Just another WordPress site

This is too weird. This morning I was listening to the radio, and one of the DJs made the claim that you see a cow every day. He said it could be a real cow or a picture of a cow, but you will definitely see one.

I thought this was ridiculous — where, I thought, would I see a cow today? The DJ was still talking about it and I was still being incredulous when I turned a corner and saw a pink flying cartoon cow holding a cell phone on the side of a Red Bull van. Perfect timing.

So, did you see a cow today?

So last Saturday our neighborhood, Sarah’s Creek, held a neighborhood-wide garage sale. The idea was that the homeowner’s association would pay to advertise it, and all we had to do was drag our junk out into the driveway and sell it to suckers… er, passersby.

Weeks ago, a lady who has lived around here for a while gave us the low-down: “The way you really make money,” she said, “isn’t by selling your junk. See, it’ll be scorching out, so everyone will be really thirsty, so you can clean up selling Cokes and water to all the thirsty customers.”

We took this tip to heart, and a few days before the garage sale, we bought 9 twelve-packs of various sodas from HEB, along with a couple of pallets of bottled water. Here’s what our fridge looked like the night before the big day:

We also made a poster advertising our drinks, just 50 cents each. On Saturday morning we taped that poster to the fence, set up a couple of card tables with some stuff that we wanted to sell, filled two ice chests with Cokes, and waited for the money to roll in.

Now, you have to understand, we thought we were in on some kind of big secret. We thought we were masterminds of the highest calibre. Turns out, no. Everybody was selling drinks. And they all had a lot more merchandise sitting out to draw people in. I think we sold about 10 drinks total in 3 hours, leaving a mere 134 to awkwardly fill our refrigerator. Sheesh.

Well, lesson learned: If you have a clever scheme to make a little money, save yourself some time and energy by scrapping the whole idea and sleeping in.

Babies are supposedly pretty small. I’m no expert, but from what I’ve seen, they start out about football-sized and grow from there. However, people whose opinions I respect keep warning us about how much space they take up. “You’ll need plenty of room for all of the baby’s stuff,” they say.

What stuff? I’m imagining standing in the delivery room, and the doctor catches a healthy pink baby wearing a plaid suit and pulling a suitcase along behind.

This reminds me of a Friends episode. Rachel’s been roomming with Joey, but she’s about to have a baby. She’s planning to move out because, “There’s no room here for a baby.” Joey looks astonished — “No room??” he says, gesturing to a chair: “We could put it here!” This is pretty much how I fealt until recently, but reality is starting to kick in.

Kidding aside, this baby is going to have a lot of stuff, including a crib, changing table, glider rocker(s), travel system (a stroller and car seat + base), play pen, high chair, bath… thingy, and a couple dozen of the softest stuffed animals you’ve ever seen.

So, to prepare for the onslaught, we bought a car last week. It’s a 2002 Mazda 626. It has 4 doors and looks sort of like this:

We bought from a private seller who took really good care of it, so it feels a lot like a new car. And it has a big trunk for the “travel system,” etc 🙂 We’re really happy with it so far!

Tonight was our third childbirth class, and we’re learning all sorts of interesting things. Tonight we heard some old-timey advice about what to do if your water breaks in public so that you don’t get embarrassed — Doctors used to advise pregnant women to always carry a jar of pickles with them. Then, if their water broke and left a mess on the ground, they could drop the jar right where the mess was and say, “Oh, no! I seem to have dropped a jar of pickles!”

Apparently, they can also make a tasty snack. Who knew?

I just wrote/recorded a little song based on Psalm 37:23-26. Click here to hear it. It’s only 1:10 long (I was playing it for Karianne as I recorded – at the end you can hear her comment on the length 🙂

We got to see our baby today! It’s growing at a good rate (it’s in the 64th percentile for overall size), and everything looks healthy. We also found out that Karianne does not have gestational diabetes, which is a relief. Here are the latest pics:

This is from the side — the baby’s feet are way up by its head in some kind of pre-natal yoga position.

This may not be too clear… it’s the baby’s face, with its left arm up over its head.

The coolest part of the sonogram (for me, at least) was seeing the baby’s hands in detail. We didn’t get a still image of that, but it was just amazing, and it was moving its hands as we watched, so it looked like it was waving at us 😀

…but we were last week! On Saturday, July 2 we headed up to Hays, Kansas to celebrate Karianne’s grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. On the way there, we stopped in Alva, OK to see the cemetary where my grandparents (Dad’s side) are buried and to see some friends.

