Funny Monday

Thanks to Mindy for sending me this!


Democratic Primary

This being our first South Carolina presidential primary, I have noticed some differences. First of all, the Republican primary was last Saturday, while the Democratic one was today. THe voter decides which to participate in, but can only vote for one.

Now in California for the 2004 primary I recall that I didn't get to vote, because I am registered Independent. Don't you only get to vote in the primary there if you are registered with either party? Am I misinformed?

I am curious when I look at the numbers of total democrat voters compared to last week's republican numbers. It could be that the total number today was so much more because the weather today was beautiful... cold, but blue skies. Last Saturday it was freezing cold outside, and the weather man threatened snow, sleet, and rain. Or could it be that there are so many independent voters in SC that cast out for Democrat today? Hmmmm. Though Obama did a lot of campaigning here in recent weeks. Clinton too, but did you see the SC debates? I really didn't like her. I didn't really like her before, but I really really didn't like her after that.

Anyhow, Obama won... by a lot. The latest numbers are
Obama: 55%
Clinton: 27%
Edwards: 18%

It will be interesting to see what happens Feb. 5.

Wii are having fun!

Friday night

MIL closed on her house earlier

No work tomorrow

Dishes are done

Emily is in bed

and the Wii arrived earlier this afternoon

Scott and I have reason to celebrate

What fun Guitar Hero III will be!

ENT Update

Scott took Em to the ENT. Sure enough he was amazed at the size of the "golf balls" in her mouth. The earliest they can get her in is 2/8. She will have to spend the night, and I will stay with her. (Scott may want to fight me on that, but he will lose.)

I have tried to get her to open her mouth wide enough so you can see the big things and how they touch the uvula (thanks Adam!) but she keeps moving and wanting to say "cheese." I will try again later. It is pretty fascinating. They will also take out her adenoids, so maybe that will help her allergies. I'm sure she will be fine, especially if we tell her she gets to eat lots of popsicles.
Thanks for your thoughts and prayers!

Tonsillectomy

Before we flew out to California, Emily had a sinus infection that landed us in the Dr.s office. An antibiotic and we were good. However, our wonderful pediatrician noticed that her tonsils were unusually large, and that they hadn't been noted as such last visit. He asked if she snored. "Yes, like an old man" was my reply. He asked if she still fell asleep in the car. "Yes, sometimes when the car is stopped at preschool, Ms Shari, who watches her, has to unbuckle her and stand her up just to make sure she doesn't fall asleep before the older kids get into the car."

They probably need to come out. And she probably has sleep apnea. Let's refer you to the ENT.

At that time he said Emily's tonsils look like they are blocking 80% of her breathing way. Now, more than a month later, they are even bigger as far as I can tell. She snores loudly, has trouble swallowing food, and tosses in her sleep. See the illustration? Emily's tonsils touch that little hangy thingy in the back of the throat, and they are larger than a marble each.It really must be uncomfortable for her, yet not much slows her down. What could be really painful for one child is just minor discomfort for Emily. She doesn't complain, so I don't know how extensive they bug her. I see her having trouble swallowing pieces of food, and I really hear her snoring, and it worries us. So much in fact that Scott has spent multiple nights in her bed with her, scared the sleep apnea will keep her from breathing.

The initial appt. wasn't until 1/31, but Scott called the ENT and explained that just wasn't going to do. He takes her tomorrow. What we really want to happen is for him to tell us they are really big, and they need to come out soon, like as in Friday or something VERY soon. I am nervous that I don't get to go to the initial appt. but figured I should save the days for when she is home recovering.

Which brings me to my next concern. I have been reading about tonsillectomy, and I found in a couple places where they keep children under 3 over night for observation in most cases. Does that mean they let the mom stay over night too? They must, right? I have many fears. But I am thankful for our pediatrician and that Emily is so tough!

I will post an update after tomorrow's ENT appt.

Reputation

After studying the book of Daniel and loving the Old Testament, I decided to go all the way back to Joshua. My thought was that I didn't really know the history that I thought I did, and possibly I could make it all the way through I II Kings. So here I am now in Joshua 6. I have heard the story about the walls of Jericho, and I even remember the song I learned as a child about the story. What amazed me was how much I have learned already before the walls of Jericho fell.

