The Perfect Shirt

A couple days ago Callie was a given a shirt from her Grandma, that is Awesome! Callie has the ability to make anything she wears, or doesn't wear for that matter, look cute... adorable... you pick the adjective. Whether or not Grandma knew that Olivet's mascot was the tigers and that my college football number was 84, is still to be determined. Nonetheless, I was proud to have my little girl look like a boy as we paraded her around in her first "jersey." You can bet that the next time I get to dress Callie, that she will be showing off her daddy's number!

Laughter

The gift of laughter is probably one of the most under-rated, least talked about gifts that God has created and designed for our enjoyment and leisure on earth. I never would have even thought about it, if my daughter at 4 months old didn't just erupt in true, pure, innocent laughter. Here's what happened: Callie was sitting on her momma's lap watching her brother and daddy play ball in the living room. Owen, with all his might, as he has done many times, throws the ball straight up into the air. All of the sudden, for the first time ever, Callie bursts into laughter! Being the proud father that I was, I asked Amy to throw me her phone with the chance that Owen could get his sister to laugh again and the chance of me catching the act on film. In the first repeat attempt, Owen throws the ball at his sister, managing to hit her square in the face... even amongst the surprise and pain, Callie gave us a couple of cute chuckles. Attempts two, three and four were a success, and sweet laughter filled the room. (Fist pump) Then Callie became bored and returned to just laying in her momma's arms.

I could not have said it better...

Have you ever had a professional writer complete a bio about you? I had not until I was hired at ONU, and I am amazed at how well someone can take a couple answered questions and create a great write up of a persons past successes. The writer assigned to my bio was Laura Warfel, and major props to her and her amazing writing ability... and making my story sound so good. Click here to check it out.

The Words in My Blog

These are the words that are found in my blog, thanks to Wordle.net. The words that are larger have been used more frequently than the words that are smaller. Other than it being fun to use, it does have some educational uses as well. It has the ability to pull out the most important words of a passage, website, or message and communicate them in an colorful artistic way. Click on the small wordle below to create your own wordle.

You Know You are Spoiled When...

...when your parents allow you to bring your lawn mower with you to the store.

...when your parents let you hold your lawn mower on your lap while you are on the way to the store.

... when you are only 16 months old and you get an entire ice cream cone from PJ's to yourself.

... when you can buy five more minutes of cuddling before bed time by holding on super tight when your daddy tries to lay you down.

... when you can get your daddy to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" for the thirtieth time in a row, by simply dancing around and signing, "more - more."

... when you point at daddy, then the ground, then at daddy, then at the ground, then at daddy, then at the ground.... over and over and over again until finally daddy joins you on the ground for a little bit of rough house!

... when you open the cupboard, pull down the box of nilla wafers, carry them over to daddy and gently sign "pleeeeaasse," you will get at least two every time.

... when your wife makes awesome new dinners almost every night!

... when your wife decides that she wants to bake... cookies, homemade bread (I know), brownies...

Feel free to add to the list.

Thank you!

While we were in transition from California to Illinois, we had a lot of help. Our friends and family really helped us out and worked at making it as easy as possible for us to leave. Hey, wait a second...?? Just kidding. In a time where there were many variables and unknowns, the people in our lives offered their time and services to help us in this transition and we thank you. There were friends in Illinois who catered to my coming back and forth, and back and forth, again and again over 6 months time and constantly let me stay at their house, eat their food, or gave me rides to and from the airport. A special thank you to the Stipps, the Seftons, the Sheltons, the McCormick's, and the Upchurches for their hospitality and just plain ole' helping out. Then there were the numerous friends and of course our family back home allowing us to stay at their house (Cooners), helping us move, drive the moving truck (Grandpa Earl), or supporting us financially, or offering help in babysitting, buying us helpful gifts or plane tickets (Kilpatricks), and all the other intangible things that people did behind the scenes that were done without Amy or I every knowing. There were many more people not named that were named and Amy and I publicly want to thank you and Owen and Callie also want to thank you the only way they know how. You know Owen... you have to envision him using his sign language and sporadically moving his hand back and forth quickly away from his mouth saying thank you!

Callie Elia Kilpatrick

I moved all my family's stuff to Illinois. As soon as it was somewhat settled I hopped on a plane to get back to my very pregnant wife. In fact, I was suppose to fly out on a Tuesday, but I left the Saturday before, just in case. When I arrived back in San Jose, I was very happy to see my beautiful wife and my son Owen! It had been about 2 weeks and it was a very happy reunion. The joy that Owen expressed when he saw me gave me that same amount of joy that only The Father can provide and the type of Joy that cannot be explained. To put it simply, it was fantastic! A couple days later I experienced the same type of joy again. I guess it was one of those joyful weekends. We were at Taco Bell one evening eating Taco's (not the inspiration of Joy) and Amy begins going into labor. Wheewwww, I am so glad that I am here with her and not in Illinois. I was kind of bummed though, it wasn't the type of labor where we threw Amy is the car and I had permission to break land speed records and break traffic laws to get to the hospital. It was the type of labor where we went back to the Cooner's house in Gilroy and hung out for a while before casually getting in the car, and casually driving to Santa Clara for the birth of our second child. Once we get to Santa Clara, instead of going inside and waiting for a few hours, we decided to walk around the hospital.... the whole hospital. We killed about 45 minutes of "labor waiting" and most likely sped up the delivery by at least an hour by walking the circumference of the whole hospital. Once we were in, the nurses confirmed that Amy was in fact in labor and gave us our room. Things were going well. Amy's anesthesiologist was really good, the doctor/midwife was good, our nurse the one who does a lot of the work... not so good. It seemed as if she was focused on all the wrong things, when all I thought the focus should be on my wife and new daughter. Anyway, without getting to detailed the delivery, it went really smooth. I'm not gonna say it was easy, or else I would be black-listed for life, but I thought it went a whole lot better then the first delivery Amy had with Owen. After the birth, Amy and I really got to take our time and bond with our new little girl. It wasn't the "floppy baby" experience we had with Owen. Again, this is where that type joy comes into play. We named her Callie Elia Kilpatrick. We decided on Callie as a reminder of our time that we shared in California. We saw Callie as being God's final gift for us during that chapter of our life. She was the icing on the cake, and even though we tried really hard to have Callie in Illinois, it was clear she was meant to be a "Callie"-fornia girl! We gave Callie the middle name Elia, (pronounced A-lee- ah). It is the girl form of the Hebrew name Eli from the story in 1 Samuel in the Bible. The name Eli means "God has answered." Over the past few years (3-4) Amy and I had been in constant prayer and in conversation about the life that God had in store for our family. It was becoming clear, that God was preparing us for something different, even though we had no idea what that was. It was finally in these last 6 months before Callie was born that God was revealing to us what he had been orchestrating all this time. We prayed for clarity, and God's answer was so very clear. So, we gave her the middle name Elia as a constant reminder in our life of how God answered prayer! We gave her the last name Kilpatrick, because it has a nice ring to it. Now six weeks later, she is an amazing little girl. She is beautiful, she is social, and her big brother loves her just as much as momma and I.