Detour Ahead

If you live in the Sachse/Wylie area and leave between 7 and 8 in the morning to go to work, I am very sorry. All week, Hwy 78 has had HORRIBLE traffic (what is the deal??) so I have had to bail and go different ways to work. Today when I got into Richardson, there was a ton of traffic on Campbell too, so I had to find a different way to get to work.

Normally, if I am not pressed for time, I LOVE to find new ways of getting places. I tend to have little patience with traffic, so it doesn't take me long to bail on it and find new ways of getting around. I have always had a really good sense of direction, so I am not really worried that I will get lost. I am frequently known to be driving through strange neighborhoods, etc. trying to find shortcuts or new ways of getting around.

It is an adventure to me to drive around in new areas. I love learning new things in general, so maybe this is why it excites me so much.

Now, if I am running late or if I have the chance of running late, this adventure stuff is not fun at all. Like this morning...the traffic was making me late, so I wasn't having any fun at all. But I did find it interesting to see where the road by the church of Christ church down the road went...it runs into Arapaho.

I Love Milk...

any way I can get it (except whole milk. Too thick!). But I especially love chocolate milk. Most mornings I drink a glass on my way to work.

So, the other day I had to buy some more Nestle Quik mix. (I am such a kid!) This morning when I opened up the new box, I realized that it was with "No Sugar Added".

Now I feel compelled to use the whole thing since I bought it. I'll just have to deal with yucky milk for awhile. Oh well.

My First Cake from Scratch

I've never made a cake from scratch before, but I decided to make a German Chocolate cake today. It turned out really well, and it tastes yummy! I had to cut off a little of the "blump" at the top of the bottom layer so that it would lay better, so Chris and I ate that part. Here are pictures of my first home-made cake!

Why?

Before Chris and I had Caleb, we made a vow to each other that when we had kids, we would not talk about their poop and pooping all of the time like we had noticed parents doing. That vow did not last long after having Caleb.

Caleb has been constipated for the past 2 weeks, so we have been having lots of "poop talk" at our house and with family and friends. I didn't think anything about it until Chris pointed it out to me and reminded me that we used to say that we would never talk about that subject...at least to others.

I now see why it is an important thing to parents. We have been worried about Caleb for two weeks, but he finally seems to be better now. Parents worry about their kids and want them to be healthy, so it is a big deal to them when something is not going right.

So, anyway, if we have offended you over the past couple of weeks with "poop talk", here is my apology. I guess I'm one of those crazy parents now!

Flight Video

Check out this video tracking the flight of all planes. It's kind of neat.

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/Documentationl2.html

No Sleep and Weird Dream

Caleb and I had a bad night last night. He normally sleeps so good. I am really spoiled. But he kept waking up once every hour last night. I never could figure out what the deal was. Hopefully that means he'll take a decent nap at school today.

In the little bit of sleep that I got, I had a dream that I had triplets after already having Caleb. It was such a strange dream. They were only about the size of my hand, and I was so worried one of them wasn't going to survive. (I guess when you have triplets they tend to be small though and thus would make one worry about them.) I was going crazy in my dream because I all of a sudden had four kids to take care of. I guess the lack of sleep I was getting was making me have weird dreams.

Oprah Show

I finally finished watching the Oprah show from last week that Pam Cope was on.

Did anyone else notice that as soon as Pam mentioned God, Oprah immediately redirected the conversation? Pam didn't even get out another word past saying "God".

I wonder if Oprah believes in God or if she just didn't want to alienate any of her viewers with talk about God.

What do you think?

Just me and the boy

Well, Chris is out of town today through Saturday, so it's just me and Caleb for the rest of the week. I've been a little stressed out knowing that I wasn't going to have anyone to hand Caleb off to when he's driving me nuts in the evening (fussy time because he refuses to take naps at school during the day) and that I have to do absolutely everything for him all week. We'll be alright though. It is a sweet time for us to bond, so I will enjoy it. And we will really appreciate Daddy when he comes home on Saturday! :)

NC Trip #3: Day Two - It's All About People

Ok, so Day Two...Conference day.

