posted November 10th, 2005 by George
Well, the past week has been quite a challenge here at our house. We have all been sick with some type of stomach virus. The kiddos got it first. They were both sick at some time over the weekend, then it hit Shannon and I on Tuesday. I will spare you of all the details. I’ll just say that things were not at all pretty around here, and I really feel sorry for the garbage man who is coming tomorrow.
I think the hardest of all was for Shannon and I to be sick at the same time. Neither of us could take care of the other, and the kids (always needy of course) had a hard time understanding why we couldn’t help them with all the usual tasks. There was one really sweet moment though, when we were both laid out in the living room and Emily was trying to wait on us. Without us even asking her to help, she brought us some water and bread and did what she could to comfort us. She can be quite a little sweetheart at times.
On a slightly different note, I decided to approach my illness a little different this time around. Usually, when I’m so sick that I can hardly move, I spend all day in front of the TV feeling sorry for myself. For some reason, this time I felt like maybe God was trying to get my attention. I certainly didn’t want to see what He would resort to next, so I thought I’d listen. So instead of my usual routine of watching a bunch of worthless junk on TV, I just lay there in silence and tried to talk to Him. I didn’t just pray for healing either (although that certainly came up). It was a strange conversation I suppose as I drifted in and out of consciousness, but it was comforting and somewhat relaxing too. I’m learning how important it is to just slow down and be silent before God. Our lives have become so hectic and overwhelming that I often leave little to no time for Him. I wish I could say that I received some grand revelation about my life and direction, but I guess it doesn’t always work out that way, does it?
Filed under: Faith, Family on November 10th, 2005 | 2 Comments »
posted November 8th, 2005 by George
The long awaited and greatly anticipated upgrade is finally here. Actually, I bet that none of you even knew that we were working on an upgrade did you?
We hope you like the new design. We have installed a blog software called WordPress. We’re really diggin the flexibility and all the extra features and plugins. It’s been fun, but this project has sure kept us up past our bed time more than once in the past few days.
But now the real challenge begins for me. To actually keep up with posting to the blog. Shannon has graciously invited me to join her blog so we will be co-blogging here. Hopefully between the two of us we can keep it going. The more comments you add, the more motivated I’ll be to keep writing.
Filed under: Geek Talk on November 8th, 2005 | 3 Comments »
posted November 6th, 2005 by Shannon
Cleaning vomit from the crevices of a car seat is NOT a fun activity. Ewww!
Filed under: Family on November 6th, 2005 | 2 Comments »
posted October 28th, 2005 by Shannon
Our last butterfly emerged from her chrysalis two days ago. Her rear wings looked underformed, but she flew all right.
The photo was taken by Emily using an Intel CS630 – otherwise known as our webcam. In addition to being a webcam, she discovered it also takes pictures. The photos are not high resolution, but she has had fun with it.
Filed under: Adventures, Family on October 28th, 2005 | 1 Comment »
posted October 12th, 2005 by Shannon
G was fast. G got soaked. G won a porcelain doll for E at the church picnic this weekend. Go, Daddy, Go!
The goal of the race was to fill a bucket with water. The challenge was that the dads had to fill it from a cup that was attached to the top of a construction hard hat. The daughters were in charge of filling the cup on top of daddy’s head. Once the cup was full, the dads had to run about 20 feet to the bucket and back again for a refill. George was so wet that a butterfly landed on his bright orange shirt and drank for about 20 minutes.
Filed under: Family on October 12th, 2005 | No Comments »
posted October 11th, 2005 by Shannon
Wow, it’s been a while! A friend of mine has started blogging and that motivated me to get back to my blog. Except she was an English major and can write eloquent entries. I wasn’t and I can’t. Oh well.
To all those who were diligently following the life cycle of our caterpillars, all but 4 turned into butterflies within a week or two. The other 4 were placed outside and three of them finally turned into butterflies within the past month. That leaves us with one lonely chrysalis. We do have video clips of some of the big changes as they were happening that we hope to digitize and put them on the web one of these days.
