Evening Walk

Flowers

Photos of My Babies

Mom 'n' Beth

101 Places to Put a Guinea Pig - by Leah & Kristine

{please read captions in Kristine's voice for all fuzzy little animals.  If you've never heard that voice before, then I guess you just haven't hung out at the Senio's enough!}

1.) Hello everybodyz! I is a guinea pig who has a bored owner and  a bored big sister. They is stickin me in weird places... like this scary jungle!

2.) Now I is in a fuzzy boot. I wuv the fuzzy boot

3.) Clocks are stupid. Pweese let me down! I is gonna fall :'-(

4.) Now I is readin' the dictionary cuz i is smart!

5.) Oohhh I hate you guyz! Dis is so cramped my nose is squisheed

6.) hmmm... 

7.) Now you guyz left me stuck out on a thingy. I ssure hope dose dogs dont eat me!

8.) Seriously guyz.. not funnny!

9.) I don't like you meaniesss. I is gonna hide under Leah's hair now until you go away. 

LOLZ

Copied from http://www.losteyeball.com/index.php/2007/06/19/56-worstbest-analogies-of-high-school-students/

56 worst/best analogies of high school students

June 19th, 2007 by admin

Apparently the washingtonpost held a contest in which high school teachers sent in the “worst” analogies they’d encountered in grading their students’ papers over the years. (I place “worst” in quotes because many of these actually strike me as quite witty). The top 25 of these have been circulating around the “Sandra Bullock” (”net”, get it?) recently, but I decided to post all 56 that I was able to find. Here they are, in their order of objective funniness (in my opinion):

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
12. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
13. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
14. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
15. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at asolar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
17. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
19. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
20. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
21. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
23. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it hadrusted shut.
24. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
25. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
26. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
27. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
28. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
29. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
31. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
33. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
34. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
35. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
36. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
37. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
38. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
39. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
40. Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
41. They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
42. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
43. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
44. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
45. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
46. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
47. The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
49. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
50. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
52. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
53. You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
54. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
55. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
56. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

Hangin' With Friends

Open My Eyes to See All The Real People Around Me

My mom sent me this blog today - www.bowensheart.com  Not knowing what it was, I casually began flipping through the posts until my eye caught the "Our Story" link.  Drifting through the information, Sanctus Real stood out to me.  What?  Re-reading, I realized this blog is about the lead singer for Sanctus Real, Matt Hammit, and his wife Sarah.  More though, I realized that it had begun in April; 5 months before the birth of their third baby.  This blog is dedicated to Bowen Matthew - Small Victorious One, God's gift. Why this name?  Because Bowen had an underdeveloped heart.  Even in the womb at four months after conception, he was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS).  In normal words, this boils down to the fact that this barely formed baby had a heart that will be forever too small.  The blog was created to keep family and friends updated on the baby's development, and later on, birth.   

Bowen was born on September 10th, 2010.  Already, he has undergone a few surgeries.  But there was one that stuck out to me in particular.  I am going to post, word for word, what Matt and Sarah posted because I can not begin to capture the emotion felt in these words.  First though, I wanted to post a picture of Bowen and the rest of the family so you can see this family's life with faces attached.   

September 14

We want you all to know that Bowen is doing well on life support today. Sarah and I are still processing what we saw and felt last night and aren’t able to put it into words at this point. We are going to spend some time at Bowen’s bedside today and then spend some much needed quality time with our girls. Please know that all your prayers and messages have been a great support to us. We are so grateful for each one of you. We’ll keep you posted on his progress over the next couple days.

September 15

A couple of hours ago, we received a copy of Bowen’s blood tests and vitals.  Sarah and the doctor joked that we should “frame it, because it doesn’t get much better than that.” His body is doing very well off of life support.

Thank you for all your prayers! We ask that you continue to pray for Bowen because we have been told, and have now experienced first hand, that his condition will make for a bumpy road with unexpected turns.

