News from the North

Norah Turned 3 and Got New Parents

2012-02-01T21:05:00.000-06:00

Well, Norah turned 3 a couple of weeks ago and had a couple of her friends over for a birthday party. Hands down, worst birthday party ever. Norah was an absolute monster the entire time. She was being rude, disrespectful, and not playing nicely with her friends. When everyone tried to sing Happy Birthday to her she actually got mad and started yelling at them. Awesome. Jamie mentioned afterward that if she had been anywhere else she would have just packed her up and left.

In a side story, Jamie and I are going through Effective Parenting in a Defective World with our small group. We are only a couple sessions in, but already its been extremely impactful. The biggest take away for me is that it does not so much matter what we say, its what we do. The values that get instilled into our children come from them watching what we value. If we say reading the Bible is important, but they never see us reading it, do we really expect them to grow valuing God's word? Not likely. And that goes for anything. So Jamie and I had to take stock of how we were living and ask, what values are we instilling in Norah. Unfortunately it was a lot of frustration, impatience, selfishness, etc. You get the idea, everything NOT found in the fruits of the spirit.

So back to the birthday party. I was very convicted that her attitude at the party was a learned behavior from watching us. I'm in no way discounting original sin, even if we were perfect parents the sin nature would be evident in Norah's life. However, the scary thing was that most of her less than flattering tendencies were learned from her parents. So we have made a choice to stop modeling the fruit of darkness, but rather the fruits of the spirit. Its only been a few weeks, but even in this short amount of time I think I can see a huge difference in her attitude.

Now, what would a blog post be without some pictures.... so here you go. I'll add more as soon as I can find the cord to get the photos off the camera.

Norah waiting for the Holiday Train...it was cold!

Norah and Daddy eating Ramen noodles, Lady and the Tramp style

Year 2011 in Review

2012-01-01T09:22:00.000-06:00

Jamie just uploaded about 80 pictures onto our Shutterfly account for everyone who is interested. You can go to Shutterfly (http://norahnoelle.shutterfly.com) to see them. Most of these pictures are within the last 3 or 4 months, from Labor Day up through our New Year's Eve party. You'll need to enter the password "blessing" in order to get to the pictures. Enjoy.

Hitting the Road and Learning to Pee

2011-12-28T14:28:00.001-06:00

Norah and I headed back (without Jamie) for the week before Christmas since Melanie and her family were coming back as well. I knew we would have a lot of fun, but I was a little worried about how things would go without Jamie's help.

Norah is a trooper and the driving portion, both there and back, was great. Normally we don't let her watch DVD's the whole trip, but since I was flying solo I bent the rules. Jamie gave Norah a pair of new pink headphones to wear while watching her movies, and man, what a blessing. It spared me from 9 hours of The Wiggles, Dora, and Barbie movies!!!

The other big experiment while we were gone was potty training. Norah's friend Hannah (who is potty trained) came over two days before we left and got Norah excited to start using the restroom. FINALLY! The problem, we threw a loooong car ride in a couple days later, so all progress made in those 2 days went out the window. But when we got to Indiana we tried again. By the last day we were at my dad's she was going by herself, without even telling me. I think auntie Melanie had a lot to do with that because she kept promising Norah all kinds of rewards and treats if she kept her underwear dry. We did have a few accidents here and there, but I think we are finally to the point where we won't have to buy any more diapers! So I left with an untrained child and returned with a potty trained child... I'd say my wife owes me huge!

Norah in her Christmas dress

Lydia is really enjoying the Barbie movie, so much so she can't even smile

Ripping into the presents

Hamming it up before bed

Norah and Daddy Bonding Time

2011-12-07T21:29:00.001-06:00

Now that Jamie has her own blog, this should really be re-titled "Ruminations from a Greatful Dad" or something. Well, I've been motivated again to start blogging more often about what's going on in our daily lives so that we don't forget!

I suppose I should start this post out by mentioning I've spent 4 of the last 5 days with Norah while Jamie either worked or had other commitments. So we've had some really good father-daughter bonding time. Its actually be amazing. Norah has a "witching hour" around 4:30-6:00pm every night where she is a monster. Unfortunately for me, that means nearly every day I miss the best hours of her day and I come home from work to chaos. But these past 4 days have been different. I get to be with her during her best hours, and its just night and day different from what I'm used to experiencing.

Over this five day stretch she has battled some sort of a bug, starting out vomiting and ended with diarrhea, but she's been a champ through it all. For the first two days (vomiting stage) we spent all day set up in the kitchen watching movies on the laptop. Lots of Curious George and lots of Dora, but I survived. Once she got to stage 2 of the sickness and we weren't constrained to the kitchen anymore, we just played and played and played. It was great. Her imagination is amazing. And I've also enjoyed showing her how to do different things. Yesterday she helped me make mac 'n cheese. Today she helped put toast in the toaster (when he popped up she nearly had a heart attack) and make ramen noodles.

She is without a doubt a tough, stubborn, and strong-willed child. But over these past few days I've really been able to see a lot of good inside her heart as well. When you walk into a room and hear her singing "I've got peace like a river, I've got peace like a river in my soul!", or as she says, "peace like a whiva" you start to think maybe you are getting through after all.

Here's a video from our lunch today after we made ramen, it was her first attempt eating it... and she loved it.

New Blog

2011-10-22T22:14:00.002-05:00

Hi all. Its been almost forever since I last blogged. Sorry. But I wanted to let everyone know that Jamie is now starting a blog as well. Hopefully she will be better about blogging that I have been. You can visit that blog here:

http://auntiemimimn.blogspot.com/

Fun Pictures with Photo Booth

2011-05-15T15:42:00.001-05:00

Back to Indiana

2011-05-15T15:14:00.000-05:00

Its been awhile since I've posted so let me provide a quick recap from my last post. Norah is doing much better lately. She has her moments like any 2 year old, but I have definitely noticed a difference in her overall demeanor and spirit. So thank you all who were praying for her (and us).

The reason its been so long since I last posted was because I wanted to include pictures and we lost our battery charger for the camera. Well, Jamie just found it, so that means pictures could be downloaded from the camera for your viewing pleasure.

Most of these are from our trip back to Indiana the week before Easter. Norah absolutely loves grandma and grandpa Miller and hates when we have to leave. We had a very relaxing week, but as always, it was nice to come home too.

at the Wana Cup

silly grandpa!

mmmmm, this sucker is delicious

riding the carousel at the Mercantile Exchange

Easter Sunday, on the deck

Fixing a Broken Spirit

2011-03-20T09:09:00.003-05:00

I figured I better post since I've been lax in doing so for over 2 months. However, that is explainable. Jamie and I have gotten a nice taste of the terrible two's. As you all know Norah has been a great kid, she's always happy, her countenance bright, and when she walks in she lights up a room. But all that changed in early February. She started spending the majority of her days being sad. She also decided that she had to use the word "no" atleast 5 times every minute.

Then Jamie decided to devise a sadistic plan to compound our pain, taking away Norah's pacifier :-) At the time I thought it was a BAD idea because I didn't want to fight two battles at once. I quickly got on board though because I knew we were doomed to fail if we were not on the same page. So we stuck to the sadistic plan for 2 weeks.... no pacifier for naps or at night. All I can say is that what ensued was a living hell. Norah rarely took naps in those two weeks and would just scream at the top of her lungs when we tried to put her down. There were times I was afraid the neighbors would call cops as loud as Norah was screaming. I have it on video, maybe I'll try and get it uploaded at some point. Anyway, with no nap we then had an over-tired kid who was miserable the rest of the evening.

We were about 10 days into this experiment when both Jamie and I were barely hanging by thread. To my own shame I have been lax over the last year in regularly praying for Norah and us as her parents. So Jamie and I started getting up before Norah and taking some time to pray for Norah, that God would graciously remove the sadness and stubborness from her heart; and for us, that we would be patient and have the grace to break Norah's strong-willed attitude without breaking her spirit. I have also been going into Norah's room after she falls asleep and laying hands on her and praying for her.

I have to say I'm amazed how easily I backslide on prayer when you see God answer it time after time after time. He did again, and in a much shorter time frame than I could have ever hoped or expected. By day 14 Jamie had spent the better part of the last four days in tears. We were both physically and emotionally exhausted. So Jamie called up a friend who dealt with something similar in her daughter. I would like to thank her tremendously for the advice she gave... to give Norah back her pacifier. She may not realize it, but she was a direct answer to prayer because Norah has been a different child over the last 4 days since she's had her pacifier back. Our Norah is back!!!

She certainly has her moments, but she is 2 and we expect that. But she is back to being happy and sleeping again. I can't speak for Jamie, but I feel a hundred times better myself. So the lesson here for me is twofold: (1) never stop praying for your children and spouse, and (2) never take a pacifier away before the kid is ready :-)

Don't Smile!!!

2011-01-12T17:43:00.004-06:00

Jamie caught some fun videos of Norah the other day, so I thought I'd post them.

Terrible Two's? Not Yet.

2011-01-08T14:45:00.002-06:00

So I was just commenting to Jamie this morning that I really feel like, atleast for the last week, we've hit a sweet spot with Norah. She still doesn't want to stay in bed at night. I have to put her back about 8-10 times each night. However, this whole process is down to 15-20 mins, where it used to take 60-90. So it feels, atleast to me, like major progress. Plus, she has just been so happy lately. I realize I'm jinxing it by saying that, but Jamie and I have both mentioned that she is doing so much better.

Her vocabulary continues to explode. One reason we know this is that she never stops talking... ever. We love hearing her sing songs to herself and even read herself books when she's playing. She just has such a happy content heart right now (most of the time). The other thing that possibly is jading my opinion is that I just love coming home from work right now. As soon as I walk in the door Norah stops what she is doing, runs to the steps, and screams in joy. Intermittently injecting a "Hi Daddy!" I'm going to borrow a phrase from the latest session of Robert Lewis' Men's Fraternity, "it doesn't get much better than this."

Norah is going to be two next week, so Jamie went and had some pictures taken. Here is just a sampling of them. My apologies on the pictures turned the wrong way. I loaded them straight from the CD and couldn't find a way in the editor here to let me flip the picture. So, you'll just have to cock your head a bit. Enjoy.

5th Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating

2010-12-30T09:57:00.004-06:00

We held the annual cookie decorating contest again this year. The winner was once again Emily, who continually trounces everyone with her artistic talent. We added gingerbread houses to the repertoire this year. Some of them looked really good, others, well, you can see for yourself.

The winner, I believe a "Christmas in Killarney" cookie

Nice work Abby!

Partially constructed houses... waiting for the final layer of icing and decorations

My favorite. Kiwi's bombed out and abandoned WWII home

A Tough Day

2010-12-15T14:20:00.005-06:00

We just got a call from our social worker this afternoon and found out that Thaddeus' birthmom has asked for him back. We knew that this was a possibility, but I'll be honest, we didn't expect it. And that is probably why this is hurting so bad right now. I am reminded of Proverbs 4:23 where it says, "Guard your heart, for it is the well spring of your life." I definitely did not guard my heart this time around like I did when we got Norah and we are paying for it now.

Jamie and I have spent the last hour crying and trying to deal with it, but we firmly believe that God is in control. We certainly appreciate all the prayers from everyone so far and we certainly could use more as we heal our hearts.

We love you all.

Ryan and Jamie

More Pictures

2010-12-14T15:17:00.003-06:00

Things have been a little crazy around here, so pictures are a little delayed... sorry. We didn't get home from the hospital nearly as early as we had planned, plus Jamie has picked up a pretty nasty cold, so we are just a little out of sorts at the moment. But nothing like some pictures to set things straight.

