In addition to making it more likely that I pass my diagnostic exam, a benefit of studying phonology is the occasional snack that my wife prepares for me.

On a completely unrelated note, after looking at this photo of my one-year-old nephew, Amy and I both wondered what he knows that he’s hiding from everyone.

Saturday afternoon, Josh and I went to visit the newest little member of our church family – Nathan Garinger. (I was excited, because it was my first time preparing and bringing a meal to a new mother.)

Nathan was born to Silas & Amy Garinger on October 17th, weighing 6lbs, 14 oz., and measuring 20 inches long. He had to stay in the hospital a week after his birth, so the excess fluid could clear out of his lungs. Thankfully, he’s doing well and enjoying being home. Nathan is an adorable baby and looks “all boy.” We’re looking forward to seeing him at New Life Bible Church soon.

Thursday night, we had Micah and Anna over for dinner and a game of Jenga. We had some intense moments, and both Micah and Anna played very well. The hand in the last picture reveals who knocked our tower over.

Wednesday night, Rachael and Selah came over to make pizza. We had a great time, making a mess and reaping the rewards of our labor. After dinner, we looked at wedding pictures, had a flute lesson, and played several games of Uno. (Emily – when are you going to come and visit us?!)

Amy got us our absentee ballots from Greenville, and we sealed them up and mailed them today. Incidentally, when I voted, I was more concerned about these guys than about these two.

Don’t forget to vote.

[update 10/21/08: For those of you who wanted to comment on this post — I turned off comments so that the blog doesn’t become a forum for political discussion.]

This past Saturday, I spent the afternoon and evening with Lily, our pastor’s 11 year-old niece. We started our afternoon adventure by going to a local park and painting at the River Legacy Living Science Center. (Yes – my painting is proudly displayed on our fridge – come by and take a look!) After painting and snake catching, we walked around and threw a frisbee.

When we left the park, we made a quick stop at Kroger and came home to attempt making an apple pie from scratch. I won’t claim to be an expert pie baker, but with a few creative adjustments the pie came out to be eat-worthy. Between baking and eating our pie, we enjoyed pizza, a few games of Jenga, and playing three-way frizbee in a near-by field.

Since moving to Texas, I’ve been on the hunt for a job. Almost everyday I search for jobs and send out applications and resumes, receiving little if any response to my inquires. We’ve been praying daily that the Lord would send me a job, but He has not seen fit to grant our request and I sometimes grow discouraged as I wait. Two weeks ago I decided to pray for something else – a pumpkin. I love pumpkins and every fall I wish I had one, but I’m too cheap to go out and actually buy one. So one day as I was driving to the store, I decided that I was going to ask God to send me a pumpkin – I just wanted a reminder that God grants His children’s requests. So I started praying and told only Josh, with strict instructions that he was not allowed to go out and be my answer to prayer.

This week, the Bixbys came to visit and as I was driving to the store to get some last minute things for supper, I asked the Lord to send me a pumpkin and thought that maybe the Bixbys would bring me one. When the Bixbys arrived, I took the kids for the afternoon, and as they were getting in my car, Miriam gave me a little pumpkin. I smiled. God answered my prayer and sent me a pumpkin. At dinner that night, I shared with Tim and Ruth about my answered prayer request. This morning, when Josh and I went out we found a large pumpkin at our front door. Last night, after the Bixbys left us for the evening, they returned and left a pumpkin on our doorstep. So, now I have two pumpkins to remind me that God answers our prayers in His time and in unexpected ways.

This week we had the pleasure of having the Bixby family visit us during their deputation trip out west. Since moving to Texas, we’ve been looking forward to their visit, and I’d been anticipating being able to host and show our home to “family.”

Tim, Ruth, Micaiah, and Miriam arrived at our apartment a little before noon and we went out to Chick-fil-A for lunch. (Unfortunately, Josh could not join us, since he had to be at his 12:30 class.) After lunch I took Micaiah and Miriam back to our apartment, so we could play while the grownups spent some time by themselves. We made brownies, colored, took naps, played Uno, and read. During nap time, I finished getting dinner ready.

Tim and Ruth joined us for dinner and we had a wonderful time of fellowship together. It was a blessing to hear about their deputation travels and what the Lord is doing in their lives. Their visit was a great encouragement to us.

Josh and I started our weekend off with a lesson in phonology. For those of you who don’t know, Josh is preparing to take his diagnostic exams on November 8th – a six-hour test which requires answering four (out of eight possible) questions pertaining to the core courses of his degree. After my first lesson in phonology, I am very thankful that Josh is the one taking the exam instead of me!

Friday night we went out to Mimi’s Cafe for dinner (thanks, David and Caroline). We enjoyed the food and our date together. Our server was extremely busy and did a great job juggling all his customers. When we were ready to leave, the group next to us asked our waiter if there were any booths available where they could move to. He came back saying there was nothing open for them and told them that if something opened up, he’d let them know. When he came by our table, we told him we were ready for our check and would leave so they other group could have our booth. His response, “No hurry – picky people can wait. I’ve been around picky people all day.” He made us laugh.

Saturday night we went to Micah Lutz’s football game. Micah is the son of our pastor, and we enjoyed watching his game with Pastor John and some other family members. Micah scored two touchdowns to help his team win their game. After the game, we joined the Lutz family for pizza and cake to celebrate Micah’s 13th birthday. We ended the night by playing an intense game of Scategories…I never knew that tigers were animals on a farm.

You may be wondering why my husband is smiling while pumping gas…click on this picture to see the price of gas per gallon and you’ll see why.

