Will They Like It?

Today Luke's class gets to bring sleeping bags and blankets and tents to school. They will spend the entire afternoon reading. (Jana said Luke has about 30 books hidden in his desk for reading today!) Luke opted to bring his firetruck "tent."

On the way to school, Luke asked me if I thought people would think it was silly that he brought a firetruck tent? I was really curious about the origin of the question, since this is the same tent he and his sister were laughing and playing in just moments before.

I could tell when we got to school that this was an issue, however. He sort of "distanced" himself from the tent for a minute or two and just watched the reaction of others. When they started saying "Cool!" and "Who's is that?" his face brightened and he went over to the tent to show everyone.

I hate that for him. You want to raise a child who is self-confident and who cares about people more than he cares about what they think. Yet, I see more and more examples of how important it really is to be liked and to have others communicate their like -- and how much it affects Luke. It reminds me of all of the days I have when I do art all day rather than risk getting hurt.

I am thankful for Luke's sweet spirit and pray that God fills him with an overwhelming knowledge of His love.

I am also thankful that Luke's classmates liked it. I would have hated to been the headline story on cnn.com. ("Father plucks the head off of mean 1st graders...")

Update

We're finally feeling better. Rob was sick this week-end, so I got to return the favor (see previous blog), and I'm finally feeling like myself again. Whatever this virus is, it is wicked! My doctor says it is lasting in people from 6 to 16 weeks--really.
Ugh.

A quick update on family life:
First, we are still celebrating Christmas around here. I have managed to put up the wooden Santa that was welcoming the neighbors from our front porch, and I have taken down the stockings and all the other indoor decorations. But, the tree, with all its ornaments and bows and lights, is still standing in its full glory. I am now considering the merits of a Valentine tree . . . It could work.

Grace has been enjoying the heady experience of unrolling all the toilet paper and shredding into pieces before she fills the potty to its fullest capacity with the same shredded pieces. On the plus side: she is learning to actually use the potty, and--another heady experience--getting to reap the rewards of a single M&M for each success. Life is good.

Luke is a few days away from losing his first tooth, front and center. This tooth is very wiggly, and with one aggressive bite into an apple, that tooth is history. He can't wait.

Rob finished a successful presentation to the Board of Trustees and is preparing for a very busy spring. He is taking 6 hours at Tech this semester, so his plate is full.

I am never caught up, but I've decided that all I really need right now is for a household genie to come and mop my kitchen floor. Just that one thing would make me really, really happy.

Mostly I pray that God will work in my life in spite of me. I pray that He will protect and bless my children and Rob, and that I won't get in the way of His good work in them.

Life moves quickly, and I pray that I don't miss a bit of it, even the parts of it (like the month of January!)that don't seem very inspiring or interesting or even very good.

Hearing my daughter laugh and looking at Luke's big, toothy smile are worth getting up for in the morning. And so it goes . . .

May God fill you up with joy tomorrow as you work to fulfill His purpose in you. And I hope someone comes and mops your floor, too.
Jana

Thank goodness for husbands!

It started last Friday . . . the fever, the congestion, the coughing, the sneezing, and more fever, and all over aching. I'm feeling extremely icky.

Rob pitched in and helped us get through the weekend; he took the kids for doughnuts and errands on Saturday (thereby letting me sleep), and then I slept again during their naptimes, and then when they got up, Rob took care of them some more so that I could catch a few more zzz's.

On Sunday, he handled all the activities of church and small group, thereby letting me stay home and sleep.

He took off the morning this morning (kids out of school for MLK day) so that I could go teach my classes, which required him to handle breakfast and lunch duty--and even the dishes! We traded off after lunch, and off to work he went.

The best part? Not one complaint about any of it!

I'm still under the weather, and will go to the doctor tomorrow to (hopefully) get some stronger medicine. I thought this might be the flu, but I've decided that it's some kind of respiratory infection. I DO NOT have time for the flu; therefore, I am banishing even the suggestion of it.

All that to say: thanks, Rob, for taking care of all of us. You are a much better nursemaid than I am, for which I am grateful.

Thank goodness for husbands!
Jana

Greetings from Oklahoma City

It has been a good day here in OKC. This group is all of the Chief Advancement Officers of the various Christian Colleges throughout the States. This is the 2nd time in three years I have been with them - last year I missed because of weather. There has been some really good conversation and encouragement come out of this. I find myself moving between "Oh, I really should be doing that in our shop" to "Wow, I am not as far behind as I thought. We have been doing that for a couple of years."

This afternoon, we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is at the site of the Murrah Building which was bombed by Timothy McVeigh. They have an outdoor memorial, which is highly symbolic. The space remembers those who died, those who survived, and those who were changed. It has nine rows of chairs, one for each person who died - the nine being the number of stories the Murrah building had. It has a reflecting pool, in the space that was originally the street in front of the Murrah Building, which represents those who have been changed, i.e., all of us. There is one section of the original wall still standing. There is also a fence where items are still being left.

