life is a narrative. a story with a beginning that began before any of us existed, but with a chapter that belongs to each of us. only this story is one of those choose-your-own adventures, and there are good paths to follow and wrong paths to follow, and sometimes, no matter what path you choose, crap happens anyway. but if we do our best not to go too far from the good path, this amazing thing happens, that doesn't happen in any other kind of story -- the individual chapters begin to weave themselves together in strange and wonderful ways, and suddenly you find that your little piece of the story has helped, or has been helped by, someone elses. and you realise that there's this incredible over-arching story line that's been plotted out since before the first word was written on the first page, and in your brief chapter, you fit into it in a marvelous and unpredictable way.
and the author of that story? He loves you more than you can image.
and the best, most amazing path in your choose-your-own chapter? that's the one He wants you to find.
It served one last purpose, as my brother drove it for the week while he was visiting from Alberta, but now its gone.
Our little car has taught an untold number of people how to drive a manual transmission, has been borrowed by almost as many people, and has carried us (including our whole family of 4 squeezed in there once or twice) for over 220,000km — all without needing any major service (save for a new engine, but that’s another story, and not our fault!)
2002: Our brand new car in front of our first apartment
After about 2 weeks of work, pulling everything together, our shiny, sleek little coup rolled out of our drive-way for the last time, fetching a high-high price of 2400 whole dollars.
I sniffled a little watching it back away from me… but only a little, because we were getting sick of paying insurance for a car that we no longer have any use for… she was a great car while we had her though…
What if we could choose to see life as an adventure, and the people around us our co-adventurers? What if, from this day forward, every single moment of our lives was building up to something more exciting and challenging?
What if being a Christian meant something to people outside the doors of our church? What if everyone who claimed the name of Christ actually tried to act like Him?
What if we spent more money on helping people than we did on war? What if we spent less time debating gay rights and more time teaching human rights?
What if we could all figure out that we are not our own purpose in life?
It’s been my tradition, for almost as long as jonandnic.com has existed, to annually collect and post a sort of retrospective recap of the year past, and briefly re-visit some of the defining moments and events of the last 12 months for our family. Although having a blog means we can go back and read about these events, there’s a sort of catharsis in summarizing them, with the perspective that a few months of growth tends to give you…
It was actually late in 2007 that we came to understand that our adventure in New York had run its course, but with our second baby on the way, it wasn’t until January of 2008 that the details were in place enough that we could formerly pursue a move back to Canada. But that doesn’t mean we were ready for it. Like the move to New York, there was lots to learn and do and negotiate, so most of the year, necessarily, was sacrificed to that task. And aside from minor surgery for our little guy, and a last minute road trip to Boston, there were plenty of other distractions to keep life interesting.
She finally did, of course, and the moment and the day were as incredible as you’d imagine. But her arrival was like the gun shot to start a race, and from then on, things got really challenging. Just a few short weeks after our family had grown by one, we were seperated, as Nicole moved home with the kids, to begin preparing a landing pad for our family — and my career, which supports it!
It wasn’t much fun being separated, but I had a lot to do to keep me busy, so we pushed through it, and got in little visits when we could.
Things wrapped up nicely at work, in preparation for the big change, and with 4.4 shipped, and the boxes all packed up, we said the big — but not permanent — good bye to New York, and the other places we’d managed to visit… and moved in together in a little apartment in our College town.
And I’ll pause to point out here that it was a very nice apartment — but that living there with two kids and almost none of our stuff, made it very uncomfortable for us. House hunting, for our first real home, was obviously a priority, although not really a joy. Not, at least, until we found our perfect little spot, in a little town, conveniently located near nothing, but far away from nothing, either.
And then we waited for our closing date… and waited, and… well, you get the picture.
Fortunately, we had a busy summer to keep us occupied, with a challenging and exciting wedding (or 4) to attend, and some re-discovered “cons” in the pros and cons list for living in Canada vs. the U.S. And although we’ll probably never look back on that particular summer in our lives with fondness, the reward was worth the effort when we finally moved into a house, and for the first time in our adult lives, committed to staying some place for more than 2 years. We’re still adjusting to that reality, but we’re doing our best to make it feel like our own.
