January 14

It's funny how quickly the days go by now that I am home. We got home from the last of our vacation on Monday night, and after dropping off the C's at home and having dinner there, we finally made it home. 5 weeks to the day since last I was at home, and it felt great.
The week has been flying past though, getting caught up on cleaning, undecorating Christmas decorations, slowly getting the kids used to doing school work again. I have had some time to cook dinners for everyone though, and sitting at the dinner table with my family has been a treat. It has been a while since I have been able to eat a whole week of dinners with them.
Recovery from the surgery has been going pretty well, although I am usually reminded a couple times throughout the day that I am still recovering and not fully recovered yet. If you are not sure what kind of surgery I had done, way down south in Oklahoma, USA, I'll tell you. It was a vasectomy reversal. I know right, all kind of thoughts in your heads, most of them starting with "are you crazy?". Maybe we are, but we feel that this is one area of our lives that we needed to give back the control of to God, so we did. Maybe we will be blessed with more children, maybe not. It is done, and the rest is up to Him now.
The work situation is shaping up to look like I will end up taking a job up north (this time in Alberta) doing a 2 week in 2 week out rotation. The benefit of this (besides the $) is that they will be able to help me get my restrictions removed from my EMT license very quickly, and at very little cost. I expect to do this job for a few months, and I am hoping that come spring time I will be working for the local EMS service here in town, and the travelling away for work will be limited to once or twice a year (did I mention the $ from the camp job? It pays well)
I do miss our friends, both in Surrey and in Goldendale. We always love to be around our peeps. The farm in Goldendale was especially fun this trip, as Eleanor was able to go horse back riding with her bestest friend. Thomas had a blast with the boys, and since the weather was so mild they got to spend a bunch of time outside running off their energy. We met some new friends while there too, (Hi Pittmans!) who know what it is like to move from your hometown to somewhere that you know nobody. They have been to Malaysia, and all over the USA, working as missionaries spreading the Good News. It was a blast to get to know them and their children.

That is all for now. Until next time, answer me this:

Have you ever been a missionary?

almost done

The end of my 3 week hitch up in Northern BC is almost over, only 4 more days to go. This is good. The part that is a little sad about it though, is that the 4 days of work that I have left include Christmas Eve & Christmas. Now I know that Jesus isn't going to be too upset that I will be celebrating his birth away from home, or that I will be re-celebrating with family a couple days late. I'm pretty sure that the 25th isn't his actual b-day anyway, it's just the day that was chosen by a bunch of dudes a long time ago.

The other exciting part of it all, is that work here in camp is only part one of this trip. After I am done work I get to visit some family in Surrey before heading down to Washington State to visit some friends that we haven't seen for a while. In the middle of visiting them, Vanessa and I will be taking a brief 3 day trip to Tulsa. Not quite ready to share what we will be doing there, but we will be leaving the kids to visit the Messengers while we are away.

As exciting as all the travelling is, I am looking forward to getting home. I don't really have a job lined up yet, which is adding a bit of stress, but I do believe that things will work out and fall in to place as needed. There are a few opportunities that I am pursuing right now, and hope to have something sorted before getting home.

For now, I will spend the next couple days listening to the wind blow ferociously. I will eat a lot of camp food, which is pretty decent (and I hear rumors of lobster on Christmas day?). I will visit the gym and get my sweat on. There will be some resume sending, and probably some napping.

Where will you be for Christmas?

Next to the middle.

Today I have officially been in camp for a week. It is located right beside the middle of nowhere, up in Northern BC. Business is pretty quiet, which in most ways is good, considering that means that there are few people getting injured. Doesn't do much for the experience or keeping the practical skills sharp, but that is ok.

A month or two ago I read on the blog of an experienced EMT his story of first starting out, and how he was always anticipating his chance to get "the big call" so he could have a good story to share with the other vets. It finally came, that call that was very intense, very serious, and extremely unpleasant. He finally had a call to share when sitting around the proverbial campfire (read: coffee shop or ambulance bay at the hospital) with the other medics...but wished he hadn't.

I am anxious to do some calls, but I am cautious about wishing for something major. If all I do up here is treat a minor slip and fall, a sore back, or headache, I am perfectly ok with that. There will be plenty of calls that come along in my career that will stand out as major incidents, and I am confident that there will be a good many of them that will result in being something I wish I had never seen. In fact, I already have one of those from my practicum days. You know, the kind that becomes material for when someone asks "what's the worst thing you have ever seen" question. Funny thing is, I don't often share that story with people. Even though they ask, I don't think they want to know. They might think they do, but on the rare occasion that I answer the question truthfully about the worst thing I have seen, I can tell that they wished they hadn't asked. And I don't blame them...I wish I didn't know it either.

I can wait for the big call. I know they are out there and I am in no rush to get them, even if it will give me a good "guess what happened this one time" story.

Back again

Hey, did I tell you I was going to take a vacation from blogging? No? Well sorry about that. See, this thing called "facebook" crossed my radar (maybe you have heard of it?) and with all the hubub of moving, starting a church, working and the such, I found that I just didn't have the interest in writing posts on fb as well as the blog.
Now I am in Dawson Creek (that's in BC, somewhere up north) and will be working as a medic in a camp for the next 3 weeks. What better time to regale the populous with some tales of the goings on in the life of the Greenhows. Or at least my life. Or the lives of people I come across that make me want to vent in a blog.
Cheers!