Think Clearly. Love Deeply. Choose Wisely. Live Boldly.

OK, I haven’t linked my blog to Facebook in a while because I discovered that most of the people who read this blog are also Facebook friends and I was, in effect, double posting. As someone who hides just about every application that posts to my wall (sorry Farmville folks, you aren’t hidden, just your blueberries) I don’t want to inundate mini-feeds.

In just over a week we leave for China. It is a crazy hectic time that we are growing more excited about daily. Since places like Blogspot and Facebook are not easily accessible in China, this blog will be the best way to share our story as we embark on our adventure. So, those of you on Facebook will get notices when I update here, but you’ll probably have to come to the actual InfiityandJellyDonuts site to see any pictures or video.

Hard to believe in just under two weeks we’ll meet Shepherd. Thanks for your prayers.

I’ve been searching for plane tickets since 3:30 am Thursday morning. Not nonstop, but it’s been ever-present in my mind. The struggle is finding the right balance of cost and security. I don’t envy travel agents. We have a great one now after I narrowed some stuff down.

I think that online pricing places are great if you have flexible dates and a flexible itinerary. When you have specific dates you have to be somewhere by specific times they aren’t as great. I even had one online place give us an itinerary that consisted of all one way tickets for each leg of the journey. A separate ticket from Nashville to LA, then a ticket from LA to Guangzhou. It was about $2000 cheaper than anything else I had found until a good friend pointed out that if one of those planes were late the entire responsibility of missing a flight would be on us.

So, back to shopping. I think we have something, but Delta’s website was messed up last night so we’ll see how much the tickets go up between now and Monday.

By the way, apparently August is the most expensive month to travel to China. Lucky us!

We got a phone call yesterday from our agency. Our Travel Approval has arrived. All that’s left now is to make an appointment with the US consulate’s office and buy tickets (and pack, and get gifts for the officials over there, etc. etc.).

We have requested an appointment ASAP. Please pray that there are some slots left in July and that airline tickets are reasonable on such short notice. Also pray for health for all of us as we get ready to travel.

I’ll try to post pics of Sophie’s birthday later on.

For all you dads out there. This is how we roll.

I have found that God often drops little messages, or signs of encouragement for His Children.  They are often personal, subtle, yet blatant.  The main reason that the fox is my favorite animal is because of a few distinct times in my life when I think God both comforted me and encouraged me by placing one of these creatures in my path.  It isn’t animism or totem worship, any more than Gideon’s fleece or the fish with the coin was.  Why do I share this?  I’ll tell you.

While I was cooking supper tonight Sophie was in her playroom busily working on her ‘project’. She will often work diligently for some time and then come show us what she’s done. This time she called us into the playroom to ‘come see’. There were a bunch of her things wrapped up as only a 5 year old can wrap laying on her chair.

“These are my presents,” she said. “I’m getting rid of some of my toys so Shepherd will get here faster.” She has been right with us as we’ve had 147 Million Orphan sales and yard sales, and doing what we can to pay for this adoption.  Katie and I both teared up.  Sophie was ready to get rid of some of her possessions in order to bring this boy, whom she has never met and will probably fight with…a lot, home.  If that’s not enough to make your throat all lumpy, then she says, “We always say he’s coming home soon, but he never does.  When is he going to be here?  When are we going to China to get him?”

Katie took Sophie over to the wildlife calendar we have on our refrigerator and showed her some of the landmark dates that were going to happen before our tentative trip in August: the 4th of July, Sophie’s birthday, Paw Paw Bunny’s birthday, etc.  Then Katie turned the calendar to August.  You wanna know what the picture for August was?

This is the actual shot.  I found it at the photographer’s website.

As my friend Scott O. says, “God’s got a plan for your plan.”  We would love to be back and home with Shepherd before school starts back in the fall, but for whatever reason, we probably won’t be.  That being said, I am comforted in the fact that our Creator knew our longings from before time began and continually woos us to Him.

He Is There and He Is Not Silent.

Well, summer is in full swing here.  We were beginning to think that it would be a long summer waiting to get Shepherd (now we’re hearing we won’t travel until August) but it is anything but that.  Sophie is participating in swim team this summer for the first time.  Today was her first meet.  She was a bit nervous beforehand (well, considering the fact that she has never swam the length of the pool and one of the coaches had to go in to get her during warmups made us all a little nervous) but she did great.  She was entered in the backstroke and she made it across the pool.  She stopped to grab the rope and rest a couple of times, but she stayed on her back and didn’t turn over too soon at the end, which we hear is a huge no no and will get you DQ’ed.  She got her purple completion ribbon and now, she is ready for future meets.

I have been busy as well.  I am teaching senior English next year, which means I have a lot of reading to do, as well as a new textbook for anatomy.  It’s been good, but we’ve spent a lot of time in the car.  Which gives us a lot of time to listen to music.  Sophie’s taste are growing and Katie and I have to be careful in what we listen to because she is *very* good at picking up on lyrics.  She heard some Joan Jett and asked Katie, “Mom, what’s Rock and Roll?”  “It’s music, do you like it?”  “Oh, yes!”

When it’s my turn to choose the tunes we get a bit more eclectic, opting for the singalongs.  I’ll leave you with one of her current favorites.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  Final total: $1800.  We are so close to having all expenses for this adoption paid.  I can’t tell you how overwhelmed we feel, in a good way!

UPDATE!:  Sophie made over $100 with her lemonade stand.  A huge thanks to Lisa and Tori and Cora for helping!  We haven’t gotten the final total yet, but we think we made at least $1000 for our adoption.  Praise God!

I’m taking a brief break from helping set up for our 147 Million Orphans fund raiser.  We hope that this will help us get much closer to the $2500 or so we need to bring Shepherd home.

We are down to paying for hotels, meals, tips, etc. so it’s crunch time.  We got a bit of disheartening news last week when we found out we probably won’t travel until August.  Besides the wait, that’s also right when Sophie and I both start school.  God’s timing is perfect, though and it’s all good.

30 minutes until showtime.  We have about 70 people RSVP’ed to attend so it will be a busy afternoon.  I’ll try to update later with how we’re doing.

UPDATE: I changed my Grooveshark Playlist to reflect the beginning of Summer!  Enjoy while you read.

Well, today was the last faculty meeting of the 2009-2010 school year. Those are always good but tiring because they bring an end to graduation weekend. I was honored and humbled to be one of the two baccalaureate speakers this year. When I speak in front of a crowd I go into a kind of fog or zone. It seems the bigger the crowd, the heavier the fog because that 12 to 14 minutes or so is a blur. They have it recorded, but I hate listening to myself so I don’t know if I will listen to it. Still, I received some very kind comments, so I guess I did OK.

Graduation was much more relaxing, but bittersweet. I once had another teacher tell me, “if you teach seniors, and your heart’s not breaking in May, then you haven’t done your job.” I don’t know if that’s totally true, but if it is, then this was a successful year.

Sunday night after graduation the senior moms always head up a party for the seniors. Usually it’s a riverboat cruise in downtown Nashville on the General Jackson, but due to the flooding the dock was washed away so there was no cruise. Instead one mom used her connections to rent out the private executive club at LP field.

It was a blast. DJ, karaoke, Dance Dance Revolution, and a couple of Wii stations made it better than the Riverboat. I may or may not have taught some guys the proper way to light a cigar, but I did enjoy a nice pipe on a balcony overlooking downtown Nashville.  Yes, I did dance a little, and yes I am still as bad at it as I was in high school. I think my final report card for the year was Public Speaking-A-, Stanky Leg- D.

So after the midnight return, I got home and in bed about 1 am with an 8 am faculty meeting. I woke up at 5:45 awake, but still tired. It was that feeling where I knew if I tried to sleep for another hour I would be toast, so that’s why I’m a little tired.

I’m looking forward to summer, though it promises to be a busy one. I’m going to be teaching senior English next year which means I have the reading list to go through this summer as well as a new A&P book to learn.  Also have a hopeful trip to see the in-laws (haven’t visited with them in a year) and my 20 year high school reunion (WooHoo).

Hopefully, with all that I will have time to post more regularly.

Most of you have heard about the Nashville flood.  It’s bad.  And it’s hard to describe.  Nashville will survive, but it will never be the same.

I encourage you to look at some of the pictures and give to the Red Cross for the Tennessee Flood Relief efforts.  More later.  We are fine, and our house is fine.

Link1

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Wow.  If you’re watching the news you might hear something about the flooding in Nashville.  Fortunately, we live on a hill.  Less than a mile or two in 3 directions there are roads underwater.  There’s more rain tonight.  We should be fine, but we have friends nearby that have water getting pretty close to the doorstep.  Prayers appreciated.

More rain in the forecast.  Fortunately, Katie went to the grocery store this afternoon and had a scary moment as she had to drive through a flooded section of road to get home.  I also heard a report that there’s water in the bottom floor of at least one of the buildings at my school.

We’ve all been hit by some sort of bug at the Hollis house.  Recovery is slow and frustrating.  It’s rough when all of us are sick.  I am thankful this is happening now and not in China.  I promised some Easter pics.  Here they are.

We colored eggs.  We like to use a white crayon to block the colors and do multiple dips for designs.

And Sophie went on a couple of Easter Egg hunts.  I enjoyed watching her both times because in one hunt, she was among the oldest kids and in another hunt she was one of the youngest.  It’s fun to watch how kids react in those situations.  Here she is scrambling around and with her take.

Our agency called this afternoon.  Our referral/LOA (Letter of Acceptance) for Shepherd is with them and they are FedExing it to us.  We should have it tomorrow and get it back to them on Wednesday to start processing our travel arrangements.  This also means we can now post pictures, etc.  Expect more.

Shepherd Ryan Wang Hollis

OK, I’ve been putting off uploading pictures from Easter Week, but I will soon, I promise. I left you hanging with the kitten video, I know. Allow me to share a random rumination to help start off your week.

As a teacher I am always on the lookout for analogies and illustrations to help teach some of the more abstract concepts in science and English.  For those who are scientifically minded, sometimes an abstract definition is enough, but I teach kids that use all different parts of their brains, so my challenge is to try to connect with all the different ways of thinking.  I think I stumbled upon one today while listening to Pandora.

Emergent properties is a concept seen in biology where two of three things working together exhibit properties that the individual parts themselves do not have.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Tissues are groups of cells working together, but you can’t put a bunch of cells in a petri dish and magically get tissues.  The tissue, as a group of cells do *more* than just a group of cells.  In the same way, a pair of scissors is more than two blades and a screw holding them together.  There is something about the arrangement of those pieces that make a pair of scissor more than just its parts.  Try taking them apart and cutting paper.

Now, some of you get it, and some of you are going, huh?  So, I’ve only done part of my job.  Let me try a different way:

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  Listen to any CSN&Y song and then listen to the same song done by just one of the artists.  “Judy Blue Eyes” by Stephen Sills and then follow it up with the group version.  Which do you like better?  I listen to Neil Young and I think, “meh, that’s OK” (sorry Hank), but listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash as opposed to CSN&Y and you can definitely hear a difference.

I love being able to find something ‘outside the box’ and communicate something to my students where they get it.

Now if I can just find a way to teach them who Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are…

Not a lot, but we had a good weekend.  Too tired to upload pictures, now.  So…watch this.

I’m glad it’s Friday.  We have a Seder Meal at church tonight and then I hope I get to see Emmett.

In the adoption world, we are still just waiting.  All of our stuff is in, and we are in a holding pattern.

That’s about all I got.  I don’t have any more energy to talk about Health Care, or politics.  I’m looking forward to hopefully having some time at home to veg.

What are your weekend plans?

Some of you have signed up for Swagbucks at swagbucks.com using my referral link, which let’s me earn swagbucks when you do just for using the search bar.  Thanks.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, the link is right there.  You know you want to

Have a great weekend!

Not like this one.

I’m usually very suspicious of getting something for nothing, or very little. I’ve been doing Swag Bucks for a couple of weeks now, and I ‘m still suspicious, but I’m also impressed.

Swag Bucks are virtual currency. You ‘earn’ them by using the Swag Bucks toolbar for your searches (powered by Google and Ask so you get good results) entering codes that are often hidden on the website, and following Swag Bucks on Twitter and Facebook. The prizes you can ‘buy’ with Swag Bucks are impressive, and as you might suspect the more expensive a prize is in real life, the more Swag Bucks it costs. I’ve been signed up for a couple of weeks now and I’ve earned just under 600 Swag Bucks. That’s a far cry from the 38,000 Swag Bucks you need for the iPhone 3GS, but not bad for the 2800 Swag Buck wireless Xbox 360 controller. All for using a different search bar.

I was also concerned that this was a passing fad, or a business that wouldn’t last long, but Swag Bucks just celebrated its 2nd birthday last week. The drawbacks? Well when you searched some of the first results are ‘Sponsored by’ so you might not get exactly what you’re looking for in the first few hits, the codes that are given out are usually only good for a few hours (I have literally missed some codes by 5 minutes on more than one occasion), and the rewards for searching with the toolbar are random, but that’s OK with me, I usually spend a few minutes each day Googling random stuff.

Then there are the referrals. If you look around swagbucks.com and decide to sign up, I’d appreciate it if you used my referral link. When you win by searching, I’ll win too, so there’s a small bit of “Welcome to Amway” feel, but it’s totally free.  If you don’t like the tool bar, but you still want to win by searching, you can switch your browser bar to use the swagbucks engine.

No pressure.  I’m not giving out emails or anything like that.  When I win something cool I might post it on Facebook.  Give it a look and if you decide to sign up, I’d appreciate the referral.

I’m just now getting into this band, though I love They Might Be Giants.  I liked their video to “Here It Goes Again” in which they performed on moving treadmills.  This new song has them the victims of an elaborate Rube Goldberg apparatus.  Enjoy.

A facepalm is just that: when you smack your face with your palm because of disgust, despair, or frustration.

Now, normally, I love AT&T customer service.  I have always had pretty good results from them and they have been kind, courteous, and knowledgeable.  I realize I might be in the minority with that, but so be it.

We upgraded phones for Katie back in November.  We thought it would be OK, but it’s not a great phone.  She didn’t like it, and after playing with it a bit, I didn’t either.  Of course, it was too late to take it back, they never give you an exchange period longer than the learning curve, so we felt like we were stuck.  Then another friend upgraded from the original iPhone to the new 3Gs and offered to sell us the old iPhone at a price we could get for Katie’s phone on Craigslist.

They told me on the phone that for Katie’s iPhone to work we would have to have a sim card that had never been in another phone.  I confirmed this when the iPhone arrived by trying Katie’s current sim card in the iPhone.  It would only let us make an emergency call.   Off to the AT&T store down in Cool Springs where we picked up her sim card.  Took it back home and activated the phone in iTunes.  Now for the dilemma: Katie’s contacts were all on her old phone.  I had been warned about the sim card and tested it myself, so I was worried about how to transfer.  I tried pushing a few via bluetooth to my laptop then to the iPhone, but that was going to take forever.  I called customer service.

[Introductory conversation where they verify my identity]

Me: I have these three models of phone.  I’m trying to get the contacts from one phone to an iPhone.  I don’t have a PC.  I was told the sim card needed to be brand new in the iPhone. Will any of them sync to a Mac?

AT&T: Hmmm, no.  Have you tried sending them via bluetooth?

Me: Can you send more than one at a time?

AT&T: No, I don’t think you can.

Me: I guess I could borrow a friend’s PC, synch up the contacts, export it as a CSV, then import it to the Mac, import it into Address Book and sync that way.

[this goes on for a few minutes, exchanging ideas, brainstorming.  Then,]

AT&T: You know, as a last resort, you could take the sim card in the iPhone, put it in the old phone, copy the contacts, then put it back in the iPhone and go to Settings, Mail, and import from sim card.  I don’t know how well that will work…

Me: *facepalm* So, once I initialized the sim card in the iPhone, I can use it in other phones?

AT&T: Oh sure.  That shouldn’t be a problem, but I’d only do that if you can’t find a friend’s PC.

Me: Thank you.

3 minutes later, I had Katie’s contacts in her iPhone.  I know you can’t bat 1.000, and I’m not really complaining.  More sharing because it was funny.

Oh, and Katie loves her iPhone.