Really long blog posts can be tiring to read...

It's been a long couple of weeks, this weekend seemed kind of long as well. (More on that soon.)

I got a new hat. It's got a sewn on felt symbol on it.

It is also 'weathered' looking, so the hat look like you could have been wearing it for the last 20 years. Didn't come with sweat stains, though. Not the bags under the eyes. This was Thursday, I think.

One day last week we had fried chicken (cornmeal batter), mashed potatoes (horseradish and garlic flavored), and zucchini from the garden. I think Tara and I liked it better than the girls did. Adam eats everything within reach.

Emma had her two week Chinese immersion boot camp. She seemed to enjoy it.

Here she is practising for the ribbon dance...

...and a blurry picture of the ribbon dance itself.

Another blurry picture. I don't know why I try to take pictures at these school functions. I never get them in right.

Head shoulders, knees, and toes, I think. Emma is starting to walk around the house saying things in Chinese. We need to get on the stick, otherwise she will start teaching her sisters, and we they will take over the house, using their foreign language skills...

I got a short video in of the ribbon dance. Still a little blurry, but you get the idea.

The girls have been watching too much Disney channel. That week at Grandma White's house did it, I think. Every since one of them need to be reprogrammed...

In other news, I have been pretty busy at work. I've got a security software upgrade I am trying to get through, it's sucking a lot of time and effort. We had a load test on Thursday, but the guy running the load test didn't really get the thing running the way it was supposed to. This means we are still not sure if the problems we had last month are actually fixed or not. School starts in 3 weeks, hard to say if we will know if things are alright before then. (Every keep your fingers crossed.) Add to it things like occasionally working on the house, spending time at the Stake center, dealing with outages at work (weird power outage in there), and just general piddling my time away, and I was pretty tired by the end of last week.

On Saturday, I was putting siding up on the back of the house. It was really nice outside, somewhere in the 70's. By about 1pm or so, I started not feeling completely right. My legs started aching, and I started seeing spots against the white siding pretty badly. (It was cloudy out, not like a burning sun shining on it.) Anyway, I stopped doing the siding, cleaned up the back patio so the girls could go out and play, and came inside. By evening, I was sore all over, with a headache and pain in the ears. By 8pm, I was under a blanket, alternating between burning to a crisp and freezing cold. I also started a little bit of a sore throat. I pretty much stayed down for the next 36 hours. I got up this morning, Tara took me to the urgent care, we both had strep throat. Not sure what caused it to knock me out like that, must have been how worn out I had been ahead of time. I will be non-contagious sometime tomorrow.

I still have painting to do in the house - here, there, pretty much everywhere. I need to build shelves in the pantry, both bathrooms, and the hallway closet. I did manage to get Tara's quilt rack back on the wall tonight. I also have to figure out what to do about the laundry room doors. (Level on top, not at all level on the bottom...) We need to get Chad out of here in the next day or two, because the well is running dry.

Tara got a letter in the mail today, showing pictures of the van running a red light last month in Washington. It certainly was "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" on that trip the young men took. I wonder how I can show the letter and fine to the young men's president in the manner that causes the most effect...

We still have about 30 boxes or so that have not been unpacked. We need to find some people to take the empties, but I didn't get to make the announcement in Priesthood meeting yesterday, because I was in bed. I also missed my home teaching appointments. I need to call my companion to see what happened. Hopefully he still went.

Anyway, tonight hopefully I (and Tara) will get a good night sleep. Tomorrow is new toothbrush day, and I plan to switch out my bipap stuff. No sense reinfecting after I get better...

We will ignore the fact for the moment that being sick sets me back two days worth of work... I guess it will start all over again in a few days. Somehow I missed fitting in a vacation this summer...