Precious Moment!

Scott absolutely loves horsey rides on Daddy!  Every chance he gets, he will climb on me and say “Go”, very similar to how announcers yell “GOAL!” after a goal in soccer, just without the “al” part.  It is so cute.  In this photo Lauri snapped, you can see Scott’s fingers pointing, while saying, “Go!”.  Just too precious!!!

My Best Christmas, EVER!

There have been many Christmas’s that were very memorable, such as the one where my whole family and I stood outside while my dad sprayed water from the garden hose onto the roof of our house in the hope that it would not burn down.  We had built the fire too big in the fireplace and that got the chimney red hot and smoke billowing from it in the attic.

However, this year was the most memorable to me, and in a good way!  There were several factors that contributed to it.  We received over a foot of snow on Friday and Saturday.  Usually when it snows in Roswell, it melts completely the same day.  This was a rare storm that left a lot of snow on the ground, and it wasn’t going to melt anytime soon.  In fact, as of the time of this post, most of the snow is still around.  Jayton and his family came from Hobbs on Friday for our family Christmas party that night with the plans of heading back shortly after our family Christmas breakfast the next morning (which is usually held on Christmas morning, but we decided to hold it a day early for Jayton and his family).  That night is when the snow really came, with no relief in sight on Saturday.  The highways were closed, so he got stuck with us for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning (we don’t get a lot of snow in this part of the state, so there is a shortage of snowplows and other help to remove snow).  It was great spending extra, unexpected, quality time with them.

Here are some pictures of the fun we had in the snow:

It was great to have almost all of the nieces and nephews there.  I think this was me pulling Scott in a sled over Kielee.  It was a lot of fun!

This last snow picture does a great job of showing just how much snow we received.  Look at the snow on the roof of the warehouse and the weight of the snow on the trampoline.  Just way too much fun!!!  Also, even though Jack can’t make a snowball, yet, nor throw very accurate, yet, he is fearless in a snowball fight.  That was fun to watch, too!

Another reason this was such a great Christmas was because of Jack.  He was just old enough this year to be excited about Christmas.  He’s still too young to understand about Christmas, but he was definitely excited.  It was great to share in that excitement this year with my wife and kids!

Even with presents all around him, Scott preferred to play with the balloons.  If that’s all we gave him, he would have been just as excited and happy!

Finally, the icing on the cake that made an already great weekend even better was spending Christmas Eve with all my family (minus my sister, JoLynne, and her family).  My dad even got to show us pictures of the room in the cellar he slept in growing up.  That was so cool to hear his stories of sleeping down there.

Belated Thank you!

When I blogged several months ago asking all my family and friends for prayers for my beautiful wife, I was overwhelmed by the response of all my family and friends across all different religious beliefs.  All those prayers were answered and the biopsy on her thumb came back negative.  She has a clean bill of health as of now.  The nail is mostly grown back and healed, and there is no longer any lingering pain associated with the biopsy.

I realize this a rather late, but I definitely felt a huge “Thank You!” was still needed.  I don’t think I can thank all my family and friends enough for their prayers!  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

On a lighter note, it has actually been comical to see how Lauriann handled being “patient”.  The doctor told her that it would take 3 months, before the nail would be back to normal.  I can’t count the number of times, not even a week later, that she would freak out, because it wasn’t healing fast enough.

Of course, I’m laughing now, but she’ll get the last laugh when I injure myself again and am too impatient to let the full healing time take place before complaining that I’m never going to get better.  Life can be very humorous like that at times.

Prayers Wanted

A couple of weeks ago, my wife did a blog entry on her Friday Phone Dump (pictures she took from her phone that week).  At the bottom of those pictures is a picture of her thumb nail.  It has a brownish line stretching the whole length of her nail.  She finally decided to do some research and found that it is definitely something that should be checked.

Long story short, she went to see Dr. Yaw to look at it.  She really liked him and found him very personable.  However, he also wasn’t all rosy with his words.  He basically told her that there is a chance it could be Melanoma, and that if it was, then she could lose her thumb.  She will go into the hospital tomorrow at 10:30 to have Dr. Yaw remove the nail, so he can biopsy for Melanoma.  Preliminary results could be within 48 hours, but full results won’t be back for 1-2 weeks.  So basically, these next 2 weeks could be the longest of my life.

With that said, I’m asking for all my friends to pray for my wife, Lauriann.  I’m a firm believer that God answers our prayers, and the more that join in, the better.