Our conference was really good and we came away with some good ideas and some reassurances that we were on the right track. One interesting part of the conference was that we were the only two "white girls". At first we thought that we might be uncomfortable, but we immediately realized that it was no big deal at all. The reality is that we are all God's children, and there are so many more things that we have in common than not. It was a great experience to hear what other churches, church offices, etc. are doing and the things they are going through. We all had similar stories and similar problems, so it was nice to get different opinions.

That night we went back into New Bern and walked around some of the historic area, ate some more seafood, drove around looking at the huge historic homes and then went back to the hotel to go to bed early.

Day Three - We got up, ate breakfast, flew out of the tiny New Bern airport to Charlotte, ran across the whole airport just in time to get at the end of the line to board our next flight to Dallas, and then returned in time for the Super Bowl.

It was a great trip! We had a good time seeing the sights and learning more about church administration. And I hope you enjoyed my stories!

NC Trip #2: Flight No. 2

Ok, as I said in my last post, we had to run across the Charlotte airport to catch our next flight to New Bern, NC. We made it a few minutes before it was time to load the plane - a small 50-seater with propellers!

This was my first time to fly in a smaller plane, and especially one with propellers. It was the kind of deal where you have to walk outside to get on the plane. Pretty fun!

So, when we got on the plane, I started talking to the guy next to me. (I like to talk to the person next to me at least for a few minutes just to be nice...I dont want to talk the whole time and whip them to death, but it's fun to kind of get to know someone new for a few minutes). I asked the guy if he had ever flown on a smaller plane before. He said that he had, and that if I've never flown a small plane before that I had never been to New Bern, NC before.

Then when we started taxiing on the runway, only one propeller was going. Marcie and I were a little worried, and I even thought about asking the flight attendant if something was wrong (boy, how stupid I would have felt after asking that!). The guy next to me told me that maybe we needed to get out and give the propeller a push and that we really didn't need the left propeller...that it saved gas to only run with one and that it would just make the landing a little difficult...no big deal. He was a pretty funny guy and helped us relax about the whole situation.

The flight to New Bern went well even though it was really loud with the propellers going.

When we landed at New Bern, the airport was so small that they just pulled up to the front door and let us out. It had three gates and was so tiny, but very cool. I had only flown out of large airports (I've never even flown out of Love Field), so I was very interested in this really small airport.

We got our car and bags and were off to Kinston, NC where there was absolutely nothing to do. We wound up eating dinner at a seafood/steak place in New Bern which is on the coast. I had salmon, and it was wonderful! I've never had seafood on the coast before, but I recommend it.

Next post, Day two.

NC Trip #1: DFW Airport, Flight No. 1

Marcie and I had all kinds of interesting things happen on our trip to NC, so I thought I would post my comments and thoughts about all of the things that happened on the trip...

First of all, I can't believe how many people are traveling and going through the airport at 5 a.m. We were blown away at the lines at the ticketing counter and security. And I guess the people working at the counter were having a stressful morning with the long lines because they were all ticked off. Under those kinds of circumstances it is always better to have a good attitude and not let things get to you....even if it is really crazy...because if you are rude to people, they are going to be rude back to you and then it all spirals out of control.

Also, there were quite a few people who were freaking out in the long lines because their flight was about to leave. I kept thinking to myself, "Well, you should have been here earlier then."

Moving along. Our flight was delayed an hour and a half, so we had some time to eat breakfast and relax before we left.

We had a good flight to Charlotte and then had to run across the terminal to our next flight that was due to board about 10 minutes after we got to the Charlotte airport.

Ok, so not much exciting happened by this point in time, but the next post will get more interesting.

North Carolina, Here I Come!

I am going to North Carolina tomorrow morning for a conference. I've never been there before, but I hear it is gorgeous. We are flying into New Bern and then driving to Kinston where the conference is.

Has anyone been to NC before and know of any neat things to do around there or good places to eat?