You can see how small he is because the pacifier is as big as his face

Norah, what did you do?!?!

One Crazy Day

2010-12-12T18:43:00.003-06:00

So if you've been following the weather in MN you know that we are just coming out of the monster snow storm that dropped around 14"-20" of snow on us. That is great and all, but yesterday we got the call that the birthmom that had picked us went into labor, so we needed to come up to the Twin Cities. So, at 9:30am Jamie and I started the white knuckle drive up to the hospital!!!

We got to the hospital around noon today since we were told that was when we could go up and see the baby. When we got here though we found out that the plans had changed. The birth grandma wanted to spend more time with the baby, so we moved back the meeting to 5pm. That meant we had lots of time this afternoon we needed to kill, and so began "the adventure."

Jamie wanted to head to Target to look for a few more infant outfits and also to get some flowers for the birthmom. So we headed out. The first part of our journey took us down Lake St. We passed more retarded drivers in that short 1 mile stretch than I have ever seen in my life. Every cross street had about 2' of snow from the plows and every Civic, Malibu, Celebrity, and other tiny little car known to man tried driving through these mounds of snow. The result were totally predictable. The few that actually looked like they had a chance of getting out were gunning their engines and spinning their wheels.... all while pointing into the main street. We were just waiting to get T-boned by one of these morons.

We spent the next 4 hours driving around town with pretty much the same results. Target didn't have any flowers (strike one), so when we got back to the hospital we headed straight to the gift shop. The good news was the gift shop did have some nice bouquets. The bad news, it was closed even though the hours posted clearly showed it was supposed to be open (strike two). So we quick headed to the truck to find a floral shop. Bad move. The first place we stopped was some "world market." They used to have a flower shop, but not anymore, or so they said (strike three). We called about 3 different flower places and they were all closed.

Now it's 4:55 and we need to be back for our meeting at 5:00. Enter Lake St into the narrative once again. Its now bumper to bumper in every direction. Instead of the few morons we saw on Lake St previously, it was now packed with them. We needed to make a left hand turn to get back to the hospital, but every single street was blocked from a stuck car. At one of the blocked streets there was a brawl. I assume because of the blocked car, but two guys were just wailing on each other. Two other guys jumped in to try and break it up. At the exact same time, there was a guy on the right side of Lake St with a snowblower launching ice and snow into the middle of the street. So its just pelting the truck like its a hail storm. And while this is happening, one of those stuck cars is high-topped beside us but is rocking back and forth trying to get out. He finally got traction and lurched forward, stopping approximately 3 nanometers from the side of our car. I'm not making any of this up either.

After passing five consecutive streets that were blocked I finally saw an open street. Note its well past 5pm at this point. I'm waiting for a car to let me turn through the bumper to bumper traffic when a Kia Sportage coming from the other direction decides he wants to take my open street. Do I even need to tell you what happens next? That's right, he doesn't even make it 5 feet into the street before getting stuck.

We did finally get back to the hospital. And we did get to meet the newest member of the Miller family. I'll blog more later about him and our experience with him, but for now allow me to introduce:

Thaddeus Tell Miller

born on 12/11/10 @ 3:48pm

5lb 13oz

19.5 inches

Moments of Joy

2010-12-04T17:25:00.002-06:00

Norah, like any almost two year old, has her moments that make us want to pull our hair out. But at the same time she is just so stinkin' sweet. Let me provide you with a few examples:

#1 - Yesterday I took Norah with me to the gas station since we had to get gas for the snowblower (which didn't work, so I had to shovel all 10" by hand, but don't get started on that). Since its only a few blocks away I let her sit in the front seat in mommy's "big girl" seat. As soon as she sat down she looked at me, smiled, and said, "I big goil (girl)".

#2 - A little later we went on a Menard's run. Some of you may be familiar with the music of Casper Babypants, well, we had it playing in the van. The second she heard it she asks for "Monkey Wiver (River)". This is the same song she made us listen to on repeat from South Bend to the north side of Chicago (I was about ready to jab my eyes with a fork on that trip). Like that trip, as the song ended she starts yammering, "gen, gen (again)." Mommy always tells her to be patient, so when I told her that it was going to start again as soon as it ended, she says "I payshun (patient)."

Below are a few more older photos, obviously as there is no snow, since I have not downloaded any photos recently. Enjoy.

Living large on the bigwheel.

Classic scrunched face smile

Check out my hot ride boys!

Go To Work

2010-12-01T21:34:00.003-06:00

Nearly every time I drop Norah off for daycare it takes her several minutes to warm up enough for me to leave. She gets so excited to go to Heidi's when we are still at the house and she recites everyone's name who will be there: Hannah, Chi-Chi (Malachi), Zackson (Jackson), and Kaden. But for whatever reason once we actually get there she never wants me to go.

However, today we reached a milestone. Today when I dropped her off I put her down and then dropped to my knees to try and play with her a bit knowing she usually needs that. Only today she looked at me, put her hand on my shoulder, pushed me, and said, "work daddy. work" So I got up and left. Its weird, I've been wanting that to happen for the last 12 months, but now that she wants me gone I'd kind of like to stay :-( My baby doesn't need me anymore, sniffle sniffle.

Norah always grabs my hat and puts it on like a homie

She was so proud of herself double paci-ing

Norah and Hannah in my grasp

Waiting For Sugar Peanut

2010-11-30T21:06:00.003-06:00

Most nights it is my job to put Norah to bed. Our ritual is that once we get to her room and shut off the lights the first thing we do is pray. For the last few weeks the first thing we pray for is auntie Many (Melanie) and the baby in her belly. But you never really know if they know what you are praying for. Then tonight as we walked downstairs I told Norah, "its night-night time. we need to go to bed and pray for auntie Melanie." That's all I said, but then after Norah gave me sufficient time to finish that thought, but didn't, she says, "and baby in belly." Seriously, how freaking sweet is that?!?!

Also, I've been letting Norah help me do all my chores around the house. So over the past several months she has been helping me do the dishes in the sink, empty the dishwasher, put a table together, fold the laundry, etc. And she is always asking to do the dishes. You can't turn on the kitchen sink without hearing, "dithes, dithes!!!" Tonight I actually left her alone in front of the sink with a bunch of dirty plastic ware and the scrubbing brush and she did a pretty decent job. I'm amazed sometimes how quickly she picks stuff up.

Norah with her mom (who's stoned out of her gourd).

Helping mom with the dishes.

Getting her feet wet on Ruby Ln BigWheel Sprint Cup circuit.

Operation: Enduring Boredom

2010-11-29T22:13:00.004-06:00

Ok, here's the deal. This one single blog post is going to be drawn out over the next several days. "Why?" you ask. Good question. Because my sister has been on bed rest for the past several weeks and is going bonkers. So Melanie, this is how much I love you, I'm going to give you a new blog post every day this week. (Note, if I forget, then I won't). My goal is to successfully deploy a new blog with either pictures, some update, or a combination of the two, ALL FOR YOU. Merry Thanksgiving to you!

So without further adieu, here are some random photos to keep the peeps happy.

Well obviously any picture of Norah loving on her daddy is going on the blog.

Hamming it up for the camera.

Just chilling and making some artwork on the driveway

This was a model shot I took of Norah wearing an old Anderson University tshirt. It was mainly to make Tim and Matt proud. However, they should note that is well worn, not something that I stuffed in the bottom of my closet. You can also see the "butt model" in the background... roar!

Norah Knievel

2010-10-12T18:55:00.004-05:00

So today was a fun day. Jamie called me on my cell and said, "You've got to get home now, Norah is playing at the neighbors and it is so cute!" Well, it turns out she and our neighbor Sean were racing down the hill next to their house on Big Wheels. Norah was having an absolute blast. According to Jamie, she did this for about an hour. Her first trip down the hill was from only halfway up the top. By the time I got there, she was going from the top and in order to get more speed she was doing the Fred Flintstone with her feet until she got to the steep part of the hill. It was pretty neat.

She also has started talking up a storm lately. Today for the first time I heard her complete the entire alphabet. She usually gets stuck around Q-R-S, but there was one time that she made it through. Then Jamie was said, "watch this. Norah, can you count to 10?" Which she proceeds to do. I about crapped my pants. I had not ever even heard her count to 3 before!!!!

Here are some pictures from her recent trip to the apple orchard.

I'm loving this one. The poses are very Abercrombie & Fitch

the end

Return to Indiana and the Ruby Lane Players

2010-09-19T17:55:00.004-05:00

We spent nine days back in Indiana the weekend before to the weekend after Labor Day. Norah warmed up right away to grandma and grandpa Miller on this trip. I think she's getting to that age where she's remembering them. The nice thing about this trip is that is was much more laid back than past trips. We did a lot of sitting around and reading/talking/playing games, and of course, playing with Norah.

The first part of the week we spent in Elkhart where we had a gathering with some the Graber clan. It was nice to see some of my cousins that I have not seen in several years. And the best part was that there were older kids there (a.k.a. free babysitting).

The last half of the week was in Middlebury. I think we took Norah to the park downtown about 10 times because she loved it. We also made our regular stops to Chick-Fil-A and Hacienda while we were back. But the highlight for me was last Saturday when I met up with 7 of my college buddies in Crown Point to do a little golfing. There were lots of stories retold and definitely lots of laughs. All in all, it was a great trip.

Norah was chilling on the couch watching ND football with her daddy.

Hanging with grandma

Hamming it up for the camera.

Don't ask how I fit into that tub, I still don't know.

Atleast there's 1 Miller in this photo with no Amish blood

So last night we got to partake in a fun event. Our cul-de-sac street has about a 10:1 girl to boy ratio, and last night those lovely ladies put on the first production by the Ruby Lane Players. They performed "The Wizard of Oz" using one of our neighbor's decks as the stage. It was great, it was Norah's first play! And her first popcorn!

Mom and Norah getting read to enjoy the show.

The cast, from L-R: the wicked witch, Dorothy, the good witch (who also played the scarecrow), the leopard who wanted to be a DJ, the Tin Man, and Emma who was not allowed a part :-(

ABC Time

2010-09-02T20:53:00.002-05:00

Norah has been on a roll lately learning new words and songs and whatnot. For the past week she keeps singing her ABC's. This clip isn't her best effort she's had, but you can atleast tell the tune she's singing. And oh, Timmy and Matt, check out the shirt I be rockin' in this clip.

Softball Tournament

2010-08-07T12:39:00.004-05:00

Last weekend we packed up and headed for Shakopee for the Berean Baptist Invitational Softball tournament (not to be confused with the Berean that we attend). We went up on Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel, which also happened to have a small water park in it! Norah loved it. She even went down the big slide with me a few times.

The softball tournament was all day Saturday. The good news: our team won our division. The bad news: the heat index was well over 100 and we played 5 games. We were all pretty much toast at the end of the day. I easily drank over 100 oz of water throughout the day, but it still wasn't enough as I never had to pee once! I managed to get some road rash on about every conceivable spot on my body, but I'll definitely settle for that as we had one guy tear his calf muscle and another snapped his quad. So a little road rash was nothing.

