The Harvest Holler

Samuel likes to be in the bathroom with me while I’m getting ready for the day. This “getting ready” consists of shaving, putting on deodorant, brushing teeth, etc. Sam generally only gets to do this on the weekends since I’m at work before anyone else is out of bed during the week.

A week or so ago I was due to dispose of my previous set of contact lenses and use a new pair (twice a month). Sam was around so I explained to him every step along the way.

I told him:
“You need to get one package out for each eye. I need a -6.50 for my right eye and a -6.00 for my left.” (I’m blind, I know). “I’m going to get some Saline solution out because I always add little bit before I put a lens in. I start with my right eye so I’m going to peel back the cover in order to get to the contact lens.” (I peel it back.) “See? There it is. That’s Daddy’s contact lens and it goes in my eye.”

(I take it out and put it in the palm of my hand. I add some solution to it.)

“What’s that?” He says.
“It’s a contact lens.”
“What’s that?”
“A contact lens. It goes in my eye so I can see you clearly.”

(I put it in my eye and wiped my hand and face off.)

“Okay, I’m going to dump this package in the sink and then I want you to throw it in the garbage. Can you throw this one away for Daddy please?”

(Sam picks it up and looks at it closely before dropping it into the garbage can.)

“Alright, now for the left eye.”
“What’s that?” He says pointing to the package.
“This has the contact lens for my left eye.”

(I peel back the cover of the container to expose the lens.)

“See? This one goes in my left eye.”

(I add some more solution and put it in. Sam looks on patiently knowing we need to dump this package and throw it away as well.)

“Okay, I’m going to dump it in the sink and then you can throw it away.”

(He smiles with excitement knowing he gets to help in the ‘putting-in-new-contact-lenses-process’. I hand him the container and he hesitates before dropping it into the garbage. I could tell he had reservations about releasing it because he knew it was the last one to throw away and for some reason he wasn’t quite ready to depart with it.)

“C’mon, throw it away and we will go eat breakfast with Mom and Luke.”

(He releases it, hovering over the garbage wondering if he made the right decision. I turn the light off and leave to go to the kitchen. He is right behind me. Some time passes. I finish eating and while I’m cleaning up I hear him start to laugh. Megan is feeding Luke some rice cereal and didn’t notice what he was up to.)

“Look at this.” Megan says to me laughing.

(I go over and look. Sam has strategically placed a Cheerio under each eye, pretending they were contact lenses. He’s laughing because when he blinks his eyelashes keep hitting the one.)

Samuel just recently turned 2 (December 5th) and anyone with kids that have reached the age of 2 know how impressionable their little minds are. When I leave for work in the morning everyone else in the house is asleep except for my pal Tanner (our Australian Terrier). This means that my wife, Megan, is responsible for getting herself up and ready along with both boys. It’s quite often that the rest of my bunch gets up roughly the same time during the week. Consequently, Megan is often doing her makeup while Sam casually watches on while playing with my deoderant, trucks, stuffed animals and books. Sam learned how to put on deoderant, swing a bat, throw a ball, make truck sounds with his mouth and many other things by watching me. He learned how to put on makeup by casually watching his mother.

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas with Megan’s side of the family. Sam took his usual afternoon nap in a spare bedroom in Megan’s parent’s (Tom and Linda) house. Linda forgot that she left a makeup bag sitting on a couch in the spare bedroom Sam was sleeping in. When Sam woke up from his nap, he took it upon himself to see what was in the bag. Once he discovered the items in the bag are the same items that “mom” uses on her face, he decided to take that challenge of applying makeup to his own face…and his sweater, pants, and couch. His laughing indicated his nap was over so Linda went to go get him. Sam had applied lipstick to his nose and cheeks and mascara to his eyelashes (surprisingly). Of course, it was all over his hands as well.

We took the following pictures (click for a larger size).

It’s been exactly one month that my online photo album has been unavailable. I’m glad to be able to report that it is now back online.

I invested some time researching what current solutions are available and decided to go with Gallery 2 (G2). G2 has many more features than G1 ever had and it appears to be more stable. It is just as wide open as G1 so you can skin it or strip it however you like, which I like. The only thing that would have been easier when it came time to migrate from G1 to G2 was if someone told me there was a nice migration tool built in to G2 (Plugin installed by default and initialized). Once I discovered this handy tool I blew away what I already recreated and simply migrated what I had on G1. It brought over hit counters, dates, comments, etc. Like I said before, I stripped out a bunch of features from G2 that I know I’ll never need, but are nice to know exist. The current skin (theme) is my own modified version of Gecko.

Let’s hope the G2 ride is less bumpy than G1 (bump 1, bump 2).

