Update - April 2008

After our trip to Lake Charles, we had some more time together. We started to discuss our options of building our family. We looked hard at doing fertility treatments again. We found several problems with this option. First, it is hard to try this again knowing the problems Amber has. First, it will put lots of pressure on us and Amber. She will have to go back to charting temps, and ovulation predictors. We could try IUI again (inter-uterine insemination), but with an incompetent cervix, having multiples is out. That is usually likely with IUI. We do not believe in IVF (in-vitro fertilization) for moral and biblical reasons. So the only other option is to hope we get pregnant on our own. Since we tried 20 months before our IUI for the triplets, we had no success on our own, and the odds were very low. So we turn to adoption. We see this as our best option and something we will begin to pursue. Basically, we plan to do infant adoption with a Christian agency called Generations Adoptions. It is an agency located in Waco, TX where my brother lives. My brother and his family actually know the director of the agency from church. We did not actually decide until May that this is what we wanted to do, but we at least got some of the pre-application done so we could go to some adoptions classes and seminars in May and June. After we decided to do this, I could see Amber change. I could see her breath and relax. I could see that she had no more fear or anxiety over another pregnancy. We just do not want to face another lost pregnancy.

The last week in April and the first part of May, I went to Norman, OK to work a week at the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) at the National Weather Center. The center is home to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Storm Prediction Center, National Weather Service Norman, OK and the OU school of meteorology. I worked with other meteorologists to investigate the use of high resolution numerical models to forecast severe weather. Basically, I played with a bunch of computers to help forecast thunderstorms that would become severe or tornadic. I really enjoyed this opportunity and got to see some up and coming technology that hopefully we can take better advantage at the National Weather Service. On May 1st, I was able to do a little storm chasing. We finished doing our forecasting and thought that parts of central Oklahoma would be prime for severe weather. Turns out that at 6pm a severe storm developed right near my hotel. I had my laptop so I was able to get internet and GPS to help chase. Unfortunately the only camera I had was my cell phone camera. It is a 2mp camera and actually did quite well. I ended up chasing a supercell that produced a couple of funnel clouds, but no tornadoes. It was a good storm to watch and had amazing structure. You can see the striations in the clouds as it was rotating. The picture above is one of the better ones I took. This was my first time to chase since 2006. It was good to see some storms like this.

-Scott
Picture of storm east of OKC.