Sunday, July 27, 2008
Put your eyes on Jesus
I went to college with Jessica and had the privilege of working with her for a short time in the kitchen at Covenant. She went to be with Jesus on the 10th of July, but made a video for family and friends earlier in the year. This video is the best example I have ever seen of what it means to get your eyes of yourself and put them on Jesus. What a difference it makes in a person's life and spirit when they do that. Jessica's life was a great blessing to many people. Please click here to view her story.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
First Baby Gift
Here's the outfit from Aunt Heather. Guess she knew we liked dogs:-)
This will definitely be our birthday outfit!
This will definitely be our birthday outfit!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Another reason I chose home birth
I've heard stories like this before, and I already decided in high school that when I had kids, I would use a midwife (several of my allied health teachers spoke of the difference during class time. I LOVED those discussions.). I've even heard an MD that I attended college with (when he was undergrad of course) talk about how OBs, like all Drs. are trained to react as if everything during birth is an emergency.
Here's the story I read today that affirms my choice:
excerpt from Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg's book Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way
"In many ways her [the midwife's] experience with normal birth is superior to most physicians'. For example, she recently attended a couple from one of our birthing classes at home. Their baby was born with the cord looped three times around its neck - unusual, but not out of the range of normal. The midwife calmly slipped the loops one at a time over the baby's head in a matter os seconds and the body was born with the next contraction. She had listened to the fetal heart tones frequently and knew the baby was in no danger. Later, at the hospital birth of one of our couples, the baby's head emerged with the cord looped once around the neck - something quite common. The baby was having no problems, but the physician attending was shouting at the mother (whose control was perfect) not to push. The doctor then pulled out a bit of the loop, clamped it, and cut the cord before the body was born. That meant the baby had to breathe immediately since the lifeline supplying it with oxygen had been severed. Fortunately, it did. Neither baby had any problems at birth, but the hospital baby had been put to greater risk."
Here's the story I read today that affirms my choice:
excerpt from Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg's book Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way
"In many ways her [the midwife's] experience with normal birth is superior to most physicians'. For example, she recently attended a couple from one of our birthing classes at home. Their baby was born with the cord looped three times around its neck - unusual, but not out of the range of normal. The midwife calmly slipped the loops one at a time over the baby's head in a matter os seconds and the body was born with the next contraction. She had listened to the fetal heart tones frequently and knew the baby was in no danger. Later, at the hospital birth of one of our couples, the baby's head emerged with the cord looped once around the neck - something quite common. The baby was having no problems, but the physician attending was shouting at the mother (whose control was perfect) not to push. The doctor then pulled out a bit of the loop, clamped it, and cut the cord before the body was born. That meant the baby had to breathe immediately since the lifeline supplying it with oxygen had been severed. Fortunately, it did. Neither baby had any problems at birth, but the hospital baby had been put to greater risk."
Monday, July 14, 2008
A funny thing
O.k. It's not like "HA HA HA! THAT IS SO FUNNY!" but just sort of interesting to me.
One of the baby tickers says I've 114 days to go (the one with the baby floating around) and the other says 113 (the one with the frog on the lily pad). I set both up with the same data.
In addition, the ultra sound tech said they calculated my due date as October 21. My calculations and the ticker company's calculations both say November 4th/5th. I am positive that we are right because this was meticulously planned, and I had been charting since December to make sure little one came along at the right time (after Jeff's fire fighter 2 raise).
Not that I would be sad if this thing comes a few weeks ahead of schedule. I hate the cold, so I would have to buy a bunch of warm clothes for the end of October/ early November, but then that is the only time they'd get used. As it is right now, I've only bought a few things and my two friends have lent me the rest of what I have been wearing.
One more funny thing:
We went to the Blueberry Farm with the Aaron and Sarah and their two little boys on Tuesday. The picking were decent. Not spectacular, but fair. We were able to at least each get a gallon of berries.
Well, I heard Sarah tell her oldest (he's 3) to turn his hat around so he wouldn't get sun burned on his face, but every time I saw him, the hat was backwards. I was relating this to Jeff, and he told me that Jeremiah (the little boy) told him he had to wear the hat backwards so that we could see him:-) I'm guessing he couldn't see us well enough with the hat on. Or maybe he couldn't see the berries? Not that that mattered. The kid ate more berried than he put in the bucket. I bet potty training was fun that night!
One of the baby tickers says I've 114 days to go (the one with the baby floating around) and the other says 113 (the one with the frog on the lily pad). I set both up with the same data.
In addition, the ultra sound tech said they calculated my due date as October 21. My calculations and the ticker company's calculations both say November 4th/5th. I am positive that we are right because this was meticulously planned, and I had been charting since December to make sure little one came along at the right time (after Jeff's fire fighter 2 raise).
Not that I would be sad if this thing comes a few weeks ahead of schedule. I hate the cold, so I would have to buy a bunch of warm clothes for the end of October/ early November, but then that is the only time they'd get used. As it is right now, I've only bought a few things and my two friends have lent me the rest of what I have been wearing.
