an Uncle!

Having grown up with a cadre of aunts and uncles, it has been a little strange to realize that my sister Carrie is the only aunt my children will ever have. (Except of course our adopted aunties and uncles.) Steve is an only child and I've just got Carrie.

But we can now claim an uncle! Or, at least, we will soon. Carrie and her beau, Scott, are officially engaged. Yayyy!!!

And I can genuinely say that in spite of his inadvertently hurling my son from a merry-go-round, and being involved in bashing my daughter in the face with a porch swing last last weekend, that I really like this young man.

He has been really kind and generous to my sister and my children.
I am so delighted to see my sister with a good man, and I wish them both the very best.

New Vision

After a somewhat restless night (wearing those cool goggles to bed isn't really very comfortable), we got up early this morning so Sarah could take me back to the eye doctor's for a checkup. I could see very well this morning, and the doctor confirmed 20/15 vision (less than 24 hours after the surgery!). I might have been able to see 20/10, but they didn't check.

Anyway, at this point its easy to forget I just had surgery yesterday. My vision is great. I've got no pain or discomfort. But I have to remember not to rub my eyes, to put in my drops periodically, to wear my goggles to sleep, etc. And to not let the kids poke me in the face to much. Which is easy to forget when everything seems to be going so well. But for at least the next week or 2 I've got to be pretty careful while my eyes heal.

So everything's looking great so far, but I need to be diligent for a bit longer to make sure they heal up well with no complications. Thanks so much for your thoughts & prayers!

Unremarkable

Hi everybody.
Steve is back from his lasik surgery. It was blessedly unremarkable.
He is home now wrapping up his mandatory 2 hour nap. He will have to wear some cool looking space invader goggles for a while and we will have a follow up doctor's visit tomorrow morning.


I'm sure he will post a web log entry after he gets the okay to stare at computer screens again.

Congratulations Jeremy & Heather!

Our close friends, Jeremy & Heather, have been in the adoption process for quite a while now waiting for a referral for a Taiwanese girl. But now they have some big news!

Congratulations...we all look forward to meeting Ellie!

Altered Vision

Tomorrow's the big day, hopefully.

First thing tomorrow morning Sarah will take me to the LASIK doctor's office for my final evaluation. If everything matches up to last time, then they will go ahead and perform the surgery right afterwards. If not, they will schedule me for sometime in June to do the same thing.

I'm so sick of wearing these darn glasses...here's hoping tomorrow's the day. And more importantly, here's hoping it goes well.

High Aspirations

I was tucking Paul in bed last night and he was being a little resistant.

Paul - "I'm not tired. I don't like to go to bed!"

Steve - "But Paul, you need lots of sleep if you want to grow up big and strong and healthy."

Paul - "But I don't want to grow up big and strong...I don't want to be a daddy."

Steve - "Well what do you want to be then?"

Paul - "I just want to be a donut eater"

Steve (chuckling) - "But Paul, you can be a daddy and a donut eater."

Paul - "But I don't want to be a daddy, I just want to eat all the donuts."

Steve (laughing) - "Indeed, well you better get some good sleep so you can eat even more donuts...Good night."

Educational Games

Paul has discovered the wonder of pbskids.org. After seeing enough advertisements for it on PBS, he and Julia can actually sing the name of the website. We keep them supervised, but Paul can navigate the website mostly by himself. Julia sits in the chair with him and watches as if it were a cartoon show on TV.

One place he’s found that I really like is called Word World. The cartoon characters are built of the letters of the words that name them. For example, Sheep looks like she is made of white fluffy S-H-E-E-P. It’s pretty clever.

One of the characters is Frog. He lives in a log and his character is a bit of a scientist. He says things like, “I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to studying word things,” and “ingenious!” The game associated with him is a rhyming game. His rhyming machine displays a word, and then the child picks from three other words to make a rhyme. Paul has really gotten into it.

Paul has starting rhyming all sorts of things. He makes up nonsense words to rhyme just for fun. He even does a dead on impression of frog. “Do you hear it? Frog. Log. They rhyme!” He’s got the intonation just right.

Not to be outdone, Julia is getting in on the act too. The other night I called to Paul that it was time to go brush teeth. Julia looked at me and said, “Teeth. Peeth. Rhyme!”

