Groovy Sputum

What Does A Geek Get His Wife For Their Anniversery?

A Google Map of all the places they have been together in their 13 years together, of course! Last year I made this list for her, and I wanted to keep the list theme going, but with a twist. The first pin I put on the map was the place we met: the LU cafeteria in 1996. From there, I just mentally walked through our life together and put a pin in any location that I had a memory of. I didn’t put on routine things like Meijer in Marion, but if it was a place that brought back fond memories, it made the map. Google lets you chose the pin colors for each point, so I kind of color coded things a bit to make it easier to read. Overnight tips together are teal, family trips are yellow, day trips are blue, and so on (I can’t tell you what all the colors are for, if you know what I mean! It is a private map, after all.) I also listed the pins by date as best as I could remember so that we could go year by year through our life together. Google lets you put notes into the pop up windows for each place marker, too, so I jotted down my memories of each location for Valerie to read and she is going to share her memories with me as we go through the map together. Over 300 pins made that map and so far, I have only missed one significant location: the Upper Room in Lynchburg. The conversation Valerie & I had there in 1996 kind of kick started this love thing we are sharing (it happened to be the same day as this, by the way!)

I took a few screen shots for you to look at:

Anyway, happy 11 year anniversary, Valerie. It’s been a wonderful journey, Love. Thank you for pushing pins with me for the last 13 years. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. I can’t wait to see what our map looks like 50 years from now!

Merry Christmas!

The Lord has truly blessed us this year: our home is nearly finished, He gave me a great new job, and we are joyously awaiting the birth of our eighth child, Micah Kathleen. God is good. Don’t forget to take time this Christmas to thank Him for all that you have and all that He is.

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Ok, I Just Had The Best Espresso EVER!

We spent the day out yesterday tooling around Athens, Ohio.  It’s where my best friend grew up and we wanted to go back and see how the old town was fairing.  We went by Valerie’s old house, the elementary school she attended (which has since been torn down), the park where she used to skin her knees, and saw the local donut shop called McHappy’s.  The kids loved playing in the park south of town and we had a pb&j lunch in the very mild 50+ degree afternoon.

I began to get a bit drowsy mid afternoon (as is typical) so we swung by Court Street in pursuit of some espresso.  Many shops were closed due to the OU students being on holiday until the second academic quarter resumes in January, but I noticed a little shop that had its sign on.  It was called Court Street Coffee and I ordered a large mocha sans whipped cream.  Valerie had a decaf mocha with double whipped cream.  That’s how we roll.

Anyway, you might be wondering if I was being sarcastic in my post title about how good the drink was, but let me tell you I was not.  It was the absolute BEST espresso drink I have EVER had!  Seriously.  It was a perfect blend of espresso flavor, mocha, and creaminess.  Most mocha lattes you get grossly overdo the chocolate syrup and it drowns out the espresso flavor.  This drink had the ratio just right.  And the steamed milk was very creamy.  Typical lattes seem overly watery probably due to the fact that skim milk is used to save a buck.  I can’t verify if whole milk was used, but I suspect it was.

I savored the experience and took my time finishing the drink while Valerie had her’s consumed in a little over two minutes.  She later expressed remorse for her blunder, and I did feel pity for her, but not enough so to share my treasure with her. Selfish, I know.

The other cool thing about this place was that they are a Crimson Cup coffee shop.  I first discovered Crimson Cup Coffee a year ago when Valerie and I were away together in Marblehead. We stopped at a little place called Spill The Beans and they had the same cups as Court Street Coffee.  Crimson Cup is a Columbus based coffee company that supplies locally owned coffee shops with quality coffee.  They will even help you start your own, if you are into that sort of thing.  They are not a franchise, but a supplier, which allows for the local owner to be in charge.  If I ever get around to opening up The Mud Puddle, I will certainly think about Crimson Cup

Double The Fun…And The Stress!

I took the day off from work today and went with Valerie to her mid-term ultra sound reading.  This was particularly exciting because, as most of you know by now, there are two little souls in my wife’s pear shaped, hollow organ which made for a much more interesting time.  As a biologist, I always get a kick out of trying to stump the doctor by finding something he misses.  In this case, Valerie beat me to the punch when she correctly identified the membranes separating the babes, an observation the radiologist missed, by the way.  (Way to go, V!)  Two membranes means two sacs which means they have MUCH less chance of beating each other up before they are born.  Seriously, the risk of complications drastically goes down when twins each have their own sac.  Seriously.

Anyway, the ultra sound went well and the kiddos seem to be doing well.  They are the same size which means they are receiving equal amount of nourishment from mama, another bit of good news.  As for the “other” stuff you can see at the mid-term ultra sound, I’ll just say that we might know their genders, and we might know if they are identical or fraternal.  And then again we might not!  Mmmuuuuhahahahah! Evil, I know.

Here is where the stress comes in: do you know how difficult it is to come up with names for twins?  Seriously.  Frick & Frack are out (sorry, Charley) and we am not doing Cain & Abel or Jacob & Esau. Valerie would like to alliterate the names (that means that they start with the same letter or sound, Leigh Ann) but we are finding that difficult to do without lemmingly following current twin trends like Taylor & Tyler, Emma & Ella, Jacob & Jordan, or Madison & Morgan. We have traditionally gone with a Biblical first name that has a strong meaning and have used a family/meaningful middle name that is not necessarily found in the Bible.  If you have a suggestion, send it our way.

