Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Just One Huge Picture
Today was the second day of Eliana’s final year of Preschool and would you believe she already has homework?!?
She was sent home with a sheet of neon green poster board to which a little note was attached. The note reads:
Dear Parents,
I am excited to get to know your children this school year. Our theme next week is, “All About Me”. I have provided a piece of poster board for you and your child to create a poster about themselves (their favorite subject). Be creative and add as many pictures and things about your child as you can think of. Let your child make his/her choices as to what they want on the poster so it’s their work. Some ideas are to include their favorite things such as: color, food, toy, book, movie, thing to do at school, etc. Remember to also include siblings, special family members and pets.
The poster is due on Monday so it gives us the rest of the week for each child to share their poster during circle time. I plan to hang them in the classroom for a couple of weeks and then send them back home. The last time I did this project with the class, the kids loved it and I’m sure yours will too.
I suppose I should look for just one huge picture of the Cheetah Girls!
{extended}Monday, August 28, 2006
Referral Watch #1
Our case worker posts a message to our agency’s web board every Monday which is like a ‘state of the union’ address. Her message this morning started on a down note:
I posted the referral news on Friday, so most of you probably know that the most recent referrals were received last week and covered the log-in dates of July 13 - 22. That means that the wait time for a referral is now 15 months from the dossier log-in date.
At this current rate, we would receive a referral in September of 2007 and would travel to China sometime in November.
{extended}Ernesto
Oh look honey!
We’ve not had a vacation all year. So of course we pick a nice, long, holiday weekend for our family to go to the beach in South Carolina and Ernesto decides to crash the party.
Great freakin’ timin’...
{extended}Sunday, August 27, 2006
Referrals to July 22, 2005
The CCAA website has been updated and the new cut-off date for referrals is July 22, 2005. This batch covered a period of 9 days.
{extended}Saturday, August 26, 2006
A New Hobby
We have discovered a new family hobby and it’s called Geocaching.
Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure”, usually toys or trinkets of little monetary value.
Armed with a small GPS receiver that Carmi bought off of the bulletin board at work, we went on our very first treasure hunt this evening. There is a cache hidden in the woods at one of the parks in town. We had been looking for a while and had decided to head back to the car when, with sunlight fading fast, I noticed an odd-looking ‘log’ buried under leaves. I touched the ‘log’ with the tip of my shoe and could tell that this was no ordinary woodsy item.
Carmi and Eliana came over and we picked up what turned out to be a camoflouged container of some sort. Eliana couldn’t wait to open it up and when she did, she discovered several little trinkets inside including a little blue, stuffed Neopet from McDonalds which she confiscated. Following the rules of geocaching, Carmi replaced the item we took with another equally valueless item.
I think we’re hooked.
You can find out all you want to know about it at the official Geocaching website.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
An Expensive Lesson
Almost 4 weeks ago, I started the blogathon on a Saturday morning with a little visit to the service department at Toyota West because the ‘check engine’ light came on in Carmi’s Camry. The problem was diagnosed and the defective part was replaced to the tune of $200. Later that afternoon, however, the ‘check engine’ light came back on.
I returned to Toyota West the next Saturday morning. Before I could even finish my cup of coffee, ‘Service Guy’ came to me and said some hoses were loose so they just tightened them up and didn’t charge me anything. All was fine as I drove home but later that afternoon, the ‘check engine’ light came back on.
I returned to Toyota West the next Saturday morning. Now I’m a real easy guy to get along with but after losing sleep for 3 straight Saturdays, I was starting to get a little testy. ‘Tech Guy’ hooked our Camry to the computer again and diagnosed another defective part which they replaced at no charge. All was fine until Sunday when the ‘check engine’ light came back on.
Last Saturday I went back to Toyota West for the 4th time. After sitting in the lobby for almost 1-1/2 hours, ‘Service Guy’ came up and sheepishly admitted that his guys had no idea what the problem was. In his words, “the guys who work weekends pretty much just do oil and filter changes”. He said I would need to bring the car back one day during the week so that their ‘Master Technician’ - who only works Monday through Friday - could look at it.
I took this afternoon off from work and returned to Toyota West for hopefully the last time.
I paced the floor like I can imagine an expectant father would do if his wife was delivering a baby. One hour later, ‘Service Guy’ caught up with me and sat me down for a talk. ‘Master Tech’ said that the Camry’s ‘charcoal canister’ was bad. It would take 1-1/2 hours to replace it and all for the low, low price of $434.
