Football In Heaven

John "Nellie" Nelson.

He was a good friend to Aaron and to me. He even rolled down the aisle at our wedding. It's hard to imagine PLU football, or our Alma mater in general without him zipping around campus in his electric wheelchair.

Doctors didn't think Nellie'd live to age thirty, but he lived fourteen years beyond their expectations, passing away yesterday from congestive heart failure.

On a personal note, I wonder if I ever would have noticed Aaron if Nellie hadn't been around. I remember seeing them hanging out in the lunchroom and watching Aaron feed Nellie. I remember thinking, "That's the kind of guy I want to marry ... the kind of guy who knows how to serve other people." My husband, even now, is incredibly servant-hearted, and I think he learned that at PLU. Through his friendship with Nellie.

That's who Nellie was to me. A teacher. He taught people just by being who he was, who God created him to be. Born in Singapore with a disease called Arthrogryposis, which locked all his joints together, Nellie spent his life wheelchair-bound. But at PLU he didn't let his disability disrupt his job or his social life. He lived his dream as a football coach. And he was a friend to hundreds, with his quick, hearty laugh and humble transparency.

That's why ten generations of six foot, hundred-eighty pound football players at PLU served him. That's why they fed him, transported him, took him to the bathroom. Because Nellie loved life and loved them. They learned that the glory you get on the football field is secondary to the glory of serving others.

Knowing Nellie shaped the man I married. And hundreds of other men like him.

And those football players, those coaches, they were all around him when he passed, giving him a Go Tunnel to heaven.

That's where Nellie gets to throw a football for the first time, intercept a pass, score a touchdown, kick a ball through the goal posts.

Attaway Nellie. Attaway. And thank you.

To watch a news clip from King 5 news about Nellie's incredible life, click here.

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

My mom sent me a news clipping from her Hong Kong newspaper about this building collapse in Shanghai that's all the buzz in Asian news.

All I can say is, Wow.

If you're planning a move to Shanghai, I'd steer clear of anything built by this company. Seems they could use a few more engineering classes before they start any new projects.

And I'd stay away from pink buildings next to the river, too. Just in case.

Our Real American Life

Real life has started. Which is why I'm not blogging as much as I did in the summer.

Olivia and Aaron started school on Tuesday. Gabe starts kindergarten on Monday. The first varsity football game of the season is Friday, September 4. So, the Prosser Mustangs are getting ready. There's practice every day after school until five or six.

And birthdays! We've had lots of birthdays in August. Aunt Amy's, Grandma Helen's, Grandma Nai Nai's. And Olivia's 8th birthday is today.

With all these birthdays I've been making lots of food.

This morning I iced cupcakes to take to Olivia's school. Gabe carried the white container of cupcakes and Anna carried the blue. They did a great job in the walk through the park, keeping the containers level.

But the minute we got to Olivia's table in the cafeteria, Gabe dumped the contents of his container on the floor. While scooping cupcakes off the carpet, I got icing smeared on my elbow and shin.

I corralled Sophie, Gabe and Anna and lurched out into the hallway to try to find the bathroom to wash myself up. I set Sophie in the hallway and told Gabe and Anna to watch her. After all, I didn't want to sit her on the bathroom floor and I knew it would just take me a minute to wet a paper towel and clean myself up.

But of course, 20 seconds into the cleaning process I hear, "Where's your mommy?" I poked my head out of the bathroom door and saw a lady standing there.

"I'm here," I said.

She looked at me quizzically. "Oh good. I just saw all these little people unattended in the hall."

I tried to decide whether to explain the frosting incident or not. I decided not to. Let her think whatever she wanted to think about me: bad mother who leaves her children alone in school hallways.

And as we walked back to the cafeteria, I stood in the doorway and watched Olivia eating her lunch. I noticed how sad she looked.

I went up and asked her if she wanted to hand out cupcakes to her classmates.

"No," she said, hanging her head. "I just don't feel like it."

I looked around the lunchroom, packed with kids. "Well, honey, how am I supposed to know who's in your class?"

