Day 49: A Public Apology

Posted by: Cris

If you are a kid who was born in Hawaii, lived the first year of her life in Hawaii and are really glad to be back in Hawaii this fall, how do you spend every single morning for the first 20 minutes after you wake-up when you are visiting a cold snowy northwest Ohio? The last few mornings, Nova has gone from bed, directly to in front of the fireplace with her blue cuddle blanket and been perfectly content to just sit there for awhile before moving on to breakfast.
With everyone away at school and work, the girls have spent the last couple days just hanging around the house, playing in Aunt Coral's bathtub...
...and generally just playing around the house.
With a good cuddle blanket and a good book, even the middle of the hallway is a good place to settle down.
The girls have been staying up late with their cousins so by naptime, they are pooped.
Tonight was the Lake Middle School's 6th and 7th grade band Christmas concert.
This gave us some time while we were waiting to take some Christmas themed pictures with the girls.






Tonight prompted me to realize that I needed to issue a public apology to anyone who was forced at some point in the past to attend a 6th grade band concert to hear me play. Now, by the time you reach 7th grade and have been playing an instrument for over a year, the music actually sounds like the song you are playing, but in 6th grade, it's a different story.

Luckily, the 7th grade was there to save the day. Alex and Lyndsey played in a cool quartet (Lyndsey on flute and Alex on trumpet)

Lyndsey only chose to play flute because they get to sit in the front row (in her case, front and center).
Lyndsey swapped back and forth every other song between oboe and flute.


Alex swapped back and forth between trumpet and french horn but because she wasn't sitting in the front row, there are no pictures of her this time around.

Word from Afghanistan is that things are going well. Intel suggesting that there was an attack on the FOB planned for a certain time yesterday morning didn't pan out so Emilie didn't get called out of bed to go to the aid station at the crack of dawn. She was happy to be able to stay bundled in her warm bed for a couple extra hours. Because Emilie is the only doc for the aid station, she is super duper busy, generally working until 10:00 every night. But, when I talked to her today (we finally got a good skype connection) she seemed to be taking it all in stride, keeping a very positive outlook on things, and doing really well. Thank you for all the prayers, support and care packages. It is hard to believe it has been 7 weeks today. It has gone fast in some ways but it still feels like April is a LOOOOONG way away.