A New Season! A New Blog!

Well, summer has unofficially begun for me. Graduation occured on Saturday and that means that today is the first day of the summer. That means quiet halls and a different pace. It means eating KD in my office for lunch watching the beautiful weather from my window (hmmm... what is wrong with that picture). More importantly, it means my family gets back their husband and father without his emotional and physical exhaustion-baggage. It also means that some things are going to get done at home that have been needed to be done (ie. cleaning the garage, getting caught up with the financial entries, etc.) It also means that I might blog once a month. You who have been closely following my blogging consistency will realize that I missed blogging in April-- but not this month!! It is the 1st and already I have one entry. That means that I can go almost 60 days before my next entry. So see you in 60 days! :)

My wife is American--- But She's from the Midwest - Not me!!!

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Yankee

10% Dixie

5% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Excuse me, I blogged!

So its February 28th and I haven't blogged all month. I have made a sort of resolution that I would blog at least once a month. That is to keep my family at least somewhat happy. Apparently they check my blog almost daily and are usually disappointed to find that there is never anything new there. I am afraid that after a while they will stop checking altogether. I can't say I would really blame them. Dave, I think I am doing even worse than you at this blogging thing.

But I am blogging tonight! It's 11:13 p.m. so I am beating my self-inflicted deadline by a good 45 minutes. So there, me!

I was going to blog/rant about made-up words like "blog", etc. but I can't now as I just learned this evening from Matt Foreman where the word came from. Turns out it is a shortform of "web-log". That makes sense to me and really isn't all that interesting. Sometimes short forms are just a lot more cooler, of which this is the case.

I am off to Kitchener tomorrow on a business trip -- which is a rarity for me. The Christian Social Service Agencies in Ontario are trying to team up with Ontario Bible Colleges to see if there could be a partnership which would provide the agencies with training facilities/programs and hopefully provide the colleges with students. I am representing KLBC to listen to what the possibilities might be. This is the second of such meetings. The first one took place in Guelph last May.

Good night from the 'Boro.

More Pics of Aria

Aria Grace Easton

Born into this world at 5:45 p.m. on January 24th, 2006, Aria Grace Easton declared to all in hearing distance, and in her case this was a fairly lengthy measurement, that "oxygen is hard to get used to." She weighed exactly 7 pounds and was 19 3/4" in length.

We left for the hospital at 2:00 p.m. at the suggestion of the obstetrician, since Valerie's contractions were getting very severe although the interval between them was more in the 8-10 minute range instead of 5 minutes (the usual signal to head to the hospital). Apparently things were very much in progress because when we arrived Valerie was already close to 6 cm and it didn't take long for things to progress. Three hours later, Aria had arrived!

Aria is perfect in every way. She looks a lot like Lael but has her own distinct nose. We discovered that her lungs are of exceptional quality. Her name means "A melody of grace". At this point the melody is rather cacophonous but we pray that through the grace of God in her life, her life will demonstrate the grace of God to all around her. "Ann" is a family name (Valerie's middle name is Ann; My Granny's middle name was Ann, my sister's middle name is Ann, Valerie's mother's middle name is Anne) but we chose "Grace" as her middle name because that is what the name "Ann" means and I liked the sound of it better. It is also one of God's attributes with respect to his children, which he bountifully has demonstrated to Valerie and I throughout our lives.

We thank God for a healthy baby girl and for her safe arrival. We thank Him for the strength that He gave to Valerie throughout these past couple of weeks and today in the final hours of labour. We thank God for our supportive family and friends who have been so thoughtful, caring and encouraging. God is so good!

Big Skies

This is me this summer off of the coast of Cape Breton Island, embracing a very big sky made by an even bigger God.
Ambience

"Eddy"

Eddy was a hermit crab
He never came out of his shell
Eddy, he was shellfish
You know him very well
His peers just down the sandy beach
Found him to be crabby
Was it just his stone-washed genes
That made him so unhappy?

These are the lyrics of a little song, Stephen Burbidge and I wrote a number of years ago. I have always considered it to be one of the cleverer poem/songs to which I have contributed. Oh, that Eddy and his angst.