Last night Rachael, Selah, and I had another girls’ party. Josh has class on Wednesday nights, and I enjoy having the company while he’s away. At 4:45 I went to Rachael’s ballet school and sat with Selah as we waited for the ballet lesson to finish. Selah and I read to each other while we waited for Rachael to get out.

After the lesson was over, we came back to my apartment and had a night consisting of singing, eating dinner, making cookies and birthday cards for Debbie King, and having a flute lesson. On our way home, we stopped by Debbie’s apartment to give her the cookies and cards and to sing happy birthday. Fun times – sorry, Emily…wish you could have joined in on our fun.

Saturday night I performed my first men’s haircut on a very sweet and kind victim. I won’t claim to be an expert or even good…maybe someday, as I guess I’ll get to practice a few more times in the course of my life. Just for the record, no one has made any comments asking who butchered Josh’s hair, but maybe everyone in Texas is just really polite. (I admit it…I miss my curly-haired man.)

In other weekend news…I beat Josh in Jenga for the first time, and Josh creamed me in Othello!

Would you please consider signing the Fairness for Families petition?

Here’s the background:

1. Until recently, to get approval to adopt from overseas, families would file a form with the US Government (with US Citizenship and Immigration Services) called the I-600A. When this was approved, the approval would last for 18 months.
2. For most overseas adoptions, 18 months is long enough to complete an adoption, but …
3. China adoptions have slowed down dramatically, and now many families are waiting a couple years (or more) for a China adoption to go through.
4. While families are waiting, their approval from the U.S. government is expiring. Our government has given families ONE free 18-month renewal. But …
5. That renewal is running out for some families, and our government is telling them that they must start from scratch. Here’s why — and what it means:
   • In the last year, our country has officially become part of an international treaty governing intercountry adoptions, and part of this has required a new and “improved” (gag me with a well-used motor oil rag) process — no longer “I-600” but “I-800.”
   • The new process (I-800) is long and onerous
   • Some families will have to change agencies (think: a whole new set of fees — thousands of dollars) because only certain agencies are approved for the I-800 process.
   • Families that are required to change agencies will lose their “place in line” — moving to the end of a 25,000-person waiting list in China.
   • Some families will lose their approval, because Chinese requirements have changed, and by resubmitting their application to adopt (instead of just leaving it in line), they will be rejected.

The petition is asking US Citizenship and Immigration Services (US CIS) to obey the law (the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000) which requires USCICS to “grandfather” old cases. In other words, cases submitted under I-600A form must stay I-600 cases instead of becoming I-800 cases.

For more info (and more things to do!), go to my Carolina Hope blog post about it. Also consider passing this around to your friends and family.

Thanks! I won’t do this often. (By the way, I lifted the cute photo from Carolina Hope’s website. But I’m the one who took the photo, so I think I can do that. And no, he’s not available for adoption.)

Happy 28th birthday to my big brother!

Friday night we invited Josh’s Thai students from last semester over for food and games. They came and treated us to some Thai soup with rice and a Thai dessert. All four are pursuing graduate degrees in engineering- or science-related fields before returning to Thailand. Lha (“lah,” yellow shirt) is working on a Ph.D.  Dow (red striped shirt) is working on her Ph.D. and is married to a judge in Thailand. This year her mother and 21-month-old son came to Texas to be with her as she studies far away from home. Mook (“moke,” in shorts) is also working on her Ph.D, and Boat is working on his MA and plans to stay for Ph.D. work. Boat came to UTA after being an exchange work/travel student at Six Flags where he did “all sorts of things.”

After we ate and looked at wedding pictures, Josh asked for a short Thai lesson concerning the Thai tones. In short the “word” na can be said five different ways meaning five totally different words, depending on the relative pitch of the vowel. After the lesson, we played a lively game of Jenga. The loser had to scoop the ice cream.

We are very pleased to announce that we have made another addition to our home. Since moving to Texas, Josh and I have been the looking into buying a digital piano. We were all set on buying one from Craigslist a few weeks ago, but the seller decided she couldn’t part with her piano and backed out the afternoon we were going to pick it up. Since then, I’ve continued to search Craigslist for another digital piano with no success. This morning, we returned to Guitar Center – where we had previously looked at digital pianos – and the rest is history….

In other news, today was my first day working for Earhard’s Main Street Music School. The school is less than a mile away from our apartment, and I’m looking forward to getting back into teaching piano. So far, I have one piano student, an adult beginner, scheduled for weekly lessons on Saturdays at 12. When I came back from teaching, my man had assembled our piano and I am enjoying it immensely.

On Sunday we decided to try playing a new game…

the pictures reveal the winner and her husband.

A few days back Amy posted about my new whiteboard. The scrawlings you saw on the board were preliminary notes for a presentation about the linguistic framework proposed by Charles-James Bailey, a presentation that I made today in Historical and Comparative Linguistics. You can see the presentation here, but you probably don’t want to. That’s okay. (The slide that you see here has a quote from Bailey I particularly liked.)

I got some positive feedback from my classmates about the 50-minute presentation (it was assigned as a 20-minute deal, but I got permission by email last night to go long). I mention the positive comments because — though directed to me — they belonged to my wife. Last night she patiently sat through my presentation (in its first draft) and made some pedagogical and organizational recommendations that resulted in a talk that actually made sense to the class. (The resulting presentation resembled the original draft … not at all!)

Thanks, Aim!

(Oh yeah, and she made me yummy pizza for when I got home.)