Eat, Sleep, Play
“I have ICE CREAM!” The sweet pea is VERY fond of ice cream.
Bowl-lickin’-good.
On a completely different note, Chunky Monkey (the little guy I watch) played himself right to sleep the other day. Sweet Pea has been playing pretty hard herself of late.
She loves her slide right now with a passion. Please ignore the ridiculously long grass. This is what spring in the Willamette Valley does to grass. My husband doesn’t get 5 o’clock shadow but my lawn does.
I’ve also been enjoying myself. I love the nice days, and we’ve made it a point to spend as much of it outside as we could. Good thing too, since cold and rain are always right around the corner.
Filed under Home life | Comment (0)“Pregnancy” Pains
I had forgotten how much I find the paperwork for the adoption to be:
1) tedious
2) ridiculous
3) hopelessly bureaucratic
Today, because it is spring break and because I’ve left it entirely too long, I decided I would (with the “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” mentality) get all the last paperwork needed to have our packet for our home study complete.
My first stop was the bank. All I needed was a letter on bank letterhead that said how much was in our account, whether we have any loans with them and if so if we are paying on time, and how long we’ve been customers. The form letter we had as an example from the adoption agency ended with ” To the best of our knowledge they are responsible, respectable, and honest people.” We have been banking at this institution for 11 years. I was there for OVER an hour. Why? Because they had to call and get permission to write the letter. Because they had to discuss what could and could not be put in the letter. Because the person who was supposed to write the letter was also the notary so it had to be decided who would be the proper authority to sign the letter (a notary cannot both sign and notarize a document). It was a three sentence form letter. Over an hour. Yep, gotta love that. Oh, and they couldn’t include the line about us being responsible, respectful, and honest as far as they know. ‘Cause, you know, we could come back with a lawsuit and say, “See they said we are honest?!?” Wait, huh?
Next on the agenda, I was trying to get state police clearance. Basically the state needs to provide our criminal record in this state (of course we have none). So I call the state. They tell me that only agencies can request that, not individuals, end of discussion. I call International Family Services, our agency (who is great!) and they explain what we will do. We have to fill out a form and go get our fingerprints done in McMinnville or Beaverton, then we bring our fingerprints and the form back to IFS, then they mail it to the state. Redundant much?
And this is just the beginning. This is for the home study. This isn’t yet for any country but ours. Le sigh, le moan. I look at pictures of waiting kids though (see them yourself here or here) and I remember why we do this. They inspire me to try harder, to do more, to get this paperwork done, regardless of how I feel about it.
Filed under Adoption | Comments (2)So, What do You do Again?
My current title is Science Outreach Administrator. The title is in no way helpful to explain what I do. What I do is rather hard to explain because it covers a lot of areas, and each area needs its own explanation to really understand what I do. I, in no particular order:
- supervise college students (this semester there are 13 students I’m supervising) who teach younger kids (from six-year-olds up through high schoolers)
- travel and do presentations with our portable planetarium
- host (mostly middle and high school) groups and do presentations in our cadaver lab (this year so far I have hosted over 630 high school students)
- educate educators on how to more effectively teach science and loan equipment to help them along the journey
- and a whole host of other things.
This post falls into the “other things” category. Tuesday, the culmination of many hours of work paid off. I certainly couldn’t have done it without the help of many, many people. There were five departments involved, around 150 people attended, and a few hundred dollars spent to make the Science Open House a success. The open house is a “show and tell” event for George Fox families put on by all the science departments (physics, engineering, math, biology, and chemistry – we even snuck in a little earth science). Here are some images from the night.
There was the cute and fuzzy…
…and the creepy crawly. This is our campus chaplain’s hand. Way to go!!
There were many willing volunteers, albeit crazy.
And “science” food. I know you want some of that.
Ice cream a la liquid nitrogen.
A very popular demo of ferro-fluid and microwaves. If you haven’t seen the ferro-fluid, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Fancy machines, big boy toys really. Big and small boys liked stretching the rod (in the middle) until it broke (that’s steel, folks).
Professors were animated and excited.
Heart rates were measured and changed using a flip table.
Chemisty was in the air.
Pyromaniacs were encouraged.
Volcanoes were set off.
I was a giant dork.
The finale light show really took my breath away.
And the laser light show was excellent. I kept expecting cell phone swaying since everyone was singing along with Fireflies, by Owl City.
I couldn’t have asked for a better night, or for better help. So many people made this night great. For example, as I was checking to be sure everyone was finishing up, the students who had been serving food all evening had started cleaning up and were DOING THE DISHES ALREADY. Although I was beat, I was also unbelievably blessed.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Not That Kind of Indian
This kind of Indian. The “real” Indian.
A salwar kameez. Of course she looks good in that color.
And a drop dead gorgeous dress. She looks so grown up.
Some friends recently traveled to India (their home country) and were kind enough to do some shopping for grandma as well as pick up some gifts themselves for the Indian Princess. We are blessed to have such amazing people in our lives. Their generosity makes us more thankful than words can express.
Filed under Home life | Comments (2)Will You…
be our …
Sunita’s college friends, “Sessh and Britie”, are getting married this summer (congrats!!). They kindly asked the munchkin to steal the show. =D
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)
