nuts, nuts, and nuts

Had a pretty good weekend and week. The fiance's niece finished up her week with us. We had dinner Friday night with them, my family, and some of their friends who live in the area. Ended up making a trip to the emergency room because their friend had a major reaction to bits of cashews in one of the breads served (he has a peanut allergy). Lips swelling, body itching. The fiance's sister, being a nurse, has a slight food allergy as well, and happened to have on hand an epinephrine pen, a spring loaded dose of epinephrine to buy us some time.

Tip: if you ever have to go to the emergency room and want to bypass "triage" then say you are having trouble breathing and/or a part of your body is getting numb. (it pays to have nurses in the family who know how to maneuver through HMO bureaucrazy.)

He had to stay overnight, just to make sure, but ended up being OK, swelling went down and body cooled from the lobster red color. Food allergies are not a joke.

Saturday had dim sum with fiance's friends from grad school. They're an interesting intellectual bunch. The recently married couple is quite excited that we're getting married. Surprisingly, it was the husband who wanted to know all the "details" of the proposal and wedding and such.

Watch the Cal game in the afternoon. Roll on you BEARS!!!

Evening took the inlaws to my cousin's house warming. The niece actually played really nice with my cousin's eagle claw daughter. They were even amazingly sweet to each other, giving each other hugs, kiss on the cheek. The niece is the smallest at her daycare so was totally fascinated by the younger kids. She tried to "pet" their heads and if they didn't move, give them a kiss on the head. But you know, kid's "gentle" stroke is more like slap upside the head.

My aunt's 3 year old son felt completely terrorized by the niece. But I think that's because he was terrorized by Eagle Claw so finds just about any young girl toddler threatening. I don't know what the poor boy is going to do when he goes to school. He'll probably be the kid who gets chased by a pack of girls on the playground.

She played well too with my other cousin's son, we shall call Xiaolin, due to his bald round head, he looks just like the cartoon.

The niece hadn't had a nap all day, after a calm intro, she started burning through the house, touching stuff, smacking folks, being generally micheivous. She wickedly fast snatched a piece of cake for herself, then when she was finished "borrowed" Xioalin's milk bottle and proceeded to chug it down. Xiaolin would later attempt to take a drink from her juice bottle since he figured everyone was now "sharing." He would also attempt to try to eat the cantaloupe of Eagle Claw while she was eating it, because any food within distance of the mouth is fair game.

The inlaws felt a bit bad over their daughter's behavior, but the family has seen all of it more than once and in general is quite entertained by it all. Pitter patter of feet, babies screaming, toddlers smacking each other around, is rather routine at family parties. However, we still left the party early because the niece was becoming a bit of a terror.

This morning they packed up the car and headed home. Another vacation visit a success! The fiance is already missing the patter of her feet. I must admit that I'm calculating the time line in terms of when we're going to have our own children. I hope we are blessed. Despite the growing world population and rich actresses getting pregnant after 40, conception is not necessarily a guaranteed thing.

Tonight is church class for the engagement. It's going by fast. Next week is our last class. The past couple of weeks have dealt with decision making as a couple and last week's reading was sexuality and the church (ie birth control, etc). The church believes in "Natural Birth Control" (ie the rhythm method) because they feel that contraception "interferes" with God's plan. And I'm thinking, if God who created the entire universe has a plan for you, would God let some man-made barrier interfere with that plan?

We have to schedule a meeting with the priest some time to discuss our FOCCUS evaluation results. I must admit, I'm kind of nervous about that. I'm not exactly sure what I want to discuss with the priest. And what if we aren't quite on the same page with more of the answers than I thought. I'm sure it will end up better than I think.

Robbitussin is working well on this cold that seems like I've had for like 2 weeks now. Time for laundry and vacuuming.