Caution. The following may contain graphic descriptions of an explicit nature which some of our reading audience may find objectionable.

Steve went poopee on the potty.

On the Sunday night after our big Pig Roast, Steve and I were really tired, or … ahem, pooped. We had big plans to go to be in bed by 9:15. We were both really excited to go to be about 9:15.

Right around 9:10, Steve sat down to use the downstairs bathroom. The bathroom most of the guests used during our party. The bathroom in which I already knew that some of our little guests had used inordinate amounts of toilet paper.

Meanwhile I heard Paul call across the monitor, “Mommeeeeeee. I need to go potteeeeee!!” I hurried upstairs to get him, and carried him back downstairs, because to get to the upstairs bathroom from his room you have to sneak through the sleeping Julia’s room. Paul only sneaks when he’s trying to snitch candy, and he is completely unhushable.

By the time we got downstairs, Steve was plunging the toilet.

He had the water level down far enough that he could take a break from plunging and let Paul stand to go tinkle. So we stripped Paul out of his footie pajamas and diaper and let him stand. Now let me preface this next part by explaining that Paul is still not very good at remembering to flush after himself. Nineteen times out of twenty, we have to remind him to go back to the bathroom and flush the potty. This time, however, he was completely entranced by the swirling, murky water, and, having urinated and without missing a beat, reached up and flipped the handle.

Rats.

Water started to overflow the basin.

RATS!

I quickly pulled Paul out of the bathroom. Steve scurried to get things out of the way of the bad water. I don’t remember what we did with the dog. I ran to find rags and towels.

Paul just sat half naked on a kitchen chair watching us run back and forth. He was sort of singing and enjoying the show.

You know, I remember coming down after bedtime as a little kid to see Mom and Dad watching TV together. I remember being sort of intrigued by this quiet adult time that took place after we had been tucked in. I’m afraid Paul is going to have a really distorted view of what Mommy and Daddy do for fun after he’s in bed.

I think we made it to bed ourselves around 10:30. rats.

Pig Roast Pics

Here's a bunch of pictures from the pig roast for your enjoyment!

Excellent Party!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the farm on Saturday to enjoy a great party and help support our missions trip to the Czech Republic. There were about 100 of you, give or take, who braved the threat of bad weather to come on out and enjoy what turned out to be a spectacular afternoon & evening.

As always, the food was great, and I thank those of you who brought something. We also enjoyed a great corn hole tournament that looked to be a lot of fun. Thanks to Brian for letting us borrow the boards, and to Bryan for running the tournament.

And most importantly, we thank God for the great weather, the great friends, and the support that we raised through this fun event.

I'll hopefully get some pictures posted up here in the next couple days.

Pig Roast Tomorrow

Ready or not, here it comes!

Tomorrow, May 17, we'll be hosting a pig roast party. Just to refresh your memory, Sarah & I are leading a mission trip to the Czech Republic this summer to teach English. But with the falling dollar, it takes a lot of money to provide for our team of 10 to get there and back. So we're holding this pig roast as a fund raiser for our team, but also as a way to let folks know about the work that we'll be joining God in there in the Czech Republic. As a result, we're asking for a suggested donation of $10/person or $25/family to cover the cost of the food & such. But please consider bringing your checkbooks and being a little more generous if you can.

We did this last year and had a spectacular time, so we're hopeful that this year will be even better. Assuming the weather holds out, we'll have a corn hole tournament, face painting, and lots of activities for the kids. Speaking of weather, we're renting a tent & we've got the barn, so we're on rain or shine (but we're all hoping for shine). Festivities start around 4pm, but we'll bring the guest of honor (el porko) out around 6pm.

We also want to say thanks so much to some of our friends in the Czech Republic who took the time to send us some authentic Czech wafer cookies for us to share at the pig roast. After all the years I've been doing this I was just introduced to these last year, and they are really good. So if you make it out you'll get to try some fine check goodies.

I hope most of you can join us for this outstanding party and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the farm.

Words are powerful.

Words are powerful. If you doubt that, just spend some time observing small children wrangle with them. Words make the difference between being misunderstood and frustrated to just frustrated.

