The short take...

We're enjoying a crazy summer (already), before Kate starts Kindergarten (ALREADY!!?) this fall. Our kids are so much fun, and we are SO blessed!

If you want to browse our pictures, you can do so at our new Google Picasa album).

December 20, 2007

Almost Christmas! We've got snow on the ground, the most amazingly beautiful daughter to celebrate with, and her uncle in town to meet her for the first time! We're set! But if you're in the need of getting in the mood, then you need to check out our snowball fight movie!

Well, we promise pictures WILL be forthcoming - hopefully a bit of time in the break here will give us time to catch up on...everything! Obviously, we've got a lot of pictures you haven't seen yet, as well as a November movie of Kate to make! They'll be coming, but in the meantime, we just wish you and your family Merry Christmas!

December 10, 2007

Well, Kate's more than four months old - amazing! Just over a year ago, we were getting our first ultrasound. She's done a LOT of growing in a year (you know, from just a few cells)! :-) She's now 24 1/2" long and more than 15 lbs! Last week we were gone each evening, mainly at dress rehearsals for the Christmas production at church. It really messed all of us up - Copper has taken to scattering the contents of our bedroom trash cans around when we're gone for the evening, and for a while Kate had stopped taking a bottle from anyone from Kyla - she had serious mommy sickness! So we spent last night after the final performance doting on Kate and petting Copper, and we're on our way back to our lives that we love. Except for Kyla today - she fell sick after the stress and busy-ness of last week. She should be doing better soon - it's 'just' a head-cold as far as she can tell, but that's certainly no fun!

Well, in other news, the turnout was great for the Christmas production - 4th service only had 28 empty seats, and that realizing that it wasn't a holiday weekend, and this weekend marked our first real storm of winter! That's right, it's officially

fenderberg
Click for explanation

weather! In fact, we're due for up to 20 inches by tomorrow night - and we've probably got around 6-8 already since this weekend! It's really a winter wonderland - it's wonderful.

And if you don't know, Kate continues to get the hang of more and more skills - first she started rolling over about 2 week ago (back to front and front to back), and she's even giggling fairly often and gets excited over us popping into view a lot. Last night, Kyla brought her down from a nap and she fixated on her jumper and wouldn't stop looking at it until Kyla put her in it, at which point she got super excited and started going nuts jumping - she's so cute. She did great with her 4-month shots, and generally she just continues to spoil her parents in every way possible.

Other friends-related news - one of my best friend growing up and his wife just gave birth to their first - a daughter. They sent us a text and a pix - she looks so cute! We wish them all the best, and we'll be talking to you guys soon! Welcome to the world Abigail!!! Also, please keep praying for our friends whose daughter is having all the health issues - they're back in town now, but she's still having lots of problems - complications from her first surgery at the very least. They'd really appreciate your prayers still.

And on the track of health prayers, please be praying for my grandma - she's been having lots of blood-pressure and balance problems recently and could really use your prayers. All her kids will be in town for Christmas, so that'll be fun for her and should really help, but she just hates that she's not being everything she's used to doing - we'd all appreciate your prayers for her.

Well, I think that's about it - I've been working on the website a bit, though it's not obvious yet. Soon all the pictures should be available to you if you're using FireFox, Opera (Wii) or Safari as well. Hope everyone is doing great! Sign our guestbook, and we'll see you next time!

November 21, 2007

WE GOT A GIGGLE FROM KATE LAST NIGHT! It was so cute...we all there in the living room - she was in her jumper (which she loves JUMPING in now, rather than just swinging), and Kyla started playing peek-a-boo with her and TWICE, she giggled! Anyway, just wanted to give you that update :-) Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

November 09, 2007

Kate's over 3 months old now...and what a cute, cuddle-able joy she is! She's reaching for anything she wants now, (hugging her toys when she's asleep in her carrier) and smiling HUGE at stuff she likes - it's just so fun watching her! This weekend, she'll get to meet the last Great-Grandparents that she hasn't met yet - it's going to be fun! Now we can't wait for her to meet her uncle (he's gonna MELT!). The only thing to report other than the joy and fun we've had this month was that she had a brief bout with acid reflux (think heartburn)...but just keeping her a little more vertical after she ate did the trick, and she's all better now! But we did get an extra doctor's visit out of the whole deal, and we can report that she's around 14 pounds now! Wow!

We've added a bunch of pictures of Kate from October for your viewing pleasure, so check it out! Also, you may notice while checking out her pictures, that we've upgraded our Internet connection speed - we're up to a 'screaming' 1.5Mbps now (around 6 times faster than before), so that should make it nicer for you to browse the pictures!

On a different note, everyone out there please keep our friends in your prayers - their daughter is almost a year and a half old, and she's been in and out of hospitals for the last month - they keep thinking they know what's wrong, but then she'll go downhill again. She's just really been unstable, health-wise, and I know they'd appreciate your prayers, both for them to not stress, and for her to get better. Thanks!

And really...we'd love you to sign our guestbook there on the right side of the page - just to know you're here and let you give us a snippet of what's happening in your lives! Love you all! 'Till next time...TTFN!

