update on Pop-Pop

After a crazy day and a half, Peter's grandfather passed away early this morning. Thankfully we all had time to visit with him while he was conscious on Saturday, and all 5 of his grandchildren were with him when he died this morning. It's going to be a long difficult week for the family, so we'd appreciate your prayers for all of us, especially Peter's grandmother.

prayers appreciated

It's 5:08am, and we've been up all night. Peter's grandfather has been in the hospital all week with a broken hip. They've been putting off the surgery because of minor issues that they wanted to resolve before operating. Friday night those issues were no longer minor. Things took a quick turn for the worse, and they took him in for emergency surgery with a bleak prognosis. Our friend Em was our hero and came to stay with our sleeping kids while we rushed to the hospital. Pop-Pop coded on the table and had to be resuscitated. The surgery ended quickly because the problem they expected to find wasn't there. That means that even if he recovers from his near death experience, they still don't know what's wrong with him. The doctors have been preparing us for the worst but hoping for the best. We actually saw some improvement around 3:30am, but it's extremely minor in the big scheme of what needs to happen. I just came home to relieve Em and figure out what the plan is for the kids all day. All prayers are appreciated for Peter's grandfather, grandmother, and the rest of the family. It's going to be a long few days no matter what happens.

cute?

Garty's favorite phrase: "I not baby. I Garty." The first time he said it I was getting a sleepy boy up from his nap and asked, "Hey, baby, how was your nap?" His cute response made me smile because it was such a grown up boy thing to say. After hearing it 30 times, it was less cute and more annoying. Now the phrase has morphed and can be used many different ways throughout the day. For example, if Peter says, "Hey, pal," Garty may respond, "I not pal. I Garty." Likewise if I say, "Are you hungry?" I might hear, "I not hungry. I Garty." I never would have thought that 5 simple words from the mouth of a handsome little boy could make me want to scream. I'm sure this will be a sweet memory somewhere down the road, but I welcome any advice on how to move us toward making it just a memory.

"fun"

Patience needs to take a "fun" family photo along for her first day of preschool tomorrow. As we have no family photos since April, and definitely none that would qualify as "fun," we asked my sister to take one at Patience's birthday party last night. Aren't we cute... and "fun"?

wisdom beyond his years

Last Friday morning when Joshua was admiring the new kitchen window that Peter had installed overnight (thanks to the carpenter ants who were nesting in the old one), he saw a bird sitting outside on a wire. He pointed it out and asked what kind it was. Instead of saying, "It's a fat gray bird," revealing the true bird lover I am, I said, "I don't know. Do you know who loves birds and knows all the kinds of birds?" Joshua's response in a very matter of fact tone was, "God." I laughed realizing that he was absolutely correct, but I was going to say Great Grandmom Dunbar.

book list updates

I can't handle the crazy list of stuff I have to do this week, yet I randomly decided that now would be a good time to update our book list on the right side of this page. That's good time management for you. I'm just excited that after a long break from reading any books at all, I've been on a roll lately. The best part is that one usually obsessive reader who has been known to stay up until 4am when she's reading a good book has managed to put her books down, feed her family, and sleep at night. Most of the additions to the list, however, were books Peter read on his rainy trip to CA back in May.

new computer!

This evening we got our new computer after almost 2 years of computer issues, and I've been staring at the screen getting it set up for hours now. I can't even think a coherent thought anymore, so I'm headed to bed in 3 minutes when my last download completes. I just wanted to share our exciting news because now it will be so much easier to post pictures of our lives. Stay tuned! I might even get crazy and upload some videos to YouTube now that I can work with our videos. We watched a bunch this evening from when we picked up the kids, which we've never been able to do before. What fun!