Easter Day!

We had an early start to the day. Here we are at the Easter breakfast at church at about 7 am:

Dinner was at Chris and Fiona's house; here's a pic of the table that Alyssa and Chris set:

Kieran made the place cards (Great Job!)
Donnalee made the fruit salad

Me cooking (candid, unplanned shot, BTW!!)

All of us (minus Grandma, Jim & Donnalee....more on that later...)

Dessert:

Colm on his daddy's lap

Adorable shot of Colm with Adam and Erika

Conor and Kieran at the computer

Playing Wii (Adam finally found a hat that fits...LOL)

Alyssa and Colm playing

All three kids at the computer

Our Easter didn't turn out quite as it had been planned. I offered to make dinner at Chris and Fiona's as Fiona was away on business (we missed you, btw!). We no sooner got there when we had to call 911 for Grandma. She wasn't feeling well, had a fever of 104 degrees and was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia and bacteremia. Jim and Donnalee left shortly after the ambulance left to meet her in the ER, and then followed her to her room once they had one assigned to her. So unfortunately, we had three less attendees at Easter Dinner. Donnalee kept us updated as the day wore on, but were unable to return for dinner. We missed them all and send our prayers to Grandma for a speedy recovery!

In The Garden

Song by Michael Card, sung by Kurt on Maundy Thursday

Easter Eve

While I was slicing tomorrow's ham:


There was a mean game of Monopoly going on:

On Clouds and Flowers

Cutie Pies

Jamie's newest purchase...soy nut butter. We all tasted it, it's very similar to peanut butter. It's a bit of a different color, and the consistency is a teeny bit different, but other than that, I don't think, for the most part that one would notice the difference.

Soy nut butter cookies, here we come....LOL!!

Donate Life!

I attended a transplant conference at Lehigh Valley Hospital on Friday. They had very informative topics, all of which had something that applied to my practice in the office. Our transplant patients are the most favorite part of my job. The majority of them are very appreciative of the gift they have been given, be it from a deceased or living donor. The topics presented yesterday included pregnancy in transplant, tissue typing, disease transmission in transplant, gastric bypass in the chronic kidney disease patient preparing for transplant, and my most favorite....a panel of patients who received transplants talked about their experiences. I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the crowd after they were done.

I don't know the story about this quilt, other than I heard one of the staff of the transplant team mention that it was opened to any of the patients to make their own block. One of them was made by one of our office patients! I think it is just beautiful and a wonderful tribute to both the patients and transplant team staff.

Prankster!

I should have known I was in for trouble! I heard Adam at the computer on April Fools' Eve looking up different pranks to play for April Fools' Day....shoulda' known....but didn't.....

I couldn't squeeze any toothpaste out of my toothpaste container OR get anything out of my body wash yesterday morning when I got in the shower. I fought and fought to get toothpaste out of the container, I had both hands on it squeezing the might out of it. I ran hot water over the opening figuring there was toothpaste clogged in it....I stuck one of my toothbrush bristles in the opening, it seemed like all was fine, but.......nothing worked. Fortunately, I had an unopened container of toothpaste that I turned to...and had no problems!

Then I get in the shower, try to squeeze my Pomegranate Soft Soap out of the bottle......nothing. I'm like, 'What the heck?!?!?' How could this be? What are the chances?!?!!?

ADAM!!!!!!!!!

(He fessed up to me last night that he had put saran wrap in both the toothpaste and the body soap which prevented anything from coming out. In addition, had he not overslept yesterday morning, he had planned on switching all the drawers around in the kitchen! Gotta love 'im!!)

Shtuff

I'm being invaded by Amish Friendship dough! It was time to make more tonite. I decided instead of making two loaves of bread, I'd put it all in a 9 x 13 pan and hope for the best!

It looks and tastes yummy!

The absolute best grilled chicken sandwich on a homemade roll from LaBella's in Easton!

Our saxophone playin' nephew, Kieran

And then there's our drum poundin' nephew, Conor

Pic that Alyssa made to email to Stellan's picture gallery

Thanks, Julie!

One of our wonderful patients in the office brings us these yummy noodles when she comes for appointments. She was in this past week and brought this container for me. There's noodles, chicken, cabbage, and red peppers in it. It worked out perfectly...I'm normally off on Thursdays, which is the day she was in for her appointment. But because I had to make a big stock pot of soup for church on Wednesday night, I had switched my day off to then and ended up working on Thursday. Kurt goes to a men's Bible study at 7, thus I don't have a lot of time to cook, especially when I often don't get home from work until after 6. This was still warm when I got home, so all I needed to do was throw it in the microwave to warm it up a bit more and we were set. I had picked up side salad's at McD's ($1 for a salad, can't beat that when you're in a hurry!), so we had noodles and salad. It was delish! Thanks Julie!!