And besides, just because its our home base, doesn’t mean we can’t travel. A fact which made itself evident barely two weeks after we moved in, when we packed up the whole clan and headed back to New York, for one more State-side celebration of 2008.
Finally settled in, and still discovering what God has in store for us here, I proceeded to piss a bunch of people off, and then did it somemore. But even in that, and in what God taught me in both the writing, and the debate over the writing, we catch glimpses of a plan that’s bigger and more exciting than we could ever imagine. For maybe the first time in our marriage, we have no idea what the coming year holds — we have no plans, or burdens or passionate fervor for a particular goal or task that we have to conquer this year. We just have the experiences God’s given us, the sometimes perplexing tuggings of His will on our hearts… and two beautiful kids, a great home, a good job, and a world-wide playground on which to discover His purpose for our family.
I can’t say 2008 has been a great year. But its been a good one, and we have every reason to believe that 2009 will be an equally amazing, but totally different adventure. From all of us, to all of you, our dearest readers, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a 2009 that is challenging, revealing and fulfilling…
For the past week or so, I’ve been in a battle to the death.
With algae.
Despite all our hot tub’s chemical being within normal levels, there was a moldy-gym-sock smell that hit me every time I lifted the lid. The previous week, the water had been a little green, so I zapped it with ‘Algae Kill’ and it cleared up in no time. But now, a week later, its a fight to keep it clear.
It took me a few weeks, in the summer, to learn how to keep everything balanced in the hot tub. Apparently, I need to re-learn those skill for the winter. What I understand had happened, was that although I’d killed the algae in the water, the steam carried a bit of that “infected” water up onto the lid, where the algae started re-growing. When the tub cooled, that water would drip back in, and re-infect the larger body of water all over again.
The other night I spent the better part of an hour (in the cold) gently, but firmly, scrubbing the lid, first with an eco-friendly general cleaner, then with some diluted Algae Kill. Everything smelled great when I closed the lid that night, but by the morning, the sock smell was back.
Finally I called in some help. We, fairly randomly, found the shop that sold the previous home owners the tub almost 5 years ago, and the lady who owns it is very knowledgeable. Apparently, in the winter, pH level is very important. And its better to keep the pH slightly lower than recommended. Although our pH had only just slipped into the “high” range — never a problem in the summer — we needed to have it a lot lower for the cold weather.
In the winter, its significantly harder to dump the water and start again from scratch (which I had to do once over the summer, while I was learning) — especially given that our hose is frozen solid. So I was eager to try the advice. Sure enough, bringing the pH down significantly had an immediate effect on the algae smell. There’s now something of a battle to keep the Alkalinity level in the norms, with the pH lower than usual, but I’m winning my chemical war now.
Between this, and a slight back injury recently, I haven’t been able to enjoy our hot tub much lately. But I’m hoping that within a day or two the water will be back up to its normal, sparkling clean, and I can hop in and relax again…
We’ve found that while some of our friends love hot tubbing, others are not big ‘tubbers. So maybe this information isn’t universally important, but for those that might need to know: keep your pH down in the winter!
It wasn’t our Thanksgiving, but we took a long weekend anyway, and even ate a turkey — in honour of our American guest. Then we all got sick — except for Nicole. To be more precise, I have a man-cold, which has now been scientifically proven (ok, not really proven, but at least posited!) to be a much more significant illness than that which befalls the fairer sex!
That’s right, ladies, next time your hubby turns into a whining baby when he gets a cold or flu, give him some extra loving — its entirely possible that he really is feeling it worse than you would!
Fortunately, things are winding down for the year. Alpha finished up last Wednesday, but the Table 11 crew are going to continue to get together at our place until Christmas, just to keep our momentum going. Last Wednesday my “suspicions” were proven true and we welcomed our new friend Jim into God’s family. I’m pretty sure that our group was hand picked by God for what we have to teach each other, and we’re praying that in January, when small groups kick off, He picks a few more interesting and challenging people to meet with us.
Nicole started on Christmas decorations yesterday. I make her wait until December 1st, because I’m adamently opposed to the rampant consumerism that comes along with this holiday, but I have to admit, it looks nice in the living room. And I’m looking forward to watching Benjamin open his presents in a few weeks.
