Count Cornula strikes again!!

We had coke chicken, corn on the cob, and watermelon for Father's Day dinner. Do you know where this story is going? Ha ha.


It was quite cute. I called for "my hungry Gannaways" which is our typical call to dinner. They came a troopin' in and Colby immediately went to the pantry and selected a box of crackers for himself. I asked him to put it back which he dutifully did, but then reselected it immediately and presented it to me. Then he spied the corn cooling on the countertop and all bets were off as he raced to try and grab one of the still steaming cobs! Kailin, meanwhile, said, "COBS!!! I love cobs!!!" (I'm thinking that there ought not to be three commas in that sentence, but I'm not worrying about syntax on a Monday morning - that's for sure!) I convinced them both to wait (one by reasoning and one by forcible removal from the area) until the "cobs" cooled.





We sat down to eat and I again made the mistake of putting the corn (and watermelon) on the table. Colby was asserting that he would prefer to nix his chicken and eat only corn and then maybe some watermelon. Steve asserted otherwise! Finally it was time for corn. I don't know how well this picture will illustrate it, but he actually took a chunk right out of the cob part this time! AND he chewed it up and swallowed it before we could get in there and remove it. I guess he won't be hurting for roughage anytime soon! Needless to say, he enjoyed his corn thoroughly. We actually videotaped part of it to get the sound effect of him tearing into it and also managed to catch Steve saying "Hey, give me back the cob!!" It was pretty funny.

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!!

Colby gave us quite a scare this week. He came down with a 104 fever on Tuesday evening, but was otherwise acting pretty much fine (maybe a bit more clingy than normal, but his appetite was fine). We medicated and put him to bed.

Wednesday it was 103 when he woke up, but again - he was mostly fine. Appetite- pretty much normal. Fluid intake - normal. Diapers - normal. Activity level other than during a fever spike - normal. I let it go (well, that is to say that I medicated every 3 hours alternating between ibuprofen and acetaminophen but did not call the Dr.) because he was still acting fine and I've read time and time again to judge by the behavior of the child not the temperature.

Well, I threw that out the window at 11pm when I temped him when he woke crying and it was 105.2!!! I've never had a child with a temp that high and it scared the dickens out of me. I gave him ibuprofen and rocked him for half an hour to let it kick in. Temped him again. 104.2. I got Steve up. I hate those horrible parent moments when you are caught between believing that perhaps you are being an alarmist and praying that you don't let it go and find something horrible has happened come morning and regret it and blame yourself for life. Guess I'd rather have some people think I'm an alarmist (or a spaz) than have the latter, so I trooped downstairs to look up the 24 hour nurse line for our insurance. They told me to take him to urgent care, then said maybe if he was behaving normally, I should just call our Dr.'s on call service. I called and the dr on call (Dr. Wilfong - who was fantastic) called me back fairly instantaneously and after diligently listening to me go on and on about what was going on, determined that my gut was right - he was probably fine, just had a virus going on, and that I was doing everything I should be for him. (holy run-on sentence, Batman!) He did say that Colby should be seen Thursday morning, though. We all went back to bed (Colby was already in bed sleeping peacefully while I fretted about him) whereupon Steve went to sleep and I laid awake til nearly 2 despite the reassurance from Dr. Wilfong.

Around 4, Colby woke crying again and when I went in he was COLD. The fever had broken! I covered him up and rocked him some and then went back to bed. He woke up at 5:45 crying, but I think he was just cold again since he was dressed so lightly. He immediately fell asleep in my arms. He felt warm, but not hot. He was shivering pretty bad, though. His temp was 100, so that wasn't so bad.

Okay, I wrote all of the above on Thursday. Now it's Saturday and he's STILL got a fever. It's pretty low grade now and not really affecting him too much, so I'm thankful for that part. He is still very moody and sleepy a lot, though, so that's been making for some interesting days these past few days. Kailin's spiked a 100 or so temp a couple of times, but other than that she SEEMS to be escaping it so far. I'm going to pray that it misses her - for her sake and mine!

