Josh Update

I know that many of you are aware that Josh had surgery today. Everything went well. I was concerned mostly that he'd have a hard time not eating this morning, because he didn't have to be at the clinic until 10:00... but he was a champ. Only mentioned he was hungry 1 time.

The doctor said he did have a "sizable" hernia, which he fixed. He checked out the other side, and found nothing that needed fixing right now, though there is a possibility of a hernia there in the future.

Josh had a rough night last night. He was really concerned about today. I think he was having nightmares about it, because he kept waking up and crying a lot. After the surgery, they let him sleep off the anesthesia. Since he was so tired, he slept for nearly 2 hours then.

I have some pictures I will post at some point, but I just wanted to make sure that anyone who knew this was coming knew that it was just fine now. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Kisses

So, this sequence of pictures didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped. The actual events were quite amusing.

Peter was laying on the bottom bunk and Emily crawled up and started kissing him. What was funny was that she just kept doing it. I think it lasted well over 5 minutes. Long enough for me to go find the camera while it was still going on. I guess she just really loves her daddy. Peter didn't know quite what to do. He just kept laughing and trying to get her to quit, but she was quite determined.


Emily got distracted by the camera for a few seconds.

But then went right back to where she left off.

Here's a good picture of how Peter was responding to all the extra love. Poor daddy. :)

Reading Together

Toward the beginning of July, I was doing something on the computer when I started hearing Josh telling Emily a story. When I turned around, I saw this. Josh was "reading" one of their favorite books to her, "Honey Bunny Funnybunny," and doing a pretty good job of sharing the story.

Fort San Felipe del Morro

On our last evening of our trip to Puerto Rico, Peter and I made it over to Old San Juan. It was beautiful. The one place we really wanted to see was Fort San Felipe del Morro. Using this fort, the Spanish kept San Juan Bay safe from sea born threats. The project began in 1539, and it took about 400 years to get it to where it is today. It is amazing that they were able to construct such a building back before all of our modern technology.

Me at the entrance to the Fort.

Peter at the entrance to the fort.

Here is Peter sitting on top of a stack of cannon balls. There were a few cannons for us to see in the fort. Another thing I found interesting is that they built a ramp with the stairs to the top floor to push the cannons up and down. The stairs only had runs of about 5 steps before a little landing so the soldiers could rest as they transported these extremely heavy pieces of equipment.

Here am I next to a square box? This is actually an air vent so that the areas far below the top of the fort would have the air they needed. Such forethought. It's interesting how they had everything figured out way back then, and I get into the frame of mind that they never had anything before all this great technology came into play. People in the past were much smarter than I sometimes give them credit for.

The Port San Juan Light. A beautiful lighthouse that was added to the fort in 1843. Then it was replaced in 1908 by the US military. I believe they hit it during the Spanish-American war, which was the last time El Morro participated in an active fight.

The structure you see on top that does not fit with the rest of the structure was added during World War II by the US to protect against possible German attacks.

This is a view of part of the fort from one of the levels of the fort. You can see the ramp I was talking about earlier that they would use to move the cannons between levels. Off to the right side of the picture, there are several nooks and crannies the soldiers would go down in to fight with quite a bit of cover.

This is a view of Old San Juan from the fort.

Word Confusion

I have recently noticed that Josh has started to understand plural vs singular and how to conjugate a few verbs. He really tries to use the right form of the "be" verb... am, are, were, was, etc. What's funny, though, is his interpretation of some words that sound plural, and how he tries to make them singular.

We have a mailbock. (Singular for mailbox...)

The other day he was pulling clothes out of the closet. At one point he pulled down one shirt. So, he told me he had pulled down one "clo." (Singular for clothes, obviously.)

English is definitely not always intuitive, but he is doing great! :)

Conrad Hotel in San Juan

In June, Peter had a conference in Puerto Rico. When I found out about this possibility, I decided I would go with him. My parents were kind enough to fly out here and watch the kids so that Peter and I could go on a trip alone. Our 6th anniversary was June 20, and this trip was June 22-26. It made for a nice anniversary celebration. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Here are some pictures of our view from our room.


We got a "City View" room, but it happened to be one of about 7 rooms that had a good view of the ocean as well as the city because it was on the right corner of the hotel. Lucky us!

This view is a little more off the same direction as the previous picture.

This view was the other direction. We could still see some ocean, but that storm ravaged building added so much to the picture. :)

This is a picture of our building from the bridge up the street a bit. The walkway in the middle of the picture connected our building with the main building. Our room was on the 6th floor. You can see our window if you count down to the 5th one from the top. Like I said, these are the only rooms where you could see off the side like this. All the other corners had walls that stuck straight out so you couldn't see anything past it. We really did luck out.

Emily in June

I have no idea what was going on here, but this expression is priceless.