Great gift

My friend Brent bought me "The Valley of Vision- A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions". I am excited to be able to begin reading it. Those Puritans sure know how to write. A great unexpected surprise.

The Love from Family

Tera's relatives hosted a baby shower for Emma today. We had a great time. Tera's aunt Mary read a poem for us. Tera knew of this poem but I had not heard it before today. It was very sweet and moving. I thought it would be nice to share.

Two Kinds
Of Love



Once there were two women
who never knew each other.
One you do not remember
The other you call Mother.

Two different lives shaped
To make yours one.
One became your guiding star
The other became your sun.

The first gave you life and
The second taught you to live it
The first gave you a need for love
The second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality
The other gave you a name
One gave you the seed of talent
The other gave you aim.

One gave you emotions
The other calmed your fears,
One saw your first sweet smile
The other dried your tears.

One gave you up
It was all that she could do,
The other prayed for a child
And God led her straight to you.

And someday you may ask me through your tears
The age old question through the
years,
Heredity or environment, which are you
The product of?

Neither, my darling, neither
Just two different types of love.

Random thought/observation...

While pulling Emma duty the other night I watched a documentary called “The Execution of Michael Johnson”. The film was about a death row inmates last 24 hours leading up to his death sentence by way of lethal injection. While the normal anti vs. pro death penalty would seem to be the angle of the special it actually was the legal scrambling by Mr. Johnson’s attorney and the in depth look at the families of both the victim and the accused and how they were handling the oncoming grief of past and future family loss. As the viewer I was intrigued by Michael Johnson’s unrepentant attitude and ever changing story of how he was either not at the scene of the crime or how the accomplice was the actual shooter. He was linked by DNA and other incriminating evidence that did not seem to sway him and his claim of innocence or his claim that his friend was the real murderer. It was hard to watch, to see a sister and mother lament over a loved one whom they had had no physical contact with for over ten years and the woman who lost her husband only three weeks after their wedding. But again this is not why I watched. I watched the entire thing because of the shock value of the entire documentary. I was drawn in to see what the killer had to say for himself. To see if he would take advantage of his last hours on earth to recant, to confess, to say he was sorry and to make amends to those in his family and the family if the victim. But he didn’t. Hours before he was scheduled to die he took his own life. He even took his own blood and scrawled “I didn’t do it”. The victim’s family called him a coward. His sister called him brave. I was so taken in by this story. But why?

So I began to think. It might be for the same reason that I watch COPS and shows of the same nature. Of course there are so many variations of this type of reality tv. Everything from MTV’s salacious, inappropriate and mind numbing ‘The Real World’ to the sometimes horrific-endings of ‘The World‘s Scariest Police Chases‘. These all seem to cater to our “I can’t seem to stop staring” mentality. We see the guy who gets pulled over for allegedly driving drunk and snicker at something that might be said by the driver because he had too much to drink or the visit to the household plagued by domestic abuse where the house looks virtually unlivable and we are more shocked by the family‘s living conditions rather than the sad circumstance of the broken home. We know that the end of these stories are sad . They end with some guy in jail or the spouse with the black eye pressing charges against the other spouse or a car crashing into a pole and running off an embankment. Shock. Shock. Shock. Columbine. OJ Simpson. The recent live on air helicopter collision in Arizona which resulted in the deaths of four men (both helicopters were filming a police chase). The tsunamis in Asia. Soccer riots. The Virginia Tech massacre. The fall of the Trade Towers. All these things have been played over and over again on the television and we watch and we watch. These are real events that exist in the world we live in and yet there seems to be an air of apathy or some sort of disconnect with the seriousness of it all. But what if that were to happen to me? What if a plane collided with the IDS Center (our tallest building in Minneapolis) or someone close to me was pulled over for driving drunk or there was an incident involving a loved one who was experiencing domestic assault? I would be heart broken. What if someone filmed these events and showed them to me and the rest of America? How often would I watch these shows if they all involved someone close to me? I wonder if the harm caused by tv is worse than previously thought. What will we do when tragedy comes to our doorstep? While I accuse no one but myself of watching some of these shows I wonder what all this reality tv and “live” footage is doing for us as a society. Do other countries have this type of programming? Would “Baghdad’s Scariest Car Bombings” be a huge hit on Iraqi tv? I will step out on a limb and say “probably not”. Why is this? I don’t have an answer. But in this case I don’t think that I need an answer to know that something is wrong with all of this. Are we becoming worse than desensitized? Are we a people who have grown to love tragedy and failure?
Just another incomplete thought of mine. Maybe I will connect all the dots at a later time.

J

Verse of the minute

1 Corinthians 1:27-29
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, [yea], and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.

