plants vs. zombies addict

Blake has gotten a little addicted to playing on my iPhone, specifically Plants vs. Zombies.  He sneaks it away and turns down the volume so that he can hide and play without me knowing.  He will then forget it somewhere and we can't call it to find it because the volume is all the way down.

We have caught him trying to sneak the phone upstairs with the phone hidden up under his shirt but the screen on.  He nonchalantly walks right in front of us with a bright screen showing right through his shirt.

He says he likes to have the iPhone to play on because he says the can't win on the iPod, but on the iPhone he can.  We have put the iPhones as well as iPods on lockdown.

Kite Day

This was the first year for Bob Lewis Elementary to do a kite day.  The school had cheap kites available for the kids to purchase.  Everyone was hoping for a nice windy day which didn't work out too well for Julia and Brayden who had their outdoor time in the morning.  They did a lot of running to get their kites up.  In the afternoon things improved for Blake who was able to keep his kite up without exerting as much energy.  They had kite hospital tent set up for the kids to make necessary repairs.  They helped with tangled string, ripped plastic, and broken sticks.  The kids had lots of fun and came home very excited to fly their kites in our backyard.  For the next several weeks they kept their kites outside and tried to run through the yard to get them in the air.  Kylee was feeling a little left out so she made her own kite with parchment paper and dowels.  It didn't quite work so she just ended up trading off with the other kids kites.

Cataracts in Panama

On April 10 I went to Panama as part of an Air Force medical humanitarian mission.  There were several different medical specialties involved, but ophthalmology had the biggest team with the only surgical mission.  I was the leader of the eye team so I flew down a few days early on April 10 as part of an advance team to make sure everything was ready to go by the time everyone else arrived.  I had visited the year before for the pre-mission site survey so I was familiar with the area.

We flew into Panama City and got a an armed escort of two motorcycles each with a driver and automatic rifle wielding backseat rider.  We traveled four hours, with a new set of motorcycle escorts seamlessly pulling into the caravan to swap out with the previous set about every half hour, until we arrived at the city of Santiago, state of Veraguas.

We checked in to brand new and fairly nice hotel right on the Panamerican Highway just outside of Santiago, and less than a mile from Hospital Luis “Chicho” Fabriga, where the supplies for the whole team had been delivered and where the eye team would be working.

There were about 40 people on the medical mission which included family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, women's health, dermatology, and dentistry.  The eye team had the only surgical mission so we spent the whole time at the local hospital, while the other services traveled to three different remote sites to hold clinics for several days in each location.  There were 9 members of the eye team including 5 surgeons and 4 technicians.  Our primary focus was cataract and pterygium surgery.  In the two weeks we performed 121 surgeries and almost 400 clinic visits.

The hotel had laundry service, but I and a few others opted to venture into town to find a lavandaria and experience a little of the real Santiago.  

Because the "eye team" was separate from the rest of the mission, we were fortunate to get a van for our own transportation, though it also resulted in me being the team driver.  On Saturday at the end of our first week we went exploring in the mountains to do some hiking and find some hieroglyphics.

We finished Saturday with a few hours at the beach.  I spent my beach time asleep in a hammock following an exhausting week of dealing with typical humanitarian mission challenges in addition to 5+ hours of driving for our tourist expedition.

 On Sunday I was able to go to church in Santiago with Col Lance Nelson, an ophthalmologist in the Air Force Reserves from Utah who was on our team.

The end of the second week we turned things over to a second combined eye team of air force and army ophthalmologists who continued the surgical mission for two more weeks.

Final Derby

Matt just helped Brayden get started on his pinewood derby this year because he ran out of time before leaving for a two and a half week humanitarian mission in Panama.  Fortunately, Brayden was a little burned out from previous years and just wanted to cut the block into a wedge.  They sanded it and painted it silver.  Fortunately, Br. Stockwell, one of the cubscout leaders and the father of Brayden's friend Matthew, volunteered to help him get wheels and weights on the car. 

Oreo

Oreo was a great cat. We enjoyed having him around.  As can be seen from pictures, Oreo did have occasional disagreements with other cats or animals.  We figured out that it was in his nature to look for trouble.  There were several times that Oreo would show up injured after a fight.  He ended up having to go to the vet and get cleaned up and drains put in to help the wounds heal.  He was supposed to stay in the house for the first few days and it killed him.  He would look out of the windows longingly.  He really had a hard time staying indoors.

Oreo in the old house at Coral Harbor.

In the new house Oreo loved all that there was to hunt.   He wanted to stay out at night going after all the wildlife.  He would leave early evening and stay out all night until the morning.  Like clockwork he would come jump up the back fence when he heard the car pull in from taking the kids to school. He wanted to come inside and then would stay and sleep all day.  He enjoyed sleeping on the extra bed in Julia's room and Blake's bed.  I would try and keep him indoors at nights, but he would just complain at the back door until we let him out.  This new house is in a rougher neighborhood, at least for cats roaming around at nights.  It borders Government Canyon, a large state natural area with wild hogs, coyotes, and who knows what else.   One Sunday morning in April Oreo did not return from his nightly exploring.  We had already lost a  couple of the feral cats that just stopped showing up for food.  We held out hope for Oreo for a few weeks, some of us a few months, but gradually came to accept that this was a fun, but ultimately too exciting neighborhood for our little cat.

Guinness World Records

The kids like to get off the bus and dump their backpacks in the entry way.  I was moving Brayden's backpack and noticed that it felt heavier than normal.  I opened it up and found 10 shirts inside.  I asked him about it and he said that he and his friends were working on breaking Guinness World Records.  He told me that he and his friend Dresden were looking at a Guinness Book of World Records and noticed that one of the records was putting on the most shirts.  Brayden thought he could break the record because he is skinny and can fit on lots of shirts. So, he had taken the shirts to school to work on it.  

Happpy Birthday, It's A Boy!

Since Matt makes great cakes for everyone else, I feel a little pressure to come up with something creative for his birthday.   An eye chart was a great idea in my head, but it didn't turn out quite how I envisioned it.  I especially didn't mean to misspell "HAPPY".  

We decided that Matt's birthday was a great day to share with the kids what baby number 5 was going to be.  We had found out in an ultrasound a few days before and decided to do something special to share it with them.  We filled a box with blue balloons which they opened to find out the baby would be a boy.  The boys were excited.  The girls wanted a girl, but they were still happy.  

These are our first "pictures" of the little guy.