A few hours of sleep and we're off to California! Our first road trip in a long time, and with three kids, no less. We're planning to stay in Modesto at the house of two good old friends of ours tomorrow night, so we've got a lot of driving to do. Here's hoping for a great trip...

As you may have noticed, I haven't thought to post much to my blog in the last week. Nor do I have anything particularly exciting to blog about at the moment, so you'll have to make due with this cute photo of the women in my life posing in front of some local daffodils. Beautiful!

It was a beautiful sunny day here in Mount Vernon today – this was an especially good thing for me, because I spent the day assembling our new shed!

We bought it at Costco last week; it was simply an offer we couldn't refuse. The time, energy, and money it would have taken to build a wooden shed was too intimidating. Costco has one already built on the floor, and it looked pretty sturdy, so we decided to go for it. Fortunately, the directions were very clear, easy to understand, and not terribly difficult to pull off. The hardest part of the whole assembly was getting the ground level beforehand!

It's too bad that it took an entire day to do it, of course – I tend to be a little over-careful and meticulous about these things – but I'm really glad that it's done, and I hope that it will prove useful for us. We've already cleared a bunch of gardening stuff out of the garage, and that's a good thing. Now I just need to remember to put the lawn mower back in the shed instead of the garage when I'm done with it...

After years of indoctrination to watch out for the Big One in Southern California, it finally hit... Mount Vernon. Julie and I were awakened last night at 3:34 a.m. by a shaking bed. It's amazing how quickly the body can get into emergency mode... Fortunately, the shaking stopped as suddenly as it started, and it didn't seem bad enough to do any damage, so we checked on the kids – who didn't wake up, of course. The frightening reality is that kids don't seem to wake up for anything – not an earthquake, not a smoke detector, not anything.

Anyway, so we checked on the kids, wandered around the house, and checked the television and the radio for news. Unfortunately, those two forms of media were not helpful for our frame of mind, since we couldn't find a channel or station that even mentioned it. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't live with the uncertainty... Where was the earthquake? Has Seattle been leveled? Or, worse yet, Bellingham? It didn't seem likely, considering the TV and radio didn't yet think it newsworthy, but... Did our furnace explode? Something else nearby? Have the Russians invaded? It's amazing what your mind will come up with in the middle of the night.

So, I finally decided to Google it. What would we do without the Internet, and what would the Internet be without Google? Anyway, I quickly found my way to the USGS Recent Earthquake Activity site and noticed a little red box in northwestern Washington that was bigger than most of the other boxes on the map, so I clicked it, and clicked it again, and clicked it again, and it became clear that the epicenter for the earthquake was right in Mount Vernon, Washington. In fact, it was about a mile from my house. I'm sure I've never been this close to an epicenter before, even growing up in California, so I'm glad it was only a 3.8. It was certainly comforting to read the details and validate our experience so that I could finally get back to sleep.

When I was a kid, I thought earthquakes were a blast, and couldn't understand why my Mom would so quickly appear at my bedroom doorway in a panic. I didn't have any kids of my own, then. Earthquakes don't seem that fun anymore.

Things aren't peachy-keen here at the Ball household. It all started Wednesday night; Julie wasn't feeling well – sore, tired, sick, etc. – and I ended up staying home on Thursday to make things a little easier for her, though I'm afraid my nursing skills are far below par (sorry Mom...).

That same day, Sarah had her appointment with an ear, nose, and throat doctor – Sarah was referred there by her allergist and our family doctor in the hopes that her allergy symptoms can be reduced. The “ENT” recommends that she have her tonsils and adenoids removed, so that'll happen some time after school is out.

To top it all off, Rebecca has been pretty sick – very congested and uncomfortable, and incapable of sleeping more than two hours at a time, even during the night, so sleep has been a precious commodity.

Friday started out pretty normally; Julie was feeling a lot better, so I went to work. Unfortunately, I got what she had and was feeling pretty bad by the end of the day. So Julie was up most of the night taking care of Rebecca, since I was all but useless, which wasn't great preparation for a busy day on Saturday.

We didn't get much done on Saturday morning, though Sarah did make it to a friend's birthday party. Julie's parents came on Saturday afternoon to help us with what was certainly the highlight of the weekend – we now have a new kitchen window! It's a garden window, so it helps our kitchen to look a bit bigger, and certainly nicer – Julie's dad did a great job of installing it for us.

Unfortunately, at one point during the day, Bethany accidentally scratched Sarah's eye with her fingernail, so after dinner, we ended up taking Sarah to the emergency room while Julie's parents kindly watched Bethany for us. Sarah was in a lot of pain, and has a nasty scratch on her eyeball. She's doing a lot better now, and is using topical antibiotics to prevent infection. Thanks again to Julie's parents, who went above and beyond the call of duty yesterday!