Reading about Rahab and the fear her people had shows the Israelite's reputation before they ever got to Jericho. This made me think about the reputations we have. Maybe it is the parent from the beginning of the school year who accused me of "screaming at kids" or "never letting the kids talk in class." Obviously not true to any who know my teaching style. But this idea of reputation is something that I have fixated on in the past few months, and I can't shake it. She (Rahab) talks about what happened with Sihon and Or (I had to reference Numbers 26 on this one... I was clueless to these kings) and gives examples as to why her people were fearful of them. Then a couple of kings west of the Jordan we are told were "paralyzed with fear." How great was this reputation that God used?

Even though this "reputation" was so different than the reputation of a teacher, it made me a little more at peace with my reputation as a teacher... at least in the eyes of parents. No matter what I do I can't change the ways that people see me, but I can rest assured that God will allow the reputation of me that he sees fit to be the one to prevail all others.

Totally not what I expected to get out of Joshua, but applicable nevertheless.

Trip to the mall

Yesterday the weather was pretty crumby. The weather man kept saying we were going to get more snow, but with accumulation this time. Though that would be fun, we also didn't want to do our typical Sat. dinner out with the potential of black ice. So, we adjusted and spent the mid morning through lunch at the mall.

Scott and I are not big "mall" people. We aren't ones to necessarily go to the mall to "look around." Nor do we have funds for such. However, the pair of brown shoes I wear to work with all my "warm" clothes (i.e. pants) ripped all the way down the sole. It was time to replace them. I found these.
I have been wanting to get these shoes ever since my mom bought me a brown velour suit for christmas, but didn't want to pay full price, and I already had brown shoes. They were on sale, and so I bought them. Very cute.

After lunch at the mall food court we did the normal Emily thing of riding the carousel. The big thing sits right in the food court, and it is always a treat for her to go. This time Scott took her and I sat and watched. Emily rode that thing around and around, each time waving at me as she passed and shouting "Hi Mommy!" She was so proud of herself, and I was beaming with joy. Who knew a carousel could be so thrilling for child and parent?

Anyhoo, off to church we go, and in my head I am trying to negotiate a way for me to wear my new shoes!

Two subject Post

First of all, here is the birthday cake picture as promised. Very rich, but yummy. I didn't make enough frosting, or I put too much frosting in between the layers, so the outer coat isn't as thick as I would have liked. Though I am loving my frosting gun for the lettering.




Second thing is we had some friend's kids over this evening so that their mom could go to a retreat and leave before dad got home. They're not just any kids either. They live down the street from us, and the older boy, Austin, is a formal student of mine. I absolutely love this kid. If you heard Jay and Becky talking about the kid who came over and played guitar hero, this would be him. His little sister is Kori, and Emily thinks she is quite the princess of the world. She loves to play with Kori, and Kori loves to dress Emily up in dresses, and show her how to do all sorts of "big girl" things.

We spent the evening making our own pizza dough and topping it with our favorites (mostly cheese) before baking it. There was lots of playing going on all over the house, and I totally loved it! I loved having three kids running all over the place. They were entertaining each other and laughing and having a great time. It made me happy. Maybe having a "tribe" isn't so bad?

Happy Birthday Scott

In honor of Scott's birthday I thought this picture was too priceless not share. This pretty much sums up Scott. Let me give you the story behind it. First of all, my mom, sister, Emily and I went shopping many days of our Christmas break while my dad worked. This left Scott to be forced to come with us. On this particular day my mom was checking out at the register while my sister and I were looking at socks. Emily was fully amused in the costume jewelry section (always her favorite) where she had wound up a disney princess musical box and was dancing around in full costume jewelry fashion. Naturally, she wanted her daddy to twirl around like a ballerina with her. How could he say no? This is Scott we're talking about! I walked back just in time to whip out my camera, much to his chagrin. His facial expression says it all.

