Category: mi familia

Weekend changes

Well, as you may remember, my life and I were planning on going camping Friday night after attending the wedding of our friends Josh McDonald and Amy Wade.

I got to show off my new clothes. As you can see in the photo, I still have a habit of leaning or slouching down when I’m standing next to Laurie. I’m hoping I didn’t do that in our wedding photos. We’re still waiting to get those back.

While we were at the wedding reception in downtown Dallas at the Trammel Crow building, we received a call from Dollye saying, “There’s a tornado watch and a thunderstorm warning. They’re expecting 70 mile an hour winds and we don’t think our tent will hold up.” Needless to say, they began packing up to head home.

So we opted out of heading north and decided to head south and home afterwards. The storms hit around 1 a.m., about the time we were falling asleep.
With no other plans for the weekend we took it easy Saturday and visited our parents, went to an Army Supply store for some Geocaching goodies, ate an early dinner at El Fenix (Mmm) and picked up the Pres-i-nator from Laurie’s parents.
We came home and drove around the Waxahachie area before retiring for the night. We’re planning to hide several Geocaches in the area so we drove around to scout out a few ideas.
I decided to sleep in Sunday morning and not help the set-up crew at encounter since they weren’t expecting me. It was a nice change.
Sunday was another relaxing day as we (I really mean she) took care of some laundry and we visited Brian & Heather and other encounter folks for an anniversary shower at their house.
Now we just have to figure out a time we can go camping again before it gets too unbelievably hot, or too cold again.

See some other photos from the wedding.

Good news for Sally

Got a call from Jose tonight, the doctors have given Sally the OK to go home.
They are now just waiting for several machines to arrive at their house to aid Sally in her recovery.
In case you didn’t follow along, it was discovered on Mother’s Day that Sally had AVM and had to be rushed to Baylor Dallas and ended up having an emergency eight hour surgery to fix the blood vessels going to her brain as well as remove a blood clot that had formed.
After the surgery, the doctors said the surgery was a success but she would likely lose all eyesight in her left eye.
Two days later she was doing much better and seeing out of both eyes. But Monday of last week the doctors realized she was having trouble breathing and had to give her a tracheotomy to allow her to breathe after scar tissue formed in her throat from the vent she was on during and after surgery.
Now a little more than two weeks later, Sally is ready to come home. Praise God! She will likely need to have an additional surgery to remove the scar tissue, but the doctors are saying she might heal on her own without the surgery.
Her vision is still somewhat blurry but the doctors are now saying it will likely fully recover.
Another praise is that Jose and Sally have no health insurance – but according to Jose, praise God because someone through the hospital has promised the family they will take care of all the costs of the surgeries, hospital stay, medicines, machines and meds at home and anything Sally needs.
What an amazing God! What a way to make himself real to this family and our church.
What a mighty God we serve.
Please continue to keep the Perez family in your prayers. There are sure to be other needs as both Sally and Jose have been out of work the last two weeks.
Thanks again for all your prayers – God has heard them.

Memorial Day events

Well its been a nice relaxing Memorial Day around Casa de Blundell.
I do believe this is the first time Laurie and I have had the holiday off since we finished school.
We slept in till around 10ish.
Lazied around the house till around 1ish, watching the “Little People, Big World” marathon.
Then around 1 we made our way over to Ennis where Laurie’s great-grandparents and grandparents lived.
We found the spot where her great-grandfather Charles Mosshart had his men’s clothing store.
It’s now a taxidermist and what looks like a variety/antique/women’s/tourist trap store. Neither were open so we didn’t get to go in and have a look around. Outside there’s not much left of the Mosshart clothing store other than a large “M” that’s still carved in the stone above the doors of each store.

The taxidermist left the M there and the women’s store had it painted over with bluebonnets.


