“This is when it’s a bean, this is when it’s in a raccoon, this is when it’s a caterpillar, and this is when it’s a butterfly!”  

Della has some really cool ways of writing her name.

Della and George were concerned about reports of tornadoes in the DC Metro Area on Wednesday evening. They had a lot of questions. The next morning Della said, tornadoes don’t come in the mornings, right? I said, if a tornado is coming, they’ll tell us, meaning the news guys will tell us. The tornadoes will tell us if they’re coming, Della told Steve. I said, no, tornadoes don’t tell us anything. They’re not alive. Oh, she said, like zombies!

Meanwhile, George is pretty clear about how tornadoes are basically the same as Bad Bad Wolves.

I’m trying to think of something funny to say about the purple bath water here…

Della lost the crown she got at Disney on Ice on the Metro, or maybe the Metro platform.

George: Maybe we could find it with a camera. Maybe I can get the Bad Bad Wolf to help us find it.

Della: That’s not going to help, George!

Della said in the car today, remember when we read Cinderella the other night and you started crying for your mommy? It was the part about the fairy godmother. Della had asked, is that her mommy? And although it hadn’t occurred to me before, I thought that yes, maybe the fairy godmother could be Cinderella’s dead mother in disguise. And then I started crying and couldn’t read about the fairy godmother creating a beautiful dress for Cinderella.

Della said in the car, I really miss your mommy, too. All the fun things we did, we won’t have them anymore, she said. She said something about not going to heaven referring to a conversation we’d had. I said, Della what I meant was that she isn’t going to come back from heaven, but one day we will see her there, but not for a long time. George said, oh maybe we can drive there mommy. No, you can’t drive to heaven, I said. He said, maybe in a little car. I said, no heaven is a different dimension. It’s all around us but we can’t see it. Like fairies. I said, even though we won’t see Nanny Rose the way we used to see her, we can see her in our minds. We can remember her and things will remind us of her. And she taught me so many things, and so many of the things I do are because of her. Della said with tears in her eyes, do you see her in your dreams? I said yes, I will see her in my dreams and so will you.

I forgot to post Della’s birthday song, written and performed by Uncle Paul Droubay, album cover by Jimmy the Dog!!!

Della turned four! Several times. In Utah in a Hello Kitty dress with a purple Barbie cake…

At school in her favorite sundress with purple cupcakes…

Queen Della in Baltimore

Princess Della in Ogden

King George at Home

Della is finally getting serious about something: face painting.

And maybe a little bit sledding.

We peoples are also dead serious about snow.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the Mid-Atlantic blizzard of 2016:

Here is Della with her Dora backpack and Frozen roller bag hoofing it through the airport. Steve was like, why don’t you just take one or the other. She assured him that she had seen LOTS of people with both backpacks and roller bags in transit.

That’s all for now…

We love you, Della! 

Bonus Track: George draws a family.

It was a giga-guitar fest a few Wednesday nights ago in Utah, and it was great.