Noah's Big Day

Yesterday had to be one of Noah's better days in recent memory. It started with his basketball game, which went very well. His coach gave him the white star for effort, but on top of that he also gave him a box of M&Ms because his effort was exceptional. That was certainly unexpected, but it did seem warranted. Noah played very good defense and was around the ball a lot when it was time for a rebound. He also scored three times. I'd say the only knock was that he took too many shots, but he was open for most of them.

Things only got better after basketball. We came home, had lunch, and then went to Target. He had been saving his money for the Angry Birds Go Pig Rock Raceway, and since the first is allowance day he could finally make the purchase. We got it set up as soon as we got home and then he was off to the races. We even gave him some extra electronics time so he could play with the new karts in the game on Amanda's tablet. It was a special day, after all.

Meanwhile, Lily was playing at her friend Grace's house. Noah and I picked her up, but we did it by way of Gamestop. He still has a gift card from there, but he didn't find anything to buy. He did, however, enjoy playing the Wii U. He is pretty much all about the Wii U when he goes there, which isn't so bad. However, we don't get the welcoming vibe we get from Play N' Trade.

While the day was hardly like Christmas, it was still a really good day for Noah. It's nice when these things can happen once in a while.

Stormy Weather

We have had an interesting weather week. It was below 20 on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Friday morning it was around 40, which was really nice for my run. This morning it was 60 and balmy. This was good because Amanda was really struggling with the dust and whatnot that came off the Christmas tree as we took it down. We opened up the windows and aired out the house.

We needed a few things from Sam's and the weather seemed OK, so we braved the tornado watch. As we were getting in line I got a text from Amanda about a tornado warning, which of course is pretty serious. I looked at the radar on my phone and figured that we could beat the storm if we hurried. It turns out that the radar was a little bit behind on my phone. The skies opened up just as the person ahead of us was starting to check out. I figured that I'd have the kids wait with the cart and I'd brave the sheets of rain to get the van.

Just as we started our order someone came running in from the door yelling to "get to the middle of the store." I got my card back, took the kids by the hand, and we calmly walked to the middle of the store. We hung out there for a few minutes until the all-clear. We had a nice pocket of calm to come home in, which was nice.

We saw a few downed pine trees on the way home and a lot of pine straw on the road, but that was about it. Apparently they clocked 89 MPH winds at the airport. Amanda said that it wasn't that bad by our house. Nothing blew around in our yard, so I think that we were spared the worst of it.

Lily was a little shaken by the ordeal. Noah was completely fine. It's a good reminder that we are not really in control. It's also a good reminder of how incredible it is to worship the Creator of everything who controls where the storms go. I don't claim to understand why He sends tornadoes or any other weather, but I take great comfort knowing that nothing happens apart from what He wants.

Fish Story

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@freedjpc) may remember Noah's business case for a fish. We got back our fish stuff plus another aquarium from the family we gave Lily's fish to when she lost it. Armed with all this, we set out after Christmas in search of a new fish.

Everything has been great for Lily. We got a new filter for her aquarium and it now hosts two beautiful guppies. One is called Rainbow (or Ray for short) because of his tail and the other is some version of Indigo because of his color. We just vacuumed out her aquarium yesterday and things seem to be going well.

It has been a different story for Noah. We first got him a beautiful red betta fish that he named Laser. That was the name he wanted for the fish in his kindergarten class, but the class chose Swimmy instead. Laser seemed a bit listless and, sadly, he died after a couple of days. We took him back to PetSmart and got a pretty blue and red fish. We also got a heater since our house is a little cold for tropical fish.

Noah named that one Nick. We suggested Swish, but he liked Nick. This was of course after Nick Swisher. Nick did better than Laser, but he died after 4 days. It was very sad because we just got back from the pet store with Lily's second fish and Noah discovered Nick at the bottom of the bowl not moving. We got our refund from Nick as well and went to a different store to get yet another fish.

Now we're back to red. We got the fish on Saturday and Noah still hasn't named it. I asked him if he was going to name it or if he wanted to wait to see how it does. He decided to wait because "it's hard" to get attached. There is something about naming the fish that makes it harder to lose it.

It's hard to be optimistic about this one, but we will see. Noah cried at the loss of the other fish, but got over it in about 10 minutes. We will see how it goes if this one dies. Hopefully he will do better. I tested the water and it seems to be OK, so I'm going to be cautiously optimistic.

Long Night

We had a brutal night last night. Noah had a fever around Christmas, but it went away. He had complained of an earache, but it also went away. The earache came back with a vengeance last night. He first came into our room at around 10:30, which was only rough because we had just started to fall asleep. We gave him some Motrin and sent him back to bed. Then he came back around 2:00 and was really miserable. We tried warm compresses and Amanda made a solution with olive oil, garlic, and tea tree oil. These things helped a little bit, but he was still pretty miserable. He finally fell asleep, though poor Amanda couldn't move with him up against her.

We all woke up to Amanda's alarm at 7:00. She had set this so we could get up for church today (ha!). We were trying out the alarm through Pandora and were heartily greeted with this to wake up. That was a shock, to say the least. Noah didn't even notice.

I got myself up and started doing my morning stuff when I heard Lily come out of her room. She threw up twice and had some diarrhea. So that pretty much did her in as well. The good news is that Amanda and I didn't feel sick. We just felt tired.

I took Noah to the urgent care where he was promptly diagnosed with an ear infection. We started him on his amoxycillin and I think he is on the road to recovery.

Lily has started feeling much better. We're not sure what happened there, but she ate a good lunch and has been listening to an audiobook all day on her iPod. Noah is also feeling better and has been enjoying unfettered electronics. We do make allowances when sick.

As you might imagine, today has been a pretty mellow one here. I did squeeze a run in before the skies open up later. This isn't really how I wanted to finish up my vacation from work, but apparently God had plans that were different than mine.