Last night Julia came downstairs while I was fixing supper, and climbed up in her chair to request juice. Steve called downstairs to find out how long it would be until supper. After I told him it would be about 10 minutes, Julia started yelling at the top of her lungs, "Daddy, ime ta EAT! Daddy, ime ta EEEAT!" But, she had to wait anyway.


Sometimes she thinks that if she pronounces things more clearly, that she will get what she wants. Sometimes this pans out for her. Sometimes not.
"Tucky, mommy."
-"You want turkey?"
"Tookey, mommy."
-"Oh, you want a cookie. Not for breakfast, honey."

"Booberries, mommy."
-"No more blueberries, honey."
"Booooberries, mommy." - she enunciates as if I'm hard of hearing.
-"I'm sorry baby girl, but you are cut off. You've already had a cup and a half of blueberries. Your diapers are going to be green and scary as it is. Plus, your bottom is already burned from all the oranges you got yesterday. No more blueberries."

Paul is also wielding words like weapons.
3:00 a.m. "MOMMY, I NEED TO GO TINKLE IN THE POTTTTTTYYYYYYYY!!!"
-"urgh."
"MOMMY, I NEED TO GO TINKLE IN THE POTTTTTTYYYYYYYY!!!"
-"mmmph"
3:07 a.m.
-"Good boy Paul. Now go back to bed."

or

5:48 a.m. "MOMMY, I NEED YOU! MOMMY, I NEED YOU!"
Running upstairs to hush him before he wakes Julia, "Paul, what is it!?!"
"My blankets slid off."
-"Uh-huh." I cover him back up.
"Thank you, mommy."
He proceeds to sleep until 7:30.

The other night he was telling Steve that he was going to walk like a giraffe.
"How are you going to do that Paul? Giraffes have 4 feet, and you only have 2."
-"I'll use my hands like this." And he got down on the floor and demonstrated how to walk on his hands and feet.
"Yeah, but your pretty short there, buddy. How are you going to eat the leaves from the trees?"
-"I'll just eat the low leaves."
Steve and I burst out laughing.

In the interest of training my children to use words for good and not for evil, I've been trying to be careful about what I call things. For example, I've got both of them pointing to the mole beside my nose and referring to it as a beauty mark.

May they never be contradicted.

Backlog of pictures

Ta-da!

Would you eat it in a box? Would you eat it with a fox?

Who's Related?

Gotta Love the pants.

Is there any food in that thing you're pointing at me?

Eggs

Every once in a while, the hens lay something that looks like this. And all I can think is, "Ouch."

WANTED

Bonnie & Clyde of the pre-schooler set. Wanted for random acts of destruction, sass, and wakin' up too early.

Should be considered cute and dangerous.
REWARD: Trip to the park and lots of exercise.

Taste

Steve likes the taste of scotch. Personally, I think he’s nuts. Oh, I’ll admit there are some interesting flavors in it. But mostly, I find those interesting flavors overwhelmed by the taste of alcohol levels sufficient to make it appropriate for disinfecting the bathroom.

Steve told me the first time he tried scotch, it was something sort of cheap and nasty. But he was intrigued by those interesting flavors. The smokiness. The peat overtones.

When we went on our honeymoon, one of our stops in Scotland was the Oban scotch distillery. The tour guide gave an overview of the characteristics of different scotches from six different regions. He described the Talisker as a, quote, “kick you in the teeth,” scotch. Oban’s scotch, by contrast, was milder, and the flavor was influenced by the sea air.

I’m telling you this to set the stage for my own recent flavor exploration. I had received a small bar of Scharffen Berger Extra Dark chocolate for being a cheerful participant in a baby-shower game.

Extra Dark chocolate it was. It was not sweet. It was an 82% cacao extra dark chocolate. It was a “I should be grating this bar up and adding it to cream to top some extravagant Italian confection” dark chocolate. It was a cup of black coffee in a smoky diner on a city street corner before dawn dark chocolate. It was a crumbly textured hiking through the Mines of Moria dark chocolate. I was intrigued. I liked it.

Steve took one bite of the piece I gave him, and said he didn’t care for it.

There’s no accounting for taste.