Owen in camo

Here I am in my standard issue amazon camo (note the crocodiles). I guess this might not work so well for Montana.

Easter Sunday

grins and crazy hair

Young Padewan

My friend Mica is not as advanced in the ways of the humans, she does not yet understand the swivel chair.....
-Cerah

Cerah's first blog

Nick doesn't know that I know how to do this, but I have been watching him for a long time. He thinks he is in charge, but it is finally my turn to shine.....

Owens first post

Hello,
I have to hurry before mom finds out what I am doing. I am practicing bear safety with my faithful brown teddy bear. I have to be ready for the grizzlies in Montana. I think the binky makes me look tougher, what do you think?..........

~ He has risen! - Good Easter to you

Here is our first video. I just bought a couple video cameras so Laura and I can keep in touch while I'm in Montana and she is in Tahoe. If any of you want to give the video thing a try, I'm using sightspeed.com. It is free and you can do video mail which is nice because we don't have to be on the comuter at the same time.

Anyway, here is a short clip from Owen on his first Easter morn.
Click Here --> 1st Easter

~ Debbie and Paul

We will miss Debbie and Paul as they head out to Texas, but so glad we will get to meet Jack before you leave!

Debbie's baby shower:

~ Laura's first post

Well, here I go with my first post on the blog. For some reason it feels a bit like public speaking, so I will avoid it mostly and you can assume most posts are from Nick:)

Owen and I traveled to see twin cousins Joshua and Adam. While we were there we got to see grandparents, aunts and uncles, it was a very memorable time.
Click here to view slideshow: Ohio Trip

Thanks again to Doug, Diane, Bryan and Leila for initiating our goodbye gathering last weekend. It was a little overwhelming, but an eye opener for me to see just how many people have been a part of our lives here in Tahoe.
Click here to view slideshow: Goodbye Party

~ Photogenic Owen (Ooops a couple dog pics too!)

Click here --> Photo Shoot - Fabulous

~ Trip to Emerald Bay with College Friend Vance

Went to Emerald Bay last weekend with a college friend Vance. These pictures of Owen are a little embarassing. I dressed him that morning in a velvet gym suit because we were going to see Renkin at breakfast before we headed up to the bay. Renkin seems like he deserves to have a mini-me.
Click here --> Emerald Bay Slide Show

~ Calm Before the Storm

This picture is the primer for the slide show below. These pics were taken by our friend Erin Farmer the day before the snow began to fly this winter. Enjoy. Click here --> Prego Laura slide show

~ Sinking In - Heading Out

Speedy Little Taxi. My dad used to call me the speedy little taxi. It was probably those words that contributed to my becoming a runner.

Preparing to move has jostled me into a quasi dying mindset. People, or atleast movies, talk about life flashing through their mind during a death defying experience. (Presumably it happens when you die for real but I haven't heard any dead affirm the suspicion) Moving out of a community is beginning to feel like that. Only it is more like a divorce than a death since it's to some extent by choice rather than fate. Nonetheless, my move away from South Lake Tahoe is in two weeks and the grieving process has begun. I feel like I'm gulping in the views of the mountains and lake, I'm driving Kingsbury with extra gusto, I'm sucking down coffee and meals from my favorite places without heed of cost or calories. But most impacting is my love hate relationship with my friendships. I want to embrace and push away all those that are close. I went through a list of people in my mind today that when summed up really flattened my enthusiasm for the day. I will miss my long time friend Brian...chess, disc golf, Halo and discussions ad nauseum. And from there the list goes on and on from men from church to business people in town. All those connections; seven years in the making and two weeks in the severing. I would almost like to review every friendship. On one hand it would be totally boring on the other it may be meaningful, if the Bible can have those long lists of names that no one can pronounce then maybe that gives me liberty here. So here it goes.

