on our way

Well it's 6:20 in the morning and we're getting ready to leave! 14 hours to NY ... what a trip! At least it's supposed to be a nice day.

giftwrapped wife

giftwrapped wife

Well I've used up my flickr uploads for the month in this free account, but I managed to get this funny photo uploaded.

At our work Christmas party, we had a gift-wrapping competition, but we were wrapping people! Michelle was chosen as the smallest "package". She looked so cute just peaking over the top of her box. She didn't win, but I though she should've. We had lots of fun, check out a few other pictures.

By the way, my first impression of flickr left alot to be desired, but my opinion is improving. This morning they upgraded their servers and I haven't noticed any slowdown today. Also, uploading photos from iPhoto at home seems to work 10x faster than at work. Not sure why, but I'm not complaining.

museum pillars

pillar 2

So I finally finished uploading all the portraits we had taken at the creation museum. Click on the photo and then click on the "Christmas portraits" link on the right to see the whole set. If you want prints of any of the photos please feel free to ask.

mobile posting

Well Michelle and I are getting ready to leave for Christmas vacation and it's very exciting. We're also going Christmas shopping tonight.

I'm very happy so far with blogger. I love the photo upload feature where it creates the thumbnails and links them to the large version automatically. flickr, however is a little more disappointing. It would be wonderful if it wasn't INCREDIBLY slow! The feature set is great, and I love being able to post a picture to my blog from flickr, but uploading 3mp photos from iPhoto takes an eternity for even a single one.

another peck

another peck

Well this is just testing out my new flickr account that I'm using with iPhoto. I export from iPhoto directly to flickr and then in flickr I can post directly to my blogger page. These were two of several nice Christmas portraits we had taken by a friend.

blogger

Well this is my first try using blogger for my website ... I'll eventually do a custom template for this site and post several of the comments from my old site. What I really want is to attach photos to this site for our family to see, but we'll see how it works for that.

camping

This past weekend we did the real thing. This wasn’t camping with a camper or in some cabin. We pitched tents, started fires with wet logs and shivered in our sleeping bags. There were eight of us roughing it at the beautiful Red River Gorge. There were some really cool rock formations there. I kept my eyes out for fossils but nothing caught my eye (not that I really knew what to look for). One member of our party decided he was in the climbing mood and bouldered around on the formations, sometimes twenty feet above ground. I would’ve joined him in a heartbeat if we had ropes. Althought the weather was brisk, but we certainly had it good as far as food goes. Michelle made the best shish kabobs I’ve ever had. She’s quite the talented cook, even over a campfire!

my sister

Today I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my wonderful sister, Kimberly. She’s such a blessing and encouragement to me and I hope I can be the same to her.

one year!

I’m writing this blog after-the-fact, but it’s still hard to believe that we have been married more than a year. As I leaf through the pages of the wedding photobook (anniversary gift) I gave Michelle I feel like I’ve known her my whole life and in another sense I feel like the wedding was just yesterday. For our anniversary we went to Lexington, KY, a place we’ve wanted to visit for a while. We got to see the Ink & Blood travelling exhibit, the Mary Todd Lincoln house, and went horseback riding. Of course staying in a hotel for the first time since you’ve been married is fun too (I love king beds ... although we almost lost each other in the covers). Lexington is a fun place and we’ll have some pictures to share too.

the blessing of grandparents

It’s been a hard summer for Michelle and her family. In a matter of about three weeks Michelle lost two grandparents on separate sides of the family. Her dad’s dad and her mom’s mom passed away. Although she was closer to her grandfather, neither loss was very easy.

Times like this make me grateful that I still have three grandparents still alive. Godly grandparents are truly a blessing from the Lord, and we can only praise Him for their influence in our lives.

answering machines

Well as a general rule I hate answering machines. Because of that we don’t have one. If you have an answering machine then you have to return a person’s calls when they leave a message. Otherwise you have the pleasure of not being contacted by just leaving the phone off the hook.

Anyway, at work today Michelle was calling a customer about an online order he had placed and she got his answering machine.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths ... Proverbs 3:5-6. That’s God’s message, now what’s yours?”

Well needless to say it was all she could do to keep from leaving a message of nothing but laughter. That message was pretty good, but I still don’t want an answering machine.

redesign 2005

Today the web team at Answers in Genesis went live with the new site design. Although we’re still working out a few bugs as always, the design is finished. Check it out and if you happen to stumble across this page, you can actually watch me on video. But I have to warn you that I look remarkably like the AiG weatherman!

vegetarian raptor

This month I decided to kill myself with the monthly specials at work. Instead of doing the normal run-of-the-mill advertising for the specials I decided to make a 3D velociraptor just for the occasion. I made him in two days flat which is an all-new record for me. Afterward I felt like doing something else with my renders so I created this.

fun & fellowship

Well today we kept busy. For a Saturday getting up at 7:40 AM is almost torture! However dragged my lazy body out of bed to help a friend from small group who was moving. We ended up helping his roommate move his stuff out as well. He just happened to be a retired pastor who needed about 1,500 books moved down three flights of stairs! No small task to be sure. I’ll be a little sore tomorrow.

