Christmas 2018 - Santa's coming

Inspired by a McDonald's, we decorated our front
door  and left it up until Superstar's birthday.

Our new tree - first large one in 10 years - the stockings,
and the Santa present for each child.

Princess got a fairy princess tent.
It is still set up in her room.

JT's punching bag was ... a big hit </Dadjoke>
He loved the feeling of power.
Sadly he destroyed it in a few weeks.

Superstar can now go fast, but he mostly lets Princess
play with it these days so he can focus on soccer.

Santa didn't bring this, but she's adorably happy
and I think that happened before my parents got here.

One happy Christmas!

Nov-Dec 2018 - End of being a faculty fellow

Time to do some catch up!
JT's school wanted to remind their students at Thanksgiving to be "Thankful 4" by writing the things they were thankful for on a number four.

Enjoying the fall colors

To Light the World, we continued our tradition of inviting the kids to donate
most of their toys. (Why most? Because we've had a hard time keeping them
clean and organized, and they don't play with the vast majority anyway.)

The farewell dinner for Beth and me

This year was my last as a Faculty Fellow at Tarleton. This was a tragically sad thing. I love(d) working with Jim, Kelly, and the other Fellows. Faculty Fellows are involved in teacher development programs to increase faculty's teaching, research, and service abilities. It got me involved in the broader Tarleton community while working with some of the greatest, friendliest, funniest professors anybody could know. Oh, sure, we still see each other now and then; but when Jim, Kelly, and I had "the talk" about how I was about to come to the end of my days, I was depressed. I felt like I'd been to a funeral!

Dec '18 Graduation - the colleges of business and education.

A new tie from one of my seminary students

The sunrise from our home one morning - one the benefits
of teaching seminary.

We had a lot of fun making caramel/chocolate apples
 for my mother for Christmas.

We practiced telling gospel stories with felt pieces
I ... can't tell what story Princess was telling here.

The boys, helping us get ready for Christmas with my parents.

Missionaries can call home on PDay

When I was on my mission in Germany, I wrote to my parents every week and called them at Mother's Day and Christmas. That's what was allowed. More recently, missionaries were given permission to email instead of write letters. That was great. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced that missionaries may now text, call home, and/or video chat weekly during their off days, plus on special occasions like Father's Day or birthdays.

As I read that, I remembered fondly a panic I gave my parents. I was sick (again!) and the doctor said he needed to have me checked for Tuberculosis because nothing else seemed to fit. I wrote my parents about that, then a few days later got tested. My tests were just fine - no problems at all - so I forgot about it.

My parents got my letter about TB and started worrying.
A week later, no letter showed up. I had sent it, but mail sometimes doesn't arrive on time. They wrote me and asked me for confirmation that everything was okay.
Two weeks later, no letter showed up from me, and I didn't one from them either. They wrote me again, frantic.
Three weeks later I got both of their letters and wrote them right away. My weekly letters finally showed up, which reassured them I WAS STILL ALIVE but didn't tell them anything about the TB because I hadn't known they were worried yet when I sent those.
A solid month of worry later they finally got a letter from me reassuring them I was okay. I'm not 100% certain, but I feel like they may have called my mission president at some point to hear I was okay, and Pres. Schubert kindly asked me to write my parents and let them know everything was okay. I reassured him that I already had.

On my mission in Neubrandenburg,
recording a radio program about Jesus.

Now, yes, email would have solved most of that. But a quick text would've saved them a lot of grief even faster!

I think about what a relief it would have been to have been able to chat with them while I was in the hospital - once getting nails put in my arm when I broke my arm on black ice, the other time getting the nails taken out.

So glad this is happening!

365 - Duolingo

Yesterday I scored a 365 day streak on Duolingo. Duolingo is an app that helps you learn different languages. As you complete lessons, you score experience points (xp) to keep track of how far you are, and if you meet your daily xp goal it adds to your streak*. I'm a real fan!

I've been using it to:
refresh my German (21,328 xp)
learn Spanish (17542 xp) and Chinese (6918)

Duo, himself

and putter around in Portuguese (2089) and French (1526).

The German lessons have mostly succeeded in reminding me of which gender various nouns are and added some words and phrases that a missionary rarely needs to use, like business terms for handling accounts.

