The GodUncle

As many of you know, I have a god-brother. For those of you who didn't know- well- SURPRISE! As a reminder to those of you who do not keep a journal filled with the minutiae of "facts about Emily" at home, his name is William and, to protect his privacy, I will only say that his last name is that of a not terribly popular car model. Will has two actual, biological siblings, and I would love to take them on as god-siblings as well. They seem like wonderful, fascinating people, but I don't know them as well probably because I never had my mashed potatoes ruined by their throwing socks into them, nor did I have the opportunity to help them transport a suitcase full of stuffed animals cross country . Although I did sew the tail back on one sibling's stuffed raccoon (or possibly squirrel) once. But that is not relevant to the present discussion.

Anyway, Will and I have god-siblinged from distance for some time now, so I was really excited when he decided to attend college in Arkansas. You know, sad for him (coming to Arkansas), glad for me, like I will be for you when I finally wear you down enough that you move here, too. Unfortunately, he goes to school 3 hours from here, but you take what you can get. He contacted me via Facebo*ok to ask me to stop writing things about his poor, defenseless father's advancing years on his dad's wall and promptly began hassling me about my own elderliness. He stopped by to visit last week on his way to his summer job, as part of my endevor to encourage him to stop by whenever he doesn't mind going three hours out of his way. Given his god-family status, we didn't do any of the MANY FUN THINGS there are to do here, but instead allowed him sleep in, to hang out and to volunteer to help Rob move some damaged limbs that Rob and his dad spent the morning removing from the tree out back. You remember, the limbs damaged from the ice storm in January, because Rob and I are quick to get right on those important homeowner tasks. Please keep in mind that we do not mandate that our houseguests do manual labor- so please come visit us Atlanta friends. We'll let you sit and watch while Rob re-sods. Don't feel at all guilty about that.

E and L love Will intensely, although they are shy about telling him so. They call him "William Rehnquist" after the judge on their Supreme Court Justices flashcards we make them work with every day. Not really. Actually, they call him this because his last name sounds sort of similar to the first part of Rehnquist and because he (William Rehnquist, not Will) , along with the Supreme Court from 6 years ago, is pictured in the back of their Oliva Forms a Band book and they always make us tell them who each justice is. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you now that we recognize the non-white, non-male members of the court and Antonin Scalia and, while we know the names of the other justices pictured, we can not agree on which wealthy, white male Protestant is which. It's really beginning to cause some marital disharmony. Rob points out that it probably wouldn't hurt our children socially if we began to dial the "nerd quotient" down a little at our house. And my point was... yes! Will! He's remarkably good with small children and we are so pleased that might grow up with a fighting chance of getting to know their god-uncle. Because we all love Will, think he's incredibly funny and hope he comes back soon. Because the house is not going to just re-wire itself.
Here he is with them:

When E woke up from her nap and dicovered Will was gone, she was upset. A few minutes later, we captured this picture of her reading one of our books. We laughed really hard becuase of the expression on her face combined with the name of the book she was holding, How to Really Love Your Child:


After church today Rob took these, which might be more of interest to the grandparents, but also demonstrate that when Will comes back through, he might have an opportunity to cut down our fountain grass with a machete: