Bad news. The iMac bit the dust. I know you non-mac users are laughing at us mac geeks now! Larry and I are just in total shock. We can’t believe this is happening.

He immediately rushed home from working in Dearborn and took the baby to the Apple store. The diagnosis: Bad Motherboard and some other nonsense. This can’t be right.

To make matters worse when I called tech support (and if you know me, that is huge for me to do) and the guy in India I talked to was no help at all. It must have been his first day on the job because I knew more about macs than he did. He kept saying hold on I’ll go ask somebody that knows and would come back a few mintues later.

My faith in the Apple people has been shaken a little.

Three days without my computer. I had to steal Larry’s to write this and check my email.

What will I do? Maybe I can get to the laundry or something.

Sunday morning dawned like any other day. We had big plans to meet up in DC with my mom’s best friend and her family who we hadn’t seen in over 8 years. I had just woken up and was attempting to down a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats when all of a sudden my cat comes running out of nowhere chasing something up onto our couch in the living room and about climbing the book shelves. I am thinking dad has been feeding her way to much of the Friskies and continue eating when all of a sudden I hear the oddest of noises. It was a familiar noise, but not one I normally hear in my house. I was trying to figure out where I had heard that particular noise and then I vaguely remembered hearing a similar noise from a tree above my head a few times around campus at BJU. A sound that could only be made by a squirrel. Being the curious person that I tend to normally be I debated whether to go over to where my cat was going nuts or just watch what was taking place from my seat at the very high up stool in the kitchen. Curiosity ended up getting the best of me and I walked over to the couch where my cat was sitting wide eyed and bushy tailed all the while reminding myself that squirrels can carry rabies. So, as gingerly as I new how I kicked the couch leg and it was as if the thing went nuts under there! I ran upstairs to where my dad was screaming because reality had just hit that there was a real live squirrel in our house and it could have rabies and it was mad. Well, dad comes running down the stairs not exactly believing me and goes over to the couch and kicks it like I just had and the stupid squirrel decided to shut up! So, dad is thinking I’m crazy and goes back upstairs. I decide that maybe the thing is just stuck in the floor vent somewhere and not really loose like I originally thought and go back upstairs to get ready. About 30 minutes later I come back downstairs and there is my cat sitting on the back of the couch looking down at something behind the couch. Once again I got very curious and walked over to the couch and peeked over the edge and looked behind it. Let me tell you before I continue that we have a big brown de-humidifier behind our couch. Well, there I am peering over the edge of the couch when all of a sudden I see something gray move under the de-humidifier and make that awful squirrel sound. I jumped back as fast as I could still thinking about rabies and ran screaming up to my dad telling him that I saw the squirrel and even knew its location in the house. My dad comes out of his bedroom and I bust up laughing. He is carrying a wooden beam as a club and his bb gun pistol. All of a sudden I am afraid for this poor little squirrel who somehow got itself mixed up in our big world. Well, my dad comes storming downstairs and my sister Kate goes and wakes up my sisters fiance who lives in my basement and so Jeff (my sisters fiance) comes upstairs and dad tells him to lift the de-humidifier while he shoots the squirrel. The poor thing didn’t even see it coming. All of a sudden there is dad shooting his heart out and then this gray bloody thing comes running from behind the couch and finds the corner of the room. The poor thing his face was all bloody where dad had shot 3 bb’s in his head. Yet he was still alive! There was blood everywhere! So, dad had him cornered and was determined to finish the little guy off and shot him again in the head point blank. That did nothing….the little squirrel ran straight into the living room and onto the carpet! Finally, we opened the front door and shooed him out! He sat on the stoop for what seemed like forever before he got enough energy to scamper off. When the squirrel was gone we surveyed the damage to the living room and dining room and because dad was the one who had actually made the mess he was the one who had clean-up duty. With the excitement over me and my sisters and Jeff proceeded to get ready for the day. About 5 minutes later dad hollers from the living room that he had found the squirrels eye ball on the carpet under the dining room table. And then he proceeded to show it to each of us. The whole rest of the day we continued to laugh at such a silly event and felt sorry for that poor squirrel who just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. We found out 2 things that morning. One being that dad can’t kill things up close because just a week or two earlier he shot a squirrel out of a tree and killed it from his bathroom window, and second being that our dog is not a squirrel hunter but just a squirrel chaser. She found more joy of chasing it in circles than in actually catching it. What a morning!!!

Busy. Busy. Busy.
Friday night we had a teen activity. It was mall Madness. We get people from the church to dress up in disguises and then walk around the mall and the teens break up in groups and try to find them. We do this activity every couple of years and this year’s costumes were especially excellent. One man had longish hair and a full beard. He cut his hair short and shaved all but a “Brandon Inge” strip of hair on his chin. No one recognized him. The only bummer was that only three teens showed up. I guess the Tigers beat someone after all. After the mall, they all came over our house for delicious “bloody eyeball stew” and “baked bones” and “graveyard cake”. (I can only image who I will get with google searches with those descriptions.) We usually have a trip to the graveyard for a little Ghost in the Graveyard or “scare the teens so they pee their pants”, but it was raining so hard we skipped it. We watched Monster House instead, which is a hilarious movie, although demented. I don’t recommend it for children under 13.
Saturday, Larry and some guys from church went to the U of M game in Ann Arbor. It rained just about the entire time and then the sun came out when the game was over. Larry, being a geek (a cool geek though) and not a jock, left the game and went and sat in the van after halftime. It wasn’t a close game and it was freezing. He really went just to spend some time with the guys. Emma had her first birthday party invitation from her new school. It was a bowling Party. She seemed to have a good time. After I dropped her off, I took the other two girls shoe shopping. Payless had a BOGO sale so it worked out great. Because, as we all know, girls need a lot of shoes. After I picked Emma up from the bowling party, where she said she was the lowest scorer. So a two year old beat her. Whatever. We went home, had dinner and since it was raining the girls took about 35 pictures with my camera. Good thing it is digital. I always forget to check to see what is on the camera before I import the pictures. This time it was posing with books and still shots of their toys. I tried to post a few, but Blogger did not like me today. Maybe in the morning.
Sunday. Ahh. Daylight savings time. We get an extra hour of sleep. Not in my house. My children have little built in clocks that wake them up every morning. And if one of their clocks isn’t working her sister will take care of that for her. I’m lucky that they stayed in bed until 6:59. I was surprised they were up because usually the only day those clocks don’t work is Sunday when I have to drag their little keisters out of bed. After church, where I left early because some little kid dumped a cup of hot coffee on my lap, we had a baptism dinner. I helped in the back with the food and I think I sat down for about 10 minutes. We came home and of course the girls wanted to do something because we can’t just relax and do nothing! So we carved our pumpkins. This was the first year Emma was allowed to carve hers by herself. She did a great job. I highly recommend those pumpkin carving kits with the plastic scooper and little knives. Get one after Halloween cheap and save it for the next year. The best part of the day was eating pizza all together and looking at the clock and seeing it 8:30 (wow! where did the time go?) So I sent the kids to bed. We couldn’t figure out why Channel 7 wasn’t playing Extreme Makeover home edition. It was supposed to be on 8. Until later, when I realized we hadn’t changed the clock in the living room and I had sent the kids to bed at 7:30! I am SO doing that every night!
Like I said Busy! Busy! Busy!

I am home once again! Time for a blog update. Many of you are wondering if I am still alive; my lack of contact with many of you is such a shame! Please forgive. I am still alive and doing very well actually. I am just unbelievably busy. Actually, if you were to pull out your favorite dictionary and look up the word “busy,” I bet you would see my picture beside the definition. Grad school is amazing - lack of sleep, lots of Mountain Dew and Vitamin C, to-do lists that are pages long, and unending projects and papers. Despite all of the work, I admit that I have learned so much this semester and am thrilled that I have had the opportunity to pursue graduate school.

I must comment on my new job. I absolutely LOVE teaching! The entire teaching experience has taught me so much. I still have much to learn, and I can only thank my students for their patience with their crazy teacher. Oh wait…there is one aspect of teaching that is not very fun - paper grading! Yikes! I have almost decided that students should not have to do homework…it takes too long to grade! My students, I’m sure, would love a teacher that doesn’t give homework. SORRY…I will continue to be one of those mean teachers that will assign homework despite the paper grading aspect!

Before I get carried away, I will stop rambling. I will be home again for Thanksgiving and hope to post another update at that time. Keep praying for me!

crystal and I want to express our appreciation for the support of our family and friends at our wedding on october 13. we have been honeymooning in bar harbor, maine and sevierville, tennessee, and are just now attempting to return to the daily grind. more details to follow, but I’ve included some photos from our [...]

…okay maybe just a little. 70 days (round about) till…………………Greenville…that’s right people I’m going back. okay dont have that much time to write…actualy…

…okay maybe just a little. 70 days (round about) till…………………Greenville…that’s right people I’m going back. okay dont have that much time to write…actualy…