The Transformation

This past weekend, Alisha and I helped some kids at church make a video about spiritual transformation. The kids had to write the script and act all of the parts, and we could only help with directing and editing. The result is pretty fun, you can see it below:

Phin's Journey Continues

Some of you may remember one of Roscoe's peers, named Phin. We posted a few times about her on the blog (here and here) as she struggled through health issues of her own with the support of her family. You might not have realized it, but until today Phin was still in the same Kaiser hospital on varying levels of support and care. So far it's been a total of 16 months of NICU and PICU living for her family.

After months of preparation, today Phin will be relocated to a children's hospital in southern California. Her family will relocate with her, so they can be closer to relatives. You may recall that transporting a baby on life support isn't easy. This transportation is much longer distance than any of Roscoe's transports to UCSF, so Phin will be getting her very own PLANE, equipped with medical staff and accompanied by her mother.

Alisha has developed a good friendship with Phin's mom, meeting her mostly weekly. We will miss Phin's family, but our prayers will continue for Phin's well-being and their integrity as they continue the journey to bring her home. Please pray with us.

Valentine's Day Flowers

Last night, I cooked a special dinner ("surf and turf") and then surprised her with the news that we were going to visit the UC Berkeley botanical garden the following day:

We woke up early this morning so that we could arrive at Acme Bread Company just after they opened. We got to see the sunrise while we drove down the highway:

We learned to enjoy their green olive sourdough one visit, and have been back to try other breads (including the ham & cheese turnover shown below) since. We usually get lots of bread and freeze it, since they don't have any locations close by. This time we went a little overboard:

Me holding 2 sourdough loaves (top),
3 green olive loaves (middle),

and a bag with 3 cranberry wheat walnut loaves (bottom)

Ham and cheese turnover

All was not food, though. The focus of our trip was the botanical garden. Alisha loves the colors, sizes, and shapes of flowers. Honestly I wouldn't have appreciated how complicated and intricate flowers are if she didn't adore them so much. We walked through different regions of the garden which included plants and trees from South and Central America, the Mediterranean, Asia, South Africa, and then a few greenhouses (including a tropical one which reminded us of Hawaii).

The best part of Valentine's Day was that Alisha surprised me with a project she'd worked on (with some help from Sarah Modgling). Alisha copied Roscoe's Story into book format and had it printed and bound into a 381-page softcover book, then presented it to me at dinner!

Staying Busy

I apologize for not posting regularly for the past few weeks. I hope to get back to regular posting. Work has been keeping me very busy, to the point where I was staying up late at night and going in early in the morning. Hopefully things have settled down, and I can get back to normal entries. I've still got a few ideas queued up to post about!

Also, I hope to start posting a weekly bible study. More details to come!