Upon receiving some good news, I feel that it’s easier to share the details of what happened yesterday morning when Bowen crashed. I’ve put together excerpts from my journal and have taken down Sarah’s perspective in hopes of giving you a glimpse of what we actually went through. I have also posted some photos and another song demo that holds new meaning to me. I had to compress the song demo to a low quality for my blog, but I still wanted you to hear it. I also want to warn you that one of the photos may seem shocking to some of you, but we want you to grasp the reality of what we experienced over the past two days…

On the morning of September 14^th, at 2:13 am, Sarah received a phone call from the hospital. Bowen’s nurse exclaimed, “We’re starting compression, please come quickly!”

Sarah yelled for me to get out of bed. I jumped up as fast as I could and we raced to the hospital. We took the elevator to the fifth floor and ran down the hallway to the PCTU. After passing through the double doors to his unit, we turned the corner to see Bowen’s seemingly lifeless body being resuscitated. The nurse had her fingers between the walls of his chest, pumping his little heart, switching her hands every few minutes from fatigue. I was shocked that saving someone’s life could look so violent. They rushed us to his side to be near him in, what could have been, his final moments. All Sarah could do was stare down at the bed sheets, hold Bowen’s toes, and pull his blanket close to her face. I cradled her and wept into the back of her sweatshirt as I held Bowen’s hand and prayed. We were frozen in that moment while people all around us were shouting numbers, calling out orders, and working together  to save Bowen’s life. It was like a scene from a movie. My iPod was still on repeat near his bed from earlier, and was playing loudly through a pair of speakers. As the words “I am restless ‘til I rest in You” washed over us, we knew that God was either ushering Bowen out, or ushering in a miracle. When the song “Restless” began to fade, I reached to put on the song “All of Me” that I posted the lyrics to on August 22^nd. After almost forty minutes had past, Sarah and I were waiting for them to call out a time of death. Instead, they pulled us into another room so they could start the process of putting him on life support. We honestly thought it was a last ditch effort to save his life, and that he was already gone. For the next half-hour, we struggled to accept, and began to grieve, what we thought was the loss of our precious baby boy. At one point, I remember praying, “Father, if this is even a fraction of the pain that you felt when you gave us Your only Son…we thank You for letting Jesus die on the cross. Put into motion the redemptive and healing power of Your Son’s death to spare the life of ours.”

Shortly after we prayed, a nurse entered the room and told us what we never expected to hear.  She said he was alive and he had been successfully placed on life support, or ECMO. Sarah remained in the other room while I returned to where Bowen was. From a distance, I watched as the surgeon reached into my son’s chest to look for what may have gone wrong. After he was finished, he covered Bowen’s chest, looked up at me with smiling eyes and said, “Hey Dad, you still have a kid in there.”

Re-read that post.  A hint of what this family is living right now has been captured in those words.  Imagine your baby, its chest open, with a lady's hand inside the chest cavity, holding a living heart, and pumping it with her fingers to keep your baby alive.  

I think sometimes I miss humanity.  This is humanity.  Utter humanity.  The lead singer of Sanctus Real.  Who knew his name before I told you?  And who knew this about his life?  Probably not most of us.   However, I bet you did know the name of his band, some of the songs, song lyrics and the title of the latest album.  But now knowing what you do about his life, if you re-listen to his newest album Pieces Of A Real Heart, suddenly, you can  connect.  The pain, fear, confusion, yet trust, show through in all of these songs.  The album was not written by a Christian "rockstar."  No, they were written by a daddy, whose only son might die before he can ever even understand that he is alive.  This is the very reason why I miss humanity.  I have no problem assessing a life, and assuming that everything is alright with them; but I want people to know that my life has problems?  If everyone thinks like I do, then we're all gonna miss the big picture.  

This world is not our home.  We were created for something better.  "Hope is born of longsuffering hearts" and how can I hope unless I have something in my life that seem utterly hopeless?  When it seems utterly hopeless, that is when God is strongest and brings the hope for the hopeless.  

Pics

On my way home from work yesterday I couldn't help but stop and get some pics.  Such a beautiful fall afternoon..

Puppies!