October 27, 2007

Here is a movie Kyla put together of Kate for October - she's got this great idea to do a short sum-up of the month in a movie each month, and here's the first installation! Pretty impressive!

October 19, 2007

Check out our regular pictures page - we've got some pictures from a few weekends ago when we went fall-leaves watching! I've finally got my picture-publisher Vista-compatible, and even added some new effects we can give the pictures, so expect to see slightly shorter time between picture updates, and cooler pictures!

October 11, 2007

Last night, we were out at dinner with Kyla's mom and we noticed for the first time that she was really actively and consistently reaching for one of her hanging toys! It's really cute, and amazing, how every day you can see just a little more development. She just keeps tracking things better and better with her head and eyes, and she has started really lighting up when we come into the room - even Michael!

Last night she even reallyreally (not a typo :-P ) slept through the night for the first time. We'd even put her down about 45 minutes early because she was hungry early, but we still had to wake her at 6:00 this morning! She's so awesome - it's such a thrill being her parents.

October 02, 2007

Happy 2-month birthday to Kate! She's getting so big - last week she weighed in at 12 lbs 3 oz and almost 24" long - that's 150% of her birth weight in 2 months, for those of you keeping score! She's such a happy (and squeaky) baby - she's tracking almost anything with her head and eyes when we move around, and she's DEFINATELY looking for Kyla when she wants her! She isn't giggling yet, but it's not for lack of trying...it just comes out as panting right now though. She DID learn to roll over from her back in the last week or so - it's pretty impressive!

Kyla's getting ready to go back to work at her new position - her company is being really nice about it, giving her 8 weeks off and letting her ease back into it by working from home for a bit at the beginning. She gets to start her new position when she goes back, so that'll be exciting...she even moved offices one day while on leave so there will be a lot of new stuff waiting for her!

Michael's had a great few weeks-he got to design a building on his own for the first time at work - it turned out pretty good! It was a challenge, because he'd never designed a church from scratch before, but it was a really neat exercise. Now, don't expect to see his design built - this was just the initial design, and it'll be changed quite a bit over the next few months, but it's exciting that he had such a hand in getting it started!

Well, there's a whole slew of new pictures up in Kate's area - as usual, use the links above to get there, and enjoy! (You're looking for the new section called "Kate's second month!")

September 05, 2007


Barry (left) getting
baptized by Mark
Kate's now a month old...hard to believe! She finished her oral antibiotics with no further excitement, and is just perfectly healthy and incredibly cute! We went on an overnight camping trip this weekend (yes, in a tent!) and both she and Kyla did awesome! She's only having to wake up once in a normal night right now, and it's around 3:00-3:30 usually, so we're actually getting some good sleep.

The day after the camping trip, some old members of our home group that had moved away (Barry and Michelle) came into town for a visit, so we all had a barbeque to celebrate. What we didn't know was that it was a going to turn into a birthday party when Barry told us that he'd become a Christian recently! Such an answer to prayer - it was just awesome to see. He continued and asked Mark (our home group leader) to baptize him, so the next day we went out to the lake and saw him get baptized! It was so cool to see them again - especially with this new development! Our prayers continue to be with them.

In other news, YES, we'll get another batch of pictures up soon! I'll post another update here and let you know when they're up. I'm still working on getting a few more features running on the website - a guestbook for instance. Stay tuned!

Update: Lots of new pictures have been added - both to the "our pictures" section, and to Kate's pictures section! Enjoy!

August 19, 2007

Well, we're back from the hospital. If you didn't know, at Kate's 2-week checkup, the doctor discovered that only part of her cord had fallen off, and she'd developed an infection at her belly button. Fortunately, it was just a skin infection - it hadn't gone system-wide yet, so a few days of antibiotics managed to clear the infection up, and the rest of her cord even came off! God was really watching out for us on this one - there were no symptoms or any way of knowing what was going on (even the doctor was surprised when she found the infection), and if the appointment had been a day earlier or a day later, it could easily been more serious.

So, 72 hours of IV antibiotics in the hospital, and some oral antibiotics that we've got to give her for a few days, and the story's over...praise God! (Latest count...8 days in the first two weeks of her life have been in the hospital...groan!)

Update: pictures from the last week or so, including pictures from her hospital stay, have been added into Kate's pictures section.

August 07, 2007

She's here!
That's right, Kate Marie arrived on 8/2/2007 at 6:14 am! She was 8 lbs 4 oz, and 19 inches long. We brought her home on the afternoon of the 4th, so now we're getting to love her in our own home! We've finally added pictures and some information to her section (link above), but we're having problems with Vista not running programs the same as XP, so getting pictures online is a slower process. Michael's working on getting this fixed.

July 10, 2007

Welcome to our new-and-improved website! When 'someone else' makes her debut to the world, this will be your source for news and pictures! We'll work hard to keep it up-to-date! At some point, we'll even update our own pictures...in the meantime, check out the pictures section for what we're planning on getting live soon!

The table on the left is a list of our most recently-created Pandora.com radio stations - you can click on any of the station names to listen to the stations we created, or use the station-generation tool at the bottom to start making your own stations (Pandora is free, but they need your e-mail address as your account name). Highly recommended.