I try not to talk about work too much on here, but I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell lately as a recent re-organization is slowly coming together. But last week I got something to sink my teeth into that’s right up my alley. I get to play with web technologies again, which is something I really enjoy. I’m pretty sure that Javascript (aka JScript, ECMAScript, ActionScript) is the perfect little programming language, but its been a long while since I got to code in it. The technology I’m using hearkens back to heady days of working for a determined, agile little start-up, and I find myself not wanting to pause even for lunch. All sorts of ideas are coming back to me, and I can barely code fast enough to express them.
I’m learning a new technology called SilverLight, which may or may not be a silver bullet for Microsoft in finally changing their direction from thick to the thin/web client world. Ramping up on new tech sucks, but once it clicks, and starts flowing, its a good feeling.
For those that have enjoyed pondering Christianity with me, I do intend to finish out my series of thoughts, I’m just not as confident in proposing solutions as I am in identifying problems. But the discussion has been very valuable to me, and although I’m sure not all of you enjoyed reading it, the feedback has been generally positive — a publishing house even contacted me and offered to send me pre-release copies of a couple books on Christian leadership that they’re putting out!
2008 has been a physically ambitious year for us. We moved twice — once from another country, had a baby, bought a house… 2009 doesn’t hold quite so many physical challenges, but that’s good, because it will give us some time to figure out how to apply some the things we’ve been learning. I won’t write again until I have some practical ways to apply those things, because even though I’m well aware that I’m not always right, I try to at least have an informed opinion before I spout my mouth off.
So, I’ll leave you with something our pastor said in church a couple Sundays back, that I found both encouraging and challenging. He said there are three roles available to the individual Christian, and we each are built to do two of them at a time. The roles are:
An evangelist – This is not someone who gets up on the street corner and preaches about judgment and doom. An evangelist is someone who lives out the love of Christ in their world. That means that where ever we are, we’re to act like, look like, talk like, and love like Christ did. (The Onion has a great article about how unusual that kind of Christian is these days)
A missionary – Someone who goes out. They have a passion for getting out of their comfort zone, sometimes into danger, to make His love known to the ends of the earth.
A supplier – Someone who equips the others. As a Christian, its your responsibility to supply evangelism and missions — in real and practical ways. That includes your finances, in tithe, both to the local ministries you’re involved in, and to the missionaries we send out. That includes prayer, and intercession. That includes time and energy.
So if all of us are made to be two of those things, maybe most of us will be Evangelist-Suppliers — which means we demonstrate Christ in our communities, and we ensure those we send out are properly equipped.
Some of us may be Evangelist-Missionaries — which means we are sent to communities that aren’t our own to show Christ’s love to others.
And some of us are Supplier-Missionaries, which means we are sent out to provide the infrastructure, logistics and support for the Evangelist-Missionaries.
Now this isn’t my sermon, so I hope I’m not butchering it in my delivery, but what I’d add to it is that God may have us fulfilling different roles in different seasons in our lives. The majority of people reading this are likely equipped, at the moment, to be Evangelist-Suppliers. But are we being effective at that? And are we ready, should God ask us to change roles? Do we know enough about Evangelism that we could do it in another place? Have we been responsible enough Suppliers that God could trust us with the Supplies given by others if we were sent out?
The bottom line is that none of these things are optional for Christians — or for individual churches. Maybe you aren’t one of those people with the burden to go to Africa and Supply or Evangelize, but if you’re not, then you have been burdened with Supplying those who have, and you are responsible to Evangelize right where you are.
Are we living out Christ in our communities? Are we supplying the missionaries He sends out? And are we willing and ready to be obedient if God wants us to accept the Missionary role for a season of our life — or longer? Are we willing and ready to be obedient if God wants one of our loved ones to accept that role, and Supply them as though we were giving back to a God who loves us and made us for a purpose?
Our challenge, as a family, for 2009 is embracing the role God has tasked us with for this season in our lives, and being as effective as we can at it. I try to avoid the self-righteous-question-to-close-a-blog-entry thing, but this is a collective discussion, so I’ll end with one, just this once:
What role is God asking you to fulfill in 2009, and are you ready to be effective at it?
Here’s a random assortment of things that, by themselves, aren’t significant enough for their own blog entry:
Abi seems to be cutting some teeth. This is way earlier than Benjamin did, but the symptoms are definitely there. Sunday her cheeks were rosy red all day, and she’s had a temperature pretty much non-stop since then. She’s extra cuddly lately, and seems to need more sleep than usual.
