Diabolical Diabetes

This morning I woke up and headed straight to the doctor for the three-hour glucose tolerance challenge because I failed the one-hour glucose test...by one point. I figured that I would pass the three-hour test with flying colours since I had failed the one-hour test by one point. Before I went I jotted down the acceptable numbers so that I would know before being told whether I passed the test or not. I can be impatient like that sometimes.

I got in and they pricked my finger to get my fasting levels. Anything less than 95 mg/dl is acceptable. Mine was 72 mg/dl. I thought that was pretty good. And then they gave me the glucose drink, which I guzzled down. I thought that was pretty gross. 100 grams of dextrose? That's like how much sugar is in a liter of Coke. Who drinks that much sugar...ever? Not me.

An hour later they pricked my finger again. Anything less than 180 mg/dl is acceptable. Mine was 225 mg/dl. No good. But you only really fail if two of your numbers are high so I still had time to catch up.

Church and an Actual Day of Rest (April 29)

Since we arrived in Ghana we’ve had crazy fully scheduled days full of appointments, touristy things, and hours of driving in a bus. Today was a nice counterpoint to the busyness of this trip—we finally got an actual day of rest… on a Sunday even. Bonus!

More pool time

Like I said, the girls got double pool time today. Rachel was a little grumpier for this round—the water was never the right temperature and the pool wasn't big enough and so forth—but she eventually calmed down and had fun.

Fun and Games

On Thursday when Andrew came home it was much too windy to do much of anything outside and we spent most of yesterday running errands (and sending Rachel to school since she skipped school on Thursday to come to the airport) so today was our first day playing outside together.

Reid and Karen's BYU ward had a date night afternoon at Kiwanis park and we crashed it with the girls. The main activity was kickball, using baby pools as bases. While "the big kids" were eating lunch our girls had a heyday in the pools (even though the water was freezing cold, right out of the tap, and it wasn't altogether warm outside yet, either). Karen had said that we wouldn't be swimming so I didn't bring swimsuits for the girls. I also didn't bring extra clothes for them. Because I'm so smart.

Planetarium

Last night we went to BYU's planetarium. Andrew first suggested that he take Rachel there on a daddy-daughter date but over lunch we decided to make it a family outing. For starters, Andrew just got home and Miriam and I were feeling a little left out—if he had been home a couple of days longer we might have been able to suck it up. More importantly, Andrew's parents hosted the ward empty-nester party last night and their nest isn't really empty if we're here, is it? We figured it was best to vacate for a while.

Rachel asked if we'd be going to a movie. Andrew told her that it was...but that it wasn't. It was something at BYU. Something exciting.

"Oh, is it a space show?" Rachel asked casually. "Because mom told me that there's a space show every Friday at BYU. And today is Friday, May 11th!"

"Wow. We looked that up like last week or the week before," I said. "She's not two-years-old anymore. There's no pulling the wool over her eyes!"

"Yeah! There's no pulling the woods over my head!" she laughed.

Perfect timing

Before Andrew left Ghana he sent me a quick email saying that there was a chance he'd be able to skip the JFK leg of his flight and fly straight from Atlanta to SLC, which meant he would land at 10:30 AM instead of 2:00 PM (which sounded like a good deal to me). He said he'd either call or email once he knew, which likely wouldn't be until he landed in Atlanta...at 6:00 the following morning.

I didn't realize until a while later that 6 AM in Georgia is only 4 AM in Utah. And then I wasn't too keen about his idea of calling home.

But at 4:30 AM, when Andrew was still stuck in customs, Miriam woke up feeling sad—so sad that she was crying uncontrollably. She must have had one of those weird dreams that just makes you feel...sad...but she couldn't remember what she had dreamt about so we just cuddled in bed for a while. Since I was up, I sent Andrew a text saying that he could call without worrying about waking me up. He never called (though he did call his dad who was not expecting a call that early and was a little disoriented).

About an hour later I turned on my computer to check on his flights. His plane had landed and his next flight was boarding. So I assumed he was on it and sent him a text message saying that I'd see him at 2:00.

He was still stuck in customs, however, and ended up missing that flight, which meant that he was able to get onto the Atlanta–SLC flight. He and his travelling companions had tried to change to this flight when they first checked in at the airport but the airline said it would be a $200+ charge per passenger to change tickets. However, when they landed, Andrew's professor's iPhone alerted them that they wouldn't have time to make their connection to JFK (apparently there's an app for that) and asked if they'd like the SLC flight instead. With one click of a button they were rebooked onto the SLC flight...for free...because they'd missed the JFK flight.

