Please Keep Praying

Well, Chris went to the doctor yesterday for a post-op visit and was told that he is not allowed to travel for another week. So, we are not going to be able to go to El Paso for his grandfather's funeral this weekend. I know he is really, really bummed about it...and being sick....and being in pain, etc. Please keep Chris in your prayers over the next few days that he will heal quickly. He has felt so rotten for so long. He needs a break (a break from Spring Break!).

Also, please pray for Chris' family as they plan for the funeral, travel to El Paso, etc. This is a rough time for everyone, so pray that they will all be comforted.

Busy, Busy

Well, it's been over a week since I posted last. Chris had his tonsils out last Wednesday, so things have been kind of crazy since then. Everyone said it would be hard on an adult, and they were right. Chris has some different medicine now that hopefully will make him feel better within a day or two. I feel really bad that he has felt so crummy. I feel so helpless when he or Caleb is sick or feels bad. I wish I could do something to make it better, but I can't. I just have to try to help out the best I can.

I don't know what I would do without family to help out. Our family has been such a huge help to us this past week. Thank you mom, dad, Jeanette, grandmother and grandaddy! We love you all!

Also, please be in prayer for Chris and his family. His grandfather passed away last night. We are not sure of the details yet, but the funeral will be in El Paso. With Chris feeling the way he does right now, there is no way he can travel. Pray for speedy recovery for Chris so that he will feel up to making the trip and for all of us as we travel.

I'm Going to Have a Sister!

No, my mom is not pregnant. My brother, Casey, got engaged this weekend! We are all really excited and happy for them both! It looks like they will get married December 28 of this year which is Chris and my anniversary also. That would make it easy to remember!

The Phone That Got Away

We went to the El Chico in Rockwall on Friday night with my parents. On the way over there, I called my dad to let him know that we were running late. Then on Saturday morning at Pit Stop, I went looking for my phone, but it wasn't there. I didn't think anything about it since I thought it would be at home.

Then at around 5:30 Saturday night, I started wondering about my phone. I turned the car and house inside and out looking for it. I remembered using it on Friday night and had Chris look it up the internet to see if that was in fact the last time it was used. I called El Chico, but they said they didn't have it. I decided to drive to El Chico (35 minutes away) to look for it anyway (I thought it might have been in a dark corner under the table we were sitting at or in the parking lot). When I got there, I asked the family sitting at the table if I could look under it for my phone...not there. Then I talked to the manager again and left him my contact info. in case he found it. Then I went and bought a flash light at CVS and then came back to look for it...not there. So I went home.

By this point I was all in a tizzy (sp?) because I thought someone had found my phone and stolen it. I was bummed that I was about to have to go spend money to buy a new phone.

At 10:00 that night, Chris' cell phone rang. He went downstairs to see who it was. Almost immediately, the home phone started ringing. It was the manager at El Chico saying he had just been walking by their safe in the back and heard a phone ringing. He looked inside to find the phone, and saw that it was mine...it had been shoved in the back corner of the safe.

My brother had tried to call my cell phone, and when he couldn't get me he tried Chris' phone. Because of Casey calling me, I got my cell phone back! How cool is that! My parents also said they were calling my phone all night once an hour to see if someone would find it and answer it.

This story reminds me of the time that I lost my purse in a gas station for three days, and when I returned to pick it up, everything was still there.

God is looking out for me even though I'm a ding-dong! :)

I will be shopping for a new purse that zips over the next few days so I hopefully wont have this problem again. Yay, new purse! :)

Baby Food Meat - Blehhh!

Ok, so Caleb has been trying baby food meat for the first time this week. He has been eating chicken with chicken gravy, and he absolutely hates it. He's liked everything so far, but he just does not like this meat. I have other kinds that I will continue trying, but I was just going to ask if anyone's kids ever had this dislike of meat...at least at the beginning. I realize it probably will take some time for him to get used to it since it is weird, but I just thought I would ask.

Grocery Buggies or Carts?

What do you say? I say "Buggies", but Chris says "Carts." A thing of much debate in our house. :)

March 1st

How can it be March 1st already?! This year is going by way too fast! I'm not even used to it being 2007 yet!

3

That is how many outfits Caleb pooped, etc. in yesterday. Crazy!

I packed many more outfits today in his bag. We'll see...

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?