things are starting to settle down now, but for a week or so there, i felt like i was living in an alternate reality.

sara and i took our little vacation to d.c. to visit my sister and her family. it was a good time, and it was awesome to finally meet reuben, even though he's still too little to do much more than cry, eat, smile, and look around a lot. of course, i spent most of my time trying to get him to smile. at least partly because if he was smiling, he wasn't crying. sara and i got to babysit a couple days, so it was nice to get that much time with him.

emma (2, and cute as a button) has day care, so we didn't get to spend as much time with her. of course, she's also more interactive, so our time with her was more fun. she sings random songs, sometimes real songs, sometimes made up. she speaks very well in complete sentences, but she sometimes goes off on a tangent in emmish. i sometimes wonder if she's not going to be totally screwed up because her mother speaks five languages (though obviously not all at once.)

it was awesome to get to spend so much time with them, and of course, to get a vacation from work, life, and all that jazz. we didn't do much sightseeing, but mainly hung around their house enjoying the fact that we didn't have to work.

things really took a turn to the surreal when, not 10 minutes after getting home after our flight back, we were driving to the car dealership to pick up sara's new car. it's a long story how we got to the decision to get her a new car, but suffice it to say we thought it the best option. so, we fly into town, buy her car, then spend the next several hours (of the same night) attempting to teach her how to drive a manual… well, that, and trying to assuage her fears about never being able to figure it out.

to really keep the financial chaos meter buried in the red, the next day i went in to sign the paperwork for a loan to buy out the lease on my car. combine these with some of the other financial goings-on, and i was really feeling there for a while that i was just dragging home fat sacks of cash and tossing them down a sinkhole in my backyard.

things have stabilized now, and i'm not feeling like some kind of body snatcher pod person; but man all this "real life" stuff gets to be a little much at times, doesn't it?

after all this, and since our friend lori's baby shower didn't quite come to fruition, we ended up going up to my parent's farm (formerly grandma's farm) in virginia. my grandma's feeling much better, and is back home again, though she has to get dialysis 3 times a week. it was really awesome to see her looking like her normal self again, and i was glad that we had the opportunity to visit now that she's feeling better. also, my sis and her family were all going to be there, so this was another good opportunity to see them one last time (most likely) before they fly off to the other side of the world.

it was a great visit. probably the most difficult thing was watching my grandma with reuben when they were about to leave. i can only imagine what she was thinking, but i know her hands were trembling and she was trying not to cry. i hope reuben gets the opportunity to see his great-grandma again, but if that's not possible, i hope some subconscious part of him remembers that moment.

as much as i might have rebelled against them, as much as i struggled for the independence and individual identity that i value without regrets, i love my family. even though i never see, and feel disconnected from my family on dad's side, i love them too. from my point of view, the three most important things in the world are family, friends, and self(-identity,-sufficiency,-responsibility,-worth). each of us is a nexus of those three things, fed by and providing for them.

well, i don't really want to get off on some philosophical tanget, so i'll just stop there. nevertheless, family = important.
also important is communication, which i think i've done just about enough of for this post. in closing, i'll just leave you with a link to the gallery with the latest photos concerning recent events.