I think it's a good time to blog again.  I'm pretty sure that everyone in the world knows by now that we have welcomed our new baby girl into the world!  We are really blessed by the arrival of "G-Dub" and could not be more proud yet humbled at the same time.  It is apparent to us already that having a baby you brings out this incredible amount and level of love for another human being that is like no other thing we've experienced in our lives.  And we are reminded about how God loves us so much more than we love our little girl.  What a great reminder and personal display of God's deep love for us as His children.  We are blessed and humbled.

We have been somewhat in "survivor mode" over the past couple of weeks.  There's a lot to adjust to becoming a parent I am quickly learning, although I would say Jan has had the biggest adjustment.  Think about what she has been through over the past 9 plus months:  pregnancy, leaving her job, delivery, recovery, feeding, staying at home, sleeping in 2-3 hour increments every night!  Wow, that is an incredible amount of change to deal with.  Yet, she rarely complains.  I'm pretty sure women are tougher than men...no, I'm now convinced they are when it comes to this kind of stuff.  If I had to go through all of that as a man, I'm not sure what I would have done!  So, I'm proud of my wife.

The first couple of weeks have been good.  G-Dub is really a sweet girl and is very alert when she's awake and very asleep when she's asleep.  The only middle ground that she goes back and forth on is the feeding part, which has proven to be a lot more challenging than we had expected.  She just can't make up her mind whether she's hungry or tired or both. 

I went back to work about a week after she was born, thanks to my mother-in-law staying with us.  That was a huge blessing the first week, and now my mother is poised to take over the support duties.  It's been good for me to go back into work and have some normalcy, but I sure do miss that little girl during the day!  In a sense it makes me focus more at work so that when I get home I can "turn it off" and focus on my girls. 

We're so glad she's finally here! 

             

Well it's hard to believe that in just 8 weeks or so Jan and I will be parents for the first time.  I'm pretty sure most of you know by now that we are expecting a little girl in July.  If you didn't know, well, surprise!  We are very grateful that Jan has experienced a fairly smooth pregnancy thus far.  That may be a lot easier for me to say than for Jan, but my observation has been that she has handled it extremely well.  Of course I will never know what she is truly experiencing nor do I want to.  But I am forever grateful to her. 

While our honey-do list seems to grow pretty constantly, we have teamed up make a reasonable dent in our list.  I have to catch myself at times because I will think that I need to do something before the baby gets here or else it will never get done.  For example, I feel that if I don't by a lawnmower now, then I will have to put all to purchase for another two or 3 years.  This is mostly a misconception on my part, and something that I need to make sure that I am balancing correctly.

So, we have been able to rearrange the upstairs bedrooms, which has been an interesting process.  We have consolidated our office and guest room into one room, while leaving the other room available as our nursery.  In the process of doing this, we continued to stumble across several items that we needed to either throw up way or donate or shred.  It's really a good feeling when we get rid of so much junk.  And it's amazing to us both how much junk we can accumulate in such a short time.  Granted, most of it is small stuff, but add all of it together and you get quite a load.  We have also stumbled across some sentimental items as well, which is always fun and, err sentimental.

We have yet to decide if Jan will go back to work, but if she does it will most likely be in a part-time role.  We are thankful that we will be able to make a decision after the baby arrives, once we have a chance to see how things go and after diving in.

(Note:  I "typed" this entry using some dictation software that I have been evaluating at work.  Hopefully I did not miss any words that I needed to correct.  Since it is not a perfect science, it can be pretty funny and at times scary what the software dictates.)

Tomorrow, November 6th, would have been my grandfather's 90th birthday if he had lived to be that old.  In a lot of ways it doesn't seem quite possible that it has been almost 4 years since he passed away.  I'm grateful that I have so many priceless memories of Papaw and hope that the Lord will allow me to hang on to them for many years to come. 

I will always miss Papaw, but will always be so thankful that I have so many good memories of him.  May his legacy continue to guide our family and bring us closer to one another through this bond.  May his faith in Christ continue to be passed from generation to generation in the Wilson family.  Happy Birthday, Papaw.

Genesis 17:7
"I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you."

I'll keep this brief, but I wanted to let everyone know that we lost our best friend yesterday. Bodie was hit and killed by a car yesterday and we are devastated. We never knew that we could love a dog so much. I know all of the dog owners out there know what we're going through. Please pray for peace and that we will be able to move on while hanging on to our memories of Bodie. Thank you.

Thanks to my brother-in-law (who is of course always conveniently behind the camera and not in the pictures) for capturing these. It is always fun getting that perfect shot for the family Christmas card. Merry early Christmas 2007 from the Wilsons!





Now, I will really know if my family reads my blog.