Olivia mumbled something that I couldn't hear. So, I took a deep breath and started handing out cupcakes. "Are you in Olivia's class?" I stuck to the table at which she was sitting and the one right next to it. All the kids seemed to be in her class, and most of them were so excited to get cupcakes.

And, lo and behold, a miracle happened. There were exactly enough cupcakes in the blue container for all the kids who were left from Olivia's class in the cafeteria. And one for her to take back to her teacher, too.

After they ate them, quite a few kids came up to me and said, "Those were the best cupcakes I've ever eaten!"

I saw Olivia brighten a bit when they said that.

One little girl then said to Olivia, "I hope I'm in your class next year so I can get another cupcake on your birthday."

But as I left the cafeteria after my brief visit, I looked back and saw my little birthday girl still sitting eating, all alone now at the long table. My heart felt squeezed.

It's so different here. And it's so hard not knowing anybody well. Especially for them.

For me, I've got cooking and laundry and hauling babies around to keep me busy. I don't have dejected birthday moments at cafeteria tables to remind me how much I miss my friends in China.

I guess the moments I have are bathroom moments, when I remember that at our school in China I could always find someone to hold the baby for me.

It just takes time, that's all. We'll be okay.

Total Eclipse

Har har har!

Have you seen any Literal Video Versions of 80's music videos? If not, click here to watch their version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Please! Laugh with me, people!

I just discovered these and was laughing so hard, I cried. Again. That's twice in just a few days. This is a good week.

Pop! Goes the Baptism Bead

Today after Sunday School I was walking toward the nursery when someone said, "Did you hear that Gabe got a bead stuck up his nose?"

Aaron and I made a bee-line for the junior church room.

"Gabe, do you have a bead in your nose?" I asked.

Gabe was calmly playing with toys.

"Yes," he said.

"How did it get there? Did you stick it up there?"

"No. It got up there by accident," he said.

Okay. I have no idea how a bead gets up someone's nose by accident. But when you're five, a lot of things happen by accident.

We got Gabe home as quickly as we could so that Dr. Grandpa could try to get the bead out. It was stuck up there way too far, though. We spent a tense 10 minutes with Gabe on the sofa holding him down while Grandpa stuck this long stick-like plastic probe thing into his nose. Gabe screamed and screamed and screamed.

All the screaming and crying just made it harder to get the bead out. So Aaron ended up having to take him to the emergency room.

The emergency room doctor asked Aaron to first of all plug Gabe's left nostril with his finger and blow hard into Gabe's mouth.

Good idea. Too bad it didn't work.

Next he stuck a catheter into Gabe's nose with a vacuum extractor attached to it.

Another great idea. But that still didn't work.

Next he stuck another catheter up into his nose with a balloon on the other end. I guess it was also designed to suck small objects out from small children's noses.

Unfortunately, that didn't work either.

Finally he applied some topical anesthetic and probed the nostril with another long stick-like device. I didn't really want to hear about how far he had to stick that thing up into Gabe's nose, but I guess he had to be pretty aggressive with it to get it behind the bead. Blagggh!

But, gross factor aside....

Pop! Out came the bead. A large blue bead -- the kind you use to make salvation-explanation bracelets. The blue in the bracelet usually symbolizes baptism.

In Gabe's case, it was a baptism into the I-know-better-than-to-stick-things-up-my-nose club.

I came out of this whole ordeal realizing that it could've been a lot worse. When you live with a physician, you hear some great comparison stories. And my in-laws were not remiss in telling me about the little boy who came to the doctor with bad breath. No one could figure out why he had bad breath, until they looked up his nose. There was a pea in there. A small, round, green pea. A small, round, green pea that had been there a very, very long time. So long, in fact, that it had actually sprouted in the damp recesses of this child's nose and was tangled into his sinuses.

I guess in comparison a bead's not so bad.

Forget Something?

This made me LOL. No, actually, ROTFL. No, actually, POTFL.

C'mon, you've never heard of Pee On The Floor Laughing?

WIP Wednesday: I Think I Thunk It All Out

I haven't written much this week.