And He baptized us all!!

That title has multiple meanings...

Yesterday we baptized Colby and then while taking pictures after the service, he baptized all of us right back! He was quite enamored with the baptismal font and although he did stop short (or was stopped by us - depending on how you look at it) of splashing in it, he did dip in more than once and smear it around on himself and everyone else in the area. It gave us all a good laugh. Maybe it's in indication that he's headed for seminary someday - only time will tell!

The second meaning of the title pertains more to the He and not the he (Colby). God saw fit to celebrate Colby's baptism by showering down His rain; baptizing us ALL. That's how I'm choosing to look at it or else I'd have to be annoyed that we had what could easily be called a truly rotten rainy day yesterday!!!! It POURED buckets (that's an understatement) from about the time we were thinking of leaving the church all the way through everyone trying to get into the house (with children in tow) and into the time when it became obvious that there would be no one enjoying the festivities outside and that everyone would be enjoying them INSIDE which was my worst nightmare. In the end, everyone seemed to have a good time despite the lack of personal space and we kept the temperature to just below intolerable heat. Ha ha. I'm thankful that God gave us a day to be together and to celebrate Colby coming home to the States and home to Faith and our church. Maybe we needed the push of the rain to truly enjoy being close with one another. Although it was crazy there for awhile, I do truly enjoy having my house full of our family and feeling the warmth (yesterday it was LITERAL) that emanates from having your family surrounding you. How blessed I am to have such a wonderful group of people to call my family.

The whole weekend was pretty crazy, actually. Saturday was supposed to be an easy (ha ha) day of getting ready. My mom was coming to watch the kids so Steve could clean and I could work on food. That plan got off to a not so great start when my mom learned of a freeway closure that was going to severely impact her ability to get here. Thankfully Mom is tenacious, so she set off on a different route, but that did put her about an hour and a half behind. Meanwhile, I was working on making 10lbs of potato salad and a triple batch of baked beans. Steve worked on cleaning. Mom finally made it and Kailin immediately glommed onto her and was out of my hair (Colby was sleeping). When the potato salad was done and Colby was up, Kailin, Mom, and I headed off to the local cheese factory (no joke) to get some cheese for the festivities. We got what we needed and headed home for lunch and naps (for the kids - sadly not for the adults). After throwing together the quadruple batch of pistachio fluff, Mom and I went off in search of cupcake papers at "the little store" here in town. We were going to walk, but then saw that it was looking a little dicey outside, so we drove instead. We made it home in plenty of time, but it wasn't long before the day turned from party prep to weather watch. A supercell storm system descended on our area - one the weather guys (regular programming was interrupted in favor of continuous weather coverage) said was the worst they'd seen in this area in over 20 years. Tornado warnings abounded (though none for our county), flash flood warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings.... the map had so many different colors on it, it was hard to tell who needed to run for high ground and who needed to go into the basement! So my mom was trying to figure out how she could get home and we were trying to figure out how (or if) we could safely get Steve's brother and sister-in-law and their baby here for the night. Reports came from my mom's house that there was golf ball sized hail in the backyard. In the end, my mom left after dinner; promising to turn around immediately (and not look for a different way around) if she saw any standing water whatsoever and Jason, Sara, and Eva made it a little over half way here and decided to take refuge with Mike, Jodi, Olivia and Nicholas instead of braving it the rest of the way. That turned out to be a great decision since they closed the freeway due to flooding soon after. Our basement has stayed dry thus far and we hope that will continue to be the case. More rains are predicted for today, but nothing as severe or vast in quantity (the area got over 7" of rain this weekend). Our prayers go out to all the families whose basements are flooded or whose trees are uprooted, or homes destroyed. Let's hope this week brings a calmer state (the weather and in my house!!).

Awwww....quackerjacks!