Before trying Spanish on Duolingo I had read the Book of Mormon in Spanish twice. The app has been VERY helpful in filling in a lot of gaps and making me very confident in my ability to read Spanish. Hearing it or having conversations with native speakers? Still not so much. I can follow along a Spanish church lesson or talk as long as I already know what they're talking about and it makes a lot of sense, but if anyone starts telling a story about something that happened to them I don't already know, I get completely lost.

Joy has joined me in working on Chinese. The other day she listened to a sentence in Chinese and asked if I could translate it. I could tell it was in the lesson on nationalities, but I couldn't figure out what country they were saying. I admitted that and asked, "So what country IS he from?" And that was correct: What country is he from? *LOL* I was able to say a few phrases to a transfer student successfully. That was nice. My favorite sentence is "Teacher please help my younger brother," because with Chinese tones it sounded like a perfect background for a techno song. I'll mutter that phrase over and over, banging out a beat with my dry erase markers or what have you just having fun.

They recently added a competition, where you are paired with 49 others who are active this week. At the end of the week they total your xp for that week. The top 10 of you go up a level, the bottom 5 go down a level, and everyone else stays where you are. After a few attempts, I've made it to level 4/5, where I hope to stay for the foreseeable future.

5000

As newlyweds, I told Joy I wanted to celebrate every day of our marriage. We kept count of every single one of them on our calendar and reminded each other of how many days we had been married. Then it was every 10 days. Then every 25. Or 100.

Well, it's TIME for a milestone. Joy and I have officially been married for 5,000 days (that's slightly over 13 and 2/3 years).

You found what???

To celebrate, I picked up some flowers after dropping Superstar off at school, and surprised Joy with ... a new, unopened board game of ... WIZARDS!

Wizards came out in 1982 and was one of my favorite board games growing up. The players apprentice themselves to wizards, druids, or sorcerers and go around doing good deeds to thwart evil and eventually gain enough trust of the various factions to unite the holy crystals, unmask the (random) ancient wizard who has turned to evil, and Save the World before it Falls into Darkness. It's complex, high replayability, epic fantasy with magic and elves and unicorns against demons and dragons and all that good stuff.

I can't believe it!

Shortly after my brother and I got married, we had a conversation about who would inherit a few things we were both interested in and we agreed that he would get Wizards while I got Advanced Civilization. After the conversation, Joy told me she was sad about that decision, so I have had it in my heart for a dozen years to find our own copy. Well, ebay came through!

Happy 5000 Days of Happily Ever After!
And since we were sealed in the San Diego Temple approximately just about ... NOW, that means we have also been married for 120,000 hours, 7.2 million minutes, and at some point today 432 million seconds.

10-13 years ago

(For anyone vaguely curious, we will hit 6000 days on Halloween, 2021. See you then!)

Warning: Cute children at large

Princess had a wonderful school picture.











Princess was eager to get ready for Christmas, so she dressed up as Mary.

The kids keep getting bigger, especially JT who has grown out of three Sunday outfits in three months.  But that means lots of pictures of the little guy looking sharp!

Microwave vs. Nigeria

Our microwave broke down a couple weeks ago while my parents were visiting for Christmas. We hurried off to the store to order a new one, but it won't arrive until this Friday. So we've been reheating food in the oven, toaster, or stove top for - almost like our pioneer forefathers. ;)


We have this saying that we still use. When the lights go out, it reminds us of the 'privations' we had in Nigeria - specifically the routine power outages 3-5 times a day. We turn to each other and say, "Welcome to Nigeria!"

Joy has commented twice now that we can't even say that. In Nigeria, AUN supplied us with a microwave. And though the electricity would shut off regularly, and sometimes for a few hours at a time, we were never days on end without a microwave to complement our stove and oven. She says: "Isn't it funny to feel like there could come a day when we feel how spoiled we were in Nigeria" compared to the US?

We were always aware of how good we had it in Nigeria compared to other Nigerians, and regular contact with other friends living abroad helped us recognize how pampered we were by our institution compared to theirs. But it's one of the very few times that we have felt better off in Nigeria than here. "Ode to having a new microwave by Friday!" quothe the Joy.

Someone had a birthday last month ... Joy

For Joy's birthday we spent a lot of time together. Normally that means playing board games while the children are asleep, but I've been too tired with seminary for much of that.

We were very blessed with friends who wanted to babysit the children for us. So we went to see Macbeth. Or, we went and saw half of Macbeth at Tarleton. That whole "too tired to stay up late for seminary" showed up again, and Macbeth IS after all one of the more bloody of Shakespeare's tragedies ... so we called it a night a bit early (much to Joy's relief; she asked me the next night to never show her Macbeth again).