And some random shots of Norah:

The Black Hills

2010-07-28T08:04:00.008-05:00

This weekend we returned from our 2nd Annual camping vacation to the Black Hills. It was a good trip, if not a bit unconventional. Due to weather (lots of rain and cold) we didn't have a single night where we all gathered around the fire after dark. That's the best part of camping, so it was a little disappointing. We also had the joy of keeping Norah under raps. We learned two things last week: (1) she's really fast, and (2) she doesn't listen very well :-)

We did go to Sylvan Lake about every day. They have a somewhat easy 1 mile hike that takes you around the lake. We walked that trail and then would head to the beach to let Norah play in the sand and water. This was about the only thing we could do to keep her happy. We also ended up hiking to Harney Peak. It was a grueling hike for someone as out of shape as me, but it was awesome. Harney Peak is the highest point east of the Rockies and west of the Pyrenees. We got a bunch of pictures, but they are on the Nikon, so I'll download those later.

We took one day and went to Old McDonald's Farm. (See all the pics below). This was a small little place that had just about every kind of farm animal imaginable. They had chickens and turkeys just roaming free through the park and Norah immediately started chasing them.

Norah and Ellie hanging in grandpa's trailer

Norah and grandpa with the goats

Washing grandpa's truck. This went on for 3 days.

Um, that's just nasty.

Getting ready to hold some baby chicks.

Eagerly awaiting the start of the pig races

Playing at the beach

4th of July

2010-07-05T12:45:00.007-05:00

We had a fun and exciting weekend. On Saturday we took Norah to Whitewater State Park to do some hiking and swimming. The Alderman family joined us for the day. We hiked up the 500 or so stairs on the Dakota Trail so Norah could get a good look over the park. She walked only about 20-30 steps before wising up and asking daddy to carry her the rest of the way. After that we headed over to the Chimney Rock Trail. It too was pretty much straight up, but she a lot more walking on that trail.

After we finished the two hikes we went to the beach and swimming area. Norah loved playing in the sand and in the water (which happened to be about 5 degrees above absolute zero). We got lots of great pictures of her playing in the water and on the beach with Isabelle, Alex, and Will.

Then on the 4th we went down to Stewartville to catch the parade. We were a little uncertain if we would stay since it was raining all day long. We stopped off at the Pizza Ranch first and had dinner since it was raining and we didn't want to sit out and get wet. It was still sprinkling after we finished and got downtown. But we stuck it out and it payed off. The rain stopped as soon as the parade started and then picked up again as soon as it was over. Norah was pretty stoic for the first 15-20 mins. I don't think she really knew what was going on. But then the horses came and she started waiving and screaming, she loved it! From that point on she had a great time. She is still a little too young to understand the candy aspect of the parade, so I made sure I collected for her :-)

Jamie already has Norah on the bottle (don't worry, it was empty)

waiving to the horses

this was before she got excited, as you can tell.

This sucker lasted her the entire parade!

Finally, having a good time

Mmmmmmm

One piece of flair...

Lots of flair! We told Tim Walz to take his sticker and "stick it".

Update: We had the pictures from Whitewater on a different computer since I used the super-duper expensive camera. Here are a few of those.

Up to Chimney Rock.

My favorite from the beach.

Walk For Life

2010-06-26T20:48:00.005-05:00

What an eventful day. It started this morning at 4:15am. That's right, read that as three hours before people should start their days. It didn't matter that I put Norah down an hour later last night to hopefully get her to sleep past 5:30. But she spited me by getting up an hour and half earlier.

After the early start, we went up to Como Park for the New Life fundraiser. It started out overcast, but turned out to be a great day (if you consider 85 degrees, 90% humidity, and no cloud cover great). We met Norah's birth mom there, as well as an uncle, 2 aunts, and 2 cousins. We had an absolute blast walking around the lake for the Walk For Life. Norah spent the first half in the stroller, but finished out strong walking probably the last half mile all by herself.

After the walk we spent about an hour just sitting and talking with Sarah and her family. It was fun to get to know them. And they got to see Norah running all over the park and playing with two cousins she had never met. Speaking of which, Norah has a pretty sweet setup. She's got grandma's, grandpa's, aunts, uncles, and cousins on Jamie and my side of the family. But she also has all those from her birth mom's family. Like I said, pretty sweet deal.

After all that fun, we all went to Snuffy's. I had never heard of it before, but it was great. It was an old-style malt and burger shop. After that, we headed back to Rochester. Only problem is that we got home and starting about 6:30 tonight Norah started puking her guts out. Luckily Jamie was in the leather chair, so no major damage, just don't plan on sniffing the carpet in front of the chair :-)

Norah and her "new" cousin Luke

Sitting with Sarah after the walk.

Her new cousin Olivia.

Giving cousin Olivia a good-bye kisses.

Diaper Wearing Baseball Star

2010-06-20T08:10:00.003-05:00

We found out yesterday that some wanker(s) stole the baseball bag out of my truck. It had two bats, my glove, cleats and all baseball related equipment. I was not real happy yesterday. Luckily, the $275 glove I bought when I played at Taylor was in the house so I still have that one. Buts its an infielders glove and doesn't do so well with softballs. So yesterday we headed down to Dick's Sporting Goods. I told Jamie, at the very least, I need to buy a cup before our game on Monday. So I got my much needed cup and a new pair of cleats. I was proud of myself though, they were the cheapest pair of baseball shoes I've bought in my entire life. They cost the same as what my Walter Payton kangeroos cost when I was in the 3rd grade... $35. The difference, I think I just scored a sweet deal, but I remember my mom nearly flipping out when I asked for $30 shoes 25 years ago.

Then we decided to have some fun:

Surviving the Storm

2010-06-18T16:02:00.006-05:00

Well, we just experienced probably the worst storm I've ever been in last night and lived to tell about it. Luckily Norah was asleep and, amazingly, never woke up. It showed up around 9pm last night and brought with it torrential rains and unbelievable winds. It was raining so hard you really couldn't even see the neighbors house across the street. Then, almost instantly, the winds came. The reports are that winds topped out around 78mph in NW Rochester, and I believe it. The rain was going straight sideways... thats when we decided to head to the basemment ASAP.

We didn't sustain any house damage that I can see, which is amazing. There are numerous trees in our neighborhood that snapped like toothpicks, the biggest one was probably about 10" in diameter. We did loose the canopy on our deck though. The wind was so strong it snapped the 4 straps holding it down and tossed if off the upper deck. When we assessed the damage this morning there was no chance for a recovery. I pronounced it dead at the scene.

At about 10pm I headed over to the Kelm househould to help out. They faired much worse. All the front windows were blown out, and a couple in the back as well. Not to mention their garage door now looks like a fruit roll-up. It was incredible the damage in their neighborhood. The house behind them was missing its roof!!! From the looks of the soffet in front, their roof was closing to getting ripped off as well.

I already took the canopy off, but here's one leg.

Side view, with canopy laying in the back.

Where it came from and where it ended up.

RIP beloved canopy (2008-2010), you served us well.

Tilt your head 90 degrees left to see the 3 branches destroyed on our neighbors tree.

Wide angle view of the huge branch that snapped off this huge oak.

Broken Appliances and a Smile that Saves

2010-05-16T14:48:00.007-05:00

About a month ago Jamie and I were standing in the basement when the furnace kicked on. All of a sudden we heard this annoying high pitched squeal coming from the furnace. I narrowed it down to the induction motor, but decided at that point it was time to call in the pros. They came and fixed it, but not before leaving us with a nice hefty bill. And you know what they say, when it rains it pours.

We noticed a couple of days ago that the contents in our upright freezer were not frozen solid like they should be. I monitored the freezer for the next 24 hours and noticed that while it appeared to be running, it wasn't keeping the food frozen. Not surprising considering this freezer was made before I was born I'm sure. We ended up getting a brand new upright from Lowe's yesterday, and dang, those things are expensive!!! The only part that I was okay with is that we did get a "deal." They knocked off 10% right from the start since it was an Energy Star freezer (as a side note, since our old freezer was built in the 60's, the sheet says this one should save us over $80/yr in electric bills, another score). We also just got a $25 off card in the mail if you spend more than $250. So we cashed that bad boy in. We also got a $25 rebate from the local electric company for using an Energy Star appliance. And we paid with Discover, which is paying 5% cash back on purchases from Home Improvement stores right now. So, all in all, my miser side was appeased with all the savings.

Yesterday Norah and I went down to the farmers market with our friend Pico and something happened there that just absolutely made my day. I had Norah in our stroller and I was just pushing her through the market. She, like usual, was just waiving and smiling at everyone. At one point we came to this one stand with a guy who was probably 85 years old. He was just sitting on the bed of his truck with a bit of a scowl, but mainly just a dazed look on his face. He looked like an old guy that just needed a friend to be honest. Well, we come rolling by and Norah gives this old guy a huge smile and starts waiving to him. You could just see the fog lift off this old man's face. He just looked at her for a second, then scowl vanished, then a slight smile. Then he even started waiving back and saying hi to Norah. It was just one of those times where a dad hopes his kid always has the ability to brighten someone's day like that, it was pretty sweet.

And here's a couple photos from a couple of weeks ago when we took Norah in for pictures. Enjoy.

This is a favorite of mine since I don't think we've ever seen this face before.

Dancing, like she always does.

Dear Lord, please make them put the camera away.

(Workin' at the) car wash

2010-04-17T19:33:00.004-05:00

Today Norah decided to help daddy wash the van. I think she ended up drinking more water from the sponge and getting more water on her clothes than she did on the van, but she sure had fun. And looked cute doing it.

She dried the sponge by sucking on it, so she needed more water.

This is our favorite, look at that smile.

Visiting the Rices

2010-04-16T20:49:00.003-05:00

We just got back from spending a week with Shawn, Melanie, and Lydia. We flew out on the Monday after Easter and Norah, while quite squirmy, did a great job of traveling. We got delayed several hours on the way out though, so by the time we got there it was already pretty late.

On Tuesday we woke up to find Norah had herself a 102.9 degree fever. Amazingly, you would never have known that she had a fever for the first two days. She played with Lydia and had a great time. And then on Wednesday we all ventured over to Hershey World. It really is a cruel place for anyone who is a chocolate lover. Chocolate was everywhere, but you couldn't eat it. Lydia and Norah ended up taking the Chocolate Tour Ride about 5 times. They loved the singing cows!

Then Thursday came, and the ear infection. Norah went from a fun happy kid to little miss clingy. On Friday we ended up at the doctors office to get her some medicine, which of course, caused her to throw up. But this is all payback of course for when Lydia came to Minnesota and threw up all over our living room floor. Unfortunately we ended up staying at the house for those last few days because there was just no taking Norah anywhere. But we still had a great time and Norah loved spending time with Lydia (and auntie Melanie and uncle Shawn). We are just hoping that the next time we get the girls together they can both be healthy!

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures at the moment because our camera was broke. So once we get them from auntie Melanie we'll post some here.

2007: A Minnesota Odyssey

2010-03-01T21:50:00.006-06:00

There has been quite a bit of excitement around here over the past week. It started off with a trip to the Wisconsin Dells. We spent three days over there with our small group just hanging out and enjoying the indoor water parks. Norah did amazingly well for her first time. She was always a bit hesitant for the first hour or so each day, but then she really warmed up to the water. When we were at the wave pool, she actually started walking toward the deep end. If I wasn't holding her hands she probably would have walked until the water was over her head!

The other big news is that I sold out and got a mini-van. We started looking back in September when we found out we were pregnant. So even though we won't be adding kid #2 this summer like we expected, we still went ahead and got one. We sold Jamie's Jetta to a guy from St. Joseph, MO last Saturday a week ago. So we were down to one car for a week, but this past Friday we headed up to the Cities and picked up a 2007 Honda Odyssey. Jamie is definitely big pimpin' in the new ride.

Norah being entertained by Addison.

Just checking things out.