But I did spend a lot of time in the car on Sunday to and from Seattle thinking about the novel I'm just starting. And since planning it all out is half the work, I guess I did get something done.

I won't say much about the plan, but I do have some interesting characters in mind.

One is a neighbor boy from a separatist Christian family. A little bit of Romeo and Juliet action going on in this one: boy's mother doesn't want boy to associate with girl ... or anyone outside the family for that matter. I know, the Romeo and Juliet part isn't very original (read: not original at all), but hopefully the separatist Christian boy element makes up for that.

And of course, the girl in question is the previously-mentioned-MC who just moved back to the US after five years in China. Nothing like living next door to a separatist Christian family to add to the culture shock. Or would that be sub-culture shock? *grin*

There are some other threads and other characters, but I'll stop here for this particular WIP Wednesday. Hopefully I'll get some time to actually write some of these thoughts out so I have something substantial to share next week. But with teething babies and kids starting school, time is something I'm slightly short on these days.

Oh well. There's always time to think about everything I want to write about while washing dishes and folding laundry. Writing it down sometimes has to wait.

Dissed

I stayed up late making it.

Sophie looked cute holding it.

She even wore her My-First-Mariner's T-shirt and did The Sprinkler to "I'm Comin' Up So You'd Better Get This Party Started."

We drove for two and a half hours and then sat in Seattle traffic for an hour.

And we still didn't win!

All I can think is that they just didn't see us.

I mean, how can you say, "No Rally Fries" to a baby in a pink Mariner's shirt holding a sign like this?


Heartless. That's what they must be over there at Safeco Field. Heartless.

(I think I'm starting to sound like some of those disillusioned writers who think they've written the Great American Novel and can't figure out why they can't get an agent. "Look at me! I've made a great sign! I have a cute baby! How come that guy with the 'It's my birthday, give me rally fries' won instead? I didn't even get on TV. No fair!")

First fruits

Today Aaron picked the first bunch of green grapes from his parent's backyard vines.

I've never been in Prosser for grape season before. It's going to be fun. Especially with all the vineyards and wineries in the area.

Aaron's sister works at a local winery -- Airfield Estates -- and they have an annual grape-stomping celebration. Maybe this year I can roll up the legs of my jeans and get in on the action. I'll feel like a cast-member in A Walk In the Clouds. Ha!

And when the red backyard grapes start coming on, Aaron's mom and dad will make grape juice. They make so much, we get to drink it all year long....

Quick Step

Sophie took her first steps this afternoon. Three steps towards her daddy.

Then she took two sets of three or four steps to me tonight.

It's been two weeks since she started standing up by herself without holding on to anything. She holds her hands up, fingers splayed, and shrieks as if to say, "Look at me!"

Of course everyone looks. And then she laughs.

Amazing.

I'm actually shocked that she has started walking as a ten month old. She was a late roller and a late-ish crawler. She started crawling the day after father's day this summer, so she hasn't even been crawling that long. And it was just a little while before that she *finally* started rolling consistently and confidently.

Maybe it's all these sisters and brothers and cousins running around that are motivating her to walk. Or maybe it's all the clapping and screaming her mommy and grandma Nai Nai do when she takes steps. She loves the attention.

Either way -- watch out world, here comes Sophie!

Sophie
...on the Snake River a few weeks ago...

Never Ending

Oh happy day! Just over one year ago we finished Olivia's adoption and I kissed paperwork goodbye.

Beautiful, wonderful, freeing day.

Or so I thought.

Now we're back in America and Olivia is armed with her certificate of citizenship and her US passport. But sadly, still without a social security number.

So, a couple weeks ago, I took her to the social security office in Tri-cities, Washington, bringing along every piece of identification I could think of to get this little citizen her number assignment.

Instead, this is what I heard: "Do you have an American one of these?" The lady behind the counter waved the Chinese adoption certificate at me.

"No," I said. "We finished her adoption in China."

"I'm sorry, this isn't going to work. I need something from an American court saying she's your child, and I need a birth certificate."

I stared at her. Seriously?

I thought the social security number part was supposed to be easy.

"But she doesn't have a birth certificate," I said.

"Well, we need one."