Benjamin is doing great since his Tyke Talk appointment, probably partially because of the tips we learned, but also because he’s ready to communicate more. Nicole’s been working hard to help him, and they’ve added about 25 new words to his vocabulary, and are well on the way to 100. He even put two words together, although we weren’t sure if it was intentional, or just an accident.
Alpha finishes up this week, with a Celebration Dinner. We don’t think we’ll be helping out with the next one that starts in January, because we have some other ministry ideas we want to pursue, but its been a good experience. There have been some weeks that I felt like I had to force myself to go, but by the end of the evening I realise I’ve really enjoyed myself and the conversation. And I believe someone at our table has made a decision to follow Jesus, which would be ample reward for our efforts. I’ll be following up this week!
If you’ve thought about doing an Alpha course before, but haven’t — do it. It’ll be totally worth it!
Just when I think I’ve got it all taken care of, something else comes up that has to be worked through. But after numerous e-mails trying to find the right person, I reached another milestone in my transition from being a U.S. employee to being a Canadian one, and got my vacation/personal business/sick time moved over to the Canadian tracking system, thanks to a very nice gal out in Edmonton.
The good news? Canadian employees get 5 extra vacation days! For next year, we’ll have 3 weeks of paid vacation, plus 5 personal business days! That means we could take a whole month off if we wanted!
I got NetFlix’ Watch Instantly working on my XBox — despite their attempts to block Canadian viewers. This is a fairly righteous hack, and I’m pretty pleased that despite being in the technological stone age that Canadian Internet Providers limit us to, I’m able to use a brand new technology. We’ve been watching episodes of Sliders over NetFlix, and I’m pretty sure its some of the best TV of the 90s…
I got to do a little video editing last week — something I haven’t done… well, since Abigail was born. I had a lot of fun watching my little trailer come together as I lined up clips from various sources in Final Cut. I need to do this kind of thing more often, because I frankly think I’m pretty good at it! This is the teaser for our next series at the evening service at church:
About 10 years ago now, Nicole and I went on our first road trip together. We were 18, and couldn’t believe that my parent’s would let the two of us go alone, in their car, all the way to Cleveland!
Of course, they knew who we were going to visit, and that there would be no shenanigans permitted there, so I don’t think they were that worried.
A decade later, and with a couple little ones in our own car, we’ll be headed back that way to visit the same people. Of course their family has relocated a number of times since then, as has ours. In fact, a great deal has changed. But John and Karen, who’s perfect little family of 4 were all in our wedding, remain a positive influence in our lives — although maybe not quite in the way they used to.
But before we make our last cross-border pilgrimage of the year (we hope!) Ben’s favorite babysitter will be boarding a train, and coming the other way across the border to see us. She remains our only U.S. friend to brave the wilds of the scary Canadian wilderness and visit us from New York — although this visit we intend to do a little less touristy stuff, and stick her with a lot more babysitting!
These two visits should fairly neatly fill up the next two weeks, but I’ll try to schedule in a couple posts to keep the site from going too stale. Besides, I’ve not quite finished with my ranting…
jonandnic dot com is just finishing up a move to a much cheaper, but slightly less capable home. While Westhost offered fantastic service for advanced functionality, its over-kill for the lowered ambitions of the site. Instead of $40 every 3 months, we’ll be paying $12 a year to LRE Hosting.
While we finish up the move, a few things may be down, or not working quite as usual. We’re a little tight for space right now, but we should be over these hiccups shortly. Stay tuned!
Archives are now working again
Photo albums are back, and are new and improved, thanks to iPhoto and iWeb. Check them out!
So I figured I’d give you all a little break from the ranting and update you on how the kids are doing…
We took Benjamin for an initial visit with a Tyke Talk speech path on Friday. He’s a “late talker” — which apparently isn’t all that uncommon for boys. He has about 30 words right now, and by the time he’s two (just over a month from now) he’s supposed to have 50-100 words, and be able to put two of them together. He hasn’t really hit his vocabulary explosion yet, so they gave us some things to work on with him. Part of his problem, we’re told, is that he’s an independent type (wonder where he gets that from) so rather than asking for what he wants, he’ll try and get it himself.