Drying off after a nice swim.

Hanging with her best friend Ashlyn.

What up homie?

Norah reading her New Testament to daddy. (a budding theologian)

She absolutely loves brushing her own teeth.

Dancing Queen

2010-02-17T06:43:00.002-06:00

Fun in the Snow

2010-02-16T06:32:00.004-06:00

This past weekend I went with two buddies up to Jamie's uncle's cabin to do a little ice fishing. We had a perfect day to do it. It was only about 6 degrees outside when we got on the ice, so we started out the day in the pop-ups, but by 9:30 or so the sun was out and there wasn't a lick of wind. So we spent most of the rest of the day fishing outside. The only problem, someone must have told the fish we were coming. There were five of us total in our fishing posse, but in the 11 hours we spent on the ice I think we only had about 15 keepers... and that was even questionable if take into account uncle Todd's internal tape measure wasn't quite up to par.

Last week we also took Norah out into the snow for the first time. She absolutely loved it!!! She would have stayed out there all day if we had let her. Here are some pictures of the action.

Her first few steps in the fluffy white stuff.

Chillin' (literally) with daddy

Gumby's great escape. This is one of my favorites.

Here are a couple of videos as well. The first one is Norah getting kicked in the head by accident when daddy was making a snow angel. The second is her playing and singing with mommy.

End of January Update

2010-01-26T18:33:00.011-06:00

Not a whole lot of new info to share. We did start the paperwork this past week for our second round of adoption. Unfortunately there is a waiting list right now at New Life so it may end up taking awhile. Thanks to an old college buddy, we did start investigating the possibility of adopting from Haiti. We never thought of Haiti as an option, but in light of recent events and all the children that are now without parents we thought it was only logical to atleast look into it.

And Norah turned 1 this month. Its been fun watching her as she continues to understand more and more things. Tonight Jamie told her to go and get her blanket and come back, and she did! Now, we just need to work on that attitude problem she's developing. Now, what everyone really wants, more pictures of Norah.

Norah with her best friend Ashlyn

Norah getting a ride from her other best friend Hannah.

Norah playing at her new kitchen

And here mommy dressed Norah up as a stripper.

Caught in the act!!!

Norah's friends Sam and Owen came over to play.

And Norah likes to get down. She turns on this radio by herself all the time and starts getting jiggy. Tonight she had some dancing partners. Note Sam, he does a little break dancing to finish off his routine.

Someone Needed a Trim

2010-01-08T17:07:00.008-06:00

Today we took Norah to get her first haircut. Her hair was starting to get completely out of control, so we need to trim it up a bit. Here are some photos from the event.

Just before the cut, showing her vampire fangs.

The final product.

Eventful Holidays

2010-01-02T12:02:00.007-06:00

Jamie and I had quite the eventful holiday season this year. Jamie's sister and her family came from Utah for 2 weeks. They stayed with us for the first week and we got in lots of games. Poor Doug, he wants to beat Jamie so bad at Settler's, but she just keeps winning. And what makes it worse, she has no strategy whatsoever. Her only strategy is getting her numbers rolled everytime. Doug and Emily also got us a new game, Qwirkle. We've only played it once, but it seems like a lot of fun.

My dad also came into town for 6 days. It was nice having grandpa around to watch Norah so Jamie and I could get a few hours here and there of rest. It took her a day or so to warm up to him, but by the time he left they were best friends.

As far as presents go, Jamie went for quality over quantity. She didn't want a lot of gifts, she just wanted one, a new kitchen sink and faucet. So we got lots of Home Depot gift cards from the family this year to help towards the purchase. I was aghast at how much it would cost for a sink and faucet.... in my opinion it was ridiculously expensive and we didn't even get the "good" stuff. But its installed and working and I think looks great.

We also had some bad news. On Tuesday, Dec 22nd, Jamie and I lost our baby that she was carrying. She was 13 weeks pregnant at the time. We were hoping to spread the good news that we were pregnant at Christmas, but unfortunately God decided he wanted this child. Along with being physically difficult for Jamie, it was a very emotional and tough time for the both of us. We had both come to grips with the notion that we couldn't get pregnant and that God wanted to complete our family through adoption. Then we find out we are pregnant. So that took some time to wrap our heads around, which we finally did a few weeks before the miscarriage. So its been a whirlwind of emotions, but we thank all of you who have been praying for us and checking in on us. We truly do appreciate it.

Now, back to some fun stuff, pictures....

Santa's Little Helper

Reading with Grandpa Miller

Hello?

Opening gifts with cousin Ellie

Big Steps

2009-12-07T16:57:00.006-06:00

Jamie got after me since its been so long since I last blogged. So, let me see if I can try recap the last few month or so of events. My mom came up to Minnesota to visit over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was nice because she volunteered to watch Norah one evening so Jamie and I could go on a date! After grandma Miller left Norah always sighs now when she sees grandma in the picture book.

Norah checking out the Christmas tree

Norah with grandma Miller

The big news is that Norah has starting walking! She took 2 steps all by herself for the first time on Saturday, then today, bam, she's walking like a pro. Check out the video evidence that Jamie was able to capture today.

Miller Update

2009-11-05T17:31:00.006-06:00

Two weeks ago Jamie and I had an opportunity to share our adoption story. New Life Family Services, the agency that we used for the adoption, was having their once a year banquet and fundraiser and they asked us to give a short presentation on our experience. They put up several pictures of Norah while I was speaking and the crowd (about 400 people) absolutely loved her! It was a great night hearing about New Life and the amazing ministry they have. If you are on Facebook, you can become a fan, just search for them.

There is not a whole lot of other news here in the Miller household. We are starting to hunker down as old man winter is bearing down on us. The fact that it gets dark by 5pm totally sucks... its going to be long winter. Luckily, we have a little ray of sunshine that keeps us going. Here are some recent pictures, including some from our trip back to Indiana in October.

Grandpa with his girls

Norah showing off her pretty pink outfit

Little Pink Riding Hood

Norah and Lydia getting friendly at the Essenhaus

Back to Indiana

2009-10-23T11:40:00.004-05:00

Jamie and I headed back to Indiana last weekend so I could attend my 10 yr reunion at Taylor. It was a lot of fun seeing some old friends who I have not seen since graduation and hearing what is going on in their lives these days. Its hard to believe that its been that long... I must be getting old.

My sister and her family came home as well so Norah got to play with her cousin Lydia for a few days. It is so fun to watch them play together because Lydia just loves Norah. She was always going up to her and giving her kisses. Since the whole family was back together, we decided to have some pictures taken. They turned out great. The pictures were taken by an old friend of ours and you can see a couple of the shots on her website, Traci Shupert Photography. Here's my favorite one as a teaser!

Basically, Just Pictures

2009-10-06T17:54:00.009-05:00

There is not a whole lot new going on in the Miller house these days. We just continue to enjoy watching Norah grow and learn new things. The latest thing now is waving goodbye. She thinks she's so cool when she waves at people. She also has become pretty good at crawling down the steps, but going up is a whole different story. She only makes it up one step, and then chickens out and goes back down.

Norah with a magazine. I think she liked her twin on the left page.

Norah dominating the sippy cup

Check out the hangtime on that drool!

A cake at Norah's last baby shower.

The evolution story: Start with one puff...

... rinse it down with some crystal clear water...

... throw in some bananas, and you've got the makings for a mess.

The First Stair

2009-09-16T19:59:00.003-05:00

Jamie took Norah and went out to Utah for a week to visit Doug, Emily, and Ellie. It was fun for me for a day or two, but I was definitely ready to have them home. Don't get me wrong, the sleeping through the night part was awesome and I didn't want to give that up. Rumor has it Norah learned several new things while she was away from home. Including this one that was caught on tape.

She Stands

2009-09-07T17:15:00.006-05:00

Norah has learned a few tricks in the past week. She can now pull herself up on things, and she ate her first jar of baby food. She's been eating rice cereal and mashed up avocados and sweet potatoes for months, but this was the first store bought food. She's lightning fast and nothing is sacred to her, so we are continually amazed at where she ends up and what she has in her mouth when she gets there!

North Carolina

2009-08-23T08:41:00.010-05:00

Two weeks ago Jamie, Norah and I went to Raleigh to visit Jamie's brother and sister-in-law. We had a really good time and got to go see some pretty cool sights. The first day we were there we went to Duke Gardens to have a picnic. After lunch we traveled over to Chapel Hill and took a look at the UNC campus (and bought some Tar Heel paraphernalia).

Sporting Dr Seuss like blue hair-do's

We also took a day trip out to the outer banks, which was really cool. We first stopped at Kitty Hawk and saw where the Wright brothers first took flight. I think I enjoyed it much more than Jamie did. From there we went straight to the beach, where Norah got to jump into the ocean for the very first time. From the beach we drove down the shore all the way to Cape Hatteras to see the light tower. It turned out to be a long day, but it was well worth it.

Norah petting Razor

Norah loved looking out the plane window

At Duke Gardens

Somewhere between Hatteras and Kittyhawk

Cape Hatteras lighthouse

And a few more pictures of Norah, since that seems to be all that anyone cares about these days :-)

Minnesota Hacksaw Massacre

2009-08-23T08:30:00.004-05:00

On Friday we had a little bit of time to do some chores around the house, something we don't get to do a lot of anymore. I was finishing up some work on the sprinkler system and Jamie decided to trim some shrubs in the front of the house. Specifically, these variegated dogwoods.

However, I'm not exactly sure that what resulted could appropriately be called a trim. I'd say it was more like a hatchet job. When I came around to the front yard I nearly choked. The once beautiful dogwood now looked like this....

Sprinkler System Installed

2009-07-21T17:37:00.010-05:00

Well, I decided to be a bit ambitious this past weekend and I put in a sprinkler system. Everything went fine for the most part, with a few exceptions. First, I'm pretty sure a 160-lb man was never intended to run a 1000-lb trencher. Let's just say I felt like I got run over by truck after running that thing for 5 hours. Second problem, coax cable that's buried 3" deep in your yard is no match for aforementioned trencher. So not only did we lose our internet and TV for 2 days, but we lost our free extended basic as well. Now we actually get what we pay for, basic cable.... which totally sucks!

One of the many trenches... straight as a politician.

The jerk that took away our free cable.

The work crew. My neighbors Darrin and Bernard.

Before.

After. The finished product. Zone 1 in action.

PS - Funny story. My neighbor Bernard is from the Congo. He said, "in Africa I would just pay someone $50 and they would come and dig these trenches for me. Why are you doing them?" I informed him that in America it costs just a wee bit more than $50 to get someone to do this for me. More, as in $1800. I thought he was going to pass out when I told him :-)

What has Norah been doing lately....

2009-07-21T07:52:00.011-05:00

Hi all. Just thought I would give you all an update on things and include a few pictures. On Friday, July 31st we are finalizing the adoption, yippee!!! We are looking forward to having all this legal stuff behind us and moving ahead as a family. Below are a few pictures of Norah, hope you enjoy.

Our little cowgirl

Reaching for everything, this time its the bottle

Norah loves eating her shoes

Howdy partner

Relaxing on the couch

She's already doing her hair in the mirror... oh boy.

Norah at her first Twins game. They beat the Tigers 4-3!!!

