Daddy's Little Girl

I was afraid this would happen. The past few weeks Ben has been falling in love with another girl. Sure, she gives the most adorable heartbreaking looks & sure, she will play fetch with him all day long. However, she does smell bad, goes to the bathroom in front of him & isn’t much for conversation. Cali & I have both been begging & whining (literally on her part) for Ben’s attention since she arrived.

Ben always jokes that he could be permanently attached to me 24/7 & it still wouldn’t be enough. It’s true. I guess I’ll just have to learn to catch a frisbee with my teeth & will have to start working on my pouting face (Cali has got me beat so far on that one as you can tell by the picture). A dog may be man’s best friend, but I’m pretty sure I’ll always be Ben’s #1 girl.

I Love Baths

Bath time is definitely not the most enjoyable experience for Cali, but she smelled so bad we had no choice. I had to get in the bathtub with her with Monica as my back up. We also realized that Cali looks about half her size when she is wet. We thought it was really cute that she looked so angry. However, she got us back by “accidentally” falling off our back stairs into the mud—she knew what she was doing.

We’re doing great, by the way. The home group we are involved in is blessing our lives more than we can convey to you. You can handle a lot more when you have friends. We’ve also resorted to a lot of movie watching lately. I usually fall asleep when we watch them at night and then finish watching them in the morning when I get up early with Cali. Monica hates that I do that, but I’m just too old to stay up until 11. On a side note, between having a puppy and watching Supernanny, our desire to not have children for a long time has been reinforced.

Nap Time

Where'd the Time Go!

We are finally achieving status as a normal American family. What I mean by normal is that we have crammed our lives with so much stuff, we can hardly find time for anything else. Monica is in the busy season at her work and I can’t remember the last time she got off work at her normal time. I am balancing 9 hours of class, 20 hours/week at my Graduate Assistantship, and 10 1/2 hours/ week at my part-time job. Cali is always busy chewing up plants and licking electrical sockets.

It stinks to be normal, except for Cali—she loves it. She already plays fetch and loves running through piles of leaves. We (and I mean I) only have to get up and take her pee two times a night now. The other day Cali was in the kitchen and I went to take a shower. When I got out of the shower, she was nowhere to be found and I freaked out. Turns out I didn’t close the back screen door all the way and she had gone through the doggy door and pushed the aluminum screen door open so she could be in the backyard. I am afraid we got one of those smart dogs. We’ll put more pictures up soon, but I don’t know to put them on here.

We’ll try to better bloggers, but now you know our excuses. Please come visit us in Memphis! We’d love to see you and Cali would really love to see you. We probably won’t make it to Edmond or Springfield in a while. Have a great weekend!

Surprise... We're Parents!

Meet Cali!

Disturbing Movie of the Year

There are just those movies that disturb you. When I was 9 I saw Nightmare on Elm Street and I slept facing my closet door until I moved to college. About the same age, I saw Jaws and to this day cannot swim in the deep end of a pool alone without panicking. It is amazing the power of movies to change your behavior. Well, I have a feeling I have seen another one of those… Open Water. I will not spoil the movie for you, but we watched it on Monday and we can’t get it out of our minds. Basically, two scuba divers are accidentally left in the ocean and struggle to survive, and of course, there are sharks. The rest of the movie is an intense psychodrama, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you. Monica and I are still recovering.

On the lighter side of things, the funniest movie we have seen this year is Napoleon Dynamite. We both watched it when we were sick and didn’t think it was funny at all, but a few days after we watched it, we couldn’t stop laughing about it. Then, we saw it with our church class at Craig and Merschon’s house and almost died laughing.

By the way, we have a pretty big surprise coming up for our loyal blog readers. We have been excited about it for some time, but have been hesitant to talk about it. Make sure you check back on Saturday or Sunday for the big news!

Back to Normal

Well, the holidays are over and it is definitely back to the grind. I start school Monday and Monica’s work is starting to get busy. The good news is that she is not on commission yet, so we will still have a steady income for at least 22 more days, and if things do get bad, we are going to explore the world of credit cards (sorry Dave Ramsey). We are not too worried, however, because God continues to sustain us.

I bought all my books but one online (Powells.com, half.com, and amazon.com) and have tallied up the numbers. I’ve saved $107 so far! I am excited about that. At the grad school you can’t sell your books back , so there is really no need to buy a new one and they don’t sell used ones. The other nice thing about used books that have writing in them is that they look like you’ve already read them. This comes in handy in class when you open up your book and there is highlighting—everyone just assumes you read it. The bad thing is that when reading the book for the first time, it is hard to read anything but the highlighted part.

Man, what a boring topic! I have exposed my nerdiness. I have dropped down to the level of talking about used books. At this point I will have to promise you a more exciting blog in the near future. I will say one thing—God is revealing to us why he wants us in Memphis and it is awesome. We are growing in ways that we would have never grown had we stayed in Edmond. It is amazing to see how God is using us in this place. Our jobs, friends, church, home group, and school have all blessed us greatly. Our marriage, finances, security, faith, and patience have all been challenged, but God is using those challenges to strengthen us. It is crazy to think how much we were depressed and hated it here for several months and just wanted to move back to Oklahoma. Now, we are accepting where we are and making the best of everything. Scary how it all works out, isn’t it?

Celebrating the New Year in Style

We continued our tradition of celebrating the New Year in Chicago. This year was great, just like all the other years. We started out by driving downtown to the outdoor skating rink (Monica on skates, Ben on skates, Couple skating - awww). We went with Mark and Darci, David and Sarah, and met up with Preston and Sarah Ackerman. The ice-skating was really crowded for a while, but we can’t complain. Also, the temperature never went below freezing all night, which makes a huge difference when you are in the Windy City. It was so nice to walk around Chicago without being frozen solid.

After an hour of ice-skating we decided to go to the movie theater because the wait at most restaurants was an hour and a half to two hours. We ended up seeing Ocean’s Twelve and then went to The Cheesecake Factory in the John Hancock building for a wonderful dinner (The Cheesecake Factory, Noise-maker blowing contest). We actually ended up staying in the restaurant to ring in the New Year because we enjoyed being around each other so much and it was a long walk to the Navy Pier to watch the fireworks.

What will the New Year bring? We hope a lot opportunities to grow spiritually as a couple and for ways to practice our faith. Okay, we also hope for financial growth and academic prosperity, but those things will mean nothing if we don’t put God first. Happy New Year!