As you may have noticed, the official online photo album for TheIowaHarvest is not working. The problem is due to the fact that I wasn’t proactive to get a solution in place when my hosting company upgraded the installed version of PHP on the server from 4 to 5. I’m taking the blame because the upgrade was inevitable. The upgrade however, was like the Lord’s return. It was inevitable in that it was going to happen, it’s just that I didn’t know the day nor the hour. The difference of course was that had I been paying attention to the TCH Forums I would have known this information. Regardless, I’m forced to change my Gallery version or use a different tool. This change will not happen over night so I apologize for the inconvenience.
I will post updates as to the status.

It was January of 2007 and things didn’t look promising for our Twin Pines Baptist Church softball team. In fact, things didn’t start to look promising for quite some time. From a coaching perspective, I think one of the worse things that could happen would be not having enough players on the roster to have a team. A close second is having too many. Ten guys that are healthy, faithful, and responsible would be ideal.

March came and after much talk it was time to see who was serious. I put a sign-up sheet on the foyer table just outside our church auditorium. For a small church and a first year team none of us knew exactly what we were getting into. I created a spot on the roster for folks to indicate their status; ‘R’ for regular and ‘S’ for sub. When it was all said and done, to my surprise we had enough players to at least enter a team in the Cedar Rapids Independent Church League. In fact, we had 14 regulars and two subs. We were pushing the discomfort level I mentioned earlier about having too many active players.

I scheduled some practices and those took us through the end of March and April. We still were in a position of uncertainty since there were some folks who just simply never showed up to the practices. Their level of commitment continued into the regular season and that helped solve my problem of getting 14 guys into a 7 inning game. Add in family vacations, work, church camps, and injuries, and that helped bring us down to 10 or 11 for a good number of the games.

What started off as ugly wins gradually turned into stellar defense and timely hitting. We surprised ourselves at how well we did. In fact, we won our first 9 games before handing the opposition a win in our 10th game through lousy defense and a shorthanded staff. With such, we still only lost by a run. We went on to win our last game of the season to finish 10-1 attributing the other three games to rain-outs.

We no doubt surprised the other churches in the ‘B’ League as well as ourselves. Everyone had a good time and is excited for next year. I have a handful of items that I will definitely do different next year knowing what I know now.

Luke Thomas
Date: June 29, 2007
Time: 0728 CST
Weight: 8 lb 11 oz.
Length: 20.75 in.

My wife is trying to beat the odds by delivering our second child on the due date with her doctor on call. From what I understand this is pretty rare, and it happened when Sam was born. I’m not sure what she can do to help her odds, but she is hoping. Of course it would be nice to have such a rare event happen twice, but at the same time I think I would rather Luke surprise us and come on a Monday so taking the weekly photo will only encompass one night instead of two (Monday for Sam and some other day for Luke). This Sunday marks the two week out point and I’m not convinced she can hold out for another two weeks…she’s great with child.

CBS News: Ex-Sailor Accused Of Supporting Terrorism

Surprisingly enough, when the article broke on national news, I pictured who I thought it would be. I called my wife from work and asked her to get out my Cruise Book from the USS Benfold during 2001. I asked her to look for the this guy in my book while I described what he looked like. She said she couldn’t find a “Paul Hall.” I asked her to look for “Hassan Abujihaad” since that is how I knew him while serving in the Persian Gulf. Sure enough, there he was. Right in the middle of my Cruise Book. I saw this guy daily while on the Bedfold and even stood next to him in the chow line numerous times. If I’m not mistaken I think we were even in the same berthing compartment. Spooky.

Today Megan had her ultrasound at St. Lukes Hospital…or would it be considered Luke’s ultrasound? If that hint wasn’t obvious enough then the statement “it’s a boy” should be. This will be number two which is great for not only for Samuel, but also for Noah, their cousin. My sister and her husband just had their first boy a month prior so Luke and Noah will be close in age which will be fun. Like last time, we asked the ultrasound tech not to tell us what she thought the gender is unless it is obvious, and it must have been. We are excited to see how much Luke will look like Sam. Included are a few of the ultrasound pictures.

3D-Profile

2D-Profile

2D-Hand

It used to be that when Samuel was first born my wife accused me of talking to him like he was a dog. Sadly, I’m sure that was true. For my defense, I’m a first time dad who had never held a baby until our son was born. I wanted to make holding Samuel for the first time all the more special. Samuel will be 10 months old next week and I wouldn’t say I talk to him like a dog anymore. However, I’m actually noticing myself talk to Tanner (our dog) like I talk to Samuel. I guess it’s all or nothing with me.