Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Of airsoft & honors

At 6:40 p.m. Sunday, as we were about to get into the van on our way to talk with students at African Mission Fellowship about missionary family life, Asher poked an airsoft pellet up his left nostril. We tried a variety of means to extract it, including attempting to provoke a sneeze with pepper and even inserting a drinking straw and sucking (we really didn't want to go to the ER). When all else failed, we proceeded to Hendrick Hospital's ER, where a doctor extracted the unwelcome projectile at around 1:15 the next morning (using a nifty catheter within a catheter with an inflatable tip). Asher, after this barrage of mostly unsuccessful (and all un-fun) attempts at BB-removal, now avers that he will not again put
One of those
Up his nose.










































Wednesday morning Danetta, Asher and I went up to Craig Middle School at 7:30, along with Luke and Jonathan, to attend a ceremony honoring outstanding students selected by the teachers during the first six weeks of the semester. Jonathan was one of the honorees, pictured as a group below, holding the plaques awarded in token of this distinction.






















And here's a freebie -- I couldn't resist taking a picture of the rays of the not-yet-risen sun shooting up over the eastern horizon as we reached the school campus that morning.










Thursday, October 01, 2009

Many a Monarch

What Jesus said about the lilies of the field, that Solomon in all his splendor was not arrayed like one of them, is appropriate also of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). There is currently a multitude of this handsome orange-and-black species variously at rest on or floating amongst the leaves and branches of the pecan trees around our house. They are on passage to Mexico, where they will wait out the cold northern winter. I took the following pictures on shrubs under the pecan trees in our back yard here in Abilene.