In review, Lady Macbeth did a great job. She spoke most clearly and was readily understandable. Most of the cast had no real feeling for the language, and much was lost in trying to sound Shakespearen and like Brooklyn gangsters at the same time. Macbeth's Marlon Brando impression fell flat and the lighting on every single one of his soliloquies was horrid. They were trying for a half-light/half-shadow effect, but it ended with the half facing away from the crowd lit and the whole face facing us shadowed, or the "window" outline covering his eyes and the top half of his face, leaving his mouth visible. The witches also blew their lines all to bits -- so excited about racing around the stage and cackling that if I hadn't known the prophecy by heart I never would have known they said he would be king. So, yeah, we weren't missing out too much in the second half, we're guessing. Most of the cast was also in Alice in Wonderland that we saw just before that, a 30-min production. The kids loved it to pieces. The actors did better in Alice than in Macbeth.

We also had a glorious drive to the Dallas Temple. Some friends in the ward drove up at 5am (from nearly an hour away!) so that we could leave before dawn. As we drove through the early morning mist and watched the sun rise, we had just the happiest, most peaceful time and drew closer as a couple. A very, very happy morning.

We enjoyed a morning at the local corn maze (pictures must be somewhere) and we went to the Chinese place for their ice cream - only hard-serve place in town.

Joy has always loved ice cream cakes, but this year she had me remake the ice cream too - we bought some dark chocolate, to which I added cookie pieces, and then arranged slabs of ice cream, more cookies, and chocolate/whipped cream layers. Add some Nutella to that and you've got a really good cake!

We also took several walks along the local trails as a family. 

Here are some more pictures of Joy and the happy children opening her presents. "I got books from my favorite author, Sarah Eden."

Hoo's there?

 

Parody: Our father just said brrrr

Superstar and I tend to be the most impervious to changes in temperature in our home. But when it drops from the 80s to 39 degrees, even Dad can get a little chilly. Here's a song for the morning to the tune of Rejoice, the Lord is King!

Our father just Brrrr! It's cold 'cause our dad said brrr.
Everyone come inside and put on a sweaterrrr!
Put on some socks! Put on a hat!
It really is as cold as that.
Put on a layerrrr and say a prayerrrr
Because our father just said Brrrrr!

JT gets his milk groove back

For something like 3.5 months, John-Thomas has not been allowed to have anything with milk-products in it. He's had some tummy troubles for years and that was the latest suggestion from the doctor after they stuck probes up his nose and down into his intestines.

It looks initially like it might have done some good. While he was in Utah, JT's gagging decreased. When they got home, it was only a once-a-week kind of thing, so it looked like this was a big part of the solution. By now, though, he's back to where he started and showing no improvement whatsoever.

We drove out to Denton to see the doc again, and he confirms it sounds like milk is not the solution. He now informs us that there were not only a lot of white blood cells in his intestines, but also a lot of histamines, so it's definitely allergy related and probably dietary but it might be environmental too. The thing is, the allergy testing he did came up with mostly negative results or minor results, 0+ or so. The only thing that is a 2 he doesn't eat regularly and he has nothing that came in at a 3-6, which is normally when a body gets noticeably bothered by something.

We know JT has environmental allergies - we do and he and Superstar both react to the allergens around here at the same time we do. So the next step is to take him to our allergist and get him properly tested for food and environmental allergies and go from there.

As we were driving to the doctor, JT calmly asked, "Is life supposed to be hard?"
Joy's inspired answer was Yes, but it's also supposed to be joyful.

To celebrate the return of milk and a couple other milestones in his young life, we took him to get a milkshake.

What have we learned from our grand 3.5 month experiment? We could totally live off soy milk (for cooking and baking) and almond milk (chocolate flavor for drinking) in an emergency. It keeps for a year and is a lot yummier than powdered, so I'm thinking this will become a fixture in our food storage.

While I'm talking about food, I'll mention that Joy started the Naturally Slim program I went through 2 years ago. We liked it when I was doing it; we like it again as Joy goes through. So we're going to be implementing some of the elements of it at home on a regular basis, trying to teach the kids to take small bites (as Princess always has), to pause between bites (the way JT does), and to be more aware of when they're full (Superstar can even say no to cake when he's full). After eating 10 minutes, pause for 5; oh, and no sweets after today until Halloween, and from then on
we'll be more purposeful with our sweets.