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.)

That's right.  The title was not a mis-type.  Today, I gave my wife an ultrasound exam and have the pictures of baby "Jandon" to prove it.  Part of my job at my company is to evaluate various medical devices.  So, when I recently had the chance to try out a handheld device that can perform ultrasounds, I thought that I couldn't pass up an opportunity to take a peak in to see our growing baby.  Once I felt comfortable with the idea I decided to go for it.  The quality is not near what you will find in the 100K machines in hospitals but it's pretty good nonetheless.

So, with 10 and a half weeks to go, here's our beautiful girl's pictures taken from our living room!  Medical technology is really getting cool!

 

 

I'm guessing this site still works since I'm typing these words.  Hard to believe it has been around 4 months since I last posted anything here.  For the record, there have been at least TWO people who have approached me and asked me about this.  So, to those two people, thanks for caring.  Here's a blog post just for you!

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Between January and April, I worked with my father-in-law and rebuilt our privacy fence.  That's right.  It took over two months!  What I had originally thought would take a couple of weekends ended up taking 7 weekends!  Ouch!  Totally underestimated that, but so glad that it's done and it looks good, too.  It was good carpentry and construction eperience for a wannabe handy man such as myself.  I really enjoyed getting to spend quality time with Jan's dad as well as a few other friends that came over and pitched in from time to time.  Thanks to Gabrysch, Oliver, Kyle, Steve, and the lifeblood and architect, Tim!

Here are some pics showing some of the progress.  As you can tell, my backyard is pretty much shot now, which means an upcoming sod laying project.

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and am proud of our work.  Looking back, I'm not exactly sure that I would do it again myself given that it turned out to be much harder than expected.  The hardest part turned out to be removing the existing posts.  They would usually snap off at the base or we would just run into some serious rock which the original concrete had settled into.  In the end though, we probably paid half of what the total would have been had I outsourced it. 

Here's to at least 10 years of having a sturdy dependable fence! 

 

The First Annual B-Dubs...

I've been wanting to host the first annual B-Dubs for a while.  After reading a friend's recent blog post that basically listed his various Top 5 lists for the year, I figured that now is the time.  So, without further adieu, here are the 2007 B-Dubs in order...no drum role needed...

Category:  Movies
1.  Bourne Ultimatum
2.  Blood Diamond
3.  God Grew Tired of Us
4.  Ratatouille
5.  Amazing Grace

Category:  TV Shows
1.  The Amazing Race
2.  Project Runway
3.  King of Queens
4.  The Office
5.  How I Met Your Mother

Category:  Beer
1.  Fireman's #4
2.  Pacifico
3.  Black and Tan (Guiness and Bass)
4.  Newcastle
5.  Modelo Espcial

Category:  Restaurant
1.  Moonshine (gourmet comfort food)
2.  Saccone's Pizza (the best Jersey style pizza not in Jersey)
3.  Magnolia
4.  Hula Hut
5.  Waterloo Ice House (25 cent wings and $2 draft Dos XX)

Category:  Music Artists
1.  Radiohead
2.  David Crowder Band
3.  Mute Math
4.  Neko Case
5.  (not enough data)

So, for next year, I am going to have to expand my musical interests so I can have more options when it comes to next year's musical category selections.  You can help by suggesting some new music for me to check out in the new year! 

Last night we went out to my parent's house in Wimberley to have dinner with some of my mom's family who was in town.  Ralph and Janet were there from Danville, Illinois where they run a very big family farm.  I had not seen them since I was a little kid, so it was a lot of fun to hear about life on the farm. 

A funny story involving Marley...

Ralph and Janet were telling us about their old dog Amos.  Amos was a big shaggy dog (think, "The Shaggy Dog") who looked and acted more like a human with a dog suit on.  Every day, he would join Ralph on the tractor, lean back in the passenger seat, and put his right paw up on the window sill as if he were just chillin'.  In the middle of the story, I heard something outside.  Since I had put Marley in the dog kennel with my parents' dog Cutter earlier that night, I got up to go and check on the noise.  I never went outside because I was too interested in Ralph's stories about their incredible dog Amos.  So, I sat down to listen to more of the stories.  A few minutes later we hear a noise inside the house and my mom says "the door opened!"  Before you knew it, in trots Marley greeting us as if he had not seen us in two weeks!  That dog had climbed over the chain link fence and somehow opened my parents' door to come and be reunited with us!  I should have been somewhat concerned and upset at him, but I was actually proud of him.  We've always known he had the talent to be a climber since the first week we had him and he would scale the doggy gate as a little tike.  Now, we have more evidence of this talent and more proof that he'd rather just be with people.  I'm thankful he didn't hurt himself and did not run away.  Hopefully he's not a bad influence on Cutter. 

Here's the Escape Artist himself

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."

The new sports journalisam TV show on ESPN, E:60, has done a great story on one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.  It is about a young man named Marachuria that made it to the US and discovered running as a sport.  Through running in college, he decided that he wanted to pursue qualifying for the US olympic team as a marathon runner.   To do this, he had to obtain his US citizenship.  Watch the video and enjoy another encouraging success story of one of the several thousand Lost Boys that were rescued and brought to the US.