This afternoon we went to see Robots (which has a cool website). It was a pretty decent movie. CGI was great, and the ideas for mechanical devices were very creative. The plot was a little lacking when compared to movies such as Pixar’s. We had a group of over 20 that went to see it so that made it very fun. Afterward 19 of us went to TGI Friday’s and got dinner. We had some nice fellowship that you don’t get just going to a movie.

risen

Well this week I had fun at work making AiG’s Super Specials Email (get it here). This week’s specials centered around Jesus Christ and His resurrection. So it only makes sense to have a picture of an empty tomb. Only problem is that stock photography doesn’t exactly focus on things like that. So I created my own with some cool 3D software, and some photos added in via Adobe Photoshop. I was so happy with how it turned out that I made myself a desktop background out of it which you can download.

many more visitors

Well after long planning and many secrets later my family decided to suprise me and came down to visit us. But the even bigger suprise is that my parents were coming as well. See to get my dad anywhere out of NY state takes some doing. So after some great convincing by my Aunt Faye he decided to come as well. YEA!!!! for us because I missed my parents and my siblings so much. So they arrived Friday night around 7 and it became very cramped in our little one bedroom apartment, but very well worth it. Saturday they just took a day to rest and I got to catch with my oldest sister, Yvette and that was great because we get along so well. I also got to spend time with our niece and 3 nephews.

I started to pray and I asked God for some pretty specific things to happen on Sunday and God worked things out so well. Dad made it through the contmeporary musice and loved the message and Paul became very interested as well. Allyson got to join the junior church there and she enjoyed it too. Andrew became ill so he only enjoyed parts of the junior church.

Melinda also got to come and visit and that is always a blessing. She was able to stay with us until Tuesday. So my family and my new husband (who still feels new to me) got to all be in church. Then we went to Chuck E. Cheese. We all got to enjoy the very funny games and win some prizes for the kids. And Joel and I got our picture drew while we were there. Monday we went and visited the aquarium. But sadly I became ill and didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else. But all is well because we got some good pictures with the family. Then back to work on Tuesday.

My family was able to come and visit the museum. That was another answer to my prayers as God made the mission of AiG familiar to my family and they want to come back and see it when it is finished. Then 2:30 Wednesday morning Joel became very ill. We were up the rest of the night and he finally stopped throwing up around 9:30, So I went and spent time at the motel with my family so he could rest. I came home and we took a nap and he was able to spend a little time with them Wednesday night. He developed a very high fever that kept me awake until it broke. He had no clue because he slept through it. But it was my first time to take care of someone that was sick all by myself and I hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon.

Thursday we spent until noon with my family when sadly they left. But we had a great time and I look forward to them coming again. God really blessed Joel and I with their visit. So thanks for coming and surprising me.

See photos.

two visitors

Another really cool thing this weekend was the fact that Michelle’s sister Melinda, and my friend Aaron came to visit from SC. We had a wonderful time and visited the cincy zoo on Saturday. It’s very nice although several of the animals were unavailable since it’s still winter. But I especially enjoyed playing with Aaron’s new Cannon digital SLR camera. Oh it was beautiful ... and we even took some useful photos with it.

During this adventure we went into the cat house. Overall the larger cats (serval, ocelot, etc.) were rather boring even though they looked cool. However Michelle stumbled upon a very entertaining and even frightening “chesire cat.” It was some kind of rock cat that was very active. She had her face pressed to the glass and the cat began to approach as if it were stalking her. Then suddenly it lunged claws first toward her face with stunning speed! And she definitely was ... stunned that is! She burst out laughing at the fact that a tiny little cat behind thick plexi-glass had just scared her spitless, and we were all very entertained.

In my entire life I can’t remember having one surprise birthday party. Not that my parents were against them or anything, I just never had a craving for one. Now that I’m out on my own with my wife I was curious to see what she was going to do if anything. My birthday was Thursday the 10^th, but she doesn’t work on Thursday. We have small group on Thursday night so she couldn't really do much then. Although she did make me a pound cake to take to SG and I thought that was it. The next morning we were driving to work and I was a little sleepy so I wasn’t driving too fast. Michelle never comments about my driving, but today she said I was going really slow. I didn’t think much of it and sped up a little. We got to work and she was walking really fast! Still oblivious I caught up to her and when I got to my desk there was a sign hanging at the entrance wishing me a happy b-day and balloons covering my desk, all instigated by my wonderful wifey.

I thought that was it, but after lunch she gathered everyone into the lunchroom and presented me a with an awesome cake and a song. So that was it. Cake, balloons and a song. What else could a 23 year old ask for! Any suspicions i may have had previously disappeared with the unexpected cake after lunch. A surprise party that night was the furthest thing from my mind! But that’s exactly what she had planned with what seemed like 20 people there! We had a wonderful time, and I just have to congratulate my great sweetheart on a job well done.