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Filed under: Family on October 11th, 2005 | No Comments »
posted July 10th, 2005 by Shannon
Our last cat turned into a chrysalis this morning while we were at church. This one turned out to be a bright green chrysalis. That gives us 2 bright green ones and 8 brown ones.
I should have written an update to yesterday’s post. We were able to watch as our last cat attached himself to the stick. There is a thread of some sort that loops around their neck and holds them into position while they are in their chrysalis. (See it here – scroll down until you see the picture of the chrysalis.) We had not been able to figure out where it came from or how it gets around his neck – but NOW we know! He makes it with his mouth!
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Filed under: Adventures, Family on July 10th, 2005 | No Comments »
posted July 9th, 2005 by Shannon
I ran some errands yesterday morning and cat #6 was a chrysalis when we got back. At 8pm last night we though #7, #8, and #9 were close so we let Emily stay up for a little longer. Unfortunately, the cats did not understand our schedule and we sent E to bed at 10pm without seeing the show. I sent myself to bed at 11:30 and George gave up on them around midnight. Nathan woke up around 4:30 and after I took care of him, I took a peek to find #7 and #8 had changed while we were sleeping. I stayed up for a little while because #9 looked SO ready. I gave up about 5, but I could not go back to sleep. I figured that if I wasn’t going to get any sleep anyway, I might as well try to get a better video of the event. I crawled back out of bed and around 5:30 it finally happened. The whole thing only took about 5 minutes again. I woke George up and he watched it with me, though I think it took his eyes and brain a few minutes to go from sleeping mode to fascination mode.
I do think we got a good video of it, but it will take some time to get it off the video camera and into cyberworld.
Filed under: Adventures, Family on July 9th, 2005 | 1 Comment »
posted July 8th, 2005 by Shannon
As we were cleaning the kitchen last night, George said “If I happened to see another caterpillar that had escaped, would you want me to tell you?” Ha, ha, funny guy! No way was I wasn’t going to fall for that! Then he says “Well, what about this one that is crawling on our paper towels? Do you want to know about him?” Arghh! He was right. We don’t have one of those OFFICIAL butterfly houses that zip up at the top. We are just using something we already had and covering up the hole at the top. Someone (probably me) didn’t get the hole completely covered up. Maybe we should invest in one of those houses that does zip up. I’m tired of escapees.
Last night the skin on the 2 cats I mention before looked chalky and we were sure they would be changing soon. George and I brought them into the computer room so we could keep an eye on them as we worked. The cats were literally inches away from us during this time. We glanced over at them every few minutes to see if anything had changed. Over an hour passed when all of a sudden I looked up and one cat was no longer a cat! How dare he! And how in the world could I miss it? His body was smooth and greenish on the top half and light brown on the bottom with his caterpillar stipes and dots still somewhat visible. We assumed that he was in the middle of his transformation and that the rest of his body would eventually change to look like the top half. However, we still had no idea how he had actually transformed. Did his skin somehow smooth out into the smoother chrysalis shape? Does the smooth stuff just ooze out of his body and harden on the outside? Would he soon spin some sort of fiber around his body? We had no clue – so we watched and watched and watched. The greenish stuff never spread out. Instead he slowly turned dark brown his whole body ended up I was waiting for the greenish stuff on the upper half to spread until it covered his whole body. What happened instead was that the whole chrysalis slowly turned dark brown. That was it. I was bummed. I still had no more answers as to HOW this actually happened. (By the way, a chrysalis can either be dark brown with blackish markings like a stick or bright green like a leaf. So far we only have one bright green one, the rest are stick-looking. I was assuming this guy was going to be another green one since part of his body was bright green, but he ended up being brown like a stick.)
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Filed under: Adventures, Family on July 8th, 2005 | 1 Comment »
posted July 8th, 2005 by Shannon
I just finished watching cat #4 turn into a chrysalis. It was truly amazing. Not what I was expecting at all! I will write more about it after I’ve had a few hours of sleep. Good night!
Filed under: Adventures, Family on July 8th, 2005 | 1 Comment »