Yesterday was ‘Take your Son/Daughter to Work Day’ so I took MD with me to the office for the morning. She was quite excited to go with me and was up at 7:00. We ate breakfast on the way and then she pretty much followed me around through my daily routine. We also made some extra stops to visit with some of my co-workers.
Back in the office she colored with markers and played some educational games on the computer.
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Originally uploaded by jmodule
A couple days ago we put out some fresh black oil sunflower seeds in the feeder from my Grandfather. Today at lunch we had a pair of American Goldfinches visit. They are supposed to be common in eastern North Carolina, but this is the first time we’ve seen them around the house.
CE is around 2 1/2 years old now and is apparently competing with MD to see who can talk the most. Lately she has mostly figured out the first person pronoun, “I”, but uses it for everything. Such as, “Let I do it,” except she pronounces the first word as “wet.” Other favorites are “Want I help you?” and “I can do it myself!”
Again the girls are at Pullen Park–this time with [jModule]. Apparently they decided to follow the railroad and see where it leads. And the last picture is just a cute picture of the girls being loving to one another.
More from CDF:
Here we are in the Life and Science museum. They had a cloud bowl where you could touch a cloud–the top was cool, but the farther down you put your hand the warmer it got. Very interesting. Then they had a tornado of cloud to show how a tornado begins and what it looks like. MD held on to the pole because she was scared that the tornado was real. No matter how I explained that it would not suck her up into it…she still held on. And lastly, MD was inspecting insects with a huge magnifier. She’d make a perfect Inspector don’t you think?
More to come.
We got back from a business trip yesterday and today CDF sent out some pictures from their outings:
[jModule] had a conference in Raleigh earlier this week and the girls and I took field trips to the Morehead Planetarium, Pullen Park, Museum of Life and Science, and NC Natural Science Museum.
These pictures are from Morehead Planetarium and Pullen Park. As you can tell, the last picture the geese came up to where the girls were and typical CE fashion, she had to tell MD what was going on!
More to come.
Sunday CDF surprised me with plans to go on a mini-vacation to Southern Pines. I think what surprised me the most was that she had arranged for me to have two days off work without me knowing anything about it.
We had a wonderful time. It was too cold to go hiking like she had planned — the weather forecast was revised from low 70’s to freezing temperatures, maybe snow! But we were able to go around the historic sections and visit little shops. We had lunch Monday at a deli that served a lot of German and Irish influenced sandwiches. I got a “Best Wurst” sandwich that was delicious… or would have been except for too much mustard. CDF had a ham and cheese sandwich that was reminiscent of a roast beef sandwich. All that to say we had a good lunch.
A railroad goes through the area, but none of the museum sites were open and since it was too cold to get out and walk around, we only got to see it driving by. It looks like it would be a nice place to come back in the spring or summer and poke around more.
Last Wednesday MD’s Pioneer club at church hosted a tea party for grandparents, widows, and widowers to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Of course the parents came along too. We invited the lady across the street who is a widow, and also two of MD’s friends, one who lives next door.
The party was held in the back of the building. Tables were setup up with the short edge against the wall and the tea and hot cocoa set out. At the back were cookies and other treats. CDF had made snicker doodles to bring.
The program for the evening was simple. Once everyone had gotten settled with their food, a group of children got up to recite the Bible verses they had memorized. After that a lady talked a little about what the bible teaches about love. Then it was just time for socializing. I enjoyed watching the children interacting with their grandparents and the other older people who were there.
At the beginning of last week I got an email from my credit card company, but put off reading it until Friday. In the meantime my boss had scheduled a meeting about how we were going to implement PCI standards on our network and servers at work. We talked a lot about how we could secure our computers and protect credit card numbers that passed through our network.
So when I finally got back to the email I found out that my credit card number had been stolen and a number of purchases had been flagged as suspecious. It wasn’t a large amount, not quite one hundred dollars, but I was thankful that the company was treating the risk seriously enough to watch for transactions originating in foreign countries for example and letting me know in time to dispute the charge so I didn’t have to pay.
The other night I was getting my hair cut and MD was talking. The conversation was about sleeping.
“Let me tell you. When I sleep my ears plug up!” she said.
“What? You must not like going to sleep then.”
“I don’t mind it. I never hear CE when she cries. She doesn’t bother me.”
The lady must have realized at that point that MD mean she doesn’t hear things when she sleeps. She is a sound sleeper — like her mother — which has been convenient when CE has a bad night, but not so much when I need to wake her for some reason.