The Storm

This past weekend, we dealt with all kinds of storms in our lives. First off, Jake went to bed Thursday night with a fever well over 100 and was a hot potato until sometime Sunday morning. It's never a fun thing as a parent to watch your child suffer with nausea, fever, sweating and congestion. You'd do anything you could to take it away from them but the only real cure is time. Thank God for Childrens' Motrin because that really did a great job of lowering his fever & cooling him off. However, usually after the 8 hour duration, Jake got hot again and began to get pale and listless. I spent most of those nights laying next to him, trying to keep him as comfortable as I could.

Oh yeah...he grinds his teeth too. LOL

Thankfully, the fever broke yesterday morning and although he's still a bit stuffy, he's getting back to his normal self of beating the tar outta me...Power Rangers style.

Then, all of NW Arkansas and Oklahoma and SW Missouri dealt with this horrible ice & sleet storm. Our home was fortunate to not suffer any kind of significant ice accumulation or power outages. Our neighbors to the north and west of us (in Benton County and extreme eastern OK) went without power and were forced to relocate to either a Salvation Army shelter or a local hotel. Local news outlets reported last night that some may be without power until Tuesday sometime. Be sure to join us in keeping these people in our prayers.

I'd made a few runs to Wal-Mart to stock up on all kinds of things just in case we got iced in but, thankfully, it looks as if it was all for naught...at least here in Fayetteville. However, I think I've got about 50 gallons of de-icer in the garage that I'll never get rid of now. HA!

Finally, this morning, I hear around 8am that the offensive coordiantor of the Arkansas Razorbacks, Gus Malzahn, is leaving the university after only one year to become the OC at the University of Tulsa. This past year was one of extreme highs & lows for the Razorback football team, ending with a 3 game losing skid, much of that leveled at head coach Houston Nutt. Nutt's been called out for limiting what Gus could and could not do with the offense (read this as suffering from envy and refusing to allow people to do the jobs they were hired to do) as well as benching last year's Gatorade High School Player of the Year Mitch Mustain (from Springdale AR...only 10 min up the road) for "political reasons".

Apparently what we're hearing now is that people behind the scenes were intimidated with Gus' offensive schemes & success and couldn't deal with that in an adult way. Looking at the way our coaching staff and administration has handled a lot of things this year, calling them "adults" may be a stretch. Anyway, word we're hearing is that Athletic Director Frank Broyles, once a staunch Gus supporter, told Houston in mid-season to fire Gus. It didn't happen so word came down at the end of the season to "encourage Gus" to look for a job elsewhere because his time (albeit a brief one) was over at the University of Arkansas.

I am an alum of the University and hearing, seeing and going through this soap opera absolutely disgusts me. What disappoints me even further is not only is Gus a devout, strong Christian who goes to our church (in fact, Gus led Shiloh Christian High School to a state championship a few years ago and just last year did the same for Springdale High) and a man who is the empitome of the word "integrity", Arkansas HC Houston Nutt also goes to our church. It's an absolute shame that what could've been an incredible building block for future years in Razorback football is now being mired down in controversy, hearsay, allegations and dirty politics.

Here's hoping these "storms" will be over soon.