It has been several months now since she has declined to eat baby food. We have tons of little jars in the cupboard that she will never use. Yesterday she was inexplicably whiny (she woke up this morning with her first tooth!) and this kept her happy for an hour.
On our way back from TX we received an unintelligible message from the missionaries. When we got through to their cell phone we learned that Antonio was getting baptized on Sunday and he requested Ryan to do the ordinance. Ryan was happily surprised. This is the first baptism he's done since his mission. Antonio is a recent immigrant from Guatemala. His wife and daughters are waiting for him back home. He found a good room mate, who happened to be the elder's quorum president, and the rest is history.
After our picnic at Memorial Park we went to the Houston temple, our last stop in Texas. Nothing disastrous happened to deterr us from going to the temple this month, except that Ryan forgot his suit in Kansas and we had to buy a new suit, pants, belt, and shirt, and get the suit tailored.
On our last day there we enjoyed a post-interview-unwind picnick at a park in Sugar Land. I've never seen a city with such well maintained streets, parks, and grounds. 
Taking advantage of warmer-than-Kansas weather, we packed swim suits, beach towels, and an inflatable tube for the little princess. Bella's new found joy in the tube exceeded our expectations and continued until bedtime.
It seemed like it would be impossible to do a follow up act to last year's Spring break in Puerto Rico, but at the last minute Bella and I decided to accompany Ryan to his interview in Sugar Land, Texas. Bella was my little assistant, as always, unpacking what I packed, adding extra things to the suit case, removing all the DVD's from their shelf, emptying her drawers, climbing into everything possible, and following me every where. I love my tiny sidekick.
Ryan just told me about this video he did last night. It's better than the one I just put up. I'm glad he got some good, lingering footage of our empty picture frames. I swear I'm going to put photos in them.
I'm posting this one for Amy, who requested to see more Bella videos. It's lucky that she wanted Bella videos, because we don't have any other kind. This was last week when we discovered Bella's joy in playing Hide and Seek. The video doesn't show how ecstatic she gets when she finds us. She usually starts bouncing up and down, eating her fists, giggling and burrowing her face into the rug. You'll have to imagine that.
Mother nature blessed our temple trip with the last big snow storm of the season.Our Nissan Sentra's tires are about as wide as a bike's. After sliding off the freeway in Missouri, we looked behind us and spied a silver Civic sliding our way. Ryan whipped Bella out of her car seat and out of the car before the probable impact. Fortunately they didn't hit us. Unfortunately, a semi hit the front of their car. Besides us and the civic, five other vehicles careened off the road in the same spot just moments after we did, including two cars that ended up in the ravine on the other side of the freeway and a semi.