I will miss Pat for the bleeding edge pressing into difficult facets of life,
I will miss Dan for his unending grace and faith,
I will miss Robert for his thoughtful and caring insights,
I will miss Joe for his para mobster stories and school of hard knocks,
I will miss Leonard for his philosophy and ultra focused mono rail train of thoughts,
I will miss Rob for his unassuming service and humble pursuits,
I will miss Kenny as the educated veteran who futily avoids the leadership that he can't escape,
I will miss Dominique for his steadfastness and discipline,
I will miss Bryan for his availability earnestness and simplicity,
I will miss Brian for his passion for an ideology,
I will miss Corbet for his maliability to big picture theology and practices,
I will miss Noah for his comradre in carrying the pragmatic 'So What?' flag into ministry,
I have missed Corey for his alternative approach to the mainstream,
I will miss Paul for his child like enthusiasm,
I will miss Jerry and Susan for their simplicity and stalwartness,
I will miss Chris and Hillary for their family cohesiveness,
I will miss Doug as the figurative patriarch,
I will miss Diane as the nuclear (central and exothermic) pervair of thought and hospitality,
I will miss Taz as an encourager,
I will miss Renkin as a light of comedy,
I will miss Margaret as a fellow conservative and structure,
I will miss Dale and Sue as faithful servants,
I will miss Bob A, as a discipler and visionary, believing in the difficult to trust proverbial next generation,
I will miss Richard as the self sacrificing servant,
I will miss Leila as the touch of easy going southern bell in yankeeville,
I will miss Kristen as the realist,
I have missed Meg as the simple and joyful,
I will miss Michael for his smile and easy presence,
I will miss Joanna for her administration,
I will miss Seth for his counsel and comical life perspective,
I will miss Drew for his intentionalness,
I will miss Pete for his gravity and ping pong,
I will miss John for his realism,
I will miss Bruce for his quarkyness and shrouded childlikeness,
I will miss Bob D. for his theological and human debates,
I will miss Nancy for her enending unthusiasm for life,
I will miss Dick for his consistency,
I will miss Linda for her candor wrapped in silliness,
I will miss Don as a mystic embedded in a practical analytic,
I will miss Charlie for his resourcefullness and youth despite his age and experiences,
I will miss Russel for his fast growing early years of spiritual growth,
I will miss Micalah for her interest in our marriage,
I will miss Randy and Denise as the uninhibited and honest war horses,
I will miss Judah as my figurative Godson and friend of Owen,
I will miss Lilly as the unedited self,
I will miss Eleanor as the hope for an easy and fun kid,
I will miss the enduring presence of my faithful Asher,
I will miss the prodigy of Asher in Ender and EZ.

All in all I will miss the family God has put me within. I could not ask or imagine a more rounded and valuable family of people that care for Laura, Owen and I. As I wrap up my life in this Tahoe family I talked with Bryan about my legacy. I think my legacy is yet to come. My legacy and God ordained destiny is to take the gifts that all these people poured into me to another place. To spread the wealth of God's provision. I will integrate all these people's gifts into my life and plant them elsewhere. My legacy is really about other's legacy being carried by me to others, not the least of which, of course is Christ himself. People in Kalispell will benefit from how I've been impacted by everyone from Pat to Asher. C.S Lewis in his space trilogy talks about a race of people that see the moment as simply an entry point for a sustaining memory. That perhaps the memory is the more impactful between the two. So I hope I am faithful with the memories, for within whom much is invested much is expected.

___________________________________________________________________

- Thoughts from Tozer

So I'm going to start out with a post on a thought about my spiritual walk. I've been re reading Tozer's Pursuit of God for about the 5th time.



So here it goes.



I believe that I can make a solid argument that there are three dimensions of growth. These include knowing, loving and experiencing God, knowing, loving and experiencing self (the redeemed) and finally knowing, loving and experiencing others. So in summary, the vertical relationship with God, the horizontal relationship with others and the singleton of relationship with self. The first two are an easy sell and the third is a bit more indirect. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, he said the first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. The second is to love others as you would like to be loved yourself which I would say is obviously about loving others but their is an implied healthy loving of self...note I'm not talking about selfish hedonism.



With that said I'll get to the point. I believe that a negative of technology and the availability of knowledge we are running into a new problem. The new problem is a form of intellectual gluttony. So I would say the following:



When our knowledge of God exceeds our submission to God, these three facets of growth are impacted negatively.



1. In relation to self: I have become gluttonous, where gluttony is defined as using something that God designed to be used in balanced moderation is rather consumed in excess with an adverse affect.



2. In relation to others: I have become a hypocrite, where hypocrisy is defined as knowing and telling others what to do but not doing it myself. And hypocrisy is one of those labels that most damages a cause. It is widely accepted that if I can prove someone a hypocrite that it is quite acceptable to discount that person's knowledge as impractical. A real shame when it comes to being a witness to others regarding the Christian endeavor.



3. In relation to God: I have discounted grace and counted Christ's work as incomplete. To pursue more knowledge then I have submisson to means that I have manufactured a standard of knowledge that neither Christ or grace have supplied. Thus I create an unneccessary and self empowering rather than God fulfilling standard for my own achieving maturity and qualifying.



So there it is.



In Brief: When knowledge exceeds submission I become gluttonous to myself, a hypocrite to others and to God I discount Christ.





Feedback?

~ In the beginning...

This is exciting. I'm launching my virtual reality, which is as real as I want it to be. In this blog Laura and I will carefully edit our photos and text to only show the best things going on in our lives, in hopes that you somehow become jealous of our perfect lives.

Or perhaps we'll try to be a little bit more real, maybe we will video tape one of us being sick or us arguing so you can feel good about your life.

Or maybe I have no idea what this blog will become...maybe we'll just have to see what unfolds. I can promise that we'll do our best to keep it up to date and to earnestly try to put our lives online so that we can still feel like those of you who care about us can feel connected with us and in turn us with you.

I hope to include pics of Owen, our dogs Cerah and Micah and of course pics of Laura and I. I would also like to include some of our thoughts. Maybe something like a diary only better because I can type faster than I can write. I also have this feeling that I will have thoughts that will warrent responses from whoever wanders across my pages.

So with no further ado...welcome to our blog and we'll see what the future holds.