It's another sad day for the Wilsons as I learned today from my dad that his border collie Hank was killed about three weeks ago.  He was actually on the set of a movie that is shooting in Marfa, Texas.  My dad's cousin is a movie animal trainer and asked my dad to use Hank on a movie.  Apparently, he was shooting a scene that included a wagon chase and Hank made a wrong turn.  We're very sad but it's neat to know that Hank was doing something he loved to do.  Run!!  And that dog could jump after a frisbee like no dog you've ever seen!  It was truly a beautful sight!  We'll miss you Hank dog.

Last weekend we got a new puppy!  We've been wanting to do this for a while and now that we finally have a yard, we decided to break down and do it.  Welcome "Bodie" to the Wilson family!  He is a 9-week old blue heeler and he is one cute dog.  We have great hopes that he will be a smart dog since the breed is known to be a pretty intelligent breed.  A lot of that though will have much to do with how good Jan and I can do in raising him.  He's quite the biter at this point, but that is normal puppy behavior that he should outgrow soon. 

The funniest thing he'll do is when he is curious about something or wants to play with something that is out of his reach he will stare it down and wave his paw up and down as if to say "you want to come over and let me chew you."  It reminded me of a jedi knight type move, so I guess for fun you could call him Bodie-Won. 

This picture is in memory of my favorite dog of all-time, Dundee.  Dundee passed away sometime during the night on January 4th at the age of 13.  Many of you who know me, knew Dundee and how he was a great, extremely smart dog who didn't quite think he was a dog.  He was definitely one of the good ol' boys in the Wilson clan and he will be greatly missed.

"Dundee, it's time..."

My nephew was born last Wednesday and he's instantly cool.  We share the same middle name!  Reese.  My grandfather had the same middle name, along with some other family members in the Wilson family.  Papaw would be so proud. 

He's a really cute baby too.  We are all very proud and are excited to see this little one experience the world around him. 

Jan and I got back from our Colorado get-away on Monday.  We had a great time spending a few days with Jan's brother and sis-in-law, Kevin and Summer.  We flew into Denver last Wednesday night and got up at 7AM the next morning to roll onto the slopes at Copper Mountain.  Jan and I went by ourselves and got our ski on for the one day.  It was fun for us since it had been several years since either of us had skied. 

That night, we ate at an awesome place called Zengos and had some "quality, not quantity food."  My very favorite was the mustard chipotle glazed beef short rib.  It was the most tender piece of fabulous meat I have ever eaten, so much that I wish I were eating it right now instead of typing this mouth-watering blog entry.

Then, we spent a few days in a beautiful cabin in Buena Vista.  There, we spent our time snow-shoeing, sledding, relaxing, eating great food, watching the UNC/Duke game, and even working on our application for the Amazing Race (more on that at a later time.)  It was awesome to just get away from everything and enjoy God's gorgeous creation.  I'll try to post a pic or two here later.

(I will have to post a separate entry and tell you about a couple of weird/funny things that happened while we were there.)

UPDATE:

As promised a couple of pictures...

(Us in Buena Vista)

(Us with Denver in the background)

 

It's been a busy last 10 days...I use the word busy to actually mean “worked a lot” in the last 10 days.  So much, I hit the 80 hour mark at around 1:45 on Sunday morning.  80 hours in 7 days...that's a record, but I'd rather not try to top it.  The short story is that we had a really tight solid deadline that we had to hit, and I'm happy to say that we hit it yesterday afternoon.  Now, I can breathe...hooray!

While I was working last week, Jan's brother and sister-in-law came down from Denver to stay with us.  When I got to hang out with them, we had a blast.  We ate at Chuy's for Kevin's birthday...happy 30th Beedis!  On Saturday night, we ate at Hoover's which I highly recommend for those visiting looking for good soul / home cookin'.  Sunday topped it off when we tubing down the Guadalupe River in New Braunsfels.  This is something that Jan and I would like to make an annual tradition.  So, if you come visit us in the summer months, we will tube and you will like it...immensely...seriously...just bring the sunblock and the cold ones. 

Tubular.

Well, Brandon has not been blogging lately.  I was bugging him about it the other day and he said I could be his guest writer.  So, that means that this is not Brandon...it's Mrs. B-Dub (Jan).  Anyway, a lot has occurred since his last entry.  Not sure that I can cover it all, but I'll give you some highlights.

Mrs. Wilson’s Retirement - We celebrated Brandon's mom's retirement on June 1st.  She retired after 31 years of teaching.  We had the Texas flag flown over the capital building in honor of her for a day.  She will get to keep the actual flag as her own.  Pretty cool way to honor someone in my opinion.  We took her to eat at East Side Café for dinner.  For those of you who like unique and nice places to eat in Austin, you should try this out.  The restaurant is on the on the East side of I-35 in an old house as many are around here.  The house is surrounded by a huge garden in which they grow a lot their own vegetables supposedly. 