Black Hills Camping Trip

2009-07-04T08:30:00.009-05:00

I'm turning into a prolific writer here all of a sudden. Two posts in one day! On Thursday of last week Jamie and I went out to the Black Hills to go camping with her mom and dad, and Emily, Doug and Ellie. Its a 10 hour drive from Rochester which I was not looking forward to with a 5 month old, but Norah continues to impress us and she did awesome on the trip. The kid is amazing, on the way there and back she probably only fussed for a total of 20 mins. If you say we are lucky, you're wrong.... we're blessed, big difference :-)

We, er I, was totally not prepared for the weather out there. It was 90 degrees by day, but dropped into the high 40's by night. Since I took along one pair of pants, one long sleeve tshirt, and one fleece, I spent the better part of every night freezing my butt off. We kept Norah in the tent with us the first two nights, but because it was so cold we decided to put her in the camper with Jamie's parents.

We had a good time and saw lot's of stuff. We drove the Needle's Highway, went to Mt. Rushmore, ate at the Purple Pie Shop, went to 4 Mile Town, (start sarcasm) and probably the most exciting of all, the CrazyHorse Monument (end sarcasm). CrazyHorse was one of the weirdest things ever. We went for the free laser light show which started at dark. We got there about 90 mins before it got dark, so we sat there and froze our tooshies off. Then when it did start we got to hear for 30 mins about how evil the white man is for stealing the red man's land. And after hearing how much we white folk suck they finished it off with a moving song, Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud To Be an American."

We brought Jamie's "new" camera along too. About a year ago she bought a new Nikon D300. It was slightly more than "holy crap!" and just less than "that's it, give me your credit cards." The problem is, she never uses it because she doesn't know how to use it. So I bought a book at Barnes & Noble which is basically a how-to for the D300 and read that on the trip so we could actually start taking some pictures with it. Anyway, here are a few from the first batch.

Adoption Update

2009-07-04T08:20:00.002-05:00

Its been awhile since we've updated what has been going on, so I thought I better get out here and write something. On Tuesday of last week there was another meeting with the judge to discuss the paternity action that the birth father filed. Like two months prior, he failed to show for this hearing. So the judge dismissed the birth father's rights and we are now free to move towards finalization!

We still have to wait another week or so to call the courthouse to set up the finalization, but that is the last thing left to do. Then I'll officially have papers to prove that I'm Norah's father in case she decides to claim I'm not when she's a teenager and hates me ;-). We plan to throw a little party as soon as the finalization is complete. If you live in Rochester we'll let you know, if you don't live here, well, you can celebrate with us in spirit.

She Makes Me So Proud

2009-05-27T17:54:00.004-05:00

We traveled back to Indiana over the Memorial Day weekend because Jamie and I went to the Indianapolis 500 with my mom. More on that later. First, let me share with you all something that makes me one happy daddy. As you can see from the video below, Norah is going to be a football fan.

As for the race, that was pretty cool as well. I never had a desire to go to the race in the past, but my mom has been asking us to go for the last couple of years. So we finally gave in and decided it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Well, now that I've gone once I'm hooked and I'm thinking this might have to become a more regular thing. I wasn't expecting just how loud it was... and believe me, it is LOUD!!! But there is something about a car with almost 700hp that goes 220mph gets a man all excited :-) Here's just a little clip from our spot on turn 4 (where 5 of the accidents happened). This video does not do any justice to how loud and cool it is to actually be there.

4 Months

2009-05-16T08:27:00.004-05:00

Today Norah turns 4 months old. Its wierd because it seems like we've had her a lot longer than that, and I mean that in a good way. So we updated the Shutterfly website with a few new pictures if you are interested. Here's a couple to tease you.

The Many Faces We Love

2009-05-07T07:55:00.010-05:00

There are many others that I just don't have updated pictures of at the moment. We love you too...Kanani, Kawika, Ellie, baby Alderman, Addison, Braedon, baby Jaxson, Abby and Deepali

You can do it!!!

2009-05-07T07:23:00.012-05:00

Our little friends were over hanging a few weeks ago..... I know I'm a little behind!
It was just so darn cute I had to post Owen trying to feed himself!!!

Latest News

2009-05-04T12:35:00.011-05:00

Already asking questions that a man can't answer correctly.

Standing tall

Grandma found out Norah loves the TV

There are the pictures, now on to the updates. Well, there have been a few things of note in the adoption process recently, but we still are not any closer to having closure. Back on April 14th there was a scheduled meeting between the birth father, the birth mother's lawyer, the adoption agency's lawyer, and a judge. The meeting was scheduled by law specifically because the birth father filed a paternity action against the agency back in February. But the birth father never showed up. Obviously that doesn't look good for him, but when the birth mom's lawyer contacted him he claimed he was never notified of the meeting.

As a result of his not showing up, the judge/referee gave the birth mom's lawyer the okay to file papers essentially canceling the paternity action the birth father filed. The next thing on the agenda is that another meeting has been set up between all the parties. This isn't going to happen until June 23rd, so we have another 2 months to wait. If the referee rules in our favor at this meeting then we would essentially be in the clear.

In other random news. I am apparently responsible for starting a new group on Facebook. The funny thing is that several of us at work have been making fun of them recently. Why? Because its getting out of control. You can become a fan of just about anything. You can become a fan of: breathing, water, sleeping, and even "not being on fire". Well, one of my friends from college actually became a fan of the latter, so I had to comment on it.

As you can see, that led to the creation of a new group. Ironic I guess.

Day at the Park

2009-04-15T20:52:00.008-05:00

Hair Isn't Everything Kid

2009-03-28T18:30:00.006-05:00

So Norah really thinks she's special with all this hair of hers. As you can see in the picture below its getting quite long. Its a little difficult to see, but at 8 weeks her hair is already about 2 1/2" long.

So we thought we better measure daddy's hair. I would like to officially state for the record though that this picture was taken right after getting a haircut. But its official, she's more than doubled me up.

This next picture is one of our new favorites. It makes us laugh every time we see it. She's getting ready to box her daddy in the nose.

Look at Me!!

2009-03-21T18:39:00.002-05:00

Someone IS all that and a bag of chips. There are more pictures just uploaded to Shutterfly for anyone that is interested.

Grandpa, Auntie and Cousin Come To Visit

2009-03-11T14:24:00.004-05:00

Ryan's family came to visit this past weekend. It turned out to be quite a fascinating weekend as our little niece Lydia decided to get the flu. On Saturday night she heard that Jamie and I would be fasting tonight so she not only thought it would be a good idea to fast with us, she decided to take it a step further and purge all of her stomach contents on our living room carpet as well. Fun times. You can see the carnage on Melanie's blog.

Grandpa with Norah

Lydia showing Norah some love

Norah with aunt Melanie and cousin Lydia

And These Are the Days of Our Lives

2009-03-03T14:59:00.005-06:00

Our little diva is now six and half weeks old. She continues to keep us on our toes as we continue to learn all of her quirks and cries. Our friend Shelly recently gave Jamie a book that apparently is all the rage. Its called The Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Giordano. The author claims that this method has never failed, not even once. Well, consider me a skeptic. Anytime you use the words "never" or "always" I get a bit queasy. The goal of the book is to get your child to sleep 12 hours at night by 12 weeks. Well, last night was somewhat of a breakthrough, I guess, as Norah slept for 6 hours straight!!!! The only problem was we put her down too early so daddy had to get up at 2am to feed her. I think if we can successfully keep her up until 10pm tonight she'll sleep right into mommies shift :-)

Also, as many of you know, we continue to face a long and expensive legal battle in obtaining parental rights for Norah. According to our attorney the law is on our side and as long as the judge rules according to the law we shouldn't have anything to worry about. Unfortunately, there is the possibility these days we could get a judge that does not want to follow the letter of the law. (It is sad when you can say that about our "justice" system). We are supremely confident that God has been apart of and blessed the adoption process to this point. We are therefore confident that he will see us through this legal battle as it is totally out of our control right now.

Due to the circumstances we have decided to set aside a 24hr period for prayer and fasting. We decided to start on the evening of Wednesday, March 11 at 6pm and finishing at 6pm the following evening. Taking a day for this is something we rarely do, but is something Jesus and the first century church did frequently. So we are inviting anyone who feels inclined to join us. If you do, please let us know so we can be praying for you and your family at the same time. We wanted to do it within the next two weeks though since we expect the first ruling from the judge will be sometime in the middle of March. Some of the specific things you can join us in praying for are:

that God would find favor with Norah and place her in the situation that is best for her

that the birth father, who is instigating all this legal action, would have Norah's best interests at heart and not his own

that the birth father would come into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

that God would place a judge over this case that will rule in the Norah's best interests

that if God sees fit to take Norah from us our hearts can be comforted and healed quickly

No matter what happens, we are truly grateful to all of you who have been praying for us and encouraging us over the past few weeks. We are overwhelmed at times by your love and support and we give praise to God for all of you.

So Far So Good

2009-02-10T10:45:00.003-06:00

Its been a little over three weeks now since Jamie and I brought Norah home from the hospital. As can be expected, there have been a few nights where either one or both of us didn't get enough sleep. Overall, though, we can't complain. Jamie and I feel absolutely blessed to be in the situation we are in. Norah is doing great though. When we brought her home from the hospital she was down to 8lbs 2oz. At her one week appointment though she was all the way up to 8lbs 15oz because definitely has no problems throwing down her formula.

At this point we are still just foster parents to Norah. We are patiently waiting for all of the paperwork to be finished with Norah's birthmother. We just met with her and her parents last week to work out our "openness" agreement which outlines how many pictures and letters we'll send to her and how many times we'll meet with her for face-to-face get togethers. Both the birthmother and her parents are super nice and we get along great with them. I am actually looking forward to keeping in contact with them over the upcoming months and years.

I made a comment to a friend who has been a pastor here in Rochester for years that we got extremely lucky with how easy and comfortable this whole adoption process has been. He quickly corrected me stating that "when you wait for as long as you have and have as many people praying for you as you have... its not luck." Of course he's right, this whole process has just been overwhelming in the sense that God has worked out perfectly every single detail and aspect of the adoption. I have a tendancy to spend more time in prayer whenever I'm hurting or seeking something, but over the past few weeks I've made it a point to spend more time giving thanks and praising God for the unmerited favor he has bestowed upon us. God truly is awe-some and we rejoice every day for his provision in our lives.

I know you are all wanting pictures as well, so I'm uploading one from my phone to hold you over. I will do my best to upload more pictures to Shutterfly tonight. But as all of you with kids know, that may not happen.

We Heard Your Cries, So Here You Go

2009-01-20T10:25:00.003-06:00

We've uploaded a bunch of pictures to a website for everyone who is interested. You can go to Shutterfly (http://norahnoelle.shutterfly.com) to see them. The first round of pictures is from the first day we had her. We had to throw a little party, which you can see in the photos. As we take more we'll keep uploading them to this website. You'll need to enter the password "blessing" in order to get to the pictures. Enjoy.

The First Noelle

2009-01-19T10:41:00.003-06:00

Greetings from the North

Ryan and I are about a month short of celebrating our 5 year anniversary. So we thought what better way to celebrate since we don't have kids yet, let's take a cruise. Ryan has been trying to get me to take a cruise for years and finally I said ,"Let's do it"!! Only to find that a few days short of a month before our cruise that we were picked for adoption by a birth mother. Not ideal considering the cut off for refunds on the cruise is 30 days. Our birth mother was due on Jan 10th and our cruise started on Jan 11th. Well, we can't go on our cruise with a new baby coming...there goes that money. For those of you who know my husband this was not cool. Ryan says, when this baby comes and she graduates from high school we are not buying her a graduation gift but she is buying us a gift, a cruise. :-)

This baby girl was not born on the 10th or the 14th (her adjusted due date) but finally the 16th, two days before we were to return from our cruise. We had the privilege to bring her home on Sunday the 18th.