"How do I get one?"

The lady scrawled a star next to a phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it under the glass to me. But it was obvious she was clueless. I don't think she'd seen an adopted child in her office without a birth certificate before. Shocking.

Back at home, I called the number and spoke with a similarly clueless lady, who gave me another phone number.

Thankfully this time the lady on the phone seemed to know exactly what was going on. She was a pro. She forwarded me via email a link about how to obtain an American birth certificate.

Problem is, when I look at the long list of requirements and *paperwork* all I feel is dizzy. Something in the back of my mind keeps saying, "No, I don't want to do this. I'm done! I'm supposed to be done!"

But there it is. More paperwork.

In desperation I finally called one of the teachers at the high school who also adopted a daughter from China. She'd mentioned to me last summer that they had re-adopted their daughter when they returned to the States.

Talking with them at least helped me to stop hyperventilating. Instead of staring glassy-eyed at the computer screen, I'm now planning to make a trip down to the county courthouse, which is just a few minutes walk from my house, and talk to a real live person about what I need to do. A real live person who can see the tears standing in my eyes and take pity on me if this whole thing skyrockets to the overwhelming level again.

I just want to get this done. I'm ready to be finished with adoption paperwork. Forever.

WIP Wednesday: Novel Swapping

Any Day But (alternately titled V-Day) is out with one of my writing-buddies, Florence.

We've done a novel swap, so I'm reading her masterpiece, The Ward.

Florence is good. Really good. She's not only a phenomenal writer, but she gives an excellent critique. I'm worried that she isn't getting a good trade by novel-swapping with me because even though I love line-editing, I'm not too practiced at giving big, over-arching advice.

I'm wondering, of course, what she'll think of ADB, mostly because I've only done one edit of this book. With my last novel, it was well-polished by the time my writing pals got their hands on it. This one came to me more quickly, partly because I'd already learned so much from writing the other novel.

Plus, I've learned to plan. I actually wrote a plot plan for this novel and basically stuck to it, something I didn't do with Up Lantau Running. With that one I let the mood guide me -- sweep me away in some cases -- which meant a lot of rewriting and hideous amounts of chopping.

With ADB, I haven't chopped all that much. It was born, went through some minor revisions, and went out to Florence in a state similar to its newborn one. So, we'll see. I'm not sure if that's bad or not. It might desperately need to be chopped up and overhauled. Or it might just need to be fleshed out and deepened. Or maybe it's perfect.

*cough* Yeah, right. In my dreams.

One of my fears with not chopping it up is that I'm wondering if I really know these characters like I knew them in Up Lantau Running. I mean, I spent years with those people -- Lila (previously called Marcy) and the gang. I've only spent months with Thia and her odd assortment of friends, acquaintances, and family. Will they seem real to my readers, or will they remain only shallow acquaintances?

Maybe I should stop worrying so much about what Florence will think of my book, and worry about giving her my best shot at a critique of her book.

Yeah, that might be a good idea. Okay, back to reading....

How Strange

How strange
That as I write this post
All my children's friends in China
Are on the school bus for their first day of school
(And many of my friends too, come to think of it)

And we are still here
In full-fledged Prosser summer

Swimming in Grandma's pool
With the cousins,
Picking out flooring for our new house

And not packing up,
Cramming consumables into duffle bags,
Not loading airport-bound cars,
Not making last-minute trips to Costco
For one more 10-pound bag of chocolate chips,
Not kissing anyone goodbye, or saying
"See you next summer."

We're still here --
How strange.

Shelved

Sigh.

It's time to shelve Up Lantau Running; time to call it a "practice book."

This afternoon I saw an email sitting in my inbox from the agent who had requested the Up Lantau Running partial. My stomach plummeted to my feet.

I couldn't open it right away. I just couldn't. So, I pulled myself out of my seat, did a few mundane tasks, and came back to it when I'd had time to stop my heart hammering. I wanted to get myself mentally ready for rejection.

Before I opened it I spoke some truth to myself: "I'm at the beginning of all this. If it's a rejection, it's okay. I'm learning. I've learned a lot from writing this novel. It's okay."

