Kessler Likes Singer-Songwriters

After my one man re-enactment of Veggie Tales' The Hairbrush Song this morning, I switched the music over to One Republic. Kessler kept saying, "Want play guitar, Daddy." So, eager to please and impress my son, I sold out and went all air-guitar to One Republic's guitarless synth.

Kessler said, "No Daddy, want play guitar on Daddy's pooter."

"Oh, you want me to play a song on the computer that has a guitar in it?"

"Yeah."

I started at the top of my iTunes list and quickly selected Track 6 of Andrew Osenga's Letter To The Editor, Vol. 1. The open was a 10 second guitar strum.

Kessler was happy.

I Wan To Do Do Go To Town!

Life's been moving fast recently. Lots of exciting things have been happening and we have lots to be thankful for.

One of the many things we have to be thankful for is The Little Guy. He is more fun each day as he develops language, a sense of humor, coordination, and a sweet disposition.

Ashley taught him a new game last night and he LOVED it. It's called Go To Town.

This Is Not A Painting

I can not stop looking at this photo.* It's the National Geographic Photo of the Day from yesterday and supposedly, it's not some magical work of photoshop or a paintbrush. It's an actual photograph.

That orange backdrop is the reflection of the rising sun off a dune in Namibia. The trees are a very real part of one of the country's largest national parks.

Surreal; never has a word been more, and less, apropos than that one to describe something as it does this photo. 

*This sentence is likely somewhat false. If taken literally, it is completely false. It is fully within my power to stop looking at the photo and I've been able to avert my eyes more than ten times even since writing that sentence. If taken figuratively, it is somewhat false. My intention was not to deceive, but the phrasing leaves a lot up to the reader to interpret in order to determine my actual degree of interest in looking at the photo. For instance, it is conceivable that I would use the same phrase to describe my interest in a photograph that I am actually one hundred times more interested in. In which case, the reader would, for one of the photos or the other, be off by a factor of one hundred when estimating my actual interest in the photo. The reader's interpretation of my interest level matters because in their mind it is a communication of my values. How the reader interprets something isn't necessarily my responsibility, but attempting to communicate the appropriate sentiment is. I was using the sentence as an expression to communicate that I am slightly mesmerized by the aesthetic of the photograph combined with the knowledge that it is just a photograph, in a this-is-a-random-photo-of-landscape-not-a-picture-of-my-wife-and-son sort of way. One could argue that expressions like the one I used do more harm than good when trying to express thoughts on any matter. Have a nice day.

Kessler's First Year

Click here to view this photo book larger

Moses Is Coming Home

Our friends, Abby and Daniel Umlauf, announced in September 2008 that they were going to adopt a little boy from Ethiopia. After a painstaking 13-month wait for a referral, they finally got pictures of their little boy. They named him Moses.

Five months later, over a year and a half after they began the process, they were informed the region where Moses is from was closed to adoption and they would not be able to adopt the boy they'd thought of as their son. The same day, they got a call that another referral came in for a boy in another region which was open for adoption. In one day they felt like they lost one son, but gained another. The second boy is Asher, who was finally able to come home this past August, nearly 2 years after the Umlaufs started the process.

A few days ago, they got word their first son, Moses, had miraculously become available for adoption. And they're going for it. He is their son, after all. After working tirelessly to save and do fundraisers with the help of committed friends to raise the $20,000 or so needed for their first adoption, they now have 1 month to raise about $14,000 to bring home their 16-month old son.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help bring Moses home. The details are on their blog:

http://comehomemoses.blogspot.com/

This is Asher, followed by the story of how they decided on the name Moses:

Told by Abby at the time they decided to adopt: 

Three years ago, I told Daniel that I loved the name Moses. He quickly told me "no way."

This summer Daniel was reading the Old Testament and read that Moses was the only prophet that met God face to face. He got a little more excited about the name.

The next day I listened to a John Piper sermon on adoption and realized Moses was one of the three adopted children in the OT.

I looked up what Moses meant and read "saved" "pulled from the water" "adopted." I emailed Daniel at work to tell him that and he said "well I guess we will have an Ethiopian son named Moses."

Two weeks later, I went out to eat with my grandparents and asked them their parents and grandparent's names. My gaga who is a special person in my life said his grandfather's name was Moses. That was it, we were meant to have a son named Moses!!!