I completely forgot to have Kailin take a picture with her sombrero and Chinese dress yesterday! That's not entirely the truth. I remembered, but in the morning before church it was waaaayyyy too crazy busy to have her do it. My intention was to have her do it when we got home, but I guess I was smokin' something when I thought that - not sure how I thought I'd work that in around trying to rush in the door and get the food on and make sure no one floated away in the torrential downpour... anyway - it didn't happen. If I can get her in a better mood than she's in today (shouldn't be hard since anything would be an improvement over the wicked ugliness that is my darling daughter today), I'll try to get both on her and snap a shot. In the mean time, I thought you'd get a kick out of this picture of her wearing her duck sunglasses and tooting her duck call whistle thingy.

Ni hao, Senorita!

I soooo wish I had a picture of this....

Tonight after I gave the kids baths, I was trying Colby's outfit for Sunday (his baptism) on him. (As a side note - do any of you with Chinese children know what the name for a traditional Chinese boys outfit would be? I Googled it with no luck.) It fit perfectly and I was glad that no one had anything below a size 2 or I'd have bought it and then we'd have been in trouble! He looks adorable, by the way, so stay tuned for pictures sometime after Sunday. I digress....

It occurred to me that I probably ought to figure out which of Kailin's Chinese outfits she'd be wearing on Sunday. She had other plans. She was intent on wearing a huge straw sombrero that we have(whilst running around naked - quite a picture). We struck a deal. She could put the sombrero on after each and every Chinese outfit she allowed me to put on her (there were 3). Let me tell you she was quite a sight!!! If I hadn't been so desperate to just get through it and get the kids dinner and to bed (it's been raining here all week and the reality of cooped up kids was VERY evident tonight - Steve's at dog training, and Mommy was on her last frazzled nerve after a very long day), I'd have gone downstairs for the camera. I'll have to see if I can get her to put it on quick on Sunday so you can have a visual. It cracked me up.

As a side note, 2 of the 3 outfits were a bit large and although she wanted to wear one of them for Sunday I explained that she needed to grow some more (the second too large outfit was rejected because "I don't like that tag, Mommy." - telling her we could remove it was futile. That outfit is forever out of the realm of possibility....at least in her mind.). She said, "okay, I'll wear it for Chinese New Year." No joke. Not a thing gets by that girl, I tell you. She is as sharp as they come and her memory continues to amaze me. We haven't talked about CNY for a LONG while - although as I'm typing this I'm realizing that Kailan talks about it and they wear red the whole episode. Hmmm... okay, I'll give her partial credit for absorbing it from the show (which she hasn't watched in weeks to be sure - maybe longer) but full credit for relating it to herself as a holiday we would be celebrating. Fair enough?

On that note... Zai jian, Senor!

More mysteries

It's only one more, actually. And I will preface the mystery by saying that I do not shower with my glasses on or with my contacts in and I am, to be honest, blind as a bat. So perhaps this is a mystery known only to me in which case you all can tell me that and then it will be solved as a personal limitation rather than a universal mystery.

How is it possible for me to miss only the strip of hair in the CENTER OF MY SHIN when I'm shaving my legs?? Further, how have I missed the same said strip TWICE IN A ROW??? Even in my blind state, I should be able to hit THAT location, right??

Anyway, as you all contemplate the reasons behind this mystery, I will be spending nap time today braiding and applying pretty beads to the leg hairs in the middle of my right shin.

Feeling breezy

I've been listening to the radio more often lately (I usually listen to kids music with the kids, but I've been letting the older two go out in the backyard while the little ones sleep in the morning.). There's a song right now that goes, "It's good to be us, it's good to be breezy...." It occurred to me that I didn't know what that meant. Did it mean "footloose and fancy free" or "go with the flow" or "light and airy"? All sorts of mental images went through my mind and the possibilities seemed somewhat endless. That was until I was standing close enough to the radio to hear "It's good to be us...It's good to be BREATHING." What a waste. It is indeed good to be breathing, but now what will I spend my time contemplating??

I hope you're having a breezy sort of day.