What A Husband!

Stephen has been gone on a two day trip doing interviews and is due back today. The first night he was gone I got up in the middle of the night, and while up, came a cross a love note from him! I loved it!!! Then, the next day I stumbled across another! Hmmm... I wondered if there just might be more hidden around!!! So, I started looking and found two more! And then today, just a bit ago, I discovered yet another one! What a guy! He sure knows how to make a girl feel thought of and loved... which is what every girl wants! He's a pro at it!!!

Putting My Girlie Screwdriver To Good Use!

Well, I once again put my girlie screwdriver to good use today. And yes, I do have a screwdriver, and yes, it is girlie. It has lovely blue flowers painted on it's nice wood handle. Some friends of ours gave it to me and I keep it in a handy drawer in the kitchen. Well, out it came today and I assembled the baby's high chair ALL BY MYSELF!!!!!!! :-) Aren't you incredible impressed???!!!!! :-) My dear little audience (Clara) observed the proceedings and then tried out the new world of a highchair for the first time! She looked soooooo cute and tiny sitting in it and she is soooooo ready for it! I think we'll be using it a ton! It'll be a great spot for her to watch me make dinner, etc., plus we've been trying out solids, so it will be really handy for that too, and a great way for her to be with us during meals but not be held. To those of you who gave it to us... thank you a MILLION times! I really like the look of it and it has so many handy features!!! I'll have to get a picture and post it soon! And to the friends who gave me the girlie screwdriver... thank you as well! It came in really handy... though I will admit that there were only two screws involved in the process... the rest was pretty much sticking a pin in and snapping stuff together! It was fun to do!

Jobs... The Virtuous Woman... Sweet Potatoes

A few updates from around here! On the job front, we are waiting to hear back from the defense contractor that Stephen interviewed with on Friday. He had four interviews with four different departments, and he liked two of them! He thinks he may get two or three offers. We're kind of in a waiting game right now. He has another interview with a different company scheduled for Thursday. We shall see.

Tuesday, one of the ladies at the chapel we are part of started a women's Bible study. We're starting with Proverbs 31... the passage describing what a virtuous woman is like! It was soooo good. I really enjoyed it. I have so much to learn and so far to go. Thankfully, God loves us just how we are, but also loves us too much to leave us there!

The little miss had sweet potatoes as her latest try at the wonderful new world of solids! The first time we tried it, it seemed to go fairly well, but tonight on the second go... it didn't seem to go too well. Oh well. She'll get the idea eventually!

My Wounds

I have a little friend named Marina. She just turned 5 yrs old. She has a big brother named Julio and a little sister named Maca'aya (or at least that's how she says it!). Anyhoo, my friend Marina just got her first set of stitches by FALLING and hitting the counter. As you will see, this is a normal phenomena that sometimes happens to people with heavy brains. Just because you have a heavy brain doesn't mean you should be treated differently than anyone else, except to be a touch more viligent. Why do I know about heavy brains? Because I am inflicted with the same problem!! I have dedicated this post to show you all exactly how I ended up with 6 sets of stitches and what you can do to avoid a laceration happening to you.

Stitches #1: This occured in the typical fashion. I was probably in a happy mood, adrenaline running high in my 18 month old body (mom to post a comment to verify age). I was probably chasing a brother around the apartment in Holcomb, KS (pop. ~6,000 at the time) with a belly full of raisin bran with at least two heaping tsps of sugar added to the top. If you notice Exhibit A, there is very little you can see of about a 4or5-stitch job right under where my right eye brow ends.



Exhibit B: Age 3. Playing on my father's new-to-him dynamometer. What's a dynamometer? It tests mechanical force such as horsepower. It's something little Stevie shouldn't have been stepping on in the first place. Notice the outer ear deformation that looks like when you stretch a tootsie roll too far.



Incident 3 and 4:

You would think that if one made a mistake the hard way that one would learn the lesson, say, loosing control of a fast moving bicycle and flying over the handle bars and landing on your big chin. Well it's a true story, back to back summers (I was 8 and then 9) and I only managed to change the location of the impact by exactly 1.6 inches. I would like to think that I could move it at least 10 inches if I where to do the same thing again. Notice that even as a man, I cannot grow facial hair in two symmetrical places on my chin.