There is also a tree, named the survivor tree, because it survived the blast, although it was directly across the street from the Ryder truck. It is the big tree in the pictures below. The building in the back houses the musuem and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. It has a large room that the flag, which is cross-stitched with the name of every person killed in a terrorist act since (1980??). It is huge. The roof was blown off this building and in the MIPT, there are pictures taken from the room you are in that shows the destruction. Three years later, when the pictures were taken, it was still in ruins and has grass growing in the building. (5th floor, mind you.)

The large structures at each end of the reflecting pool have a time on them. One has 9:01, the other 9:03. The in between space is time standing still - 9:02 when the bomb went off.

We did not go in the musem, but the people from OC sid it was very intense. I can imagine, just walking around outside was pretty moving.

Reality . . .

My grandmother fell last night and broke her hip, Rob's out of town this week to OKC, Luke has had some very difficult days at school, and it's midnight, and I'm just now preparing my classes for tomorrow (rather than folding a mountain of laundry and clearing out a sink full of dirty dishes), on the heels of eating too many Hershey's chocolate kisses. "Mama said there'd be days like this . . ."

Please pray for my spunky and wonderful grandmother;she's almost 87 years old, but she's a fighter. I love her dearly.

Off to tackle my textbook . . .

Jana

January's Family Day Out

I was in the Wells Fargo Bank building this week, where I came across the Chamber's large display of things to do in Lubbock. I got to thinking about how many things there are to do in Lubbock, yet we have not done many of them. Maybe it's that whole "You don't go to the Capitol if you live in Austin" or "You don't ever go skiing if you live in Denver" thing. So, I grabbed a couple of pamphlets and off we went for our first monthly day out. (We think we will try to do something once a month. We may not and this may be the last monthly update...)

We decided to go to the Silent Wings Museum (find out more here).



Lubbock was once the training site for WWII glider pilots and now has a museum telling the story of the gliders in WWII. Very interesting, with a refurbished glider, several WWII jeeps tanks, etc. Definitely worth a trip.

This was my favorite picture from our outing.


It is looking down the barrel of this...


There are more pictures on flickr.

The Silent Wings museum is a partner with the Buddy Holly Center (here) and so if you go to one, you can go to the other within 48 hours. We went ahead and did this one, too. I think dad would especially enjoy seeing some of the things they have about Buddy Holly, so we will have to put that one on the list to do as well.



I thought it was interesting that we picked today to come since this was in the paper this morning.

New Semester

I'm experiencing my right-before-the-beginning-of-every-semester chaos. I'm rapidly assembling syllabi, assigning texts I have yet to read from a set of very new, and mostly unread, textbooks.

I am tense, feel on the edge of panic, and as Rob so succinctly puts it, "You're a lot of fun to be around."

I'm also experiencing my semesterly (is that a word? It should be)personal freak-out time, when I question my ability to teach, to motivate, to inspire, and to make a difference--I wonder if I can pull this off again for another semester, and then I wonder if I've ever pulled it off. And then I wonder why I'm doing this at all, when I'm really a fraud in teacher's clothing, and some day I'll be found out, and then I'll go down in history as the college teacher who was almost successful, except that she wasn't because she really didn't know what she was doing.

If this sounds bizarre, I have it on good record that it's a teacher thing. Doubts seem to be a rite of passage for me at every beginning of every semester.

But I always eventually come back to this place: I'm not the most creative or the most intelligent professor in my department by a long-shot; I'm behind the technology curve;I'm less involved in extra-curricular academic pursuits than most others.

But I became a teacher, and I've stayed one, because I loved my teachers and I think that there is value in standing with the next generation, talking and thinking and writing about what is important and what makes us human. I teach for the moment of epiphany, when a student, who has previously seemed outrageously bored, shoots up his hand and says, in essence, "I get that!" And I could go on . . .

Class begins on Monday; pray for all the students and teachers in all the classrooms whose lives will be joined for this season. Pray that this time will be meaningful and rich, and that our lives will be joined in a chorus of praise to our Master Teacher, who always gets it right!

Amen!

Makes Her Daddy Proud!

Jana and the kids got me a book with grilling recipes for Christmas. I was cooking Swiss Burgers tonight and needed something to round out the meal. I was trying to find just the perfect thing, and this was it...



For some reason, I got to thinking about Chuy's Creamy Jalapeño Dip and began searching for a copycat recipe, which I found here. There are several versions on the recipezaar.com site, most of which admit to not being the original. (Besides, unless you want to nail fish to your ceiling, it wouldn't be the same anyway!!) However, if you find that your city name does not appear here or here (click on option 4), I would declare this a very good substitute. But don't take my word for it, take Grace's:



The only picture missing is the one where she picked up her spoon and began eating the dip like soup. That's my girl!