And there it was when I clicked open the email ... the rejection:

Many thanks for sharing with me the opening chapters of your novel UP LANTAU RUNNING, which I am declining with my regrets. I think I just didn't connect with Lila in the way I would in order to represent a project. It's a difficult line to walk -- to make a character feel appropriately picked on and "other" enough to believe she would be such an outsider, without having her feel alienating to your readership. I'm afraid it just didn't work for me. Of course, this is only my opinion, and another agent may very well feel differently. Nonetheless, I appreciate your thinking of me, and wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

And, strangely, I felt okay with that.

Maybe even relieved.

I can't really explain it except that maybe I knew in my heart that this particular book has some structural issues that no amount of plastering over (read: rewriting) is going to fix.

As much as I love the characters and the setting and, well, especially the characters, I have to let go. Move on.

It's time to throw myself into polishing my new novel and starting to query it.

And I have something new bubbling in my brain. I wrote the first page. I already have a title. It's called Back and it's about a teenage girl adjusting to life in American high school after five years in China.

Write what you know. Know what you write. Right?

And I keep reminding myself: God willing, I still have a lot more life to live.

God Bless America

I had a yay-for-America moment tonight.

I was making a last-minute lasagna, meaning it had to be done by 6p.m. This was when I knew my father-in-law would be coming through the door from work. I also knew he was heading right out again for a meeting, so dinner had to be on the table.

It was nearly 5:30 and I had to get that thing in the oven. I had the sauce ready, the ricotta sitting on the counter with the lid off. Then I remembered the cheese.

Darn, I still had to grate it.

I headed out to the refrigerator in the garage where I'd seen a block of mozzarella. When I slid open the drawer, lo and behold, there on top of the block of mozzarella was pre-shredded Italian cheese. Two packages of the stuff.

I headed back to the kitchen humming "God Bless America."

There's nothing like living in China for eight years to make you grateful for small things like pre-shredded cheese in zip lock packaging.


Side Note: On the ironic side of life, even though I got the lasagna in at 5:30-ish, the whole wheat pasta I'd used took longer to cook than the brand I used in China. So ... well ... the father-in-law had to eat salad and bread and head out to his meeting without lasagna. I guess he'll eat some when he gets home.

Sigh.

Oh well. I tried.

I Recommend: Dan in Real Life

Surprise! This is not a book review.

This is a movie review.

And I don't watch movies very often, so this may be the last movie review you see on my blog.

Dan in Real Life is great. I wasn't intending to watch it. I intended to spend my evening reading my writing pal's newest novel, but then the movie sort of sucked me in.

It's clean.

It's hilarious.

And I love the emotions the actors portray. You can just feel their pain. And you can laugh at it too, which is all the better.

Steve Carell, famous for his role in the American version of The Office, plays Dan, a widower, father of three daughters. He's a man who can give good advice, but has a hard time taking it.

What happens when a man like that falls in love, but loses the love-of-his-life to his younger brother?

And what happens when they all go on vacation together -- stuffed into a shingled vacation home on the coast? Mix in meddling parents, uber-observant teenage daughters with hormones and cell phones, and a whole bunch of other relatives who all have their own opinions, and you've got a situation ready to explode. In a good way.

When Dan's middle daughter yells at him, "You are a murderer of love!" because he sent her sneek-in boyfriend home, I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard. I got a clear fast-forward picture of the melodrama that will be our lives when our daughters start turning into teenagers.

But what a great movie!

If you haven't already, watch it.

Provision 3

We're in the process of buying our first home.

All I can say is Wow.

Wow.

And now I'll try to elaborate on that.

There are Wows on various levels.

I've been following the Prosser housing market for about a year, ever since we were pretty sure we'd be moving back to America this year from China. I followed online through a real estate agent who sent free email updates.

And Wow, there are really not that many houses for sale in Prosser. Most of the places I was getting on my email updates were three bedroom houses or less, approximately 1500 square feet, which was not too much bigger than the apartment in which we lived in China.

There was nothing wrong with our apartment in China. We loved living there, which is why we stayed and didn't move for six years, even though we qualified for a bigger home.