After that, we drove to Kinsley, KS, where Grandpa Howard’s sister Loretta lives. We visted with her for about an hour, and before we left we took this picture:

Then we went up to Hays. The celebration was great — wish we’d gotten a picture of Karianne with her grandparents, but we did get some good video of the event, which we’ll hopefully post here sometime. Our second night there we ate dinner at a brewery, which was very fun… until about 2:00 the next morning. Something Karianne ate there gave her a terrible case of food poisoning, and we ended up going to the emergency room and spending our 4th of July in the Hays hospital! The doctor and nurses were great, and Karianne started feeling a lot better in the evening, so we headed out and drove to Salina. We saw some fireworks from the highway, so it wasn’t a total loss!

In Salina we visited with Karianne’s Mom’s Aunt Mary. She cooked up some wonderful french toast and showed us a lot of crafts she’s made. Right now she’s into restoring old lamps (“parlor lamps,” aka “Gone With the Wind lamps”), but she also has a kiln and makes a lot of ceramics and other things. Here we are with her (in the green shirt) and Aunt Lenea (not sure if I’m spelling that right):

On the way out of Salina the next day we picked up some cozies from The Cozy Inn, a 6-stool diner dating back to 1922. Cozies are little hamburgers, and they taste great!

Oh yeah — we also went out to Lindsborg, which is a Swedish town (sort of the Swedish equivalent of Fredericksburg, for Texas folk). Here’s a picture of Karianne and Joshua (riding an enormous Dala horse):

We drove to Lawrence and stayed with Karianne’s uncle Richard and his family (fun, but we parked on the street and our car got egged for no reason!), and the next day we all headed to St. Louis, MO. When we got there, we drove straight to the headquarters of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), where we met with Pastor Larry Krueger. Pastor Krueger (aka “Rev K”) was our pastor at Texas A&M, where we met. He wanted us to meet him at work so he could introduce us to his boss, Gerry Kieschnick, the president of the LCMS. It’s a long story, but a while back I wrote a song for Pres. Kieschnick called “There Ain’t Been No Trash in My Trailer Since I Threw You Out Last Saturday Night.” (You can listen to the mp3 if you click on the “Music” link at the top of this page.) So Rev K wanted him to meet us in person. Here’s a picture of us with him:

We had a really nice visit! I also have a letter that Pres. Kieschnick sent a while back about that song, which you can see here.

While we were in St. Louis we stayed at the lovely, flamingo-adorned “Krueger Dew Drop Inn,” which we can highly recommend! If you ever stay there, and you ask them nicely, the Krueger’s may take you to Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard — you would not believe how many people show up at this place every night. We were there on a week night and there were people almost spilling over into the street — on a really busy night, people DO spill out into the street! The custard was great 🙂

And of all the odd coincidences: the one day we happened to be in St. Louis, our good friends Dustin and Michelle Gooding and Jesse Carter were also passing through on the way to a wedding in Chicago! They called Rev K and we decided to all get together for lunch. Here’s a pic from outside the Pizzaria Uno:

So that couldn’t have gone better 🙂 In St. Louis we also saw the zoo (most of the animals were standing in the shade facing away from us… It was like a tour of animal butts), we visited Concordia Seminary (and of course the bookstore there), and we drove by this big Arch they have there. It’s cool, it’s like, made of metal or something. It’s pretty tall, too. You should definitely check it out if you’re ever in St. Louis, just ask somebody about “the big metal arch thing,” I’ll bet they’ll know what you mean.

We left St. Louis on Friday (the 8th) and drove to Tulsa, where we had dinner with Karianne’s uncle Scott, Iva, and their son Scott. That was really fun! The next day we headed home, stopping in Purcell, OK to visit my dad’s Aunt Eulalia (another of Grandpa Howard’s sisters). She made us a wonderful lunch and we had a really nice time visiting. Here’s a picture of us with her:

All in all, it was a great trip, and we’re glad to be back!

One of the first “dance crazes” in history emerged in the 1500s from the Aztec city of Quetzalcoatl. Check out this song I wrote about it! QuetzalcoatlWaddle.mp3.

This is Maggie, our cat (for now; she’s going back to her owners in a few weeks). She likes to meow incessantly for no reason. Here’s an mp3 of a little conversation we just had! 🙂

There one was a lady named Kurth,
With a rapidly increasing girth.
Her husband thought that,
She was just getting fat,
When one day, suddenly, she gave birth!

(The “Photos” link above is in the works, check back soon!)