some short time after that we all three went to Virginia to see Will's side of the family. Charlie became completely obsessed with Will's parents' cat and they developed a pretty intense love-hate relationship in which he wanted to be with the kitty, and then he was scared of the kitty, and then the kitty would run into the room and Charlie would run out, and then Charlie would ask "Where kitty go?" and hunt the kitty down, only to have the kitty run away from HIM. It was all very complicated and French, but I think by the end of the stay they had reached some sort of understanding, because the kitty (named "Red" after the color of his collar) eventually would stick around long enough to let Charlie pet him, and Charlie would touch him a little bit before he got scared.

Other highlights of this trip were all the fun toys that Grandma had for Charlie to play with, and all the energy Grandma had for playing with Charlie and the toys; going in to DC and visiting various Smithsonian Museums; also seeing our friends Geoff and Katie and their awesome house. Being back East always makes me wish we had a bit more history here in Nevada, because you just don't have the feeling of being established like you do in these great neighborhoods in Virginia, or the fantastic character of older houses like Geoff and Katie's, which has all these great architectural details and craftsmanship that nobody bothers with for the most part in newer homes. There isn't anything liveable in Las Vegas that's more than a couple of decades old. Anyway, I always love visiting Virginia, there are lots of things about living out there that I feel we're missing here in the desert, not the least of which is having really, really big trees around.

After we got back from Virginia we headed up to Idaho for the missionary farewell of my littlest brother, Evan who's heading to Greece to serve in the Athens, Greece mission. (I'm so jealous, I would LOVE to go to Greece someday.) While we were there we did a little hike up in the foothills with my mom and dad, and Jo's family, and two very excited dogs. The proximity of two big dogs with rough-and-tumble manners caused Charlie much consternation, and he required someone to carry him for most of the 5-mile hike. And here's one of (the only?) benefits of being pregnant on a hike: no one expects you to carry anything! Many thanks to Baca (Grandma Hall) and Grandpa and Dad for carrying Charlie without complaint. We did see another pregnant lady on the same hike, but she probably would have carried Charlie if we'd asked her, because she was RUNNING the trail, uphill, and she was more pregnant than I was! I sure hope she was OK, because it really did look like she was going to go into labor within minutes.

Then the most recent trip: I went to Seattle with my mom and sisters to visit my sister-in-law Brittany, whose husband (my brother, Bryan) is serving in Iraq right now. Other than the coldness and wetness of that city, I really loved spending time there with the "First, Former and Current" Hall women, as I guess we're now called. We went to a fascinating museum called the Experience Music Project which features the history of rock, specifically how it relates to Seattle history. I've never met a museum I didn't like, and I definitely could have stayed a lot longer, especially if I could have gotten my sisters to do a jam session with me in one of the interactive "music studio" booths, but one really cool exhibit was this guitar feature pictured above. It was a three-story musical sculpture made entirely of musical instruments that was electronically wired to play samples of all kinds of music on those instruments. It was pretty rad.

And finally, here are some funny Charlie-isms that I've been meaning to write down for his posterity, so I'll write them here:

ok-chet (chocolate)

ik-chen (chicken, or kitchen, depending)

wetchables (vegetables)

egg-shine (exercise)

poor (pool)

lock-dog (hot dog)

And I'll end with a story that is typical of the kind of stories Charlie tells:

A ladybug...(gibberish)...in there (pointing down his pants)....nice ladybug...(gibberish)...bite you...scary!