Dear Everyone,
This is coming a week late because last Sunday (July 28th) we were driving through Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois.
Family
In my last update I mentioned being in Utah the last week of June to see Danielle's extended family and many of you. Upon returning Victoria loved telling us about Leslie, Julia, and Emma. In addition to hearing about these three she can name most of my siblings and their kids from pictures now. She even said Uncle Marshall once when I was video chatting with him and she walked by. She has also started using her whole first name, Vici-toria. Once she losses the extra syllable in the middle she will be ready for the next step.
Tucson
We finished our time in Tucson with some great rain. Victoria loved joining in puddles. While in Tucson we got to attend 5 baptisms, one of which I got to do the baptizing. Danielle tried her hardest to get anyone we knew to show up to any church thing. She was able to have two families over for dinner and family home evening. We also spoke in church our last week. I was able to finish everything at work except the project I started the last week. I had the opportunity to present my work to the management three levels up. It was well received and Micheal Bardach (my supervisor) has been ask by his boss when I am coming back.
Villagers
Our drive back went very well. Victoria was very good, but whenever we were getting back in the car she would tell us "don't want go home". She deserve a reward for her cooperation. We managed to avoid bad weather like the record rain fall in Albuquerque that closed the highway hours after we drove through. We also got to speak at the little Hiawatha branch in Kansas that we stopped at.
Within 15 hours of getting to Champaign we turned around and moved to the village of Savoy. So we are now villagers. We are enjoying our new townhouse and the idea of not moving again until I graduate or two more kids come along.
Odds and Ends
In the last week and a half Victoria has started parroting everything and using sentences by default. Though she struggles use pronouns correctly and often drops little words such as to, am, and is.
We learned this summer that Victoria likes food pure and unadulterated. This start when we tried to introduce her to s'mores and culminated with her getting mad at me for putting cookie dough on my marshmallow: "Noooo, daddy get off." As I type this she is carefully eating around the strawberries in the strawberry jello. Once the jello is gone she will eat the strawberries.
We hope everyone is well and miss those we did not get to see this summer.
Greg
Here is a link to some of our pictures from the month. I will get Danielle to upload the rest this week.
