Merry Christmas!

It's a little after 7am on Christmas Morning & I am currently waiting for my two girls to wake up to join in the Christmas festivities. It's given me the opportunity to reflect a bit on Christmas and its meaning. "For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6, NLT). It is so easy to get caught up in the stuff of Christmas that we forget the deeper meaning. I really like this passage from Isaiah - imagine what it must have been like to hear this in the midst of a very dark time - to know that a Savior will one day come to redeem all of mankind. A simple child, born in a manger - and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This is our God.

These are my thoughts this morning as I wait for our house to be transformed into world of excitement, wonder, and Christmas cheer. In the meantime, I thought I would share a little from our Christmas experience this year. These pictures are from the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. We went on Saturday night with a couple of our good friends (Aaron & Amy) and my parents. Ellie had a great time looking at the lights (they had lots of glow-in-the-dark animals outlined in lights). One really cool display was of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges with Mount Rainier in the background - very creative (for those of you not from Tacoma, they are currently building a second bridge to span the Tacoma Narrows - in the picture it is the one with the cables lit up). They did a really good job replicating the bridges - even leaving off certain sections of the bridge that aren't quite finished yet.

Sleepless Night

Last night was one of the those nights were sleep just seemed to escape me. I managed to get in about an hour and a half of sleep before I was awakened by our daughter. She was having a rough night (I think her leg was hurting) and had trouble getting back to sleep. Finally after some Tylenol she was able to make it back to dream of her new Pooh bear toy. Unfortunately, by this time I was wide awake. I fought it for a little while but finally decided to give up.

After doing some brainstorming and putting some thoughts down on paper (of the electronic variety), I headed over to my favorite photo site - Flickr. I enjoy flipping through and looking at the variety of pictures. Typically, I look for pictures to use as backgrounds for songs for our worship services at our church. It kind of serves two purposes: our church gets some cool new backgrounds and I get to browse through lots of photos - something I enjoy doing. If you run across any cool images, let me know.

Here's one I like:

Email updates

We've set up a GoogleGroup for those that are interested in being notified by email when a new posting is made to our blog.

Instructions: (this will take 1-2 minutes)
Visit our group's webpage.
Click on "Join this group"
Login to your Google account (gmail, calendar, etc.) - if you don't have a google login, you'll need to create one.
Decide on what format you would like to receive the email in (digest, full, or abridged).

That's it. You're all done!

By the way, I've changed the settings so that you don't have to login to blogger to post a comment to our blog (sorry to all those who attempted to do this in the past - it should be easier now).

the new blogger

We recently switched over to the new beta blogger (operated by Google). Not too much different - a few changes here and there, but it is easier to add different elements now (such as tags, links, etc.). You'll probably need to update our address in your feed reader - the addresses are below. By the way, if you're looking for a good feed reader, I'd recommend Sage. It's a plug-in for Firefox and integrates really well.

Here's a screen shot of what it looks like:

When you click on the icon for Sage, it pops up a sidebar that shows the blogs you subscribe to on the top with the individual postings below. When you click on the refresh icon (located at the top of the sage bar), it checks for any blog updates and lets you know it's new by bolding the text. Also, the magnifying glass next to the refresh icon searches a site for a new feed. So, if you are visiting our site (mike-tina.blogspot.com), you can click on the magnifying glass and it will automatically grab our feed so that you can subscribe to it. It makes life much simpler.

New Feeds for Mike & Tina (either of these will work):
http://mike-tina.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://mike-tina.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Green Eggs and...

I've always thought this was simply the clever title of a book created in the mind of a rather famous "doctor," but about a month ago I heard about chickens that actually laid green eggs - and sure enough, they do!

This morning, Tina, Ellie, and I got to enjoy some of those green eggs (thanks to our friends Mike & Cindy).

I gotta tell you, they were pretty good - although it was odd knowing that we were eating green eggs. If you get the chance, I'd highly recommend them - much better than the store-bought.

Here's a nice "after" picture to see how they turned out (we were making breakfast burritos - very tasty).

good times

Well, we now have a 2-year old on our hands! She is full of life, energy, and opinions! She has opinions about which clothes and shoes to wear, what to eat and drink, which blanket to cover with, and the list goes on...
We had a fun birthday party for Ellie. Here is a picture of Ellie chasing her "Elmo" birthday balloon.

Birthday girl!

Well, today is Ellie's 2nd birthday. We'll be having a party with some friends tomorrow. I don't think that Ellie really understands how this day is any different from yesterday or tomorrow! But, it is special to me! It's hard to believe that two years have gone by since our precious little one stole our hearts (even before she was born). I remember during my pregnancy Michael would get out his guitar and sing to her. She would always move and kick a little more when daddy sang to her :-).
On the day of her birth, Michael and I both cried as we heard her first scream as she emerged from the womb. She has been such a joy in our lives. Her sweet voice and laugh keep us smiling. What a blessing from God to have her! It's a continual adventure, figuring out how to be good parents to this little girl, reflecting God's love to her. What a privilege (and responsibility) parenting is!

A little more settled?

It's been a busy and exhausting week as we've been working and trying to unpack and get settled in our "spare" time. But, things are starting to take shape around our new home. We've discovered in the last few weeks how much "stuff" we own (this reality hits hard when you have to pack and move all of it!). But, we're enjoying our new place! A big thanks goes out to our great friends who helped with the move (and childcare) last weekend (Aaron & Amy, Tim & Carlie, and Mom)--you guys are awesome!!