Current stuff

Current...

weather: hot and not enough rain, I'm ready for Fall

book(s): Kingdom Come (LaHaye/Jenkins)
Truth War (MacArthur)
The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Vanderkam and Flint)


music: Fernando Ortega- Beginnings
Joel Hanson- Captured
Jimmy Eat World- Futures
Zao- A Parade of Chaos
Michael Card- Soul Anchor

Spare time projects:
Emma, Emma, Tera, Emma & Emma. And thinking about the stuff around the house that I need to do.

Looking forward to:
Farmer's Market, The Minnesota State Fair http://www.mnstatefair.org/
Muskie and Northern Pike fishing in the Fall, The Fall (the season not the band),
our first Christmas with Emma, date night with Tera at Fogo de Chao
http://fogodechao.com/

sites:
pounce.com
mahalo.com
watch.org
gty.org
My local library homepage
kare11.com
google.com
foodtv.com
forthischild.org
babiesrus.com
wikipedia.com
craigslist.com (mpls)
wunderground.com (mpls)
youtube.com
thegiantnapkin.com
christiananswers.com
searching websites to find a new mac laptop for $100... i'm still searching, surprised? haha.


j

hey

Admittedly it has been a while since my last post. And for good reason. Emma has been plagued by a number of illnesses. She has a cold and on top of that she has been throwing up most days as well. She has what would appear to be an acute gag reflex (or something) which causes her to vomit on a dime. It has been trying to say the least. Tera and I are definitely worried about her. We are in contact with the doctors trying to figure this thing out. Yet, Emma's overall demeanor is pleasant and we do have our good days. She is just having a hard time keeping things down.
Please pray.

J

I love technology until it breaks

I have an ipod and I use it on a daily basis at work for hours at a time. It really helps me get through the mundane activities at work (rocket science can be a bore). So the laptop that I used to manage my itunes account got itself perished. Of course I did not have all the files on my ipod backed up so now I am in a pickle. The CD's that I downloaded into my ipod are long gone and Apple does not allow the consumer to transfer such content from an ipod to a "new" laptop. I am looking for some legal software that can accomplish this feat. I know that they are out there but there are so many products that I have no idea which to use. Blah...

J

Ha!

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box.
I was an only child....eventually. -- Steven Wright

It's been a long day and I need a laugh. As you can see from the above quote I have a "different" sense of humor. Tera would agree. Remember Steven Wright? He's a tall guy that looks tired all the time. He's very funny to me. I guess I would call him a clean comic. "Clean comics" are a rarity these days. In a world where people think they need to use foul language to be funny clean comics are hard to find. Brian Regan is a gas as well. Anyhoo, I thought I would quote someone who makes me laugh from time to time.

Congrats to Tricia, Alan and Victoria on your "eventual" arrival to Guatemala and reuniting (for the final time) with Sofia!!!

J

One month ago right now

As I type this I believe that our plane was landing at Mpls/St.Paul International airport one month ago. So much has happened since our arrival home but it seems like the three of us got off the plane last week. Emma went from sitting to crawling to pulling herself up on her own in no time. She gains a new skill ever few days and works on refining the ones that she has everyday. Happy one month being home Emma!

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!!!

On Sunday I woke up to Tera standing at the foot of the bed. She handed me the digital camera and said “Look at this”. I looked and what I saw surprised me and made me laugh out loud. It was a picture taken that morning of Emma holding on to the rail and standing in her crib. And of course she was smiling ear to ear. She has been working on trying to stand up at the sofa table in our living room. Tera has posted pictures of her at the table on her blog. All her hard work has paid off and she is now rewarded with the fruits of her labor. I am very proud of her and her newest accomplishment. Another day, another surprise.

My how time flies

Oh where has the time gone? Our sweet Miss Emma has now been home for almost one month now. She will be 9 months old on the 4^th of July and the time is flying by. Tera just commented yesterday that it seems like we just got home two days ago and I would agree. Our return home is so vivid in my mind still even though it’s already July.

Emma continues to progress with her new found “skills” and other tricks that she discovers each day. Each morning after work I get home as soon as I can so I can see her smiling face (she apparently is a morning person). Actually I got home yesterday after work and discovered that she had already woke up for her early morning bottle and was back in her crib sleeping. I was bummed. Even though our time in the morning is limited I still love seeing her before I head off to bed. Each day she and I have Emma and Daddy time which is a hoot. A little talking , a little crawling and if we are lucky, maybe even a little rough-housing. She is so active, constantly buzzing around and getting into everything. It’s pretty cool I must say.

I wanna make a quick note and acknowlege all of the friends and family that have been so kind and generous to Tera, Emma and I. People have been very sweet and we appreciate it very much.

On an unrelated note; If you like meat (beef, pork, lamb, chicken etc.) and would like to experience something new and different grab a friend or loved one and head over to Fogo de Chao. My dad took me there back in May and I dream about it often. When (and if) we get some time I am going to take Tera there for lunch or din-di. www.fogodechao.com

Ciao

J