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.