Highlights

We've been working on "final" preparations for the new little one. It could be any day but despite all the planning and preperation I'm sure there will be something that we forget and then remember in retrospect. Regardless ... the delivery, the excitement of caring for a new baby and sharing the new moments with our friends and family should help ease any major worries we have.

We spent last weekend visiting the area where Sarah went to High School. It was my second trip to the area in 7 years. We have a couple who we went to college with who now work at that school... so I had a great time catching up with them and getting to know their kids. We also had a chance to meet other staff and it seems they have a really wonderful community to work at and to raise their children.

I'm now working on potty training Benjamin. It's great to watch him when everything goes well and a bit challenging for me when it doesn't. He's also enjoyed playing in the little plastic outdoor pool the last day or two. We let him play for about a week with no water so he really thinks the water is pretty fun. His vocabulary is really picking up. His newest phrases or words are "I'm sorry" "Giraffe" and "Jellyfish". He is really interested in one Spanish-English bilingual DVD we checked out from the library here. The title is Professor Parrot ... and I guess we'll have to buy it soon so other people at the library will have a chance to watch it.

Last week we had a family from church over for dinner. It was great to see Benjamin interact with their children - one who is older by a couple of years and one who is younger. Sarah and I enjoyed visiting and sharing with another couple who are close to us in age and in life.

Friends

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working at catching up with friends from college who I haven't talked with in several years. For some it has been 5+ years and for others only a couple. It's been great to be able to take a little time each day and swap a few emails and photos. One of the nice things about being closer to where we went to college is that it's more central to where alot of Asbury alumni live. Hopefully over the next couple of months my family and their families will have a chance to see each other in person.

Little Issac

I spent most of this afternoon hanging out with my friend David. Right now he's the stay-at-home dad with Issac who is now about 9 weeks old. He previously sent me a link to his blog and I somehow misfiled it over the last couple of months. So I've updated my blog to add a link to his. I really appreciate his friendship and it was great to see him adapting to the role of Father. His wife Kim went back to work last week - weekend shift 12-14 hour days - 4 days straight. Lots of adjustments but they are doing a great job. Hopefully Benjamin can teach Issac how to play with his toys, eat solid foods, crawl, and walk in a few months :-)