California Dreamin' on Such a Winter's Day

This week my parents and I got back from California. We had gone there to visit my nephews: Preston, the inquisitive nine-year-old; Franklin, the generous almost-six-year-old; and Nathaniel, the adorable almost-four-year-old. Sadly, this was the best picture I got with all three of them.

We flew into the Oakland airport on Christmas and then went to my brother's apartment. We hadn't seen their new place; they moved out of their old one after some diabolical fiend who doesn't deserve to exist robbed them. I prefer to spend Christmas (and other holidays) at home, but at least I got to see my nephews.

Preston still likes to ask lots of questions. For the past four years, he has been known to ask a lot of questions.

Franklin's speech has improved. In the past, he had a strange habit of turning consonant clusters involving an r, w, or l into f. Thus, he said "play" as "fay" and "try" as "fy." Since starting school, his speech has improved; now he says "pway" and "twy."

Nathaniel was formerly known as Baby, but once this time around we called him that, and he said he wasn't a baby. When I asked if I could call him Baby, he said no; he says he has two names (Nathaniel and Qi-en). He still answers to Baby, though. Nathaniel is just such a cumbersome name; the Chinese Qi-en (chee-UN) is shorter, but I don't speak Chinese.

His speech hasn't improved much, if at all. He says more things, but his pronunciation hasn't changed. He is very hard to understand. His stop consonants seem to be interchangeable, and they are almost all voiced. For example, he says "toy" as "goy." Most of his fricatives and affricates (like "s" and "sh") seem to be either pronounced as "h" or "w." I can't decide whether his pronunciation helps make him so utterly cute, or if he would be even cuter if he could speak well.

However, he is really funny and has imaginary homes and families. There are some things he has sixteen ("hixteeng") of, and there are some things he has "hix nineteen" of. He has sixteen buses and sixteen houses. Each house has other family members and a swimming pool, although only one has another uncle. When we were buying Christmas presents for the boys, we told them that they could pool their money for a Wii U, and Nathaniel said they have one at his new house. When I was asking him what I could call him besides Nathaniel and Qi-en, I was silly and asked him if I could call him Bird, and he informed me that he has a white bird at his new house.

While we were there, we went to San Francisco's Exploratorium, which would have been funner if there weren't as many people there. Then we played at a park there in the city.

Our last full day there was on Monday, and I took the boys to a little playground at their complex. We heard a custodian freaking out, because he had found this little fella in the trash can:

The rat was trying to jump out. The boys wanted to see it, so I held them up, but I was a little worried about it jumping out while I was holding them. Eventually some people put a branch in the garbage for the rat to climb out. It did and ran into the bushes. It was kind of funny, because the first custodian was scared of it, so he called his friend custodian, who made fun of him for being scared. We made a quick stop back at the apartment, and when we went back  to the playground, Nathaniel brought his little bike. He left it on the playground while he went playing, and then we noticed a woman pushing a little girl on it. Of course, Qi-en didn't like that, so I took him and I went up and said, "Can he ride on it?" She got off, but then Preston told me that he could tell the woman was mad because she was talking angrily with a friend (they weren't speaking English). It was weird enough to ride someone else's bike, but to be mad when you get kicked off--that's excessively odd. Maybe it was a cultural thing. And maybe she thought it wasn't ours either, since I didn't explicitly say so. But the woman did seem like she knew the girl had to get off when she saw us trailing them, before I had even said anything.

On New Year's Eve we flew home. That night my mom and I went to see Cherie Call on Temple Square. I think it was the sixth time I've seen her live, and I was very pleased she sang "Starting Again, Again," which is unquestionably the best New Year song I own. Then we went to my sister's house.

On New Year's Day, we had our traditional family dinner. Then the day ended.

And depressing January is upon us.

I've decided that January is officially my least favorite month. Once New Year's Day is over, there are no real holidays. While I hold Martin Luther King Jr. in high esteem, his holiday isn't much more than a day off. We don't have a "fun" holiday until Valentine's Day, and that's not even very fun. You need to lose all the weight you gained over Christmas, but it's hard to go running, because if the air is clean, there's lots of snow and ice, but if there's not much snow and ice, the air is dirty. I hope we don't have any freezing rain this month.

Tomorrow I start my fifth and last winter semester. Today at church, lots of people were introducing themselves and saying that they had just gotten off their mission. I was in that same boat four years ago. Weird! When I introduced myself, I said, "I've been home from my mission for five weeks, plus four years."

I'm hoping that this semester will be more laid back, but that's what I said about last semester, so we'll see. I got to see my grades for last semester. I got A's in my senior course, internship credit, Old English, and technical communication; an A- in groundwater; a P (pass) in swimming, and a B+ in field studies. I was expecting a B+ in field studies, so that doesn't disappoint me. The groundwater grade makes me both happy and a little disappointed. On one hand, I was expecting a B of some kind, so the A- was a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, the A- was a miracle, and if I was going to get a miracle, I would want it to be an A! These grades lowered my cumulative GPA. Oh well. I'm almost done anyway.