CUDOS to Darby!

Darby scored a 100 on his Central Nervous System presentation! 100%! For any of you who have watched him present or speak - it is A-mazing. His voice...his presence is ridiculously STRONG at 11! ... it doesn't even make sense. He is pleasure to watch... WAY TO GO, Darbus Maximus!

An Afternoon at the ER!

We spent about 2 hours in the ER with Darby this weekend. I went outside to water my flowers and was so happy because not one mosquito bit me…. They usually eat me up…. I went around back to coil the hose back up and mosquito got me on my eyebrow…. Ughhhh! So I came back in and told Darby and he was like, “Mom, it is really swelling up. But I have something to show you, but don’t say, ‘Oh, poor thing’ cause it doesn’t hurt…just itches a little”….. he lifted up his shirt and his whole right side was swollen from under his rib cage down to his groin and around his hip to the back of his butt. He had another place on his left knee about the size of a golf ball. Of course, I was asking when this came up and he said a week ago when he was at his Dad’s!!!! But he didn’t tell anyone, including his Dad. I lectured him a bit about not telling someone that it was there and said if he was embarrassed because of the placement of it to, “CALL ME!”

Both places had temperature to them – just really HOT… he did not complain of hurting at all really. I asked Lance to look at it… he looked for a bite mark and found none…we looked for a latent tick or something like that that could have been missed and was still wreaking havoc - found nothing. Lance pressed on certain parts of his abdomen ruling out a possible hernia. He shook his head and said, “Take him to the ER”… so off we went. Turns out it was a gi-normous hive…. Most likely caused by a food allergy though Darby can remember eating nothing out of the ordinary. It was the biggest one the doctor had seen in her career…Darby was proud of that! HA… All in all the one on his side looked like a giant mosquito bite the size of a football and raise about an 1/4 inch off his skin! Although it was harmless at this point it was kind of taking over, and his body could not fight the spread of the hive for some reason…. So I OK’d a systemic steroid shot (Darby was NOT happy) just to try and kind of get ahead of this thing and then she gave him another 10 day steroid pack…. By Sunday morning the swelling had come down a lot… still very hot to the touch…. By this morning it was even smaller and the temperature was coming out of it…. So I think his body got the boost it needs and is now getting rid of it.

To think, if I had never showed him my itsy-bitsy bite he might not have said a thing about it! BOYS!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Alice Project

As many of you know I became very interested in the story of Randy Pausch and his journey as a terminal cancer patient. That would be the "simplistic" view. In the course of following his treatment, I began to really look at his life and the work he had done at Carnegie Mellon University. During several lectures, Randy mentioned the The Alice Project - a software application which uses 3D programming to create animation in a much more friendly environment for teens. It involves lots of drag and drop techniques v. throwing a student into trying to develop and author lines of code. http://www.alice.org/ While Dann, Cooper and Pausch's project sounded like a phenomenal learning tool, I must admit it flew right past me as I have no interest at all in programming. I took Pascal at UF for about 5 minutes and it probably ruined me forever. I kept leaving off that damn ";" or "." or "//" and my one tiny little line of program would NEVER run ... And yet, the Alice Project kept coming up over the course of the last year - kind of tugging at me.

Last night Darby was frustrated because he wanted to make his own "Stickman" animation... he had the story line down, what his bad and good guys looked liked, the music he wanted in the background - but he couldn't find the software to make his vision real. Then the Alice Project popped into my head.... we looked at the application together. Tonight we will download the 2.0 version for Windows which is FREE compliments of Carnegie Mellon! Darby is interested in Computer Science as he wants to eventually design and build video games as well as other 3D animated projects - unfortunately there is no curriculum offering in programming right now for 6th graders - middle school. Alice might be a perfect solution for him and his curiosity, and willingness to learn. If it turns out that one of the reasons for being drawn to Randy and his story was to discover a way for Darby to accomplish his goals of one day becoming a Computer Science major, how serendipitous - what a "God" thing - how truly magical would that be?

Captain Todd Ross

Our neighbor, Todd Ross, just returned from a 10 day training trip and he is now officially a CAPTAIN. He will now occupy the left seat on every flight he makes!! What an accomplishment!!!

My Birthday....

I am 41 years old today....incredible to think about that! I feel great and I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Bailey was home this past weekend and we had so much fun. We relaxed a lot which was just what we needed I do believe. Darby is with me this whole week too. He had to complete a project on The Central Nervous System. He did a great job. We did a cook out over at Lance's Mom and Dad's on Saturday. All of Lance's family from his mother's side were there and it was a good time.

Lance finished the framing on the front porch and called for his inspection. He got GREEN flagged first time out - again! I am beginning to think that codes in Hendersonville loves him! It was an AWESOME birthday present. He only had to work to get one critical job out today so he left the office at about 11am. I went home for lunch and when I left he was starting to put new sofit up.... the white stuff is going away! The sofit is Clay and the shingles and metal are Savannah Wicker. It is so pretty and warm. We have already painted the front door a deep Olive Green, though the color is called Deep Lichen. Once Lance has restored the beautiful old church door we have downstairs he will paint it with the green and replace the door we have up now.