After our stop in downtown Ennis we visited the Crape Myrtle cemetery where both her grandparents and great-grandparents are buried.
We then made our way to Chick-fil-A. Mmmm. Always a good stop, anytime of day – especially when you haven’t been there in over a month (what’s going on!?).
We wrapped up our errands with a trip to HEB to fill our weekly shopping list and then did a quick park-and-grab geocache by the local Boy Scout Cabin.
Now we’re back home, Presley’s cuddled up on her blanket next to Laurie and her iBook. I’m across the coffee table with my Gateway laptop and we’re settling in.
We’re watching more of the “Little People, Big World” marathon that we TiVo’d. And before the night’s end I’m sure we’ll try out our bottle of homemade cream soda.

*EDIT* – oh and yes…. it was our first one month anniversary 😉

Open source soda


While Laurie and I were in Pagosa Springs we stumbled upon (after looking for a good 15 minutes) a small micro-brewery that was simply awesome.
It had a great atmosphere, friendly staff and we got a personal tour by the owner and founder. Not bad for a Wednesday afternoon.
I told Laurie we should open our own micro-brewery in Waxahachie. I don’t think she was super thrilled with the idea. Although she did enjoy the root beer Pagosa Brewing Company made.
Now, Open Cola has released their “secret” formula so that you too can make your own soda.

From DIY:happy::

The formulas that make up Coke and Pepsi are closely guarded trade secrets – perhaps the most popular and well known trade secrets in existence today. If you want to drink a Cola, you gotta shell out the big bucks (literally, these days) for one of the big guys.
OpenCola is working to change that, having released their Cola formula under the GNU license. Now you can start your own underground neighborhood Cola brewery and give the sauce to your friends and family. The inventors of the drink (is inventors the right word here?) invite people to come a change the formula in hopes of making a more perfect beverage.

So now we just need a root beer recipe and a contract with Blue Bell Ice Cream and we can open our own soda shop.
Wah-la.
Here’s a recipe for root beer too.
Get the formula here
Oh and as DIY:happy points out:

“Many of the oils needed for flavoring can burn skin. Use caution when preparing. They can also dissolve the plastic lining of a refrigerator; store with caution.”

Living with a girl: The bed’s not big enough

Well, my wonderful life posted a funny entry yesterday about the “fight” over the sheet and blanket on our king size bed.
She assures me that it was more in jest than anything else and she’s not upset about me “stealing her blankets” at night. But I’ve enjoyed giving her a hard time about it either way.

I thought I’d add to the story and point out a couple other things I’ve noticed at night (because I honestly have not noticed this struggle for the sheets and blankets that she refers to ;-)).

We’ve both had our own bed for so long. She’s 5’2″ and had her own full size bed all to herself and I’m 6’5″ and have had my own king size bed to myself. Now, not only do we share a house and bedroom together, we share a bed!

I think because of us not being used to sharing a bed, we’ve gotten into an odd pattern of sleeping.
We both have a tendency to wake up anytime the other person wakes up, the only downside is I roll back over and go right back to sleep. She takes a good while longer to fall back asleep.

I remember several nights with this pattern. Fall asleep. Wake up a couple hours later to a pat on my arm, poke in the ribs, push on my shoulder, “Roll over!”

“What?”

“Roll over your snoring!”

“Sorry.”

I roll over and fall back asleep. Several hours later the event reoccurs.

Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t fall back asleep as quickly and getting up at 4:45 a.m. doesn’t help matters.

I’ve also noticed that when I wake up at other times in the middle of the night I have a tendency to accidentally “kick” her with my foot or hit her with a knee or hand or something when I roll over.

It’s in no way intentional. She may not even notice it. But I do and I feel horrible.

It’s not with great gusto – but for some reason my 6’5″ frame has trouble staying on my side of the bed when I roll over and she’s normally right in the middle of the bed when I do.

So for any added “mystery” bruises you might have Laurie – I think I’ve found the problem and I apologize in advance for anymore.

So the moral of the story is… well I don’t know.

How about this, “Don’t sleep on your back if you tend to snore and keep your hands, feet and legs to yourself once the decision to go to sleep has been made.”