April 16

Phew!

Yesterday I drove into work and parked under the viaduct. (Its one of the few free parking spots in Seattle, just south of Qwest field) From there, I had to walk about 5 blocks to the Starbucks IT office building. About three blocks in, I did the 'self-frisk'- or checking each of my pockets for all of my valuables-- wallet, phone, work badge, etc. I found everything but my phone. (This has been my favorite cell phone ever of all of the ones I have had so far. It is a Motorola Q smartphone and has my email, contacts, internet, games and all those other goodies-- oh yeah, it even works for making phone calls! ;)) I was reluctant to head back as I was closer to my building now than I was to the car. I figured I must have left it on the front seat during the drive. I wasnt sure if it was worth going back for it. But then I started thinking of this particular area of the city and some of the unseemly characters that roam around Pioneer Square. I still wasnt sure that I should go back. I knew I had locked the car and it should be safe. But the impression to return came back to me again-- like a still small voice. I figured I better obey that voice. I got back to the car and was about to unlock the door when I looked down by my foot and saw the phone right there in the dirt by my door. Holy Cow, that could have been worse than I anticipated. I thankfully picked it up to find it was undamaged and said a prayer of thanks.

 

Sigh of Relief

Last Friday, LeAnn took Austin into the doctor to have his elbow checked out.  A few weeks ago he banged it up pretty good while roller skating at the local rink. We figured it was just a bruise, and hoped it would go away. It didn't. He complained about it occasionally when wrestling around or having it hit. So, LeAnn had called our physician to have it looked at, but they didn't have anything open for a few more days, so that was when we went the Insta Care route. LeAnn, took him out of school early on Friday hoping that the place wouldn't be to busy.-- Nope. There were about 8-10 people in front of them and it took about 7 hours, yep I said HOURS for them to finally get through. Crazy. They were able to leave for a while and then come back at one point, but still makes me never want to take anyone to the insta Care ever again-- and I wasn't the one that was waiting the whole time. After all that, we got a pretty bad prognosis that Austin had broken a growth plate! Looking at the xrays and having LeAnn explain to me where the problem was was pretty awful. Just think of all of the potential problems this could cause was quite terrifying-- would this inhibit his growth on that arm? -- would he need surgery and a pin stuck in there? With those scenarios hanging over our heads we went the weekend commiserating about what might happen. Austin wore a sling over the weekend as a reminder that he needed to protect his elbow area. Unfortunately, this prevented him from participating in the practice track meet for his elementary school. He was quite bummed. He showed me how fast he could run with the sling on, but the doctor had said he should not be running around in case he fell again and damaged his elbow further.
LeAnn then took him to see the Orthopedic Doctor on Tuesday. To our utter relief, this doctor said it was not a growth plate break. (Thank goodness for specialists!) Apparently, it was a small fracture somewhere that he couldn't actually determine without taking a more sophisticated MRI xray. He recommended just putting a cast on it for a couple of weeks. This was our best case scenario going in, so our prayers were answered. This is Austin's second cast in three years. We might need to bubble wrap the boy before we send him out in the world again. :)

April 22

 

By the hair of my chinny chin chin

I need to thank my family for praying me to success in passing the test for my CompTIA Project+ Certification yesterday. I had taken 40 hours of in-class training for this certification and doled out a chunk of money for the training and test. My classes ended at the end of February and I ended up taking the exam for the first time mid-March. I missed passing by 3 questions out of 80 possible. I was quite bummed. They did allow for a retake though, which ended up being scheduled for yesterday. I crammed over the weekend and focused this time around on practice tests which we had been given. There were about 235 questions that I had been studying through yesterday. My brain was pretty much mush going in to take the test. There were a number of questions that I breezed right through, and others that took me at least five minutes to figure out. I did end up taking more time to complete the exam this time. You are given 90 minutes to finish, and I took about 85. After completing the test and submitting my answers, there is a mandatory electronic survey that you have to take before you see the results of whether you passed or not. It is quite infuriating having to go through the form of 15 questions before seeing the final grade. I had somewhat mixed emotions on whether I had passed this time or not. The passing score is 499. I ended up scoring a 510. (Last time around I got 470) That is with each question having a value of up to 12 points, so it is likely I passed by one question this time around! I know that I had some divine intervention on a number of the questions that I wasnt sure about. I know that LeAnn, Autumn, Austin and Jaylin (as well as myself) were praying hard and had a lot of faith that I would be able to pass this time around. (I sure wasnt looking forward to having to take the exam at some future point again.) All of those prayers combined gave me the 11 points that I needed to pass. :) It is such a relief to have this completed and be able to have another certification added to my resumé.

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April 17

Track Meet

My beautiful girls, Autumn and Jaylin ran in a practice track meet for their elementary school- Star Lake Elementary, last Saturday. Autumn's meet was at 8:30 and included the 3-5th grade athletes. I stayed home during the first few hours as I was planning on going to Jaylin (and Austin's-- before we found out he needed to have his arm in a sling and on doctors orders he couldnt participate) track meet later that afternoon. At 11:00 I got a call from LeAnn stating that Autumns meet was still underway, and she needed to leave to go see a Broadway play with Jeannine. So I ended up heading out with Austin and Jaylin at 11:00 to tag in for Autumns meet. The place was utter chaos. There are a few hundred kids there running around to these different events, and masses of them waiting for their turn based on which grade they were in. We had to wait around for a while until Autumn ran in the 100 meter race. She ran pretty well and finished not far behind the leader. After that completed, I talked with her about competing in the 800 meter. I know that Autumn is good at endurance running, because she will go out occasionally and run around our neighborhood block 10 times without too much trouble (This is one of LeAnn's methods to wear the kids out before bed time :)) There werent a whole lot of the kids that were to interested in running the half mile distance, so this event would take much less time to get through. We waited about 15 minutes for her age group to come up. She did great and was in 2nd place for about half the distance. She started falling back a bit midway through the second lap and ended up finishing in 6th. She did great for not having trained at all for that event. I know she has good endurance and stamina and that she will do very well in this as she practices for the actual meet that goes at the end of the month. She was very tired, but very proud of her performance. We then went down to Billy McHale's restaurant and got lunch before coming back again for Jaylins meet at 2:30. This one went much quicker. She did the long jump, softball throw and then ran the 50 meter. She was cruising right along and finished 2nd in her Kindergarten race. It is so fun to watch my girls having a great time out there exercising.

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Sigh of Relief

Last Friday, LeAnn took Austin into the doctor to have his elbow checked out.  A few weeks ago he banged it up pretty good while roller skating at the local rink. We figured it was just a bruise, and hoped it would go away. It didn't. He complained about it occasionally when wrestling around or having it hit. So, LeAnn had called our physician to have it looked at, but they didn't have anything open for a few more days, so that was when we went the Insta Care route. LeAnn, took him out of school early on Friday hoping that the place wouldn't be to busy.-- Nope. There were about 8-10 people in front of them and it took about 7 hours, yep I said HOURS for them to finally get through. Crazy. They were able to leave for a while and then come back at one point, but still makes me never want to take anyone to the insta Care ever again-- and I wasn't the one that was waiting the whole time. After all that, we got a pretty bad prognosis that Austin had broken a growth plate! Looking at the xrays and having LeAnn explain to me where the problem was was pretty awful. Just think of all of the potential problems this could cause was quite terrifying-- would this inhibit his growth on that arm? -- would he need surgery and a pin stuck in there? With those scenarios hanging over our heads we went the weekend commiserating about what might happen. Austin wore a sling over the weekend as a reminder that he needed to protect his elbow area. Unfortunately, this prevented him from participating in the practice track meet for his elementary school. He was quite bummed. He showed me how fast he could run with the sling on, but the doctor had said he should not be running around in case he fell again and damaged his elbow further.
LeAnn then took him to see the Orthopedic Doctor on Tuesday. To our utter relief, this doctor said it was not a growth plate break. (Thank goodness for specialists!) Apparently, it was a small fracture somewhere that he couldn't actually determine without taking a more sophisticated MRI xray. He recommended just putting a cast on it for a couple of weeks. This was our best case scenario going in, so our prayers were answered. This is Austin's second cast in three years. We might need to bubble wrap the boy before we send him out in the world again. :)

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April 02

Our cute little fools

It seems that some of the shenanigans of Jo Ann Walker have worn off on LeAnn. At 11:00 on March 31, she told me we were going on a mission to begin April Fools day on our kids. She went in and got a eyeliner pencil from our bathroom and proceeded to go and draw all over the faces of our sleeping children. Austin got a mustache, Autumn got a “I love my dad” and Jaylin got a big black dot right on the middle of her nose! Then, after they got the face paint, we moved them all into different beds. Autumn was put into Austins bed, Jaylin into Autumns and Austin into Jaylins! It was amazing that none of them woke up during the move. They are all pretty hard sleepers. Autumn did end up getting up about 10 minutes later and came in to ask us what was going on. I told her she was dreaming (dont think she bought it), and to go get back in Austin’s bed. It turned out that Jaylin woke up during the night and then ended up getting back into her bed. She found Austin there, so she just pushed him out onto the floor. Then when he found himself on the floor, he ended up just crawling back into Jaylin’s bed, so that is where LeAnn found both of them in the morning. I wish I could have been there on April Fools day when they ended up finding out that their faces had graffiti on them!
To get back at LeAnn that morning, the kids ended up going downstairs and toilet papering the kitchen. :) They did a pretty good job of it too. Then Autumn even got me as when I got home I went to turn on the light in the bathroom and it wouldnt turn on. I was starting to wonder if a breaker had gone off. I didnt figure it out until after soccer practice when I got home and Autumn was grinning mischeiviously when LeAnn tried to turn on the same lights. I knew then her gig was up!.