Car troubles

Well last week Amber's van had the ABS light came on. Well it was due for an oil change anyway so we took to our local guy for an oil change and to check why the light is on. It turns out it was a cracked axle, 300 + dollars. Well it turns out my car is making weird noises as I make turns. It too was due for an oil change so back to the shop again today; Cracked power steering rack, 600 + dollars. Okay now I just need the third part of the Mastercard story that says "Priceless!"

Black and White photos

Ok so not that we take a long time to go through our B & W film but the first picture on the film was Amber pregnant with Julianna and the last one was a school house I took a picture of on the way to my niece's wedding this summer. But my one favorite photo out of them is this one.

More of the same

Well I know it is not a nice way to put it. (More of the same) But if I titled it "It's a girl." It would be too much of a giveaway for you to read on anymore. They are VERY sure it is a girl. Amber was sure because of all the differences in how she is carrying it and how she has felt that it was a boy. Oh well. Now we are kind of scared to try for a third and end up with three girls. We will have to wait and see how this one goes. Still no names picked out yet. Will probably do the same as we did with Julianna and have a couple of names and name her when we look at her and see which one feels like the best fit.

Anna is 2 ! ! !

In some ways I cannot believe she is 2 already. In other ways it is hard to believe she is only 2. I see these 5 and 6 year old girls around town thinking, Anna will be like that someday. I now realize that someday is just around the corner.

She is so beautiful and wonderful and such a blessing. (Most of the time) She drives me nuts sometimes with her screaming and fits. But most of it comes from wanting to be independent and knowing what she wants. I guess that is better than having a child who wants to depend on you for every little thing. I love you Anna, Happy Birthday!!

Be careful what you wish for.

On my way back to work from lunch I was once again noticing the funny noise my car was making. I thought to myself the best thing to happen would be for someone to total my car and get the insurance money so I can get a new car. Well not 30 seconds later I almost had my wish. Traffic was stopped in front of me as someone was turning. A white thunderbird came around the corner and the driver was looking out his side window in lala land. Luckily the speed limit there is only 40 so that when he finally saw me stopped about a 100 yards away and slammed on his brakes with squealing tires....he was able to stop in time.

So I decided it is better to just keep my car.....Thank you Lord for keeping me safe.

Not management material

A situation as happened at work because something I said. Some people are getting in trouble because of me and I think I am going to get an ulcer from the tension of it. I would make horrible management material I think. I hate confrontation. Well at least when it is because of me. One or two may deserve what is being said but they are all being lumped together. I feel bad.

Hectic Day

I have been added to another que at work and has increased my call volume and my frustration volume. I am not very good at tech supporting and I am not extremely patient when I cannot figure it out right away. Granted much of it is that customers are telling me the wrong thing. But most of the guys have enough experience to know what the right thing is when they here the wrong thing and can interpret it or ask the right questions to figure it out. UGGGHHH!!!!!

But had a good weekend. Was finally able to get my office cleaned out and took the copier out of there. (Thanks Kevin!) Still looking forward to Thursday!!!

Nice Weather

The sun is shining and it is suppose to get up to 56 today. So looking forward to softball season and getting outdoors again. I could see the little sprouts of my daffodil's starting to come up around the dogwood in my front yard. In another month or so the dogwood's blooms will appear and my 3 lilacs will get their blooms as well. I love those 3 to 4 weeks when they are all in full bloom. My yard looks so nice.

New life is coming. Easter is coming....

Some Irish Blessing for You this St. Paddy's Day

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

May your feet never sweat,
your neighbor give you ne're a treat.
When flowers bloom, I hope you'll not sneeze,
and may you always
have someone to squeeze!

My Life In A Couple Of Months

March 15

Beware!!

The Weekend

Well the weekend was really productive. Manage to get a good portion of the house really clean. We are talking emptying cupboards and cleaning them out, reorganizing, dusting, dishes, vacuuming, and even Julianna's play room is fairly straightened up. Well until she got home and played for about 5 minutes. Oh well, can't be perfect. But it felt really good to get so much done.

