So these are a few of the pictures before they have been touched up. They are for the Christmas season advertisements for the Picture People. I’m pretty amazed at how awesome they are. Lisa Tanner is an incredible photographer. And these are a lot more flattering than my last post. Enjoy.

We were asked by a friend of my parents named Lisa to participate as models for the upcoming advertising campaign for the Picture People. The Picture People are family photo studios in malls across America. Lisa is the main photographer and in charge of the photo shoots. We took the four of us and my [...]

I’m getting ready slowly this morning because summer is here. Grace doesn’t need to be driven to school and Bea isn’t leaving the house at 6:15am. aaahhhhh. I’m looking forward to remembering what surfing feels like, what a Friday day off feels like, and what it’s like to not set an alarm for 5:30am every day

Bea left me for the weekend to go to Palm Springs with a couple of her girlfriends. I love my girls but when it’s just me and them for a few days I start to go a bit stir-crazy. Then this afternoon, Ella wakes up with a fever and is hyper-needy. She is really sweet [...]

Today Ella was dedicated to God formally in church. Of course, I feel like I gave up control over her and dedicated her to God before she was even born, but it was a sacred time of publicly acknowledging that she is God’s and not ours. A big thanks to Randy and Michael for praying [...]

Could my New Year’s Resolution be for my kids to sleep in past 6:30am? After being up until about 12:45am it was not pleasant to wake up this early. We had a mellow New Year’s Eve night with a delicious feast of fondue. A classic Swiss fondue with Gruyere and Emmenthaler and then a Pub Fondue [...]

Last night we celebrated the fourth night of Hanukkah and Shabbat with some great friends. Some good friends of ours are Jewish and I love sharing the Jewish traditions with them and with our children. It seems to me that most Christians forget that everything we believe about God has been through him working through [...]

Grace and I watch Mr. Rogers in the morning. The guy is awesome. I watched him when I was a kid and now Grace is watching the same thing. Learning about sharing, kindness, what to do when you are angry, feelings, exercise, identity, pretend vs. real, and how things are made. The man was a [...]

We are leaving tonight to Bea’s parents for Thanksgiving. We are going to hang out there until Saturday night. I’m looking forward to just relaxing and chatting and watching football. The boys are going golfing on Saturday which should be really fun. It took Kevin and Michelle 4 hours to get to Simi Valley today [...]

Yesterday at about 1:00pm my lovely wife, Bea, left for a Lutheran Teacher Conference in Palm Springs for three days. She gets home on Tuesday evening. We had our small group last night which was cool but I was nervous about trying to manage the kids and lead the small group. But Kevin and Michelle [...]