We Had a Very Eventful Weekend

Friday:

• The kids and I spent time at church helping with last-minute preparations for an community outreach event to be held on Monday, which was the nationally-recognized Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. This year's Day of Service was the biggest in history (so far).



• We went to a homeschool play date at a neighbor's house. We live in a large neighborhood, and a large population of people in our neighborhood homeschool, but getting even a few families together is like pulling teeth. The host mother was very gracious to have us and two other families over, but the children of the house weren't too happy to have guests. It was a short play date, to say the least.

Saturday:

• Bub had a basketball game very early. Despite leaving the house around sunrise, Bub played so well, stealing the ball time and again and scoring basket after basket. He said their team won 44-6, and while I think that's a slight exaggeration, I don't think his numbers are that far off. I learned Bub's team nickname is "High Rise", and I was proud to watch him win the Best Offense award that morning.






• James and Gracie harassed me with baby names. I think we have a top-three list of girl names, but we are struggling to agree on any boy names. James doesn't think that's a problem -- he's certain this baby is a girl. I have an odd list of name restrictions that complicates matters enormously: I dislike consonantal alliteration between first and last name (so prospective baby first names can neither begin with an "h," nor end with an "n" or an "s"), I'm not a fan of professions as first names (Baker, Miller, etc.), and I refuse to pick a name that's too "Texan" (I can't explain what I mean -- it only makes sense to me). We'll need the whole of the next six months to come to some kind of reasonable decision.



• Since she was home sick last Saturday, Gracie cheered at her first game this weekend. She was so excited and did so well. Obviously, she was the cutest cheerleader in the whole place. Her squad did a special half-time cheer and she was the only girl who didn't know how to do a cartwheel. Fortunately, she was a good sport about it, but having never learned to do a cartwheel as a girl myself, I was a bit sad for her. I'm looking into tumbling classes now.





• We went to Gattitown for dinner, looking forward to a meal of sub-par pizza and an evening of video game play. Instead, I thought I had a miscarriage in the Gattitown bathroom and we spent the evening at the emergency room. As it turns out, I'm still pregnant and no one knows what happened to me. Somehow, I'm not surprised.

Sunday:

• After Saturday's excitement, we planned a low-key Sunday. I rode with James to pick the kids up from Mom's house, and we stopped at IHOP for omelets on the way. As we waited for a table, my OB/GYN came in to eat. We ended up debriefing with him in the IHOP lobby, and an experience that freaked us out completely didn't trouble him at all. I'm not sure why he wasn't a bit more concerned, but he wasn't. Maybe I shouldn't be.



• After we picked up the kids, we went to Babies-R-Us to look for a fetal heart doppler. Bub became suddenly sick and threw up boiled eggs and sweet pickles in the bedding aisle. We thought his sudden nausea may have been related to something he ate, but he threw up again in the car on the way home, then developed a fever later in the day. Since Bub was likely contagious, we had to shuffle our childcare plans for Monday. We were both scheduled to serve at the community outreach event at church, but James (who is awesome!) decided to be Mr. Mom for the day to let me honor my commitment.

Monday:

• Our church had been invited to host a community outreach event formed out of a partnership between the Presidential Inaugural Committee and Feed The Children, a well-known relief organization. I'd been invited to be a part of the Operations Team, and as a result, I was able to be a voice in the planning and had leadership responsibilities on the day of service. I felt (and still feel) so honored to have been included. I was up by 5:30 A.M. , and arrived was at church by 6:45 A.M. By the time I arrived, the place was already hopping. The buzz was unbelievable! We had a plentiful number of volunteers both from our church and from the community -- people who read about the event on the Obama website and just showed up to serve. 400 boxes of groceries and toiletries were distributed to people from all over North Texas, and we heard amazing feedback from both recipients and volunteers throughout the day. I don't think we fully anticipated the positive ramifications of this monumental event, and I feel really blessed to have been a small part of such an amazing day.