 

Easily Impressed

When you’ve gone as long as I have, living here in Roswell, NM, without rain (I believe it’s been officially announced that we have never gone this long without “measurable” rain since records have been kept), it’s easy to be impressed by pretty much any set of clouds in the sky (In fact, my dad heard on the radio last month that Southeastern New Mexico has officially changed it’s rain gauge.  It is now a bottle cap!).  So when I was driving back from Utah during my last trip there in July, I drove through a couple of storms that were IMPRESSIVE!  At least  they were impressive to me.  One was so fierce, the rain was pelting my truck sideways and I could barely see past my hood.  Fortunately, most of the storms I drove through were very short.  The one I just mentioned (and pictured below) didn’t seem to last longer than 5 minutes.  Still, it was AWESOME to drive through!

This next picture shows a bigger storm.  This one lasted a while and seemed to rain off and on for about 40 minutes or so.  When it did rain, it was a pretty thorough soaking.

This last picture shows a mild storm compared to the previous 2 pictures, but I still wanted to share it.  I love how it shows, among all the cloud in the picture, just one section that was letting it’s moisture fall to the earth.

Each storm I drove through was spread apart by a couple of hours each.  It was nice to not have to drive through storm after storm without any relief.  I don’t think I could have asked for a better sequence of storms for my drive.  Oh! How I LOVE nature!

Love Jack’s Imagination

The way Jack plays sometimes just has me amazed!  He can be so imaginative and expressive.  When you see the picture, you’ll understand why I used the word “expressive”.

Jack playing "General Grievous" from Star Wars

Hopefully, you’re able to see his “mean” look (you can see it in much more detail by clicking on the photo to bring up a bigger picture).  He’s playing as the evil General Grievous.  He was even swinging his “light-sabers” while spinning around.  It was so cute to watch!  I just love these precious moments caught on camera (courtesy of the best photographer EVER, and that’s my unbiased opinion!)!!

Lauri also magically captured our junior Jedi in training in the background.  He’s not ready for 2 “light-sabers”, YET!

Precious Moments – Mowing

The last year Jack “helped” me mow the yard.  Lauri captured this moment perfectly.

Jack mowing lawn with dad

Seriously, is there anything cuter than your son “helping” you work?!!

I have always wanted to be a father.  As long as I can remember, that has been the case.  However, there was a long stretch in my life when I wasn’t sure if I would ever get to experience fatherhood (the first 13 years of our marriage). There were many times during that 13 year stretch that I would reflect on what I was missing and would long for the time when I would have a “helper”, much like I would help with my dad.

I was going through my pictures and this one made my day, so I just had to share.  Hope whoever reads this entry will enjoy it as much as I did.

He’s a Natural

Jack seems to be a natural at so many things.  We were playing with Doug’s family (he’s my brother-in-law) and Jack just took over.  I think he has serious potential to be a rockstar!

Jack as the lead singer with guitar

He never ceases to amaze me with figuring things out on his own.  And I’m not sure I’ll ever tire of blogging about all the fun things he does.  He is such a joy in our lives!

Precious Moments

Lauri took this photo of Jack playing with some collection cars of mine, while wearing his pirate hat.

I never cease to be amazed at how Lauri can capture such a precious moment!  But I’m even more amazed that Jack just keeps giving us these moments.  With Jack and Scott, I honestly can’t think of any more blessings I could receive that would bring me more happiness.

Fortunately, Lauri caught him playing with the cars nicely.  Unfortunately, he didn’t keep playing with the cars nicely, and I’m pretty sure there have been some casualties among my collection of cars.  And, yet, I still love him SOOOO much!!!

Amateur vs. Professional Photographer

I’m having a hard time putting this post together, because I’m still laughing thinking about the night this picture was taken.  You’ll need to visualize Lauriann and I just sitting together on our back porch enjoying an absolutely beautiful lightning storm one fine Sunday evening (on 8/15/2010, to be exact) as the sun was setting to get this story.

We were talking about life in general and reminiscing about the past year while enjoying nature’s fireworks display.  Lauriann kept tweaking the settings on her camera and trying to capture the right lighting for the storm.  It was getting darker by the minute, so she had to continually readjust her settings.  At first, she was trying to catch the clouds as they lit up from the lightning, but as the storm grew closer, she tried to capture the lightning itself.  She would adjust her settings, then hold the camera up and wait.  Just as she would get impatient and start to lower her camera, another lightning would strike.  This trend went on for about 20 minutes.  It was driving me crazy!  So I finally grabbed the camera, waited for the right moment, and–Voila!  On my first attempt, too!

My First Attempt

Of course, she immediately pointed out that I would NEVER have found the right settings on her camera to capture that.  She’s right, but I countered with the fact that her timing was WAY off for capturing lightning.  It was fun discussing how I captured an image a professional had been trying to capture all night.  After breaking my arm from patting myself on the back, I finally gave my beautiful professional photographer the credit she was due.  There was NO way I was EVER going to get the right settings to capture that.

But better than capturing that picture was the time I got to spend enjoying the storm with Lauriann.  We love to spend time together outside during lightning and thunderstorms.