Duece

It’s official: Valerie is pregnant with twins. You should have seen the look on the sonogram tech’s face at midnight in the ER as she finished up scanning Valerie’s gall bladder (we thought she was having a gall bladder attack) and decided to take a quick peek down below just to see if we could see anything. Anything turned out to be two kids with strong heart beats. I never get over hearing that sound for the first time. And I havn’t been this giddy about a pregnancy for a long time, either. Wow…TWINS!

Happy Birthday, Love!

Today is Valerie’s birthday, so head on over to Consider It Done and wish her a good one.

SHE WON!

Valerie got a call from the library this afternoon and it started like the typical your-hold-is-in-at-the-front-desk call that we get almost daily. BUT, it wasn’t. It was the children’s department calling to tell her that her book and illustrations had won first place in the book competition! Yeah! That’s my girl. I will be making it into an e-book soon for you all to read, but until then, head over to Consider It Done and congratulate my favorite artist on a job well done.

Bragging A Bit

I am going to post this because I know my wife won’t, but should: a few weeks ago, Valerie came home from the library and mentioned that they were having a children’s book competition. As long as the book was original and intended for children, anyone could enter. She began to sketch a few ideas and before long, she had her thoughts organized, water color paper purchased, and was staying up until midnight painting. She finished it this afternoon and it is a lap book about our toddler and his many adventures with his softy, blanket, and sippy cup.

We won’t know the results of the contest for a while, but I wanted to blog about it and invite you head over to Consider It Done to leave a congratulatory note. She has worked SO hard on this project and it has turned out to be a WONDERFUL book. (the librarian started to tear up when Valerie turned it in today…”YOU made this!” she said in amazement.)

I will let Valerie have the privilege of presenting the book to everyone on her blog when she is ready to, but I wanted to let you see at least a glimps of her work. Enjoy!

Missions & Dates

I took my older two boys with me the other day to Lowe’s to take back a few items that I had purchased for the house that I ended up not needing. I tend to over buy things and then take them back rather than make multiple trips to a store for one item at a time. The boys always love going with me to building supply stores…I guess it’s a guy thing. We got back in the van and S wanted us all to put our hands together in a circle, team huddle style. We then did a “1-2-3-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” cheer and threw our hands in the air. Apparently this kind of thing is a big deal to a 4 & 5 year old boy. Anyway, I got to thinking about how I want to always include my boys on “missions” that I have to do. Fixing the van, building a deck, cutting down trees…all of these things are missions that we can accomplish together and build our relationship. You know, a dad teaching son how to be a man.

I also got to thinking about activities that I as a father can participate in with my girls. One of my biggest fears is that some boy will steal the heart of my daughter before she is ready to be a wife. I want to meet, as best I can, her need for love until God brings the right man into her life at the right time. One way, I think, to do this is to take her out on dates with me. I should be the one to teacher her how a man should treat her, right? Do I really want a 15 year old boy to teacher her about dating? Uh, no. Dinner, a movie, a walk holding hands, holding the door open for her, letting her dress up and make her feel beautiful, special, loved, and cherished. Maybe if I show her enough of the real kind of love, she will be able to recognize (and hopefully reject) the selfish, childish love that most of us got burned by as adolescents.

So, I now open up the comment area for suggestion for a mission or date that I can take my children on.

What I Gave For Christmas

I can proudly say that I spent WAY more on gifts for my wife, mother, and in-laws this year than I did on my kids. That is saying something in light of the fact that I have 7 children. In previous years, Valerie and I have felt that the kids get too much and don’t appreciate things the way they should because they get too many presents. So, we tried to tone things down a bit this year.

First, I got Valerie a Kodak Z712 IS camera. It is a 2007 model that I got for a VERY good price. I, ahem…SHE, loves it! It is not too big, can act as a point and shoot, but also has the whistles and bells of a higher end camera (with out the price).

Then, we gave a Kodak P720 digital picture frame for both my mother and Valerie’s parents. This was the first year in a long time that we knew immediately that our gift was a hit with Peter: he immediately opened the box, read the manual, and went home and loaded the thing with like 300 pictures.

Like I said, we toned things down a lot for the kids. S has been longing for an American Girl Doll, so it was decided that we would go together with our parents to get her one. That would be her only present this year since it is such a large ticket item.

We got A a sketch book called “The Girl’s Doodle Book” along with a deluxe set of 50 Crayola colored pencils. I wasn’t sure if she would like it, but man, she tells me every day how much she likes it.

S wanted a Webkinz, but not just any Webkinz. He wanted a bat. The problem, however, was that the bat was a special Halloween Webkinz. It pretty much sold out in stores in October, so off to eBay I went. I actually got one for the same price I would have paid at Meijer.

We got N a G.I. Joe motorcycle/action figure set. He pretty much likes anything that S likes, and we figured that they could play with it together.

A is only two, so she has particular tastes. We say a pair of slippers that looked like princess shoes. She wore them for three days straight after she opened them, so I guess they were a hit.

C, our 16 month old, loves books. One in particular he loves is “Brown Bear, Brown Bear”. Our former copy was a traditional paper copy which had been toddlered to death. So, we found a heavy duty board book edition for him. I also gave him a board book copy of “I Love You, Stinky Face”, which is also a hit.