One more funny thing:
We went to the Blueberry Farm with the Aaron and Sarah and their two little boys on Tuesday. The picking were decent. Not spectacular, but fair. We were able to at least each get a gallon of berries.
Well, I heard Sarah tell her oldest (he's 3) to turn his hat around so he wouldn't get sun burned on his face, but every time I saw him, the hat was backwards. I was relating this to Jeff, and he told me that Jeremiah (the little boy) told him he had to wear the hat backwards so that we could see him:-) I'm guessing he couldn't see us well enough with the hat on. Or maybe he couldn't see the berries? Not that that mattered. The kid ate more berried than he put in the bucket. I bet potty training was fun that night!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
NEA top 100 books
It seems to encourage reading, NEA has put out a list of the top 100 books. They predict that the average American has read only 6 of them. I counted that I have read 24, but three of the "books" they listed were whole series (Harry Potter - 7 books, Narnia - 7 books, Lord of the Rings - 3 books) so really I read 38 of them.
Here's the list. How do you compare to the average American. (I highlighted the ones I read.)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - (own but haven't read yet)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - (own but haven't read yet)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - (own but haven't read yet)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - (own but haven't read yet)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - (own but haven't read yet)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - (own but haven't read yet)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Here's the list. How do you compare to the average American. (I highlighted the ones I read.)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - (own but haven't read yet)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - (own but haven't read yet)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - (own but haven't read yet)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - (own but haven't read yet)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - (own but haven't read yet)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - (own but haven't read yet)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
It's a. . .
Well, you'll have to guess.
Here's a photo from the ultrasound (we had to take our own pictures because they're not allowed to give them out at a diagnostic place, which is where we had to go since we're doing home birth).
Imagine the little critter is standing on its knees with its butt facing you. The indicator is going to be pretty near the very center of the screen. (Oh, and Jeff accidentally took it as video, but it's easier to tell if you just leave it still. Push the play button at the bottom, but pause it pretty quick.)
And here's the kid looking at you. See its head over toward the right? One of the eyes is visible toward the top (that would be the right eye), and nose, mouth and an arm right there under the chin. Peek-a-boo.
So, any guesses?
Here's a photo from the ultrasound (we had to take our own pictures because they're not allowed to give them out at a diagnostic place, which is where we had to go since we're doing home birth).
Imagine the little critter is standing on its knees with its butt facing you. The indicator is going to be pretty near the very center of the screen. (Oh, and Jeff accidentally took it as video, but it's easier to tell if you just leave it still. Push the play button at the bottom, but pause it pretty quick.)
And here's the kid looking at you. See its head over toward the right? One of the eyes is visible toward the top (that would be the right eye), and nose, mouth and an arm right there under the chin. Peek-a-boo.
So, any guesses?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Walker Co. and industry
Wow, in the six years that I have worked for Walker County Schools, we have really seen industry here take a hit. I do not understand how our schools continue to grow like they are with all these large companies closing down.
When I first started teaching, the Sweetheart factory (that makes plastic drink cup lids) closed its doors. Just before that the K-mart closed. They both sit vacant today.
Then somewhere along the line the synthetics factory closed, the bus factory (Bluebird), carpet factory (Shaw), and appliance factory (Roper) all downsized their staffs.
A couple of months ago we lost a plant that made carpet padding (or maybe they recycled old carpet padding?) to a massive fire.
This morning's paper said that the Dow latex plant will be closing at the end of August.
I don't know what the statistics are for the rest of Walker County, but here in LaFayette, the average household income is $23,000. I can not begin to comprehend what is going on with the families that rely on these types of jobs because even with me quitting my job to SAHM, our household income surpasses that by more than ten thousand. But my heart aches for these families. Jeff and I were talking about where they could possibly go to find jobs now. The only options now (besides moving) seem to be driving to either Chattanooga, Rome, or Dalton, and with gas nearing or passing $4 around here, I don't even know if that is a good option.
When I first started teaching, the Sweetheart factory (that makes plastic drink cup lids) closed its doors. Just before that the K-mart closed. They both sit vacant today.
Then somewhere along the line the synthetics factory closed, the bus factory (Bluebird), carpet factory (Shaw), and appliance factory (Roper) all downsized their staffs.
A couple of months ago we lost a plant that made carpet padding (or maybe they recycled old carpet padding?) to a massive fire.
This morning's paper said that the Dow latex plant will be closing at the end of August.
I don't know what the statistics are for the rest of Walker County, but here in LaFayette, the average household income is $23,000. I can not begin to comprehend what is going on with the families that rely on these types of jobs because even with me quitting my job to SAHM, our household income surpasses that by more than ten thousand. But my heart aches for these families. Jeff and I were talking about where they could possibly go to find jobs now. The only options now (besides moving) seem to be driving to either Chattanooga, Rome, or Dalton, and with gas nearing or passing $4 around here, I don't even know if that is a good option.
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