After years of waiting for our newest addition she is here...

Norah Noelle Miller
Norah was born Jan 16th around 7:45am weighing in at 8lbs 6oz 20in long

Our birth mother said Norah would like to wake up around 1 or 2am in the womb. Well she is still carrying on this pattern. Norah slept Sunday away except 1 hour in the afternoon. Then she was up from 10pm-5am before she finally decided it was time to go back to bed. It is 1:30pm now and she has only been awake for about a total of 1 1/2 hours today. We hope she wakes up here for a little while this afternoon. We made it through the night on 3 hour shifts between the two of us. I don't think she got the memo that I like sleep.

We ask you all to continue praying for us, Norah , her birth mother and family. There is still a lot of paperwork and many different emotions for us all. We truly know God has been with us thru this whole journey. We have had so many people praying for us over the years and I know Norah has had many praying for her while she was growing in her birth mothers womb. We thank you all for the special gift of love and support you have given us.

We look forward to our friends and family meeting her and showering her with love and prayer.
God Bless Love, ryan, jamie and norah

Double Down

2009-01-13T10:52:00.003-06:00

Jamie and I continue to wait on news of our adoption. The birthmother was due this past Saturday, but the weekend came and went and still no news. I don't really consider myself an impatient guy, but these last fews days have been excruciating. We have had to deliberately keep ourselves busy to keep from going insane.

It didn't help that this morning when I got to work it was -18 degrees outside. Knowing that we were supposed to be on our Caribbean cruise right now makes it feel that much colder. But that's why we are ready for the baby to arrive, since that will make the cold and the missed cruise fade into oblivion.

What else exciting is going on in our lives? Thanks for asking, let me tell you. It appears that Jamie and I spent 3 days/2 nights at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL the first week of January. The weird thing though is that Jamie and I have no recollection of going. Its quite strange, you'd think we would remember a nice vacation like that. And since I'm not a raging gambler, I'm surprised we booked there. But if the Discover card says we spent $1500 on a 2-night stay there, then I'm sure it must be true.

Good News

2008-12-23T19:33:00.004-06:00

Last Friday Jamie and I headed up to the Twin Cities for an adoption meeting. We found out about 10 days ago that we were among 2 families selected by a birth mother as potential parents for adoption. For whatever reason, we stood out just slightly more than this other family so she wanted to meet with us.

The birth mom is just 18 years old so she came to the meeting with her parents. We weren't nervous at all, but that was probably because we didn't know what to expect. The meeting really turned out great. Jamie and I were very excited after the meeting and we felt a really good connection with the birth mom and her parents. Now we just had to wait to see if we would be officially chosen.

Yesterday we got a call from our social worker with the good news. The birth mom had selected us!!! She is do on January 10th, so in about 2 1/2 weeks Jamie and I will hopefully be proud parents of a new baby girl. The birth mother had asked us if we would allow her to give the baby a middle name. Jamie and I had two names already picked for a baby girl, but we were also aware that the birth mother may make this request and we were happy to ablige her. The name she requested was Nora. We tried what seemed like a hundred different names and nothing "worked" with Nora as the middle name. So then we thought maybe it would be easier to put Nora as the first name and come up with a new middle name. After much trial and error we (and by we I mean "me") came up with a name that we both liked... Nora Noelle. We liked it for 2 reasons. One, it honored the birth mom by naming the child Nora. And two, we thought the name Noelle was appropriate since we found out this great news 3 days before Christmas.

Walk On

2008-11-25T08:39:00.002-06:00

OK, I know this has nothing to do with me, but I saw this the other day and thought it was too good not to add to the blog. FYI, some of you may want to get a few Kleenex's handy. There was another video from E:60 as well that I wanted to add, but since it just aired yesterday I don't think its on the website yet. I'll add it when its available.

Miller and Evans - For a Brighter Tomorrow

2008-11-05T09:32:00.005-06:00

I would like to thank Russ Phillips for his bravery and his desire to stand up for what is right. He emailed me this photo this morning. If 60 million more Americans can stand with him in 4 years we might see "Real Hope" and "Real Change".

The first vote ever cast for me, courtesy of Russ

2.09, What a Nice Number

2008-11-04T20:18:00.002-06:00

Its been a long time since I've written anything, but I'm back. And I come bringing you tidings of joy. I would like to share a little story that brought a little joy into my life. The story begins, and ends, at our local gas station. This past week I pulled my little gas guzzling pickup into the local Kwik Trip with the gas gauge just a hair above the 'E'. As little as four months ago I could feel my savings account shrinking everytime I filled up. But not this time. Roughly 12 glorious gallons of dinosaur juice later and my bill was....... $24.44!!!! I would have paid about $50 for that fill-up in June.

Life as a Bachelor

2008-10-05T10:51:00.002-05:00

Jamie left for Salt Lake City to visit her sister and her sister's family last Tuesday. She's coming back on Wednesday, so that means I'm just over halfway through my time alone. Its definitely weird, even after only being married 4 1/2 years I'm finding this newfound freedom strange to say the least. But being a bachelor again, I've reverted back to my pre-marriage diet:

Pizza
Ramen noodles
Frosted Flakes
Chips and salsa
Chef Boyardee

All staples of a good, healthy meal plan I know. And its not just my diet that reverted back, but my activities. With the exception of my "Honey Do List" that was left behind, my typical day consists of:

watching sports
watching movies
surfing the internet
playing xbox

I also went down and spent a few hours reading at the Barnes & Noble. I know that's not a typical guy thing to do, but I'm also a certified nerd, which explains why I find enjoyment in sitting with a bunch of strangers and reading a book.

The Third Option

2008-08-27T09:21:00.002-05:00

Well, this started out as a joke but it appears to be a joke no longer. The people have spoken and it appears that they want "real hope" and "real change". As such, I am officially entering the following as a valid option for Tuesday, Nov 4th.

T-shirts and bumper stickers will be coming soon!

Git 'er done

2008-07-14T20:55:00.006-05:00

Jamie has put together quite a list of "to-do's" for the summer. Last weekend my dad came to town, and unbeknownst to him, he got to help me make Jamie happy! The first project was finishing our new kitchen floor. Well, the floor has been down for about a month, but it took me awhile to get the threshold finished that went between the kitchen and the living room. The problem is that the reducers you buy at Home Depot only come in 4ft pieces, and we needed 12ft. So I had to improvise and make one out a 12ft 1"x2" with my router. But my dad got to do the fun part of helping me put it down and then stretch the carpet back to fit. All in all, it looks like some good Amish work.

And speaking of good Amish work, we got started on some shelves in the garage. As continue to accumulate, ahem, stuff, we need a place to store it. So I was directed to build some shelves for the garage. So dad and I got started on that project on Saturday. Here's the final product:

And while I'm loading pictures I thought you would all (the 2 of you that read this that is) would like this. This poor critter must have been a little thirsty and didn't bother thinking about an escape plan before he went in for a drink. As you might have guessed, my wife was none to pleased to walk up on this sight!!!

Kawika's Da Bomb

2008-06-24T20:34:00.003-05:00

As many of you know Jamie has been a nanny for the Asuncion kids for the better part of the past 7 years. But they are slowly getting all grown up on us, so we don't get to watch them that much anymore. But now that they are older, we get to go and watch them play in there various sports. We just went and watched Kawika's baseball game this past weekend. He's getting to that age that he's really fun to watch because all the guys he plays with and against actually have some hittin' and pitchin' skillz. Well, it came to our attention that Kiwi is now a Rochester legend. I wanted to embed the video right into our blog, but alas, Blogger doesn't allow the embedded javascript. So I guess we'll have to settle for the link to the TV stations website.

http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S487650.shtml

She Looks Cute, We'll Take One of Those

2008-06-04T11:36:00.003-05:00

Well, since we do not have kids of our own, I'll continue to dote on my nieces. Emily, this means its time to send us more cute pictures of Ellie :-) My sister directed me to these on their photographers website. Its kind of weird, but I think the photographer is more in love with Lydia than we are.

Almost Famous

2008-05-29T18:55:00.005-05:00

Today we got a travel brochure from Insight Vacations. Jamie and I went on an 8-day tour of Eastern Europe for our 1 year anniversary with Insight and had a blast, but the trips aren't exactly cheap. It was, at the time, suppose to be our last hurrah before having kids. Well, here we are 3 years later with no kids so I wanted to tear into the brochure to see where we were going to next :-) Jamie just wanted to throw it in the trash because she didn't want to tease herself.

So I ripped off the plastic and started scouring the pages. Wouldn't you know, I wasn't more than a few pages in before Jamie had taken the book away from me and was looking at it herself. Well, we worked our way to pg 26, the Vienna, Prague, and Budapest trip which was the one we went on. Much to our surprise, this was on pg 27.

Who's that hot looking couple?

That's right folks, we are now celebrities in the world of traveling aficionados. If you would like to see us now, you'll need to have your people contact our people. Also, we will be signing autographs for a small fee.

Miller Updates

2008-05-21T20:52:00.004-05:00

The Millers have been spending the month doing updates for our adoption process. Yes we have almost reached our one year mark for waiting. Its been a long and fast year all at the same time. June 14th is our official year mark. There are a few babies due this summer so we continue to be hopeful. We have been enjoying our life together and look forward to a new addition God willing this year. We know that He has a perfect plan for our lives. We thank all of you who have and continue to pray for us during our waiting period. Ryan and I feel so very blessed to have so many beloved friends and family praying for us.

Summer has arrived and this is my favorite season of the year. I finally can unthaw, enjoy the beauty of the colors again and most important Friday and Saturday morning rummage sales. It will be four years this summer when Ryan and I decided we would start trying to start a family. Well since that hasn't happened I have much opportunity to find many many great deals for the future baby. One mans junk is another's treasure....well maybe not Ryan 's but it is for Jamie. Also for both of my neices and friends....I just can't help myself.

Hope you all are enjoying spring. much love the millers

Being an Uncle Is Really Tough

2008-03-16T16:46:00.008-05:00

Since Jamie and I are not parents yet, we get to spend all of our time doting on our two nieces. So last week we got a picture sent to us from Ellie that was soooooo sweet. It instantly became my new favorite. Obviously our other niece Lydia must have been feeling the pressure, because she stepped up her game and sent us a great picture also. So I'll let you all decide who you think is the sweetest...

Ellie

or.......

Lydia

And the winner is.... both.

Now We're Talking!!!

2008-03-11T21:12:00.007-05:00

Not only has the weather actually warmed up here in Minnesota, but now the news has just gotten better. Jamie has been taking a cake decorating class for the last several weeks and tonight she came home with this:

You know it baby, I'm in for some good eating over the next few weeks.

Bust Out the Speedo

2008-03-11T07:45:00.003-05:00

That's right, its Speedo time. Why you ask? Because we are experiencing a little "global warming" here in Rochester. It cracked past the freezing mark yesterday. I'm not exactly sure where to go to check this out for sure, but I believe today will be only the 3rd day since Thanksgiving that the temperature has been above 32 degrees. Rumor has it it supposed to get up to 42 today. I know, its like heaven on earth hearing news like that.

Back from Pennsylvania

2008-01-09T18:49:00.001-06:00

We made it back safely and believe it or not, on time! We had a great time out in Pennsylvania spending time with Melanie and Shawn. And of course our beautiful niece. We got to attend her dedication service on Sunday morning which was a lot of fun. The women from their church even quilted Lydia a baby blanket. Maybe its time to head back to the Mennonite church!!!