Fortunately his comprehension is excellent, his problem solving skills are great, and his fine motor skills are above average, so its not likely that he’s developmentally delayed in any way — he just doesn’t see the urgency for talking.
Something else he picked up from his dad (and likely his mom’s side of the family, as well, if his Papa is any indication) is a fascination with how things work. He loves taking things apart, looking at them from all sides, and then trying to put them back together. He also loves anything with wheels… a lot!
He cut a set of 4 or more teeth over the past couple weeks, so he had some high fevers and extra cuddly days, but most of the time he’s a happy kid. He loves his sister, and gives her kisses all the time.
Oh ya, and he got his third hair cut — Nicole did this one, and she did a great job!
Abi is really becoming aware of her world — and aware that its a pretty funny one most of the time. She does her little army crawl all around the house, and moves way faster than you’d think possible for someone her size. She squeals with delight any time there’s any play going on anywhere. If Ben’s laughing, she’s probably laughing along with him.
Something that I didn’t expect, given that she’s a girl, is that she loves horseplay as much as Benjamin did at her age. I always figured having a girl meant you had to be more gentle, but she absolutely loves being thrown in the air or pushed over on the bed and tickled. She doesn’t mind at all if Benjamin steps on her or bumps into her when they’re playing together.
Actually, most of the time, if she’s not hungry, poopy or tired, she’s grinning or laughing — at me, anyway. Nic sees her more, so she might report something different, but pretty much any time I walk into the room she grins at me.
She’s started eating more solid food now — although she doesn’t have any teeth. She likes bread a lot. She eats little pieces of banana, and pretty much any cereal. She has a voracious appetitie — especially at dinner time! We’ve had to start giving her 2 courses of her 5-course meal around 4:30, just to keep her from getting panicky by the time we sit down for dinner.
In between bites of food, she likes to lay her head on her shoulder. It doesn’t look comfortable to me at all, but I guess she thinks the world looks funnier from that angle.
Both kids are sleeping pretty well, now that they’ve adjusted to that stupid Daylight Savings Time switch (which makes no sense to me at all, and if I’m ever President of the world, I’m going to get rid of it) and comfortable in their routines. They detach without problems when we drop them off in nursery — especially if their little babysitter is in there. So, in general, we haven’t really got any major concerns for either of them. They’re growing like weeds, and a joy to have around… most of the time.
I figure I should also take a moment to record all the new little friends they’re about to have, because it seems to be that season of life for so many people we know:
Chad and Jen just let us know that there’s going to be a little mochaccino baby arriving in 6 months or so
Brian and Melissa are due almost the same time with baby #2
Christy and Brent are due any day now with their second
Jeff and Kathy are having their first, just as he wraps up the long haul through Dental school, in the next week or so
Chad and Nicole are having their second dual-citizen baby who we hope to meet before they return to Asia
Pete and Faith are home from Africa having their #3 in December
Randy and Amber, who got hitched this summer, are having their #2
Jason and Brooke (who are currently blogless) are gonna pop out a little brother or sister for Benjamin’s girlfriend Alivia in about 7 months
We’re excited for all of them — but especially the first time parents, who can’t possibly imagine how much their lives are about to change! (For the better, don’t worry!)
About this Site
This is a journal about life, travel, faith and family -- with the occasional geek-out. Share these things with us through our thoughts, pictures and videos, and be a part of our lives through your comments and replies...
It took me a few weeks, in the summer, to learn how to keep everything balanced in the hot tub. Apparently, I need to re-learn those skill for the winter. What I understand had happened, was that although I’d killed the algae in the water, the steam carried a bit of that “infected” water up onto the lid, where the algae started re-growing. When the tub cooled, that water would drip back in, and re-infect the larger body of water all over again.
Alpha finishes up this week, with a Celebration Dinner. We don’t think we’ll be helping out with the next one that starts in January, because we have some other ministry ideas we want to pursue, but its been a good experience. There have been some weeks that I felt like I had to force myself to go, but by the end of the evening I realise I’ve really enjoyed myself and the conversation. And I believe someone at our table has made a decision to follow Jesus, which would be ample reward for our efforts. I’ll be following up this week!
