It's been awhile since I've posted any updates. Things have been
very, very busy at our house. Lots of things around the house that
needed to be done to list it. At least one of us has been sick pretty
much since December. I'm only now actually feeling "normal" without the
congestion, coughing, and runny nose that I've had since mid-December.
We're all finally healthy again. Beth has been very busy coordinating
the
MOPS group at our church. The girls have been very busy themselves, playing, going to preschool, making messes.
Cara
really does anything and everything Anna does. If Anna tells me
anything, Cara comes right up and says the same thing. Though she still
talks like a baby, we can understand the words she's saying most of the
time. She's still in love with butter and would eat it by itself for
every meal if we let her. The other night, we had crescent rolls, and
she, of course wanted butter on hers. Then she went ahead and pinched
all the butter off the roll with her fingers and ate the butter
straight. Don't worry, though, she still eats very well, and she'll eat
your dinner after she eats hers, so be sure to have extra. She'll even
catch you if you have something in your mouth - I tried to eat some
Whoppers candy without her knowing. I put them in my mouth behind a
door so she wouldn't see, but then she saw me chewing and kept pointing
to my mouth saying, "Want some! Want some!"
Cara
is also starting to potty train and desperately wants to wear panties
like her big sister. She's used the potty successfully a few times, but
is still learning. She also likes to jump on daddy's belly now, but
only for a minute; then she wants to be held upside down, just like I do
with Anna. She then repeats over and over, "Ook meeee, Anna! Mommy,
ook meee!" telling everyone to look at her upside down. Almost daily
(and Beth might say many times in a day) she asks for "Hoasie Wide," aka
"
Horsie Ride," aka the
William Tell Overture, so she can run around and around. When it's time
for bedtime, she's protesting now, saying "No - no stowees!" (no
stories), "No, no naps!" and "No, no bet!" (no bed). But fortunately
she's still easy to put to bed.
Anna
still loves her
snowman jammies
very much. Just tonight she asked for them specifically and cried when
we said not tonight, but tomorrow she could wear them. She wears the
snowman jammie slippers faithfully, though. She's made lots of friends
at preschool and talks about them a lot. She gets very excited when
they come over to play or when she gets to go to their house to play.
She really likes when our photo gallery screen saver comes on and she
can watch the pictures. She remembers Titi Toni and Titi Edna very well
when the
Orlando reunion
pictures come up. She also loves the Curious George blanket that Aunt
Raquel made her for Christmas. She frequently insists that it's the one
and only blanket she wants to cover her at night.
She
understands the idea that we're trying to go live near Mama Jet and
Papa Nick's house. She gets very excited when she thinks about it, and
frequently reminds us that we're going to do that, and that someone has
to buy our house first, then we can move. She's visiting them with Beth
in late April (Beth's helping her mom organize a yard sale). When we
ask if she wants to fly on an airplane, she says no, "because I'm too
big!" I didn't understand what exactly that meant until Beth pointed
out that whenever she's actually seen an airplane, it's been very small
from being so high in the sky, so Anna must think that she couldn't
possibly fit into that tiny little airplane.
I've been quite busy myself between home, the girls,
choir, and
especially work. I'm the only person that has been developing the
mission planning software (MPS) for two satellite missions being
launched this year and flown by
Orbital Science Corporation
in Dulles, VA. To really simplify what MPS does: it is a tool used in
the mission operations center (MOC) that repeatedly analyzes the
predicted satellite orbit and assembles the nominal command loads that
get uploaded to the satellite for execution, checking for conditions
that might damage the satellite in some way. I really could have used
another developer to take some of the workload (the original plan), but
since that didn't happen, just about every MPS-related question or task
falls on me, for either mission, and recently from several groups with
Orbital looking at possibly wanting their own customized MPS for
upcoming missions. The two missions for which I'm currently developing
the MPS are:
- Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX),
launching Summer '08. This satellite's mission is to build a "picture"
of the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. Think
of it as the shock wave made by our solar system as it moves through the
larger galaxy. Here's the official mission website.
- Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO),
launching December '08. This satellite's mission is to act as a
space-based platform to observe sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in
the effort to better understand the carbon cycle and improve predictions
of any future increases in CO2 and its impact on climate change.
I also traveled to Seattle for a work-related seminar earlier this
month, which explains the Seattle shirts you might see the girls wearing
in some of the pictures in our gallery, which I've updated with some new pictures, by the way (
Day-to-Day, 2007-2008 Winter).
Well, that probably brings us somewhat up to date for now. I'm sure
there are things that have happened in the last month that I've
forgotten and didn't have time to sit and write. Maybe things will slow
down enough I'll be able to write more often. Or maybe I'm kidding
myself…!