Jamie spent her first full day there at the outlet malls with my sister. I will never understand a woman's need to buy more stuff than we have room for in our suitcases (but that's a whole different story.) Meanwhile, Shawn introduced me to NHL07 for the PS3. Basically what I learned is that I'm horrible. I'll stick to Halo3. We also went and visited the indoor market in downtown Lancaster. It was really cool, I just wish they had something like that around here.

We took a ton of photos, so I tried to capture a few good one's for you all to enjoy.

NWA stands for No Workers Around

2008-01-03T10:39:00.000-06:00

So its Thursday morning and Jamie and I are now recovering at my sister's place after an interesting day yesterday. There was both good news and bad news from our trip, so lets start with the bad.

The original plan had us leaving Rochester at 10:05am and getting into Harrisburg at 3:25pm. So Jamie and I arrived at the airport at 9am and got ourselves checked in. Right away we were told that the plane we were going to get on was going to be late. It had some mechanical problems causing it to take off late. So it wouldn't arrive and then leave Rochester until 12:00pm. Due to the two hour delay we were going to miss our connection in Detroit, forcing us to reschedule to a 6pm flight out of Detroit that wouldn't get us into Harrisburg until around 7:30pm.

Fast forward to 12pm.

The plane is on the ground in Rochester, but needs maintenance. They tell us it will take 15 mins and then we can board. Ninety minutes later we are still sitting in the terminal and no one is showing their face to tell us what is going on. I went back to the ticketing counter to see if I could figure out what the problem was, where I was informed that the maintenance guys were not answering their phone. They promise us that by 2pm we will be on our plane to Detroit.

Fast forward to 2pm.

Guess who's not on a plane? That's right, Jamie and Ryan. Finally someone comes out (4 hours after we were supposed to leave) and tells us the plane is not leaving... ever. So they are arranging to have a bus take everyone up to the Twin Cities airport. The bus doesn't leave Rochester until 5pm. So let me quickly recap. We were supposed to be on the ground in Harrisburg by 3:30pm, but instead we weren't boarding a bus IN ROCHESTER until 5pm to take us to Minneapolis. Just making sure you were all aware how much NWA sucks. So the only flight option was a direct flight from Minneapolis to Harrisburg leaving at 8pm.

Fast forward to 5:55pm.

Massive accident on highway 52. Both sides of the road are stopped and we have no idea how long we will be jammed up.

Fast forward to 7:15pm.

We get to the Minneapolis airport and get dropped off a half-mile from the ticketing counter (I'm not kidding). Here's the map of MSP just so you know, you'll need it to understand the rest of this paragraph. They dropped us off at the star marked "Hiawatha Light Rail Station". We then have to walk underground all the way over ticketing area on the far right of the map. I joke to Jamie, now watch, they'll stick us in the last gate of the A concourse. Folks, I can't make this stuff up, but our flight left out of gate A14. Nearly a full mile walk from the ticketing counter. Jamie and I rushed down to our gate to make sure we can make the flight. Turns out its not going to be a problem, since the plane is late coming in and we now aren't going to leave until 9:35pm.

Fast forward to 10:35pm.

We are actually sitting in a plane believe it or not. However, we have been sitting on the tarmac for 35 mins because our plane is overweight. The pilot is reworking the flight plan and if that doesn't work we have to head back to the gate to drop off several fat people from the plane. Luckily, we didn't go back to the gate. So, we were supposed to leave at 10:05 and we left at 10:35. Not bad, if it wasn't a mere 12 hours and 30 mins after we were supposed to leave Rochester!!!

Fast forward to 2:47am.

We finally pull into my sister's place. We felt horrible because my sister had to come and get us at the airport with our 7 week old niece. So not only did they ruin our day, but my sister's and my little niece's as well. Shame on them.

I do have some good news though... I can save a bunch of money by switching my car insurance to Geico.

PS - I did my best to clean up all words/actions/thoughts that were used throughout the day in this dramatic retelling from our trip which was put together by Hades Travel Inc.

Christmas Festivities

2007-12-27T11:15:00.000-06:00

Time for the Christmas recap now that things have settled down a bit. Joe came up to spend a week with us. He arrived last Wednesday evening and stayed until yesterday morning. It was good and relaxing time as we didn't really have anything on the agenda. On Thursday morning my dad and I went down to Cresco, IA to see one of his dealers. It was fun to tag along and actually see what it is he does when he goes on all of his business trips. I did have an ulterior motive though. I was hoping to peddle my ability to do websites to them, but alas, they already had a website that was actually pretty nice, so there was nothing else I could do for them.

On Sunday after church we decided we would head up to the Mall of America to do a little shopping. What we didn't account for was the snow and 40mph winds. It was brutal driving in those near whiteout conditions. Luckily I am no ordinary man and was able to navigate the treacherous highways with no problems. While at the mall I stopped at the Apple store and I'm firmly convinced I'm buying an iMac. I've never used a Mac, but they have everything I want, so now I just need to find a large sum of money to pay it since the price tag is a weeeeee bit salty.

On Christmas day we went with Cari Sloma and her mom to the free showing of White Christmas. Jamie makes me watch it every year and since it was FREE and on the big screen we decided to go.

All in all, it was a very relaxing and fun holiday with family and friends.

Well Wishes

2007-12-18T08:40:00.000-06:00

For Our Democrat Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.

Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms.

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Oh, and For Our Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Annual Cookie Decorating

2007-12-17T16:49:00.000-06:00

This year we continued our tradition of decorating Christmas cookies with family and friends. Jamie's parents, the Kuhlmann family, and the Asuncion kids all came over and participated in the decorating this year. We had a lot of great entries and a lot of, um, well, interesting entries. Among the cookies made were the American flag (how patriotic!!), a snowball with dog pee (yes, you heard me correctly), and whole lot of reindeer. Jamie and I are trying to collect more cookie shapes, with the reindeer being this years new addition. Who knows what it will be next year?!?!

Joel with the winning cookie

This year's winner was Joel with his rendition of the "Headless Horseman". I know, not your typical Christmas cookie, but we had a gingerbread cookie that lost his head, so Joel did his best to work with it. Here are some pictures from the event:

Bella and Amazing Grace

2007-11-19T11:06:00.000-06:00

Jamie and I watched two excellent movies this weekend, Bella and Amazing Grace. I'll start with Bella. Everything about this movie was wonderful, starting with the actors, ending with the cinamatography, and everything in between. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it yet so I'll do my best at not giving too much away. The majority of the story follows two characters, Jose and Bella, as they spend a day together. They both have a lot of baggage from their pasts that they carry with them each day. Through some very real and frank discussions both Jose and Bella begin to help each other cope with their demons and move on with their lives. What I really loved about this movie is that it didn't play out like every cookie cutter Hollywood movie. Most movies are predictable and after 15 mins you know how the movie will end. There were so many times where I found myself saying, "oh, he's going to say this now...", but he didn't. Or, "okay, she will have to do this now," but she didn't. It completely blasted out of the mold of old stale Hollywood and like many arthouse movies, it left a lot of situations open to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions. CAUTION: there are some moments when tissues may be necessary.

Next on tap was Amazing Grace. I was tipped off to this movie by Chuck Colson on his Breakpoint commentaries. This movie focused on the life of William Wilberforce and his efforts to abolish the English slave trade. (Breakpoint actually has a Wilberforce Forum setup to deal with these same issues today). It took Wilberforce two decades before he saw any fruit to his labor. Yet he never gave up, he never quit. I personally was more moved with this movie than I was with Bella. I think because I was struck by how utterly hopeless his task was and yet he never wavered. To see how God can so mightily use one man to change the very course of history was humbling, and at the same time inspiring. It left me asking questions like: "what is my legacy?" "what am I doing to change the world?" "how does God want to use me to accomplish his ends?" If you are like me, by the time you get to the end of this movie and realize the impact one man had, you may, well, see the note after "CAUTION" in the previous paragraph.

Uncle Part 2

2007-11-12T13:44:00.000-06:00

Early Friday morning Jamie and I became an aunt and uncle for the second time. My sister had a beautiful baby girl. I have no pictures yet, but as soon as I get some I'll be sure to post them. They named her Lydia Grace, and because she was just over 4 weeks early, she is just a little peanut. She was 19in long and only 4lbs 13ozs. We can't wait until January when we get to go out to Pennsylvania to see her. This now means I have two nieces to dote on. It is a very tough job, but I think I'm up to the task. I've got plenty of love to go around :)

The other "big" news is that Jamie finally got her fireplace! After much hard work and toil (and nearly losing my left thumb) all the work is complete. We had Haley's Comfort Systems come and hook up the gas line and exhaust. I didn't feel like being responsible for blowing up our house. After they did that work, I finished everything else. It will definitely be nice since our TV is in the basement. Its typically about 8-10 degrees cooler in the basement, so in January that means its about 60 degrees down there. Give me a blanket and I'm fine, but my wife prefers the 35,000 BTU firebox.

Whiffle Sickness

2007-09-26T13:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, you all know that I love YouTube by now, so check this out. I remember throwing some nasty junk as a kid, but this is just ridiculous.

Alive and Well

2007-09-24T15:48:00.001-05:00

Fear not fellow bloggers (and blog readers), I am still alive. It has been awhile since I last wrote. We've been extremely busy, so here's a little recap of the past 2 months....

Jamie and I went with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law to Las Vegas for a week in the middle of August. Melanie found a rental house on the SW side of town that was perfect... and huge! It had 3 bedrooms plus a master suite as big as our house. But the best part was the pool in the backyard. We went downtown to the strip several times too. I didn't do any gambling for 2 reasons: (1) I'm too practical and I realize that the house always wins, and (2) I never win anything when money is on the line. So it was easy for me to not get sucked in. Melanie on the otherhand, well, she's got a problem. On the last day Jamie handed her a pamphlet she found in one of the casino's that read, "When the Fun Stops: What to Do When Gambling Becomes an Addiction." We all got a good laugh at that. Jamie's sister and brother-in-law came down from the Salt Lake area and spent a few days with us also. If you checked out the pictures already you'll see about 10,000 photos that Jamie took of our favorite little niece!

We also spent a lot of time while we were out there just site seeing. We spent one day and went to Mt. Charleston which is one of the highest points, if not the highest, around Vegas. We also went to Red Rock Canyon one afternoon. The big trip, however, was the full day trip that included Valley of Fire State Park and the Hoover Dam. It was a lot of fun, but let me share a bit of advice with you all. Never, ever, ever, ever go to Vegas in August. It was out of control hot. The day we went to the Hoover Dam it was roughly 125 degrees. Do be stupid like us, go in January.

Patten Still Looks Good

2007-07-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned that I love YouTube? Please be WARNED, there is some offensive language in this clip, so watch at your own risk.

Ol' George Washington Is Rolling In His Grave

2007-07-24T16:06:00.000-05:00

Is anyone else completely sick of the political scene? Seriously, we are still over a year away from elections and I'm already sick of it. Anyway, I just read Vince Flynn's novel Term Limits. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes the political-thriller/action novels. I won't spoil the book, but lets just say that lying weasel Congressmen in Washington are dealt with quite strongly. It would never happen in real life the way it does it the book, nor would I condone the behavior in real life, but lets just say I enjoyed reading about it the land of make believe.

Here is an example of why politicians suck. They are all a bunch of pandering patsies who sway whichever way they think the political wind is blowing. Take that fine stateswoman Mrs Clinton. Last night she ripped Obama for wanting to enter into diplomatic discussions with our enemies. Yet, a mere three months ago she said exactly what Obama said last night. Do these people really think we are so stupid we can't remember what they said? Is there any chance we can use our mulligan on Washington DC and start over?

