Allergies again

My allergies are acting up again. I was telling Andy I don't think they have ever been this bad and then he found an old blog post of mine in March 2008 where I said the exact same thing.

Same allergies just a different year. Next year, I will plan ahead and stock up on allergy meds.

This time of year is hard to get through in my opinion. It's not quite spring but winter is still lingering on. It's still cold but warm though. Let spring come!!

Morgan cannot stop talking about Monster Truck she tells the same story over and over again. It made quite an impression :) Next year, we'll all go.

Oman 2- Abraham

This event in Oman was probably one of the most life changing to me. There are some particular details one needs to understand about the culture to grasp some details about the story

1. In Oman culture, light colored skin was a desirable quality. much like skinniness or tallness is viewed as beauty (although distorted) in our culture. There were different shades of light skin with the lightest, olive colored, skin belonging to the native Omanians and the darker skin color belonging to those of more African descent

2. Oman was a foreigner friendly country and yet there were/are root arab/islamic traditions that are seemingly unbreakable

3. Houses are clumped together and referred to as compounds. The walls surrounding the houses are usually waist high and there are no guards of any sort. The garbage dumpster is located outside the compound across a dirt road (this is a key detail in the story)

4. We lived in a compound made up with various other families. 1st family was British and they ran the British council, 2nd family was scottish and he was a pilot who worked at the British base called ( thumb/ rait), 3rd family was from Palenstine who we frequnetly referred to as the family from Jordan (the country) cause we couldn't pronouce their last name. 4th family was us from America :)

5. The sultan (king of Oman) 'allowed' westerners, people from india, philipians, asian to have a compound where they atteneded church and where all the pastors lived. There were 2 church buildings where the various denominations held their services at different times (think of the gas and time people saved on church hopping!) The pastor of our small non-denominational church was named Ken and his wife Margaret. They were from Britan and with the best last name ever for a Brit ...Crummick sounds like crumb. Ken's love for people of every culture impacted my life greatly and has gave me a healthy view of Christ's love for everyone despite cultural differences. I contribute much of who I am today as a Christ follower to him and his wife's love for our family.....




One day our palenstian neighbors knocked on our door and we opened it to see them holding a baby, a brand new baby maybe a few hours old, in their arms. They quickly explained that they had found the baby on the ground right in front of our garbage container. They quickly handed the baby over to my older sister and left to their house. We were beyond shocked. The immensity/sadness of the whole situation was overwhelming. I vividly remember my mom crying and I was trying to grasp the enormity of why someone had left their baby by the garbage!!!...... We called the police. It was obvious that it wasn't our baby as the baby was definently Arab descent (explaining why our palestinian neighbors where so quick to hand off the baby)

The police took the baby to the hospital. We quickly called our pastor Ken as alot of the Philippian nurses at the hospital went to our church and thus Ken could find out what happened to the baby.....

Ken found out that the baby was o.k. and healthy and that the baby had apparently been delivered at that same local hospital as they could tell by the device on the umbilical cord. In that culture so much is not talked about or addressed even hidious and sad crimes. Babies out of wedlock are one of the many issues ignored and swept aside. As Ken talked to the nurses more they showed him that there was a room with several babies that had been abdoned and that there was another room with toddlers/preschoolers who had grown up in the hospital. Ken clearly heard God speak to him and tell him that this baby that we had found was like Abraham in that he would be the first of many babies that our church/community could change their lives just by holding/hugging/playing/talking to. And those babies were so hungry for love and affection and thrived on what we could give them.


So we all named the baby Abraham....


I couldn't even imagine how Abraham's mother felt and that the only option (she felt) for her was to throw her baby away??? That's despair....

Ken had his own speculations about what happened. First Abraham's skin showed that one of his parents was definently Arab. One could only speculate what type of situation Abraham had been conceived into. 2nd, our compound was the only compound where Westerners lived in that section of town. He thought Abraham was purposely left where the mother knew foreigners lived. 3rd, the baby was set in front of the dumbster...hmmm 4th He thought the mom actually went to see her son at the hospital as he grew up there....

When it was discovered that there were babies and children at the hospital our church formed groups where and Ken and a group of mothers plus me and my sibling would visit these babies weekly. Bring toys and just take them out of the cribs to give them affection. Love was never so simple.


I remember hearing Omani women comment on how beautiful Abraham was because of his light skin and then they would point or gesture to a darker baby and show distaste. So not surprisingly Abraham was eventually adopted by a loving Arab family. We had considered adopting Abraham as a family but when we further began to investigate our option, there wasn't any. Abraham was obviously Arab and the goverment wouldn't allow a Western family to adopt/rasie an Arab in a Christian home.

In the pictures above, my mom is holding Abrham and my sister is holding another one of the babies from the hospital. Where the person is standing to take the picture of our compound is where Abraham was found. The older couple is Ken and his wife Margaret.

Thoughts

Today was a hard day. I have never seen the movie or read the book The Shinning but I couldn't imagine being stuck inside for that long.

Caden is such a handsome boy. His personality is developing and he is a delight.

