Shout out to Michigan Missionaries!!

Hey, I'd just like give a little praise to all of the great missionaries we've gotten to know since we've been here: Witchurch, Doxey, DeLange, May, Mohlman, Rasmussen, Lithgoe, Mecham, and Blood.  (Elder Blood, by the way, is a pretty good musician: check out his musik at http://www.reverbnation.com/calebblood or http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=196945094.  While he's on a mission, he's decided to release his music for free download!) Here's a pic with Mecham and Blood before Mecham's departure: He's been Timmy's favorite missionary so far, I don't think he ever didn't smile when Mecham made a goofy face at him.

Elder Mecham left last week and it kind of got me thinkin.  When I was a missionary in Germany, I remember people saying things like "I don't want to get to know another elder, because you all just end up leaving."  Having such close contact with the missionaries here, I'm starting to figure out why people felt like that: you build a relationship with an elder, and then he gets transferred, and you have to start all over again.  I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for the transitory nature of missionaries, and I wonder if one of those reasons is to keep the status of the position higher than the status of the person.  It seems that when you decide to devote your full attention to bringing souls to Christ, your personality can speak louder than your message, especially when you are well-known.  Maybe by transferring missionaries frequently, converts, missionaries, and members alike are constantly faced with the fact that the message missionaries carry is still life changing whether it is given by Elder Blood, Elder Mecham, or his replacement Elder Doolan.  In this way we can avoid linking the message of Christ with any one person, and our convictions can be founded on love for God and man rather than devotion to a particular missionary.  Anyway, enough ranting.  

Just in case you wondered what would happen if you leave your wife alone with the camera and baby for just one minute.  Seriously, one minute.  It's sickening to think of what could have happened if I had left her unsupervized longer.  I can't even imagine.  Sends chills down my spine.  Really, chills.  There it goes again, those dang chills.  Someone should shut the window.  By "someone," I mean anyone else but me.  Maybe you could get that window for me, your just sitting there on the computer doing nothing.  PLLLEEASE!!!! 

D-Town

Scott and I had a fabulous weekend, I just had to write about.  My sister gave us a gift of a night's hotel stay at the Hyatt in Dearborn.  It was beautiful!  We had a huge picture window view, and the hotel had a great workout room, pool and jaccuzzi.  We first had dinner, and in celebration of my upcoming birthday, I got the steak I had been craving for a week.  Then, we worked out in the hotel fitness center, swam and enjoyed the jaccuzzi, both in the evening and the morning.  

On Saturday we toured Detroit.  We took a tour of the Henry Ford Estate, which was really cool.  He had a real "state of the art" home with an indoor pool, generators powered by the Rouge River, a central vaccuum, a home movie player, a bowling lane, a huge garage to house about 10 cars, and just a beautiful home.  It was fun to see.  

Then, we went into the downtown area, and took the "people mover," which is the elevated train around the city.  It's great!  For 50 cents you can get a good view of the entire city.  We had lunch in Greektown and then toured the Detroit Historical Museum.  Both museum passes were compliments of the library system, so we had a nice inexpensive and super-fun weekend get away!

We both enjoyed a break from Timmy, as we had him babysat and had a great time together.

Thanks Mel!!!  What a great birthday gift!

It's Been a While

It's been a while since we've been a' bloggin'.  Sorry about that.  Some pretty big news on our part, if you haven't already heard.  We're expecting!  If you are like 80% of the people we've told, you might say to yourself "Another one?  Didn't you just have one!"  That's right!  But, here we go!  And we're excited to find out the gender, which should hopefully be descernable on December 15th at 2:30 pm during our ultrasound.  

The due date is May 9th -15th (ish).  I'm in my 14 or 15th week (depending on whether you go by date or ultrasound.)  I'm feeling OK - just the typical tiredness and nausea that are common, but nothing to really put up a fuss about.

We had a fun fall and enjoyed an especially warm bout of weather into the first part of November.  Halloween was warm and beautiful.  Here is us with Timmy the lion. 

This is Timmy's friend Nash.  I watch Nash once a week and we always go to the church to workout in the mornings.  It takes me a while to bundle these two up, but they enjoy getting out of the house and playing with the toys and other kids at the church, while us moms exercise.
Here are the kids from our apartments on Halloween, getting ready to parade around.  Notice one sad little lion on the front row.  He got scared when everyone yelled "Happy Halloween!"  

Here's to prove that he actually had fun!

I took advantage of the beautiful weather by hiking in the Arboretum at the beginning of November.  I just couldn't believe our luck with such warm and lovely days!  It's snowing now, but at least we had a last hurrah!