You can do it!!!

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

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

Hair Isn't Everything Kid

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!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Britain's Idol and Global Warming, not related

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.....

Saying Goodbye to my 100mph Fastball

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!

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

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'

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

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

Ruminations on a Super Bowl

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

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.