Vacation - Brandon and I got back from another vacation last week.  We went to Ruidoso, NM with our friends Chance and Laura.  We stayed up late, slept in and enjoyed the easy life.  Hiking in the mountains was probably the highlight of the trip.  We did so many fun things, but there is something about the mountains that captivates me and all my senses every time I am in or around them.  It makes me the love the Lord and His creation more and more!  I am sure Brandon will post some pictures of our trip for you to see so I'll save the rest of the trip details for him to share another time.

Furniture – We ordered some new furniture on Memorial Day.  It will be another few weeks until we receive it, but we are excited to have a new couch that doesn’t creak when you sit on the right side of it and that doesn’t have a slip cover you have to fix every time you get up.   We’ve been blessed to have these hand-me-down furniture pieces from our families; however, we’re ready to start living like we are out of college.  For our guests, this means you can look forward to a new couch plus a chair and half with an ottoman. 

Barry White Voice – Brandon is sick right now and has a really deep voice.  Not only does he love to talk Barry White style to me on any given day, but also he really enjoys playing up the deep scratchy voice he has right now.   So, I leave you with one of Brandon’s favorite Barry White sayings.  “Baby, you know I love you... and you KNOW what tonight is...”

It's been two weeks since my last post and I admit that I have fallen behind in the blogging department.  The main occupier of my...that word doesn't look right...anyway, I've been working a ton of overtime the last three weeks.  The first couple of weeks weren't bad but this week is proving to be a long and exhausting one.  We are just trying to make up some time in the project schedule so we are putting in the extra hours.  I think after this week we will be close to being caught up and all will return to normal in Brandon's world.  Jan too has been working a lot mainly because she's got some proposals that are due in the next few weeks. 

I went to Hill's Cafe tonight to meet up with my dad.  I surprised by showing up because I had told him I had to work.  Well, I decided to stop by after work to see him anyway and to see Ricky Trevino perform live.  Now, I am pretty picky with the kind of country music I like, and I have to say that I definitely enjoy his music.  He plays a lot of stuff that sounds like the Mavericks, Marty Robbins, and a bit of Tex-Mex flavor to it.  He had 10 people on stage with him and they all combined to make some really good music.  He had a sax, trumpet, steel guitar, accordian, drums, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, piano, and a bass somewhere in there.  Sounds crowded don't it?  Check him out if you ever get a chance.  I know a lot of you aren't big country fans but he's really a good musician.

Easter last Sunday was a lot of fun and a first for Jan and me.  We hosted my whole family for Easter dinner and it turned out to be a great success.  I slaved over a spiral sliced ham from HEB and everyone else brought the sides.  I'm telling you - pot luck is the way to go.  It was great to see my grandmother whose birthday we celebrated.  Jan made an incredible carrot cake with her mother's recipe.  Dang, baby, that thing was goo-ood!! 

On Friday, Jan and I went to see The Passion - on Good Friday.  It was definitely well-done, but outside of critiquing it I was really moved by a few of the scenes.  It truly is a movie that we all need to watch periodically if not more frequently to remind us of what Christ did for us.  It doesn't even come close to what actually occurred only because we weren't there, but it is the closest thing we have and I am thankful that Mel Gibson and his crew made the movie. 

Well, I'm off to bed.  I hope to blog more often and will try to keep it interesting.  I gotsta keep the peepul comin back for mo'.

 

Papaw

 

At 7:35 PM on Saturday night, February 7, 2004, the world lost one of its heroes; I lost my hero.  My grandfather passed away peacefully in his sleep in his home with his family by his side.  I had the blessing of being there with him when he went home to be with his Savior. 

 

“Papaw” truly was my hero since I was a kid.  No other man I knew showed more love to his family and friends than he did during his lifetime.  From the times when I got to dance on top of his feet with him, to the many games of checkers, Old Maid, and Jenga we played, to the countless stories of his life that he would share with us all, all the way up to the last time I hugged his neck and kissed his cheek, he loved me unconditionally.  I will always have so many lasting memories of times with Papaw that I was blessed with. 

 

Today, he is rejoicing in heaven with Jesus and having an incredible reunion with so many of his dear friends and family who adored him.  Papaw no longer has to worry, no longer has to battle his headaches, no longer has to use a walker.  He is a new creature now and he will live in eternity with the Lord.  That is the great hope that we have because of the life of Jesus. 

 

One day, we will all be able to see him again and dance with him and hold his big hands once more.  Until that day, we will continue on with the legacy that he leaves behind and continue living on the foundation that he laid out for all of us.  Papaw was our cornerstone, but he can be at peace knowing that we will always carry a big piece of his life with us throughout each day.

     Until that day, Papaw…thank you and we love you…

 

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