Burn Notice

2007-07-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks I've been watching USA's new summer show Burn Notice. I can't decide if I like the show because of its content, or because my boy Stevo is the lead actor in the show:

Steve's sexy pose

Seriously, they look identical. If you don't believe me, you can see the real Stevo on this blog. WARNING: extremely huge guns are in the vicinity of small children on this website. It is rather disturbing. Maybe Jeffrey Donovan is Steve's doppelgänger.

We Got Some Talent Too

2007-06-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have to admit that I'm not much of a Reality TV guy. In fact, I hate it. I've never watched more than 30 seconds of Survivor, Big Brother, etc. But thanks to Paul Potts, Jamie and I were flipping through the stations and actually watched one act on America's Got Talent. This is what we were treated to...

The Return of Ellie

2007-06-19T20:49:00.000-05:00

Britain's Idol and Global Warming, not related

2007-06-18T12:12:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of the internet, allow me to post some totally random information. I had this sent to me today. Watch it and let me know what you think. I've watched this about 10x today. All I'll say to entice you is that I thought I was about to witness a train wreck.....

************************

And being an avid follower of how my S10 is causing all the death in Darfur (maybe I should go buy a Prius), I found this blog about how temperatures are being recording across the US.

Saying Goodbye to my 100mph Fastball

2007-05-17T13:03:00.000-05:00

Its been almost 3 weeks since my last post, but there is good reason for that. On May 3rd I headed back downtown to the Mayo Clinic for yet another surgery. Just in case you were scoring at home, thats 3 surgeries in the last 2 years. (Note that I have found no correlation between turning 30 and my body falling apart faster the Howard Dean in the '04 primaries). I went in this time to have a partially torn rotator cuff fixed. For the past 3 summers it has felt like someone was stabbing a knife into my shoulder everytime I played softball or volleyball, so it needed to fixed. I've still got my arm in a sling, but I am able to finally type with two hands instead of the extremely frustrating hunt and peck method.

Seeing that I've had surgery on my left knee and my right shoulder, along with destroying my left shoulder 5 years ago, I guess that leaves my right knee as the one remaining fully functional joint. I'm pretty sure that no amount of Xbox360 or vegging out in front of the TV will rob me of my good knee. Looks like I'll have to wait until the Lord calls me home to get that Nolan Ryan-esque fastball back.

The Big 3-OOOOOOhhhhhh!

2007-04-26T18:24:00.000-05:00

Yeah, its official. I've just passed on to the "other side." On Tuesday I celebrated my 30th birthday. It just so happens that a good friend of mine turned 30 just two days before me so we decided we needed to throw a little bash. Jamie was nice enough to let us host the birthday extravaganza. We invited about 10-15 of our married friends and their kids and Anthony invited about 20-30 of the singles from our church. Needless to say, our house was packed with party goers. In the end, I ended up with 5 cards (extremely sarcastic of course), $1 bill, an Xbox360 game, and shot glass with 30 plain M&M's. It should be noted that the shot glass came from another one of the elder's daughters!!! Oh the horror! :)

Me and Adawg

Sorry coach, I got a case of the 37's

2007-04-12T15:45:00.000-05:00

Found this today, its a boxscore for the Phoenix Suns/San Antonio Spurs game from last week. Check out the line for San Antonio's Robert Horry. Classic!

Note 4/26/07: The above link has been changed. The injury note for Robert Horry in the boxscore used to say "DNP: Old Age". Apparently someone didn't think it was too funny, so they changed it, bummer.

Them tail lights are Pimpin'

2007-04-11T15:32:00.000-05:00

Well, its been awhile since I last posted. The main reason being that I've been extremely busy, but also because I didn't think anyone actually read this thing. But after being scolded by my cousin Alex for not updating my blog, I've been inspired once again.

So the big news is that over the Easter weekend I traveled half way across the country to get my new pickup truck. It's a long story, and I have time, so here it is. I've been drooling over trucks for the past year, but never felt like pulling the trigger since my car was still under the manufacturer warranty. Well, about 3 months ago when my car hit 61k miles it decided to blow a camshaft sensor. And oh btw, I found out my warranty ended at 60k. Figures. So I started getting serious about dumping my car and finding a truck.

At the beginning of March I found out my mom was having some car trouble. That's when I ran the idea past her that maybe should should upgrade from her '92 Accord to my stunningly beautiful '01 Galant. That was like selling heat to an eskimo, it was a done deal in seconds. Now I just needed to find a truck. Enter eBay. After scouring adds for about 3 weeks I found several Ford Rangers that I wanted to make a run at. Unfortunately, they were all more than what I was selling my car for and Jamie and I didn't want a new car payment. The other problem was that I hadn't really run the truck selections past my wife. Well, with the likely addition of a child through adoption this year, she made having a back seat a requirement. Sooo, I had to revise my search a bit, and that's when I found her. Actually, Jamie did. As soon as I showed it to her she said, "That's the one." The only problem is that it was more than what I wanted to spend, but hey, what the wife wants the wife gets, right!?!? :) If you ask her though she'll tell you that I wanted it and I'm the one who spent all the money, but lets face it, I know she wanted it!

So on Friday morning Jamie dropped me off at the Rochester Airport and I flew all the way out to Queens, NY. While I was out there I was able to hook up with an old friend, James, and we had lunch and he gave me a quick 2cent tour of Brooklyn. Then I bolted for Millersville, PA to spend the night at my sisters place. I spent a few precious minutes showing Sean how to put the biscuit in the basket on his PS3 and then took off bright and early on Saturday for Indiana. After a nice 10 hour trip I pulled into Middlebury. I met up with Jamie and her mom there since they drove my car down to Indiana for my mom after they left me at the airport. Then on Sunday we all hopped in the truck and headed back to the frigid confines of Rochester.

All in all, I traveled nearly halfway across the country in one weekend. I got to spend quality time with myself and Vince Flynn's "Executive Power" audiobook.... highly recommended btw.

Our Favorite Niece

2007-02-11T12:25:00.000-06:00

As I promised earlier, here are some pictures of Ellie:

Ruminations on a Super Bowl

2007-02-08T08:42:00.000-06:00

Indianapolis Colts, Super Bowl extra-large I Champions, I like the sound of that. How often can you say that your favorite sports team actually won it all? Not often (unless you are from Boston recently, more on them later) that's for sure. Its kind of surreal though, I mean, it came and went and yet I don't feel any different. I've waited my entire life for these guys to win and now its finally happened, but I am unchanged. I mean, shouldn't I being wearing a perma-grin or something at the very least? I think I have to blame it on living here in Minnesota. The fact that its -10 degrees every day may have muted my ability to get excited about this stuff. And the level of apathy of Vikings fans I work with every day has reached epic proportions around here. I know for a fact that the missed FG by Gary Anderson back in 2001 ripped the beating hearts out of many Vikes fans, and I don't think they have ever truly recovered. I think they too are rubbing off on me.

But back to the Colts. I think I had more excitement and satisfaction out of "pounding" the Patriots in the AFC Championship game. I don't care if it was only 4 points, as long as the Pats are on the losing end, its a pounding in my book. Suck it Brady!!! Suck it!!! That is probably because I hate the Boston sports scene. Basically it comes down to the fact that I'm a small market guy (Colts, Twins) and I get sick and tired of big market teams spending money to win. I mean, I could have had the best looking date at the prom too if I was willing to fork out $500, but isn't it more satisfying when you have the hottest girl beside you and you didn't shell out a dime? Yeah, I thought so. Big market teams are just a bunch of pimps with a whole lot of prostitutes on their rosters. Chicago is a big market, but the Bears don't pay squat and are essentially small market, so maybe that's why I didn't get so excited. It was like David defeating David.

There was some other good news as well. We spent Super Bowl Sunday at Jamie's aunt and uncle's place. Her uncle decided to put a football board together. This was major high stakes gambling friends, 10cents per square. We contacted Barkley and Jordan to see if they wanted in, but politely declined citing the sizable buy-in. I pitched in $2 so Jamie and I could each get 10 squares. Payouts were $1 for the 1st Quarter, $2-2nd Qtr, $3-3rd Qtr, and $4-4th Qtr. It should be stated that when it comes to gambling I have some sort of a curse. It is impossible for me win money through gambling for whatever reason. So I knew that my $1 was being donated to someone else, I was okay with that. Luckily, the curse placed on me does not hold sway over my wife as well. She took the 1st and 2nd quarter pots (I was thinking a 4 quarter sweep by halftime). Needless to say that was all we got, however, my wife parlayed my $2 investment into $3.... now that's what I'm talking about baby!!!

January Recap

2007-02-07T09:22:00.000-06:00

What a way to break in the new year. There were two big events this month. The first is that Jamie's sister came to Rochester for two weeks and she brought our little niece with her! Poor Doug had to stay Utah and work and did not get to join us this time. However, there are some rumors swirling around that he got a little fiesty with some people on his pizza delivery route one night, so it sounds like he had a little excitement while his two favorite ladies were gone. We have lots of pictures of Ellorie, but I haven't downloaded them from the camera yet. So those will be coming shortly so you can all see just how cute she is!

The other major event this month was that I was nominated and formally elected by the church body to become an elder at our church. It is very humbling to even be considered for this position and at the same time very "scary." I in no way take this position lightly and both Jamie and I have committed ourselves fully to all the time and effort that is required of us. The success of any church rests on the ability of its elders to lead and so I ask all of our friends and family out there to please keep us in your prayers, we will need them.

PS - If you are trying to come up with jokes about me being an "elder" please know that I've just about all of them already :) I guess that's what you get when you carry that title and haven't hit 30 yet.

PSS - Consider Jesus was only 30 when he started his earthly ministry. Since I'll be 30 in a few months it was a sobering realization that age should never be an excuse for being timid or inactive in church leadership.

Christmas Cookies

2006-12-23T09:31:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday Jamie and I hosted the 2nd Annual cookie decorating contest at our house. We had a house full. The Asuncion kids, Jamie's parents, and the Kuhlmann family all showed up to do a little decorating.

We had a blast making the cookies. Jamie made about 40 different sugar cookies for us to work on. We had several cookies that looked that they were done by a professional cookie decorator, and then we had others that looked, well, like they weren't done by a professional :) Jamie brought in the rest of the cookies to work and her co workers went crazy over them.

Here are some pictures of the event.

Deepali's 1st Prize and Emily's cookies

Kanani's grinch cookie and Kawika's Santa w/ a lazy eye

Abby's

Don't Use the Internet in Canada

2006-12-11T15:01:00.000-06:00

In light of my recent post about how much Charter Communications sucks, here is a great link displaying the total incompetence of customer service in this country. I got this link from a co-worker and listened in horror. Maybe its because I'm an engineer and very analytical, but this seems like.... common cents?

http://www.glumbert.com/media/verizon

Apparently this guy has a blog about this as well, quite humorous.... http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

For those of you too lazy check out these links, here is the Cliff's Notes of the audio. This poor guy gets a quote from Verizon that he will be charged .002 cents per kB while using the internet in Canada. In actuality, he gets charged .002 dollars. For all you non-math majors, thats 100 times more than he was quoted. He racked up something like 35800kB of internet usage. So by Verizon's math:

35895 kB
x .002 cents
------------------
$71.79

NOTE: This is the definition of "fuzzy math." You have to keep the units the same, if you multiply by cents you gets cents in your answer. So the bill should be 71.79 cents, not the $71.79 he was actually charged.