What a guy to do whatever it took to give me time to entertain our two year-old so that I could spend much needed time with my sis and mom.

For the official cake of his 35th birthday I plan to re-create the four-layer triple chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting that I made over the holiday. Too bad my dad won't be here to eat the remains like he did the holiday cake. Picture to follow.

Happy Birthday Scott!
Love,
Malisa

New duds for the bed

When we got married my Aunt Becky gave us a beautiful silk duvet cover for our bed. Of course it was one that we picked out, and we really loved it. However, it wasn't long before the embroidered stitching began to pop and the button holes tear. (My friend and seamstress goddess Jenny tells me it was probably polyester thread used on raw silk, which is a no-no. I'm sure she's right) And when we moved into this house we loved the green bedroom walls, but when we added our furniture with our green duvet we didn't care for the sea of green that our room became. With our fourth wedding anniversary coming up, I decided it was time for us to invest in something else to dress up our bedroom.

This is the spread that I picked out. No duvet cover to slip and pull away from the feather duvet. No ripped stitching. Just multi-colored bliss to break up the green. It has almost the same pattern of embroidered scroll on the green panal which was what I loved about our old cover, with the added rust-red and gold. I absolutely love it.
Now maybe I can figure out what to put on the beautiful curtain rods that have hung empty above the four giant windows in our room!

Commentary

This past November I finished a Bible study using Beth Moore's Daniel. This was by far the best study I have every been a part. One of the major differences with this study from others I have done is that it didn't concentrate on me. There was a focus of course on applying what we read and studied to our lives, but mostly this study focused on bible history.

Before this study I thought of Daniel and remembered the childhood Sunday school stories about the lion, the 3 in the fire, and such. I didn't remember anything about the prophesy in the later chapters. I was amazed at what I found out about our God through studying this prophesy. One of the reasons why I think I learned so much was the commentary that was referenced.

So, I got myself a commentary. Scott told me different ones that he thought would be good, but I didn't want a set that consisted of multiple volumns. I wanted a consice commentary that noted each verse in bold, with timelines, and such. I decided on Nelson's new illustrated commentary. I don't know much about commentaries, but so far I am glad that I got one. So... yeah.

Saturday plans... sort of

Today is one of those days where we are busy, but not really. We have a lot of little things that need to get done, but no apparent time frame or order in which to do them. So far the Christmas tree and decorations have been taken down, but there are still needles in the carpet, and the rest of the downstairs needs a good thorough cleaning. I guess that's next.

I also have plans this afternoon to add mulch to the vegetable garden, do some winter weeding, and plan where I am going to plant the late winter seeds that I just ordered. Oh, and this year I am going to try potatoes... from potato eyes indoors, and transplanting them out when they are larger. We shall see how that goes. Another new try this year will be onions. I ordered green, red, and sweet walla wallas. Besides the trip to Colorado for the wedding, we should be home most of the summer. Hopefully this will help the veggie garden. All the weeks gone last summer combined with the severe drought did not bode well for growing. I have big expectations for this summer.

Have a great Saturday!

We're back!

So without too much delay, we're back in SC. Yes, our flight was delayed out of Bako. Yes, we had a taxi can drive to LAX over the grape vine with 50 mph winds, and yes, we brought in the new year while sleeping in front of the ticket counter. But all in all, not too bad. :) First class tickets on a direct flight to Charlotte sort of made up for the above. Emily loved her first class seat, and enjoyed the breakfast including fresh fruit served on fancy china.

Now that we're home we are adjusting to the time change, which I think was mostly impacting us because of the over night trip difficulties. We got in around seven last night, and I had to get up for work this morning. Not as tired as I thought.

What a great time we had! We saw tons of our family and friends. We got to meet Melanie Foster for the first time, I got to go to Becky's bachelorette party, and we both stayed out late at karaoke. Thanks to all! I only wish we could have spent more time!

Now I am off to explain to Emily why she really must go to bed now that it's 11 pm. She is really struggling with the time change this trip. I guess I am too because I can't get tired for bed. Hope all of you had a wonderful new year's eve!