Oh, I wish....

Oh, I wish I was a princess
Oh, I wish I was a princess
Oh, I wish I was a princess
And a Happy New Year

Sung by Ali..the tune: "We Wish you a Merry Christmas"

Also, congrats to my dear friend and college roommate, Kari. She got engaged. Check out her story on her blog

Thanksgiving at Church

One of the best things about the church I pastor is that they do a meal to feed anyone who wants to come on Thanksgiving. We had a few reporters out today to cover this event. Here is the link to one of their reports:

ABC News 7

And here's a newspaper article from the Contra Costa Times.

Enjoy!

Halloween and Baptism

So, what has happened in the last month? I'm sure lots, but the two most important events were Halloween and Josiah's baptism. Ali, Jed and Josiah's godfather, Greg, went to the church's Halloween carnival while Josiah and I took a trip on BART to go pick up Nana from the airport. Ali was a carrot. She wouldn't wear the carrot for the preschool parade earlier in the day, but after Greg's encouragement to "be the carrot" she gladly wore her costume and got lots of candy.
Josiah had a pea costume, but he didn't need in on the BART, so we put him in it just for the picture!More importantly, on November 2, Josiah was baptized. We discovered that he was the first child of a First Lutheran pastor to be baptized at First Lutheran...did you catch that? Josiah was not impressed by the significance of the day and cried through the baptism and pictures after the service, although he was fine the rest of the time. We were excited to have the Strand family here for the baptism, and thankful that they made the LONG trip to see their godchild baptized. We have better pictures from the baptism, but getting them from the CD to our computer is proving to be a bit of a challenge. So for now, these will have to do.
At three weeks, Josiah weighed in at 11 pounds, 5 ounces, and was 22 inches long. Ali still likes him, sometimes a bit too much. We have had several talks about how we don't touch Baby "Siah" when he is asleep and we don't move his head to make him look at you. At the same time, she leaned over in her chair today and told him she loved him, so we think we are good!

And our Ali's quotes for the moment.
In prayer: "Thank you for Tiffany (her teacher) and cake." Which is better, we don't know.
"Reading" a book to Jed "And God says 'no jumping'"...important lessons for us all.
After pulling a book off the shelf : "I found God. He was hiding." Good thing we have her around to find him!

Introducing Josiah William

At 3:30 a.m., it began.

At 4:00, Jed was awakened.

At 5:30, we waited.

At 6:00, the bags were checked one last time.

At 6:30, the journey began.

At 7:00, we arrived at the hospital.

At 9:00, the waters gushed forth.

At 11:00 Jed took off his wedding ring because Anna hurt his hand from squeezing.

At 1:30 p.m., Anna did not know if she could take the pain any longer.

At 1:50, the pushing began.

At 2:00, Josiah began to peek.

At 2:07, Josiah emerged into the world, all 21 inches and 10 pounds of him. Here's what he looked like:
At 3:30, Sy had calmed down. Here's what he looked like then:


At 6:46, Ali met her baby brother Sy for the first time. Here's how they look together.


At 6:51, we took the first picture of the rest of our life. Here's our family:


Thanks to all of you for your prayers! We especially thank God for a healthy delivery for both mother and child.

Pumpkins and Pictures

Yesterday Ali and I went on a trip to the Pumpkin patch. Ali picked out her own pumpkin and even carried it around a bit. I'm glad that she's not like me...when I was in kindergarten I went to the pumpkin patch and picked out a pumpkin so big I couldn't pick it up and so I had to roll it, which doesn't work so well when you have to get it back to your kindergarten classroom, which is downstairs. It's a miracle that the pumpkin survived that journey.

So when we were at the pumpkin patch, we did other things than get pumpkins. I talked to the other dads who were there with their preschoolers, and we gloated in the fact that we beat all the moms there. Ali sang some songs like "Old MacDonald" and "If You're Happy and You Know It" with some guy who played the banjo, and we saw some pigs, turkeys, peacocks, chickens, and roosters. There was also a hay maze.

Hey Gramma, here's a picture of Ali on her new trike. Notice that there is no fence or anything in the background.
Ali was walking around today putting herself in time-out. "I love time out," she said. Apparently we need a new form of punishment. I've heard that bamboo shoots under the fingernails is effective.

Speaking of torture, Anna is ready to have a baby. Really, really ready. Never mind that the due date was Sunday. We'll just keep waiting...and waiting...and waiting...

And besides field trips, I'm staying busy with work stuff including hiring a music director and planning a memorial service and stewardship program and the holiday schedule. I'm happy to not be preaching for the next couple of weeks, though. I took the time off so that I could be around when the baby came...and now I'm waiting and blogging. Well, if Sy turns out to be anywhere near as cute as Ali is, we'll be just fine. We'll be in trouble, but it'll be good.

Here's one more picture illustrating how cute Ali is.

Place your guesses...

Because I need to have some fun while waiting for Josiah (or else I might go crazy), I've decided to make it a game. I've set it up so anyone can leave a comment, even if you could not before. Guess the birthday, weight and length of this little boy. We'll see who comes closest. Maybe I'll even come up with a prize; we'll just have to see.

To put everyone on equal ground, his "official" due date is October 5th, but at one point I was also told October 9th.

Guess away!

From the Paparazzi

Some of you have wondered what it would be like to be in Anna's shoes right now. First of all, you need to know that Anna doesn't wear shoes as often as she can. The second thing you need to know is that Anna can't really tell whether or not she is wearing shoes because this is what she sees when she looks down. She feels really big, and requested once that I take this picture off the blog on account of her tummy resembling Mt. Vesuvius. I still think that she's beautiful, and I'm sure there is a beautiful baby boy swimming around in there somewhere. Michael Phelps, watch out. Josiah has been practicing...


Even though we were offered millions of dollars from People (R) magazine, we decided to turn it down and post Anna's late pregnancy pix on our blog. Here's a picture of her standing in front of our door, which Ali says is "reb," even though she is perfectly capable of saying "red."

In our next picture, Ali would like to welcome you to her house. It is in our backyard, which is curiously enough where Jed's imaginary friend lived when he was Ali's age. By the way, our backyard looks totally different now because there is no makeshift totally flammable barbeque cover, no red fence, and no dog cage made from mattress frames. That has all been dismantled and is sitting on the side of our house now, along with the yellow slide that we really will put up sometime this decade. Really.

In our last picture, you will notice that Anna is not really pregnant. At least not from the back. I've heard that this runs in her family, that they're never pregnant from the back, going back at least as far as Granny. You also have a nice view of the front of our house and some plants that get watered by our sprinklers, which is the only reason they are still alive.

Enjoy!