After another sleepless night, our family was clearly not going to be able to make it to church today, so I'm afraid we had to skip. Julie has been doing a great job of taking care of the family, and me in particular – I sincerely hope that I'll start feeling better by tomorrow morning.

All in all, I thank God for Julie, and I feel for all of the single parents out there. Days like these are hard enough when there are two parents – I simply can't imagine what a single parent must go through when they get sick...

Time for me to go and get some more rest. Here's hoping for a good week!

One of the interesting things about buying a used vehicle is that you never know what surprises you're going to find. Usually, used car surprises are bad things, but we've had pretty good ones so far with our van.

For example, one day, we suddenly realized that one of the middle row seats has a built-in child safety seat! Our oldest girls are already too big for it, but Rebecca should grow into it eventually.

Another surprise was the “Check Engine” light. Of course, we knew we had one, but we didn't expect it to light up while driving north recently! Thankfully, this too turned out to be a good thing – the van was noticing that its gas mileage wasn't up to par. As predicted by the owner's manual as the most likely cause for the light, the gas cap was loose.

Did I mention that the van has tinted windows? Easy to forget from the inside, but I hope it'll cut down on the intense sunlight that can bother the girls in the summertime; it certainly gives a bit more privacy in the back.

Anyway, yesterday I discovered that our van has another cool feature. It should have been obvious in retrospect, but this is our first “new” car – we have an anti-theft device! I guess the little flashing red light actually does mean something! I decided to unlock the van with the key rather than the keyless entry, and, to my surprise, the van started honking at me! I don't really know much about the system yet; I need to do some more experimentation. But this is a good thing to know!

I've got a cell phone. I don't really use it much, so I have the cheapest plan T-Mobile will give me, but it comes in handy when I forget why I'm at the grocery store. Plus, I like knowing that I'll be able to call AAA when my truck finally breaks down for good on my way to Bellingham.

In any case, one danger of owning a cell phone around here is getting too close to Canada. I don't pay roaming or long distance as long as I'm in the States, but all bets are off in Canada. Unfortunately, when you go any farther north than Lynden, the Canadian provider takes over, even though you're still in the States. I was in that predicament a few weeks ago when I was up in the Blaine area on business. (That sounds important, doesn't it? Fortunately for my family, I do very little business travel. This was a mini-retreat for long-range company planning that a dozen or so employees attended.)

Anyway, as we approached the hotel, my cell phone announced that we had arrived in Canada, and, not wanting to incur any charges, I turned it off. The next day, on the return trip, I turned it on and watched it switch back to my local service. It was almost as good as actually being in Canada.

So, this past weekend I was doing our finances, and I checked my cell phone bill. To my shock, surprise, and utter dismay, there was about $9 of charges from Vancouver, Canada! Julie had called my cell phone a few times while I was gone, but since I didn't answer – nay, since the phone wasn't even on – I didn't expect to be charged anything.

Perhaps foolishly, I decided not to absorb the hit and gave T-Mobile a call, hoping that they'd quickly credit my account. Unfortunately, this was not going to be easy. To make a long story “short,” after talking to two different customer service reps and finally a supervisor, after insisting repeatedly that I didn't receive any calls, didn't make any calls, didn't let anyone use my phone, didn't even have the cell phone on, didn't know what that phone number was, didn't know why it was marked as “forwarded” – after all of that, along with some unfortunate raising-of-voice on my part, the proverbial lightbulb appeared above the supervisor's head, and he figured out that my cell phone was forwarding the unanswered calls to my voice mail – through Canada. Something about it being an older phone, though I still can't understand how the phone could do this feat when it wasn't even on. I'm sure I'll never know, because I won't be bringing it that close to Canada ever again.

He did credit my account in the end, so I'm a semi-satisfied, but certainly better educated, customer. Maybe it's time for a new cell phone...

I had the pleasure of going to the dentist this morning. I had never minded going to the dentist – until one had the audacity to suggest that I wasn't taking good enough care of my teeth. So, I've been brushing twice a day, flossing every night, and rinsing with flouridated mouthwash. (Mount Vernon is a great place to live, but I can't begin to imagine why they don't flouridate their water – flouridated water kept me from cavities my whole life until I moved here!)

In any case, my dental program must be working, because it was all good news. It's always good to hear “keep up the good work.” Here's hoping for the same report in six months!

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and that certainly happened this weekend. Julie and the girls had hoped to visit friends of ours in eastern Washington this weekend, but it was not to be. Rain here has meant snow in the mountains, enough of it that driving over the pass is ill-advised. So, I get to hang out with my girls this weekend after all. At least they didn't get stuck over there...