Best Laid Plans

Jamie and Josslyn were supposed to come visit today and help me make a huge stockpot of soup to take to church tonite for our Wednesday evening Lenten supper, but since Josslyn was being a little on the gretzy, not so happy, side, Jamie decided it was probably best just to sit tight at home. That left me with a nice big container of yummy egg salad that I had gotten yesterday at Wegman's for us for lunch. On a whim, half joking, I called my sister-in-law, Martha (you know her, the one married to Fernando??) and asked her if she wanted to come for lunch. Now mind you, it was already noon when I called. A friend of hers had just arrived and they had planned on going through Arby's drive thru for lunch. Well, instead, they went through my drive-thru...LOL! We had a lovely, totally unplanned, visit. (And Jamie, jsyk, you owe me a visit!! I'll get us more egg salad!)


This is a picture of Adam's traffic light that he made for his honors Physics project. The two little blocks in the middle are the actual traffic lights, when he gets to school tomorrow, he plans on coloring in the red, yellow and green using Sharpies. In addition to the light he designed, he needs to hand in calculations used to design the project. Rather him than me....LOL! He's so good as stuff like this, he'll make a great engineer....


I'd like to ask you to pray for this little guy named Stellan. He's been through quite a lot in his short little life. To make a long story short, he was diagnosed with heart failure while in utero, doctors were not sure he would even survive. He did, was born full term and appeared to have been healed fully. The poor little guy was admitted to the hospital three days ago with a heart rate close to 300 beats per minute, and has been going in and out of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) since then. If you click on the picture, it will take you to his mama's blog, which explains his condition in detail. I don't know any of the family, have just been following her blog since she was pregnant, but have come to feel as though I know them through her posts. Your prayers would be appreciated by them, I'm sure. Thanks!

Prom!

Ok, so they didn't go to the prom, but it's still prom weekend! They decided it was going to be too costly to go to the prom this year. Instead they decided to go out to eat at a nice restaurant. A promise had been made by his Auntie Fifi months ago that he could borrow the Lotus to go to the prom. Permission was secured to still allow him to use it even though there was no prom. They had dinner last evening at the Hanoverville Road House, then friends came over around 11 pm and they had a bonfire til after 1 a.m.

Getting ready for the bonfire

Adam couldn't wait for everyone, he and Erika went over and started the fire before everyone arrived

A picture for Adam for remembrance sake, he won't see this parked here again for quite some time

The aftermath

Going to clean up (some people have their own mode of transportation...LOL)

Adam and Erika in heaven!

Pasta!

Brown chicken breasts in oil

Add seasoning

Cut up into small pieces

Steam broccoli

Add cooked pasta

Toss all together and add some fresh Parmesan cheese

Enjoy with tossed salad!

Randomnicity

(Is that a word??!?!!?)

Pulled pork plate from Grumpy's BBQ Roadhouse
(Pork, coleslaw, 'smothered potatoes', cornbread)
YUMMY!!

Hangin' with his buds

Playing with my Amish friendship bread...LOL!

Olympiad Update

1. Bridge broke, didn't place.

2. Water clock wasn't accurate. He tried to explain it to me, but I have no clue what the heck he was talking about!

3. Placed fourth in the 'Problem Solving' portion (see medal above). I didn't even know they were doing this and Adam said that they didn't even prepare for it! Turns out he and Richard were the only ones who placed in any events from their school.

I'm still proud of him, they put a lot of time and effort into the bridge and water clock. (Even if they waited until the last minute....LOL!!)

Good Luck Richard and Adam!!

Here is Adam and Richard's final bridge. The first pic is what it looked like last night when they finished putting it together. Tonight they sanded the bridge and drilled holes in it to make it lighter. His ex-Chemistry teacher must really like Adam because she let him bring home her ($300) electronic scale to measure the bridge as they were sanding it and drilling the holes in it. Adam says the final weight is 24.8 grams.

Apparently not everyone signed up for all the projects and they were given this additional one to create. It is called a water clock. He and Richard were busy doing math calculations all evening trying to figure out how to create this clock so that so much water would flow out in 5 minutes. It's almost midnight, Richard has gone home and Adam is still at trying to get it just right. I've been in the kitchen several times now and either the water emptied in less than 5 minutes....or it took over 5 minutes to empty. The pic shown below has the water draining from the bottom, which emptied too quickly. They changed it to have it drain from the side (see video) and then it took too long! His next step was to shorten the tube that comes out the side. I asked him if they give them any leeway, like 10 seconds either way. He said they would be penalized 100 points for every 10 seconds....there goes that idea!! I hope he figures it out soon...he needs to be at school by 6:30 a.m. in the morning!