Holy Scheister!
“What choice do I have?”, I mumbled. “Go ahead.”
There was one other guy sitting in the lobby. As ‘Service Guy’ walked out, this guy asked if I normally top off when pumping gas. “Yeah, almost every time”, I replied. He went on to say that if you continue to pump gas once the pump shuts off the first time, gas will leak over into the canister and contaminate the charcoal.
“Is that so? You know what, buddy? I’m getting screwed out of $400 so I’m really not in the mood for friendly conversation.”
All right…I didn’t say that but I was thinking it. Instead, I offered a “hmmm…” with a nod of the head and turned my attention to CNN.
Just out of curiosity, I called an acquaintance who happens to be a mechanic back home and asked him what a charcoal canister would cost. He looked it up and said his shop could get one for $276. Ah ha. I knew Toyota West was ripping me a new one and I was going to let them hear about it. He went on to tell me the exact same thing that the dude in the lobby said about topping off.
Shortly, ‘Service Guy’ said our car was ready and he assured me that the problem was taken care of. “I certainly hope so.”
As we looked over the bill, the price for the actual part itself was…huh…$276 just like the mechanic at home quoted. And in a good-will gesture, ‘Service Guy’ handed me a BP card worth $20 for gas along with an apology.
Rest assured I won’t top off any more. And you better not either.
{extended}Tuesday, August 22, 2006
What Did You Say, Sweetheart?
I went into K’s house after work to get Eliana. K’s daughter, L, and Eliana were in L’s room playing.
Eliana was busily grooming a doll but L came out to greet me. She said something unintelligible while opening her hand to reveal a little golden trinket.
I leaned down to her and asked innocently, “What did you say, sweetheart?”
Eliana’s head shot up. Those dark brown eyes pierced right through me as her brow furrowed and she grumbled, “Hey! Why did you call HER sweetheart!?”
{extended}Sunday, August 20, 2006
December Cruise 2002
During the first week of December in 2002, my Gospel quartet was the special musical guest of a tour company on a cruise to the Western Caribbean.
Before the ship left the port of departure in Miami, everyone onboard had to assemble on deck for an emergency drill. Eliana thought it was a little difficult to hug mommy with that big ol’ orange life vest on.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Change Is In The Air
Except for a short 6-month period early last year, the same young lady - ‘K’ from church - has helped care for Eliana since we returned home from China almost 4 years ago.
For the last year and a half or so, ‘K’ has worked part-time in the mornings at Eliana’s preschool and occasionally she worked there when needed in the afternoons. With the beginning of the new school year, she will work in a full-time position at the preschool which means that Carmi and I have been looking for a new after-school caregiver.
My supervisor’s wife, ‘S’, is a stay-at-home mom with a 9-month-old son and a daughter, ‘G’, who is one year younger than Eliana and weighs about 20 pounds less. ‘S’ expressed an interest in watching Eliana for us so she kept Eliana this afternoon and will do the same tomorrow to see how compatible the two girls are.
When I picked Eliana up after work, ‘S’ said the afternoon went great. There was the occasional ‘power struggle’ between the two strong wills but that is to be expected. She laughed and told me that Eliana laid down around 3:00 and was out like a light while ‘G’ did lay down but never so much as closed her eyes. Our girl definitely likes her sleep. ‘S’ went on to say that “Eliana was hard to wake up”. Yep…that’s my girl. I have to allow myself 10-15 minutes in the mornings to rouse the little grumpus. She is certainly NOT a morning person.
The first day seemed to be a success. Hopefully tomorrow will go equally well and ‘S’ will feel comfortable in committing to watch Eliana during her final year of preschool.
{extended}Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Anybody Need a Disposal?
While doing the dishes Sunday night, I flipped the switch to our disposal and was greeted with a faint “hmmmmmmm”. Tried it again, same noise. Tried a third time, still no luck. About the fourth time that I flipped the switch, there was nothing…nada.
“Not bad”, I thought to myself. We’ve been in this house for 11 years and this was the original disposal. Don’t know what the normal life expectancy is but I would say that we got our money’s worth out of it. So tonight we took time to swing by Lowes and purchase another.
Once home, I opened the box and the first thing I pulled out was a little booklet with ‘READ ME FIRST!’ plastered across the front.
