And We're Back!

Hello!

I apologize about the lack of posting. There have been a number of things that have come up in our life here, but now I can with certainty say that it will be more regular again! As I have told you before, the laptop's busyness is synonymous with Brad's busyness. And this is the busiest semester of Brad's entire schooling, from kindergarten until this very semester! :o) We knew this semester would be like that, from seminarians who have gone along before us. I feel really bad for Brad, because he has so much on his plate! Five papers (and these aren't your quickie little ten-pagers...!), Greek and Hebrew reading notes, quizes, and exams around the corner. He and the laptop have been very busy. I can't wait until next year, which supposedly is a breeze compared to this year of seminary! The rest of this semester can't pass quickly enough.

The week of April 5 was Brad's Spring Break, and Brad's parents came out and visited us. What an incredibly fun-filled week! We had a blast with them and were so sorry to see them go. I'll post pictures of that. They will be pictures from Brad's Dad's camera, because when we went to the beach, we dropped the camera in the sand...and it did not survive, despite the heroic efforts of Brad and his father to completely dissect it and put it back together. So we currently have no camera.

Last week, I was down the entire week with a bout of food poisoning...ick. I am just now beginning to get over it, but that is surely something I would never wish on anybody! So, all of these things combined has ensured the laptop and I's certain separation -- and hence, the lack of posting. However, this week Brad got a new laptop (an HP Mini) that he's very fond of, and that means the old laptop can stay home! Yay! I can blog again! I've got so much to tell you and show you...

Words

I like words. I like learning the meaning of different, new, interesting words. I like to read. When I tell Brad that, he tells me to read all of the assigned theological books for his classes for him. So I've learned to qualify that statement...I like to read, but I hate boring books. Theological books and textbooks for classes are like sleeping tablets for my brain. Because I like words and books, it makes sense that I think puns are fun! I love them -- they make me laugh. So I thought you'd like to read some, too.

1. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

2. Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.

3. Leif Ericson, a famous Viking explorer, returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely, saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."

4. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from very bad breath. This made him a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

5. The Cleveland Symphony was performing Beethoven's Ninth. In the piece, there's a long passage - about 20 minutes - during which the bass violinists have nothing to do. Rather than sit around that whole time, some bassists decided to sneak offstage and go to the tavern next door for a quick one. After slamming several beers in quick succession, one of them looked at his watch.

"Hey -- we need to get back!"

"No need to panic," said a fellow bassist. "I thought we'd need extra time, so I tied the last few pages of the conductor's score together with string. It'll take him a few minutes to get it untangled."

A few moments later, they staggered back to the concert hall and took their places in the orchestra. About this time, a member of the audience noticed the conductor was a bit edgy and said so to her companion. "Well, of course," answered her friend. "Don't you see? It's the bottom of the Ninth, the score is tied, and the bassists are loaded."

6. Did you hear about the Buddhist monk who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.

7. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

8. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Amal. He responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal."

9. The friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought this was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.

10. There was a person who put ten different puns up on a blog, in the hope that at least one of the puns would make its readers laugh. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

Well, they all made me laugh!

He Speaks!

Isaac is our strong, silent child no longer. Just this week, he found his voice! And I mean, he REALLY found his voice. He's louder right now than December ever was, if you can believe that! Here he is, doing his shouting-cooing.

Animal Babies

On Saturday, I took the kids to the Wild Animal Park. I had never taken them to the park all by myself before, and it was really fun! We usually go with my friend Naomi and her kids, so the whole time December was confused and was asking, "Where's Noah? Where did Noah go? We need to go find him!" because he wasn't there like he usually is!

We went there because there have been alot of animal babies born there recently. Here December is walking down the path to the tiger babies.

Here's the elephants!

If you look between the mother elephant's trunk and legs, you'll see a little gray blob, which is the newborn baby elephant. He had been born the day before, and at birth he weighed 252 lbs!

"The Coniferous Forrest" was a place at the Wild Animal Park that we hadn't explored before...

I decided that I don't take enough pictures of the interesting plants around here, so I took this picture!

The baby cheetah -- so cute! At first, he was cuddled into the stuffed animals around him that he looked just like another stuffed animal, and I couldn't see him. I told December that they must have taken the baby cheetah out of the exhibit, and we were both sad about that -- until I realized he was actually laying there all along, just camouflaged!

Baby alligator. Actually, this alligator is five years old and has been hand-raised. They were letting children ages five and up go in and pet the alligator. Yikes! Even if December had been old enough, I don't think I would have let her go see him and pet him. Alligators are the animals she's most afraid of, and if this little one had moved even a muscle, December would've been scared for life!

A picture taken while December was at the seminary during a barbeque lunch last week.

December wasn't finished napping when I woke her up, so she fell back asleep on the carpet.