Ready for Israel

Sea of Galilee

Tonight was the last rehearsal before The National Christian Choir travels to Israel.  I've been so busy with work, the kids, listing/fixing the house, getting my car fixed, doing taxes, figuring out health insurance changes, etc., etc., etc., that it didn't really sink in how close the trip was until Harry (the director) said "See you in the Holy Land!" before we went home.  We're all very excited.  We had several additional singers from the region who are singing with us in Israel at our last few rehearsals.  We're expecting around 30 or 40 more singers from around the country to also join us, but we won't be meeting them or rehearsing with them until we get to Tel Aviv next week.  Dad arrives this weekend to stay at our house in Maryland a few days before we depart for Israel. It should be quite an experience - please keep all of us (around 300 in total) in your prayers as we travel!

Little signs of growing up

I don't even remember when she started doing this, but it just occurred to me that Anna walks up and down the stairs now using one step per stair.  She doesn't put both feet on each step like she used to.  It made me a little sad.

Anecdotes for March 14, 2008

Cara likes to pretend, at random times, that she's either a puppy or a kitty.  It's not hard to guess which it is.  If it's a puppy, she'll walk up to you and state, "Woof." Then she'll lick you.  If it's a kitty, she'll walk up to you and state, "Meow."  Then she'll put her head on you.

She's not very ticklish on her feet.  I've tried it several times, but it doesn't faze her.  In fact, it turns out she likes it.  When you stop "tickling" her feet, she'll grab your finger and pull it back to her feet to have you keep rubbing it.  She likes when you lightly caress her face with your finger, too.  If she happens to be sitting in your lap, relaxed, she'll grab your hand and pull it to her face.  Then she'll do it again if you stop.

Last week I brought home a "surprise" on a couple days for the girls to entice them (well, to entice Anna, mainly) to eat their dinner.  The first time the surprise was a big chocolate chip cookie.  The second time it was gummy bears.  Beth brought the girls by the office this week to sign some papers.  Anna wanted to stay with me at the office and was sad when she had to leave.  On the way home she told Beth that she wanted a surprise when they got home.  It turns out the "surprise" was well-defined - she later revealed she wanted a cookie as the surprise.  She still likes to play hide and seek - only when it's her turn to hide and you finish counting, she yells, "Over here! Over here!!"

Yesterday at preschool everyone wore green, a leprechaun visited the school, and during chapel they learned all about Easter.  Did Anna tell us any of this?  No - when Beth asked what she learned in chapel, she said that Mrs. Sacardi said that the ants go outside.  Apparently, an ant had crawled onto Anna's hand, and it traumatized her, and her teacher had to reassure her that the ants live outside.  Anna still plays with a "money purse" that she made in Sunday school weeks and weeks ago.  She loves that money purse, which is a paper plate folded into a cup-like form with a string through it for the handle.

Last night at about 1am, Anna woke up screaming in terror.  Woke everyone up.  Cara woke up and was scared at the screaming and started crying herself.  I asked Beth what happened, and she said that Anna told her that she dreamed an ant was crawling on her hand and got scared.  I guess we know who's not going to be an entomologist.

Happy 2nd Birthday

Cara and I celebrated our 2nd birthday together this past Tuesday, 2/26/08.  Since we have the house listed (and ready to be shown at any given moment, as much as possible), we kept it very low-key this year so as not to have the house torn apart by a mob of kids.  Who knows, maybe we'll have an "unbirthday" party for her that's bigger once the house sells (or we give up and withdraw it).

Like last year, we had cupcakes.  As you can see from the picture, Cara liked hers.  She ate it straight off the table, like a horse.  Anna again helped me blow out my candles, then she had to make sure all the frosting was licked off the candles.  She's learned how to do a somersault and likes to show us.  Cara, of course, doing everything Anna does, also wants to show us her "somersaults," which are just her putting her head on the ground, then laying on her back.

The Butter Monster

Well, it was bound to happen.  Cara discovered an unattended tub of butter, and she was in heaven...

First car wash

Today we were out and about with the girls, and on the way home we decided to get some gas and a car wash, since the car was very salty.  It was a touchless car wash, so there were no scary brushes whapping against the windows or breaking our antennas.  The first couple passes of the bar just lightly sprayed soap onto the car, and the girls were enthralled watching it, almost enjoying watching it.  But then on the 3rd pass, which was the first rinse, the bar was spraying water rather hard, and that's when the Anna got scared, covered her ears, and said she wanted us to leave.  I think Cara was actually ok until she saw Anna scared, then Cara started crying.

It reminded me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark towards the end, when they've opened the ark, and one of the ghosts comes up to the main bad guy after someone else had proclaimed, "It's beautiful!" [the light soap spray] Then the ghost suddenly turns into a scary demon, the horror music starts blaring, and everyone is screaming in terror [the rinse].

Life keeps marching forward

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…!