The booklet was a troubleshooting guide and scanning down, I noticed a section that read ‘Disposal will not start’.
That’s me.
One solution was to check the circuit breaker which I had already done. The other solution was to press a little red button on the bottom of the disposal to close the overload protector which could have been tripped.
Surely it couldn’t be that easy. I’ve had to unclog the disposal several times over the years and I don’t ever remember a little red button. Doggone…there it was. Only my button was black which would explain why I never noticed it.
Too bad I was so quick to tell Carmi the simple solution. I could have milked the situation for a while and really impressed her with my handymanship.
But she knows better.
{extended}Sunday, August 13, 2006
Christmas Parade 2002
Our town’s Christmas parade is always the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
A good friend of ours is a police officer and in 2002, the police department sponsored a float called “Cops for Kids”. They wanted a diverse group of children represented on the float and our friend asked if he could ‘borrow’ Eliana because…well…there’s just not that many Asian toddlers around town.
Carmi rode with Eliana and tried hard to teach her the ‘beauty pageant’ wave but the Empress was not real interested. Thank God.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Fave Friday Foto #1
Several years ago, I read an article in the Sunday edition of our local paper about a young woman who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. For some unknown reason, her story really captivated me.
I discovered online journals and started following the adventures of incredible people as they walked a 2,174-mile footpath along the ridges and across the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
I haven’t experienced a thru-hike yet but my feet HAVE at least touched the hallowed ground of the trail.
In April of 2005, I met Craig Miles, President of a non-profit ministry called Appalachian Trail Servants. Craig heard about my love of the trail and actually took me on a 2-mile hike from Winding Stair Gap just outside of Franklin, NC to the very top of Siler Bald. What a thrill and only 2,172 miles to go!
Friday, August 11, 2006
How To Launder Money
After two hours of the Disney Channel, I felt like Eliana had been dumbed down enough for one evening so, much to her dismay, I turned the television off.
Carmi pulled out a neat little book called
The Preschooler’s Busy Book
which contains 365 creative games and activities to keep a 3 - 6-year-old busy.
The first activity called ‘Clean Coins’ was simple enough. Carmi put pennies into a mixture of water and vinegar and added baking soda for a cool fizzing effect. The reaction of the ingredients removed some tarnish and then Eliana meticulously took care of the rest with a toothbrush and old-fashioned elbow grease.
Good to see that she is inheriting her dad’s attention to detail.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Pep Talk
Before I received ‘the call’ last night, Eliana and I were shooting basketball in the foyer. I was on my knees and probably a good 8-10 feet from the basket.
A couple of my first shots missed the mark. After Eliana retrieved the ball for the second straight time, she handed it to me and said in a huff, “Come on, Dad. Get your head in the game.”
Nothing is better than a good pep talk to get me focused.
{extended}Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Put My Money Where My Mouth Is
I was tossing a ball with Eliana when the phone rang this evening. Carmi was closer so she moved to answer it.
“NRA?”, she questioned as she studied the name on the caller id screen.
“National Rifle Association!”, I yelled back.
She picked up the receiver and after a pause I heard her ask politely, “May I tell him whose calling?”
Normally I would get rather pissy with a telemarketer on the phone, especially one ringing the house after 8:00 pm. However, my father had been a card-carrying member of the NRA so I made myself promise to be nice before I took the call.
“Hello?”
“Hi Mr. Henderson. My name is so-and-so with the National Rifle Association. I’m calling tonight to see if I can get your opinion on Hillary Clinton.”
As soon as those words left his lips, I busted out laughing. I wasn’t laughing at this guy but I was laughing because I have a very strong opinion about Hillary Clinton…and it’s not good at all.
“That’s the kind of response we get a lot of the time”, he said in a relieved tone. He then played a very brief message by the NRA Director talking about Hillary’s hatred of the 2nd amendment. He followed the message with another question, “Mr. Henderson, would you like to see the NRA continue to fight for your right to bear arms?”
“Absolutely!”, I answered.
“Well Mr. Henderson, for only $175…”
He lost me then. I told him ‘no thanks’ a couple of times and just as I hung up, something strange happened. I experienced a twinge of guilt.
As I was telling Carmi about the conversation, she mentioned something that my dad told her one time. He said that if we ever had a son, he would buy him a lifetime membership to the NRA. I never knew that.
Might have to put my money where my mouth is after all.
{extended}