About ten minutes after I'd gotten back into bed, Andrew texted to tell me he'd be landing at 10:28 AM.

I texted back and said, "Sweet!"

He didn't get my earlier texts because his phone was turned off so he was pretty shocked that I was awake.

Mirror, Mirror

We're on the final countdown over here! We had our last Skype conversation with Andrew this afternoon. We put the garbage at the curb for the final time (because when Andrew comes home that's going to be his job again). And I just put the kids to bed for the second to last time, which means that I only have to do it one more time before Andrew will be here to help!

I'm just a tad bit excited for him to come home—two more sleeps, two more sleeps, two more sleeps!

Yesterday was awful (with biting and scratching and fighting) but today was pretty good. My parents invited us out to see a movie so I had that to hold over my children's heads all day: be good, come to the movie or don't be good and don't come to the movie—it's your choice. They were good and any time they were on the verge of behaving poorly it only took one warning before they fixed their behavior.

For example, when I asked Rachel to put away the clean dishes she whined, "Why can't I do it after the movie?"

"Because you either do it before the movie or you don't go to the movie. That's why."

And the next thing I knew she was putting away the dishes with a smile on her face.

Perhaps I should use bribery more often.

MTC and Playground-filled River Islands (April 28)

As I’ve probably mentioned several times already, BYU’s MPA program has really close connections to Empower Playgrounds (EPI), the organization that gives rural village schools special merry-go-rounds that generate electricity to charge electric lamps that kids can use to do their homework at night. Like, really close connections. Their executive director, Chris Owen, is a 1st year MPA student and is one of the students on our Ghana trip.

This morning we left Ho early to visit a couple of EPI’s installations in the Volta river. Half of our group came to Ghana a few days early to live on a tiny, poor island with one of the first merry-go-rounds, and EPI has since installed another more modern one on a neighboring island.

Welcome, welcome Sabbath morning...now please go far, far away.

On the way to church we talked about Nauvoo. For some reason (after Music and the Spoken Word) Rachel had asked Grandma where her parents served missions and the answer was South Carolina and Mississippi.

"Mississippi?!" Rachel yelped. "That's in Nauvoo!"

"Not quite," Grandma said. "The Mississippi River runs by Nauvoo but the state of Mississippi, which is where they served their mission, is not where Nauvoo is."

So we talked about Nauvoo on the way to church. Rachel still remembers quite a lot from that trip—her favourite part being Pioneer Pastimes. 

"And, oh, the Mississippi River," Rachel reminisced. "Remember watching the sun set over the Mississippi? It's beautiful!"

"Know what?" Miriam chimed in. "I have a sippy cup at home. It's beautiful."

Sometimes Miriam likes to feel like she's part of the conversation even if she has no idea what's going on. And sometimes in doing so she derails what was once a perfectly logical conversation. Such was the case today. 

After Rachel and I had finished laughing about Miriam's silly interjection, Rachel asked, "Can Mississippi be a boy's name, too?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I don't think I know anyone named Mississippi—boy or girl."

"Like...Mister Sippi!"Rachel said, roaring with laughter.

Sometimes my children are hilarious. No, really. They are.

Baby Shower and more playground time

Our friends from Egypt—Josh and Carolee—were in town this week. They're due with their first baby just a week after we're due with Benjamin so Carolee's sister threw her a baby shower today. When I got invited I promptly put it on my calendar and then forgot about it...until this morning.

So I quickly made a little baby washcloth and made a "bunny roll" out of it. We wrapped up a package of wet wipes and used the cloth as the "bow." I'm a lame gift-giver, I know. It's even worse for boys than for girls because for girls you can always whip up a few flowers and hot glue them onto barrettes or something. But for boys...I got nothin'.

The shower was fun. It was nice to see Carolee and Josh again and the girls had fun eating and eating and eating. The theme for the shower was "Ships ahoy! It's a boy!" so they had buckets full of popcorn, Swedish fish, and goldfish crackers with shovels for servings spoons. They had decorated an angel food cake as a bouy (with while frosting and strawberry stripes) and had ship-shaped sandwiches. It was all very cute.

We also got to decorate some onesies with some iron-on decals. Miriam chose a fish and Rachel chose a circle. I even let them do the ironing, which they thought was cool. They started to get a little crazy wound-up toward the end so we left to go to the park, but not before snapping a few pictures of us with the Schillings: