This and That

Dwight received a gift certificate for Pizza Ranch during teacher appreciation week, so we took the family out for pizza last night. It was a rainy, miserable night and we almost stayed home where it was warm and dry, but he convinced us to venture out. Not only did he want pizza, but he also wanted to go see the art display in the mall, as the work of some of his students was part of the exhibit. What a fun evening we had!

It was busy at Pizza Ranch and we saw many people we knew, as in knew well enough to stop and talk with them about various things. I couldn't help contrasting this with our last Pizza Ranch visit, shortly after we moved here, when we were still newbies and knew no one. This time we knew so many people that we felt like part of the community, a very nice feeling indeed.

The icing on the cake was when a friend from our church back in Holland walked in. He is out here working temporarily and recognized our van in the parking lot (not only is it exceedingly ugly, it still has Michigan plates and a Holland Christian Schools sticker in the window). His daughter and Maria are friends, so he quickly called his daughter on his cell so the girls could chat. It was so fun to see him and catch up a bit.

On another note, today Maria had her IVIG treatment. It was also the first day that the newly formed adoption group at her school was meeting and she wanted to go to the meeting. What a great opportunity to get her to try leaving the house while hooked up to her IV. We timed the treatment so that the meeting time fell in between her IV Benedryl doses. She took her portable pump along in a fanny pack. She has never done this before and was VERY worried about doing it, particularly about how the other students would react.

One of the things that she was worried about was that her pump would "beep" during the meeting so, of course, it did. The funny thing is that at first she didn't even notice her pump was beeping. The nurse had to go into the room and get her so they could fix it. Too funny! I'm glad that happened because then she could see that it was a non-issue. The whole thing went great!

I don't think we'll do this sort of thing often because toting along everything we needed was a bit of a production, but since the adoption group meets on Wednesdays and her treatments are every other Wednesday, we plan to do it a few more times. I am very proud of her for taking this risk and doing this, even if it did sap all her mental energy and we had to put up with a super grump this evening. (For some reason, this time the IVIG caused her to break out in a rash which was definitely a contributing factor to the grumpiness.)