Then on Sunday after church we had the college students from church over for pizza. It too was a good time. We were trying to see where their hearts were and what they were looking for from our church. I was really happy with what I heard come from them.

And in church Joe preached a stirring sermon that goes well with the idea Kevin has been talking about, how the gates of hell will not overcome us. (They are on a defensive and we are on the attack and we will not be overcome!) I am getting a new excitement stirring.

5:00

Wow this day is dragging.

Can't wait for 5:00!

An evening alone with Amber tonight, Julianna is staying at the babysitters tonight.

We have a romantic night of cleaning and painting planned.

Have a great weekend!!

Names

Why are names so hard to come up with? For starters, Amber's familiy if quite large and they see each other all the time. So you don't want to use any names of close family. Then like our top 2 or 3 names have been names of babies that were lost very young in her family, so defintely can't use them. Then Amber is a teacher so all those names of those (how to put this nicely) "problem" kids she has had she can't use.

Her dad has been doing family trees since before it became popular and easy with the internet. Dragging Amber along to old filing rooms looking through hours of papers. So we are both from Welsh backgrounds and thought a good Welsh name would be good. Well there are not a lot of those and the good ones wouldn't you know are all considered popular now. Everybody and their brother is suddenly jumping on the old English/Irish/Welsh name kick.

Well luckily we still have another 2 months to figure it out.

Talk over Pizza

Well we had another good lunch at Pizza. Our discussions revolved around one of our favorite subjects sports. More specifically baseball and the upcoming season. Who is going to be starting on opening day and the such.

And we had a discussion that Kevin had in his class:

Matthew 16:18
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

His prof pointed out that gates are defensive units. Gates are not used to attack. So does that mean that when the church attacks, Hades will not be able to defend itself. Or is that the gates are used to mark your territory and Hades will not bring its territory over the Church? I like the first idea a little better. What do you think?

Birthdays and Pizza

I can't believe I forgot to mention yesterday was my mom's birthday. I sent her a card and I did call her. But she does read my blog as well so I wanted to mention and say "Hope you had a Happy Birthday Mom!" Hope dad bought you a milkshake.

Going out for pizza with the guys today. I so look forward to these days. We always have fun and good talks.

They cheated

Well I said I would not mention the bowling again if we lost, but we did, but they cheated. Okay so they didn't technically cheat. They just failed to mention that two of the girls use to league bowl. The one who scored the highest even had her own ball with her. She scored a 224 and the other one scored a 198. I did manage to score the highest score on my team the first game with a 140. Then on the second game I had the highest overall from both teams with a 182. We only lost by a total of 15 points on the second game. My boss was there and we were down by 17 on his last frame. So since we lost by 15 you can probably guess that he knocked all of two pins down.

But we had a lot of fun. There was a couple of people there who it was only their second time bowling. It was fun to see them get strikes and do pretty well. (for their second time bowling.) Just our two teams from work raised almost $500 for BBBS. By far the most raised there by any group, so we were glad we decided to do it.

Bowling

Tonight I get to go bowling. 5 guys against 5 girls from work are competing tonight in bowling for Big Brother and Big Sisters. The nice thing to say is that the real winners are the little brother and sisters. But we also know the winners are going to be the guys tonight! If you don't hear anymore about this next week the girls won, but I have a feeling I will have another posting about this on Monday.

P.S. I have had no practice, haven't been bowling in....months? Can't remember the last time?

Cavs and Spurs

Went to my first NBA game last night. My friend, Ron, got us a couple of free tickets to go last night. They were good seats, but would never have paid the $60 face value for them. So it was cool I got to experience something I would not have otherwise.

We left right after work and drove (well Ron drove, I rode) for 2 hours through the snow to see the game. The first 3 quarters were a little slow, but it was a close game most of the time. The Cavs came back to tie it up with 12 seconds left only to leave Tim Duncan (in Ron's words) "wide wide wide open", to make a game winner at the buzzer.

LeBron had a mediocre game for him. But it was pretty exciting and glad I got to go. I spent most of the time taking pictures and will try to post a few in the day or so. Thanks Ron!!