Andy and I are getting away for our anniversary in April. Each year we try out a new bed and breakfast in the area and this year, we're finally making it up to the lake. That weekend can't come soon enough...

Morgan is enjoying preschool so much. I think I am enjoying it more then her though :)

I have tried to enforce the rule in our house that only 1 child can cry at a time....that did not work today

First Day.....

So Andy and I have seriously been contemplated putting Morgan in Little Lites (the preschool at our church) since Morgan is potty trained. So today I went in to hand in our application and the teachers suggested that today be Morgan's first day because since the snow created a smaller classroom.. What the heck! So today was Morgan's first day in preschool!!!

I'm not sad at all!!. I'm excited that Morgan will make new Sadas (friends) and will have fun activities to do. She's been pretty bored at home and I am and have been running out of energy and activities to keep her energetic self preoccupied. Plus Caden can now get some good one on one time. Did I mention it's alot easier doing errands with one kid versus two. So yes, not sad at all. Maybe I'll be more reflective and meloncholy about sending our last kid away but that's for a different season.

Pictures are soon to come! Cheers to Little Lites ...

Chipped

Seems strange but every year around this time, I start to ponder about my chipped vertebrae. I know I've mentioned it previously and this is how it happened...I


I I lived in the middle east with my family of origin from the time I was 12 years old to about 15 years old. My dad worked for the government in the country of Oman and we lived in the city of Salalah. It was a great experience living there and contrary to popular belief, there are parts of the middle east that are great places. We had made friends with a family that was from New Zealand and they had a girl that was my age. We all went camping out in the sand dunes and when I say sand dunes I mean sand dunes. These things are huge. Some have at least a mile circumference around them. It was out in the middle of no where. In the states, the middle of no where could bring to thought some places like rural Nevada where the nearest town is a couple hundred people and where the nearest hospital is rural but has an emergency room. Rural where we were meant the nearest town consisted of a few flocks of goats and sheep and several families living together and the first aid center had band-aids to assist in an emergency (you'll see how this ties into the story)

We had camped with our friends once out there and after they moved back to New Zealand, our family decided to camp there alone with one of our Omani friends who's name is Siheed ( it means Happy in Arabic and proncounced sigh-heeed. That's who is in the 2 pictures). Our friends had left us a snowboard that we had used last time to sand board. No bindings, no boots, no nothing except bare feet standing on the board going staight down.

I was thrilled to keep trying this new sport and didn't realize instead of going full speed straight down one should carve from side to side. I vaguely remember the night before the accident but not much else. Apparently, I headed straight down on one of my runs and at the bottom hit a slight incline and without knowledge or equipment flew off of the board and hard onto the sand. The sand is packed so hard it's like hitting ice. I laid face down in the sand for a few seconds not breathing and my brother was just a few yards away and ran over and turned me face up and cleared the sand that was covering my face. I'm sure I lost some brain cells on that fall and if my brother hadn't been there I would have lost quite a few more!! I was unconscious for the next few hours as my parents raced me back to our home town a few hours away by car. Not before they stopped at the nearest town at the first aid clinic which offered band-aids to help. Thanks but on-wards. I regained consciousness half way through the ride back. There was a family we had come to know who's husband was from Egypt and a physician in the local hospital. X-rays and tests showed I had chipped one of my neck vertebraes and had suffered a concusion. I've been told for the next few weeks I couldn't remember much of anything including what time dinner was, although I had just asked 2 seconds ago.

Thank you, Jesus that I healed.

Potty Training and thoughts

Soo, I've been contemplating trying to potty train Morgan again. The first attempt 3 months ago did not go well and we reverted back to diapers after 2 days as mom was sick and tired of cleaning up poop and pee everywhere! I have been looking for signs to see if she is ready. Morgan's vocabulary has grown alot over the last 3 months and I could tell she was putting cause and effect together better. What was the clencher for me was when she was learning her numbers and put the 2 in the right place in the puzzle. She looked soo proud of her self and exclaimed I did it, I did it!!. ...That's when I decided to go for it.

Off came the diapers and out came the toliet. I decdied to do it cold turkey. She was happy to wear her panties. She peed on the carpet after 10 minutes and looked so surprised! I told her that it was yucko (new word, thanks papa!!) and that she had to keep Thomas the train (on her underwear dry not wet)...Worked like a charm!! She has been telling me when she has to go for over 36 hours and no diapers even at night...Dare I say it!!! I think she did it!!!! Go Morgan!!

OOh We did tell Morgan that in order to go to Little Lites and play with Sadahs (Morgan's word for friends) she had to not wear diapers....Maybe that did it.

On other thoughts, Andy is off tomorrow for 2 nights and 3 days in the Delta with his friends to do his airsoft stuff. I miss him already but I know I can do it...Just one day at a time

Trust

I'm going to a great Bible study on James that I'm really enjoying and getting into. On our discussion last night on the 2nd chapter of James, somebody said the phrase how you don't have to trust in order to show mercy. I have always paralleled the two and thus have not shown mercy where I should be.

We also discussed the difference between trust and faith. Those two seem identical.

Wouldn't it seem that you couldn't have trust without faith?...Good thoughts