Singin' and Soccerin' (plus pizza!)

The karaoke night at Grace was a lot of fun... turned out it was sort of a "karaoke and dancing" night! Every three or four songs they played a track from a dance CD and everyone who wanted to could do the Grapevine or the Electric Slide or whatever. (I don't do group dancing, so I just had fun watching.) Cathy and I did get to sing the duet we've been working on, but it was a rough performance... the person before us had turned Cathy's microphone off (!) and she didn't realize it until a couple of lines into her first verse (which is solo D'OH!!!), and then the track was so loud that we actually literally couldn't hear ourselves singing. But I think we did a good job on it considering the adverse circumstances. Cathy also jumped in and sang background vocals on a couple of songs... "Sweet Home Alabama" was one. Mikey sang sort of an impromptu duet of lead vox on that one. He also sang the Tree63 version of "Blessed Be Your Name" with me singing along... what he didn't know was that I held the mic as far away from my mouth as I could and sang really loud so mostly only he could hear me helping him keep his place, and everyone could hear HIM sing! Mwa ha ha! So everybody got to hear Mikey singing it! For my part, I sang some BTO "Takin' Care Of Business" which is on the high side for me but I was able to spit it out OK. People seemed to respond well, so the end result must have been acceptable!

We went over to Mom and Dad's house to pick up Hannah, and we sang our same song, "Pure", for them, and then we followed up with "Revelation Song". They really liked it and want us to call their music minister and come sing at their church sometime! By that time Cathy was worn out from practicing all day and then singing all night... she totally wore herself out!

The next day we went out to one of Mikey's soccer team's games. Turns out we picked a good one... afterward everybody went out to Incredible Pizza for an end-of-season party! We had a terrific time! Mikey hasn't been able to play for most of the season because of his broken arm (which will be splinted until the week after the final soccer tournament) but he's still "part of the team" and he'll be back on the same team next season. In fact, next week when we get back from Cub Scout camp we'll probably head out and see if his team is still playing tournament games. They've only lost one single game all season (!), so they should go far!

We realized at Incredible Pizza that one of the couples whose kid is on Mikey's soccer team not only have a mutual friend with us (the boy was in a drama class with the daughter of a good friend of ours from church), but they actually both went to ORU at the same time as I did... in fact, they met in a class at ORU! I always thought the dad looked a little familiar. It's a small town after all!

End of May Update

Wow... way too long without an update! Well, Hannah's doing fine... she took some antibiotics and some Robitussin and a breathing treatment or five, and now she's back to her regular self. One day, though, she was having trouble eating because she couldn't breathe and eat at the same time, and she got angrier than I've ever seen her get. She's usually very even-tempered. So we're really glad she's feeling better!

School ended for Tulsa Public Schools last Friday; we set up Mikey's schedule to match Tulsa Public, but he actually hasn't finished all his assignments yet so he's still "in school". Probably he'll finish tomorrow.

Yesterday at church we got to see some friends we haven't seen in quite a while... Mike & Amy! We love those guys! :)

Today we got to get our air conditioner fixed. I say that as though it was a privilege to pay $360 to a stranger for hanging out in your back yard for a couple of hours. Actually, though, it is a privilege to sleep with cool air again! We've been sweating it for several days. We got a crack in the pipes and lost a little freon, and you know how that goes. No freon, no cool air! But now we're good.

Finally... and we'd like to invite anyone who's reading this on Thursday or Friday... tomorrow night we're going to a cool new thing at Grace called "Friday Night F.U.E.L." and it's kind of a karaoke and games night. Free to anyone who wants to show up! Cathy and I are all pumped to do a duet we've been working on. If you're in town on May 29, come on out at 7pm and maybe you'll get to hear us sing!

Bed And Not Breakfast

So, Saturday night I was working on fixing our computer. The thing has been having issues for weeks now, and it's really driving me crazy... it's been keeping Mikey from doing his homeschool, which is almost all on the computer. So about midnight Cathy and I were wrapping up a Scrabble game that we were playing while the computer was running some long process. Mikey was asleep in bed, and so was Hannah. We heard something from Hannah's room that sent us running into the room... Hannah gasping for breath. Apparently she had been around something... pollen, mold spores, dryer sheet fragrance, something... that caused an allergic reaction. Hannah has a history of breathing weirdness anyway, and there's nothing like hearing your baby sucking hard for air to send you running to dial Nine One One!

After the ambulance got there, I called Mom's cell to see if she had given her anything unusual to eat while Hannah had been hanging out at Meme's that afternoon, and Mom answered right away. At midnight Mom answered right away. This was because she was already at the hospital E.R. with Dad, who had strained his back and was getting pain pills. We loaded up Cathy and Hannah into the ambulance, I woke up Mikey and loaded him and myself into the car, and we were off to St. Francis Hospital. Mom and Dad took Mikey home with them to get some sleep (they were done in the E.R.) while Hannah got admitted to an E.R. room. Long story short (and I mean REEEEEALLY long, as anyone who has ever been to an E.R. knows) we were there until nearly 4am, and by the time the doctor came in, to all appearances Hannah was perfectly fine. He gave us a scrip for some Children's Benedryl and a steroid to relax her breathing passages, and we went home and passed out into bed.

At least we got a chance to watch some Little Mermaid and Lilo & Stitch in the E.R. (both were episodes of the series, not the original movies). Lilo and her alien friends were trying to get guests to come stay in the new bed-and-not-breakfast they had made out of the crashed spaceship (they didn't want to have to cook breakfast). Kind of ironic to watch that while sitting in a room in the E.R....

Cast, Part 2

BEFORE

AFTER

Mikey got his first cast off today... unfortunately, they said it's not done healing yet, so they put another one on! The blue one is signed by all of his soccer team buddies and the coaches; Mikey said he's going to get the new one signed by his friends at church. See the whole batch of pictures of him getting the old cast cut off and the new one put on here!

He'll go back in three weeks, get another X-ray, and probably get the cast off for good.

New Baby for the Trac*'s!

Last night we got a call that Cathy's lifelong friend Tracie was having her baby by emergency C-section. By the time we got to the hospital, the drama was over and her husband (Tracy) was in the nursery room with the new baby, who is not named Tracie or Tracy:



They've been trying for a LONG time to have this baby, and he's a real answer to prayer. Congratulations, guys!!!

Caturday 5/2/2009

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