But as we were thinking about BUYING a place, we wanted something our family could grow into. With Olivia going on eight years old, we wanted to make a good investment so we wouldn't have to move again in five years.

So, Wow, I wondered how we were going to find anything we wanted to buy in Prosser.

Enter Aaron's friend Marcus, who also happens to be a real estate agent.

He told us about a place up the hill from Aaron's parents house. The owners were considering selling, though they hadn't put the house on the market.

We went up there and looked at the house and ... Wow.

What a great house! Four bedrooms and a fifth room that could be another bedroom, but is now being used as an office; three bathrooms; a daylight basement....

And, wow, a gorgeous view of the valley.

It's on a quiet street. Check.

Has a nice, private, fenced backyard. Check.

Has enough space to grow into. Check.

And that view. Wow. That's a bonus.

And there's a gorgeous deck on which we can sit and enjoy the view. Wow. Another bonus.

Now, how can we afford all this Wow-ness, you may ask?

Well, the house does need a little TLC. As our friend Marcus says, "the bones" of the house are great, and if this house were "dialed in" it would be way over our price range. But as it is, with all the updates it needs, it actually falls into our price range.

Wow.

So, we made an offer last week and heard on Friday that our offer had been accepted with a closing date of October 31. So, if everything goes according to plan, we should be spending American Thanksgiving settled in our new house.

And that will definitely be something to be thankful for.

Wow.

Warm

No matter how old I get.

No matter how hot the day is.

I will always love the warm tingle of laundry fresh from the dryer against my skin.

Escape Slug

Slugs leave slime trails.

Everybody knows that. But leave it to a science teacher to come up with the idea of comparing slug slime to different man-made adhesives in a classroom science experiment.

And my husband, science teacher extraordinaire that he is, was quite excited about the possibility of doing this particular gross-factor experiment in his tenth grade biology class.

So, he was thrilled to find a three-inch-long slug on the backyard walkway the other day.

Aaron grabbed a jar and trapped the slug. He covered the jar with aluminum foil, poked some air-holes, and added a few pieces of lettuce.

Then he stuck the jar in Sophie's room (read: the room with Sophie's crib in it where we've stored most of the luggage we haven't cracked opened yet).

The next morning, I was sitting in the living room when Olivia rushed in.

"The slug escaped!" she yelled.

I was calm. "Oh, honey, I'm sure it's just sitting up on the lid."

"Yeah, maybe," Olivia said and departed.

Several moments later she came back. "I don't see it on the lid," she said.

"Oh, honey," I said. "I'm sure it's just kind of camouflaged up there. I'm sure it couldn't have gotten out."

But I dragged myself up and followed her into Sophie's room all the same.

Several seconds later ... "Aaron!"

"What?" He was up in the loft.

"Your slug is gone!"

"What!"

Sure enough, we both checked the jar. Absolutely empty. Except for a few pieces of half-chewed lettuce.

We looked helplessly around the room, littered in boxes and odds and ends.

One of the-other-Amy-Sonnichsen's old purses was lying on the floor. And that's where Aaron found the first slime trail, shiny against the black fabric.

We followed the slime trail across Grandpa's old hat. And that's where we lost it.

With no slug in sight.

I stopped laughing long enough to ask, "Are you going to tell your mom?"

Aaron didn't answer at first. He was too busy checking behind the boxes stacked against the wall. Then he said, "I don't know."

We didn't have too much time to look for the slug right then.

Aaron returned to the job in the afternoon. And I got to tell his mom the slug was loose in Sophie's room.

"Ohhhh!" she wailed, grabbing onto the kitchen counter for support.

I don't blame her. Slugs are nasty. You definitely don't want to wake up and find one on your face in the middle of the night.

I silently vowed that Sophie would not sleep in her crib until the slug was found.

Finally, Aaron got his big break. In a certain slant of light, he saw the slug trail climbing the white painted wall. He followed it onto a shelf where his mom stores her knitting supplies. Sliding out a plastic storage container, he found the slug clinging to the back.

Still alive. Just as slimy.

