Our little business: OBE

OBE means "Overtaken (or Overcome) By Events." Our little online shop is OBE.

We're out of time to devote to it: our upcoming move has crowded it out. Zillions of things, large and small, to resolve. That's consuming all our stray (and non-stray) moments.

More supplier problems. None of our original designs made it out. That one design we ground out based on the clip-art we had available. We did it just to put something up (that let us start exploring the online advertising part).

Maybe next year. Still a valuable learning experience, which was what it was about for us. And we're pondering what we've learned to apply it to other things, too.

No richer, but a little smarter!

We won't forget the little people when....

our new t-shirt business makes a killing.

Jim and I have been curious to learn the ins and outs of doing business online. So, we launched a silly little t-shirt business in honor of the 17 year cicada just to see what would happen. You can visit our store at www.cicadatees.com.

What have we learned so far?

• That everything takes 3 times as much tinkering as you think.
• Venders (and others) sometimes disappoint you and we weren't able to launch 2 other designs as hoped. Bummer. They were good.
  
• Search engine advertising is easy to set up, but complicated to master.
• Jim and I have very different advertising philosophies. It takes a lot of bickering and hmphs to come to an agreement.

All suggestions welcome...and we'll even split the profits with you if you provide an image we like. If we make any money at all, we plan to keep the thing up for the next cicada brood in another part of the country.

Adventures with Rebecca

Luke's babysitter, Rebecca, would take him on excursions on Tuesdays. He looked forward to it and would ask, "Are we going to ride the bus today? The train? What are we going to dooooooOOOoooooOOOOo?" Getting there was definitely half the fun. Here's Luke at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Rebecca has gone home for the summer and since we'll be moving to another part of the city, it may not work out to have her hang out with Luke anymore. I think my favorite memory is that she taught Luke to recognize jazz music on the radio. We'll miss her dearly!

Easter Memories

Of course, "memories" is the code word for "this is really way too late to put on the blog, but I wanted to anyway."

Here's our small group at Easter, enjoying the impromptu easter potluck.

Thanks for a great time, everybody.

Want to live there?

We looked at a house a couple days ago. As we're walking away, I asked Luke, "Do you like that house? Do you want to live there?"

"No."

"Really? Why not?"

"Jonathan's house has toys."

"Ah. What if we get toys for that house? Then do you want to live there?"

"OK."

(P.S.: We're still a ways away from making any decision.)

Here's the 4-1-1

To fill everyone in, here's what we're up to.

We're in the process of selling our condo and moving closer to Luke's cousins in the near-west suburbs. We need more space and Luke and his sister will need better schools than we can give them here.

Oops! Did we forget to mention we're having a girl? Well, we are!

Our place is in contract (contingent on our buyers selling their place).

We're exploring buying or renting for the near term, and haven't decided which. (Please pray for wisdom for us.)

Cheers!

Welcome Camden!

We're pleased to welcome Camden Goddard into the world.

Born March 29th at 1:51pm, 9 lbs 11 oz.

Here he is, with his proud papa.

We can't wait to meet him. (When's that going to be? Let's keep thinking about it.)

Scary Mask $16, Cute Penguin $48

Luke was diagnosed with Asthma a few days ago. Not a good day.

In the morning he was very tired and we could tell his breathing seemed a little labored. All he wanted to do was sleep. So he took a morning nap AND an afternoon nap, which is virtually unheard of from him these days. When he woke up from his second nap he was still having difficulty breathing normally and we could hear wheezing so we called the doctor.

It's a good thing we did. The doctor listened to his breathing and checked his blood oxygen level, which was 90%. The doctor said it should read 100% or very close, and they wanted him up to 95%. The doctor said 90% was “bad,” but then qualified that a little more by saying it wasn’t really dire, life threatening. His chest was very tight.

He treated him immediately in the office with a nebulizer, a machine that put out a mist. In it was a concoction of oxygen, albuterol and a steroid. Luke got pretty scared of the machine and the whole situation (and he wasn’t feeling well to begin with), and cried and struggled quite a bit. We had to wrestle him to keep it on. After a few minutes (and both Jim and my efforts), we got enough medicine in him to get his blood oxygen level up to 94%. That was good enough, according to the doctor.

(Sidenote: They make fun nebulizer machines, such as the penguin nebulizer or even a train. But...no, our office opted for the scarier masks to cut corners since the scary mask is $16 and the cute penguin is $48. I'm sure we'll be billed more than $48 for use of their nebulizer.)

He prescribed albuterol and a special contraption for kids to use an inhaler, and predisone (a steroid to help open his lungs better). We gave Luke a dose of each before he climbed down from my lap, walks off, and without looking back announces "I'M GOING TO BED!"

Poor kid. We were all exhausted.