The Wired City?

Supposedly Tacoma is considered to be "the wired city." Something about the miles and miles of cables & fiber optics buried beneath our city streets and suspended in air from numerous poles around town (I'll have to check with my good friend Randy Sherman who is responsible for several miles of those fiber optics). Well, it certainly hasn't been the case for our house - at least not for the past 4 months.

But we're back and man does it feel good. It's surprising how much we use the internet. For awhile there, we had no real connection to the outside world. We didn't have internet, we didn't have phone (well, at least not a landline - we'd never cut off our precious cell phones), we didn't have newspapers, and we didn't even have TV. We were a bit out of touch with the world around us - which for awhile is really not that bad. It was pretty quiet around our house (short of the almost-two-year-old singing and playing games), but it was good.

But with the purchase of our new house, we decided it was time for our self-imposed exhile to end. We've decided to ante up and get the internet fired back up at our house. Hopefully, that will mean we'll be able to post a little more often...we'll see how that goes (there's something about home repairs that makes me think I won't have quite as much freetime as I had thought).

So from the perspective of our new home, Tacoma has gotten a little more wired and we've gotten a little more connected. Ahhh...this feels good.

Sawdust, Sawdust, everywhere!!

Well, it has been a very busy weekend of pulling up carpet, sanding down the wood floors, applying stain to the wood, and coating with lacquer, but we're almost finished with the floors! We are waiting right now for the first coat of lacquer to dry, then we'll apply the final coat and voila...we're done! The floors look beautiful and this will soon be worth all of the effort!

It's ours!

Well, today Michael and I went to sign the mountain of papers to make the house officially ours! As of tomorrow afternoon, we will be first-time homeowners. We were both nervous on the drive to the escrow office. But, we have to say that the homebuying process has been very smooth (and pretty easy) and we feel very blessed for that! I'm sure that is because other people have been working very hard on our behalf!!
Thanks for all of your prayers and encouragement! For those in the Northwest, we'll be having an "open house" once we get settled in. For the rest of you in the country...you're welcome to come and visit anytime!

Goofy girl!

Here's a funny Ellie story for you! A few nights ago I put Ellie to bed and she was all set in her warm footed pajamas. About 30 minutes later, I walked into her room and saw a shadow of something lying on the floor. So, I reach down to find her warm pajamas on the floor beside her crib and I see Ellie standing up in the bed--naked except for her diaper. Apparently, those weren't the pajamas she wanted to wear that night. So, I changed her clothes and we tried again! For a young girl of her age, she is quite opinionated about her clothes and shoes (even when sleeping). ha, ha

asleep on the job?

I recently began reading through a Psalm a day with a friend of mine. Today was Psalm 7. In it, the Psalmist says "Wake up, God." My question is: Is the Psalmist accusing God of falling asleep on the job? What are your thoughts? Click here to read the entire Psalm.

It's a Deal!

Well, our offer for the house has been accepted (the cute little white house), so here we go! We are excited about owning our first home! We're looking forward to having a little bit of a yard for Ellie to play in (and it is on a much quieter street).

So, I've had a few people say, "I guess this means you're staying in Washington for a while." I suppose that's the message we're sending! Life is good here. We've been busy with ministry and work and family. Beginning in October, I'll be increasing my hours at work to full-time at the clinic.

Here are some recent pics of Ellie...she's so cute! She keeps us laughing!!

House Hunting

Well, Tina and I are taking the plunge and looking at buying our first home. We've been looking at houses for the past three weeks. Here's a little bit of our journey...

Attempt #1 - We found one we really liked (a bit of a fixer-upper but all-in-all a great house) in the 6th Ave. area, but apparently someone liked it a little faster than us and put in an offer before we could. Our first disappointment! We were both pretty down for a couple days or so, then we picked up again looking at houses.

Attempt #2 - There was another house that we liked in the UP/Fircrest area. It was a split-entry level in need of some cosmetics with a big yard. This time, we got to at least put an offer in. Unfortunately, they didn't like the offer and turned us down (I'm not sure they really wanted to sell their house - but I guess its their loss). It didn't take us long to get over that one.

Attempt #3 - Again we hit the streets with our agent, this time we found three houses we liked. The first was a really cute old house that had been remodeled and setup just like we would have wanted. The only problem was that the yard was about as big as a pancake - which really wouldn't have worked with Ellie. So, on to house #2. This one was huge - 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, and two very large living areas with a couple fireplaces and a giant yard. The price was a bit more, but we could rent one or two rooms out with no problem. But in the end it seemed a little too big, and might stretch us a bit too thin. So, on to house #3...


This is maybe not the most eye-catching from the street (at least not in its current white), but it has a lot of old-style charm. It was built in 1939, has hard wood floors, with a good size basement. It also has a great little building out back that could serve as a studio apartment.

So...big breath...we put in an offer, which we found out yesterday has been accepted. Right now we are working on some of the negotiations in that area. Once we know a little more, I'll try to post some pictures up. We are definitely excited about the possibility of owning a home. It seems a bit daunting, but everyone we've talked to has said it's been worth it.

In talking with others, it seems like three weeks of looking is really not that bad, but it certainly does take a lot out of you. We'd appreciate the prayers as we continue working through the process of ironing out details with the house and getting the finances all worked out. We'll keep you updated.