The Saga continues #5: Age 16. I was working under an older vehicle with about a 9/16" wrench and it slipped. I only got two little stitches in a 1/4" cut in my wrist just below the thumb-side of my palm. The significant thing about this occasion is that I removed the stitches myself with my own pocket knife while I was supposed to be working on school work. If you're really hard, like the cowboys in the movies, you can get shot by an arrow, break it off at the shaft, ride the get-away trail, and then extract the head and sew yourself up around the camp fire with not too much hastle (although movies also show drinking plenty of liquid libations and then pouring an ounce or two at the point of entry just to get it good and sterilized.... AAAARRRrrrrgghhh! Anyway, you probably can't even see it.



#6 The Last of the WaBonkas...so far anyway!

So there I was.....in the very belly of the cargo ship engineroom bilges.....replacing a gasket in a 4 - 5 in. steam pipe. I was using 1-15/16" wrenches, which to get the full effect of my story, you have to understand that these are big-boy wrenches, OK? uughh. So I am leaning awkwardly over my work due to the cramped conditions under the deck plates and I was finishing the final torque check on my gasket replacement. I decided to give it the old extra 5 ft-lbs for conscience sake, albeit a little cock-eyed wrench-to-nut relationship.....and I pause here for effect......and I slowly point out that most cock-eyed relationships never really hold up under pressure before they have to readjust....*WHAM*...and the next thing I recall is that I was nice and warm and I realized that I must have been sleeping on the job. I also noticed that the was water leaking around me.....until I traced the water leak with my eye balls and figured out that it was not water and it was probably coming from my head. So I looked up from the Pit of Dispair and a shocked but calm supervisor pulled me out and put a clean rag over my forehead. I was sent to the doctor in a taxi (by myself) and stitched right up. As you can see I tried to match my left eye to my right eye like I did my chin. It didn't work out too good, but it almost matches Marina's cut, just opposite eyes. So Marina....welcome to the Heavy Brain Club!




PS - Again, heavy brains cause no significant change to having a normal life. Just look how good I turned out to be!

Quick Update

Hello from our corner!!! It's been awhile since I last posted. Sorry if anyone has kept checking back and been getting frustrated!

Life has been moving along here. For those of you who don't know, Stephen was laid off about a week and a half ago. Although not a fun experience for Stephen, it was an answer to prayer, as we had been praying about the future and Stephen had not really been wanting to stay with that job but was not sure if and when he should leave. He has now been actively in the job market and you can be praying with us that the LORD would lead us to the place that is best and that we would joyfully follow! Stephen is actually at an interview right now and has another one scheduled for the end of the week! He is trying to move out of construction and would ideally like a field or design engineer position. If any of you hear about something, do feel free to let us know!

Miss Clara is doing well. Such a sweetie. Stephen weighed her the other day and she is about 16lbs!!! Big sweetie! We've tried solids a couple times for fun, but not much yet. You should see the faces she makes! :-/

You all have a wonderful day!

Rewind To Labor Day

I promised you some pictures from our Labor Day vacation and here they are! Over the holiday weekend we traveled to visit friends, and had a nice little vacation! Clara did great in the car... for the most part (it was a LONG drive). Seeing and spending time with friends we hadn't seen in quite a while was good! Thank you very much to all of you who helped make it a special time!

PLAYING WITH GRANDMA ELISA



GRAB DADDY'S FACE


BESTEST BUDDIES!!!!! :-)


OUR FUN AND HARD WORKING HOSTESS!!!!!

Daddy's Fan Club

Stephen's been playing guitar quite a bit lately... and doing a GREAT job!

A Week of Firsts

This was a week of firsts for Miss Clara! She successfully rolled all the way over and got her own arm unstuck for the first time. It was a back to tummy roll, and she has been keeping it up since then. Once on her tummy though, she can get frustrated quite quickly. That nasty old ground keeps getting in the way and we can't quite do what we were doing on our back, etc. :-) Oh well. The little lady also appeared to discover this week that she can grab her feet with her hands, which she's been doing quite a bit now. So cute!

And now for some pictures of an adorable first that happened this week: First time to have a story book time with Daddy!

Funniness!

Uncle Caleb and Aunt Melly!

Uncle Caleb and Aunt Melissa are visiting Clara right now! They got here yesterday. In the evening we went to the park and cooked silver dollars for dinner and watched the dogs in the dog park and played around. We came home and had ice cream and went swimming...even Clara came in!

Today we played card games, played with Clara, took lots of pictures and made cookies. Stephen is off to a job interview right now.

Here are some shots of our time together so far:

Overall Cuteness

Come back soon...I'll plan to put up some pictures from our Labor Day vacation before very long.