The slug is back in the jar now. But Aaron's not taking any chances this time. He actually attached the screw lid of the jar and poked tiny holes in it with a nail.

We checked on the slug the next day and it was stuck on the lid, probably cursing the fact that nail-holes in metal aren't as pliable as vents in aluminum foil.

In any case, our escape slug ain't goin' nowhere this time.

Angels

I decided to walk down to the grocery store this morning with Anna and Sophie in the baby jogger. But as I was getting ready to leave, I noticed the tire was flat.

My hero husband came to the rescue with some sort of foam in a bottle. He filled up the tire with the foam and we were ready to go.

It was hot. Eleven o'clock in the morning on a potentially hundred-and-four-degree day.

Halfway there I heard a funny sound.

When I looked down, I saw white foam squirting out of the sides of the tire. Behind us was a long white trail. I watched the wheel go flat, flat, and flatter, splattering white foam on the sidewalk.

We wobbled the rest of the way to the grocery store, but once there I figured I'd had enough of pushing a gimp baby jogger in the heat. I decided to call Aaron and ask him to come get me.

Too bad I didn't bring a cell phone.

At the store, I scraped together some change for a 25-cent phone call. I waited in line for the cashier to exchange my one dime, one nickel, and ten pennies for a quarter.

Then I headed with Sophie and Anna in a shopping cart to the outside pay phone.

Did anyone else know the payphone company is gouging customers by charging fifty cents a call these days? I sure didn't.

Upon realizing that I couldn't make a call with my solitary quarter, I dug into the zippered pouch of my wallet. Three patacas (from Macau) and a few ten cent Hong Kong coins, and four or five other pennies were all I had left. No other cash.

"Well, I guess we'll walk home with the flat tire," I told Anna.

I looked up to see a man approaching me, holding out a cell phone.

"I noticed you trying to make a call," he said. "Do you want to use my phone?"

Yes, there are such things as angels.

A Summer In Pictures

My crazy kids with their 2nd cousins, Alaythia and Isaiah.

Swing high, swing low, away we go!

Bathing beauties enjoying poolside popsicles:
cousins Grace, Anna, Olivia, & Abby

Gabe poolside

Aaron, Grandma Nai Nai, Great-Grandma Helen, & Sophie

Learning to plant seeds with Nai Nai

At Horsetail falls (on our 10th anniversary) where Aaron asked me to marry him almost eleven years ago.

On Dog Mountain
(some day I'll be embarrassed my glasses were that big)

Sophie's swimming attire

Anna navigating the Columbia with Uncle Garry

Fun in the new minivan (see Sophie's feet?)

Sophie's first time sitting in the grass;
she didn't mind.

I Am Not An Addict

I'm in the process of proving to myself that I am not a Dr. Pepper addict.

It struck me last weekend when we were camping how much Dr. Pepper I was drinking.

You probably know how it is. You're driving a long distance. You stop to eat at a fast food restaurant where the combo-meal fountain drinks are the size of a small child's swimming pool.

And then you get a refill, too.

At the campsite, I was heading over to the cooler three times a day and pulling a can of Dr. Pepper out of the ice. I was on a buzz the whole time we were camping.

When we got home, I felt bloated and sugar-coated.

"I'm going to fast from pop for a week," I announced. My sister-in-law, the other Amy Sonnichsen, offered to join me in my restraint.

It has not been easy. Afternoon comes, the kids go down for their rests or naps, and I get an overwhelming urge to drink Dr. Pepper. Without it, I'm dragging. I'm lying on the sofa watching rodeo* on TV because I don't have energy to do anything else.

Pathetic.

Tomorrow marks the end of my fast and I have the cans of Dr. Pepper in the refrigerator so that they'll be cold when I allow myself to indulge.

I'm not a Dr. Pepper addict, am I?

I'll let you decide.



*Yeah, that's right. Rodeo. Man vs. Bull. Bulls with names like "Whip Lash," "Gnash," and "Satan," up against men with first names like "Billy Joe" and "Jimmy Bob." I think I watch it because it's a completely different culture and I find that interesting.