Well, Andrea just beat me at poker. I'm not sure if it was skill or luck or both. Anyway, I've got to practice more if I'm ever going to make it one day on the World Poker Tour. As it is, I'll just have to resign myself to watching the big boys on TV.

Si has his track meet/field day tomorrow. It's supposed to rain over the next couple of days, possibly beginning tonight. We may wake up and it be raining already. Either case we're planning on heading to Perry, OK, in the afternoon to see Andrea's grandmother. She is moving to Alabama over Memorial Day weekend to live with Andrea's uncle so we want to take this opportunity to see her while we can. Looks like it's going to be another fine, rainy weekend ahead.

Just finished putting up a gallery of images from Easter 2004. Papa and Mimi came over for lunch & the afternoon. Mimi even brought a 'bunny' cake for the kids. After lunch we gave the kids their Easter baskets & had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

You can see the gallery by click here: Easter 2004 Gallery (gallery currently unavailable).

I apologize for some of the images being blurry. We're wanting to replace our digital camera when we get the chance (any recommendations would be appreciated!). The one we have will have to do for the time being, though.

We're exhausted. It has been a long week culminating with a long day. I got up and was out of the house by 7 am this morning ... on a Saturday! Today was our youth Work-a-Thon. We started this event last year & had tremendous success with it. We spent the day (8a-3p) working at various locations around Coffeyville doing community service work. Today some of the things our youth did were working at the Brown Mansion (a local historical home), helping man a booth at the New Beginnings Festival downtown for Habitat for Humanity, and helping sort through clothes at the Salvation Army. It is a great experience - both for our youth & for the sites involved. Both this year and last we outperformed the expectations of these locations, who were extremely grateful for the time and hard work our youth put in.

Continue reading "Totally Worn Out" »

Can I just say that storms suck?! This is the third day in a row that severe storms have hit Oklahoma (specifically the Tulsa area). We haven't got much rain up in Coffeyville, but the storms have affected our TiVo routine. Okay, let me say upfront that I am petty. That out of the way - the only regular show on TV that we got to see (out of the three we actually watch on a regular basis) was Smallville. Tuesday night TiVo recorded 15 minutes of American Idol and 45 minutes of storm tracking. We didn't realize it until about 10pm when we sat down to watch it finally. By that time the 're-run' of the show (due to the weather) had already ended. Wednesday night we just plain forgot to throw a tape in to catch the 'vote out' American Idol (AI) show, although we would have caught 30 minutes of storm coverage again instead of AI anyway. TiVo did get the full hour of Smallville, which was nice (good episode, too). Tonight we got another hour of storm coverage. I'm trying to figure out when the re-air of Survivor will be so we can record it later.

Now, I know that these have been pretty severe storms and there have even been some tornado warnings. I'm not sure if any actually hit the ground or not. In the midst of all of the severe weather my desire to watch a TV show is pretty insignificant.

Continue reading "Storms Again" »

I just realized it has been almost a week since I last posted an entry here. Sickness is pretty much gone now. Si did have to come home from school early on Friday because of an ear infection, but he is doing better now. Andrea is feeling good as well. I, miraculously, escaped the two week sickness mess without coming down with anything ... don't ask me how.

Josiah has a track meet (field day) at school on Friday, so we're planning on going up in the morning and helping work it. He's competing in the 100M dash, the sack race, and the soccer kick (his choices). Then, Saturday we've got our Work-a-Thon 2004 for the youth. We'll be doing community service work at several locations around the community & it will help the youth raise support for their summer camp in July. We had a good time last year & really had quite an impact on the locations we worked for then. In fact, many of them were more than happy to allow us to come in on Saturday & do some work again. This is one of those things that I think we are actually 'being' the church to those in the community. I'm looking forward to it, although it probably will take me a couple of days to recover.

Well, we sent Josiah to school yesterday & they both went this morning. Now we just have to get Andrea back to 100% and we'll be well again (after over 2 weeks!). She's doing better, but is still not feeling completely well. Today was the first day I have been able to work out of the office in about 4 days. I left last Wednesday afternoon & have been working from the house ever since. I think it was good for Andrea to finally get a break from the boys for a few hours this morning (Micah returns at lunch). Keep praying that Andrea gets well and that we don't start passing something else along while our defenses are down.

Well, seems they've fixed the bugs that messed up our albums. We've got them back up again, sort of. I've uploaded the most recent couple, but it will take some time to get the rest back up again. Seems we lost everything when the album crashed and we'll have to add all of our pictures again.

Well, a full week (I think) and the albums are back down again. I updated the new found software to a new, just released, version & it still has some bugs. Hopefully things will get fixed soon and I'll be able to update the software & get things working again.

Well, we're all hanging in there after almost a week and a half now of having sick people in our family. Emerie is fine now, and I (Chris) never have caught anything (cross my fingers). The boys are both acting well, although they are still infected. Micah never got things as bad as Josiah did, but both are doing much better. I don't think they'll get to go to church Sunday, though - which is a shame as we had the cutest outfits picked out for them to wear on Easter. Andrea is still sick. She started feeling bad around Wednesday. Things have been better in the last 48 hours since the doctor prescribed some medicine for her, but she still doesn't feel that great. Be praying that she gets to feeling better as she has a big solo in our Easter Musical that the choir is performing on Sunday night. Someone could probably come & watch the kids for a couple of hours if her voice feels up to it.

Well, the 'big game' didn't wind up being that big at all. I didn't get started watching until about 9:30p last night. Alec didn't wind up coming over because of our infected household. The game left much to be desired. Saturday's Final Four matchups/games were definitely more exciting than the championship game. In the end I wound up silently cheering for Georgia Tech to make some kind of come back, which it looked like it was capable of for awhile in the 2nd half. They made too many mistakes, though, including waiting until the last minute or so to foul and make UConn win it at the line. Oh well, now it's time for the 'big wait' until next August.

Well, I'm excited & sad at the same time. Tonight marks the official end of my sports season. Since I'm not into baseball that much I pretty much have to wait until August when NFL & college football start up again. I hate to see March Madness end, as well - this has been a good tournament & a lot of fun to watch. The only downer was that my team (Kansas) didn't make it into the Final Four. Oh well, Elite Eight is still a fabulous end to a great rebuilding season. Can't wait for next year!

I'll be cheering for UConn to win it all - both because they beat Duke (which made my weekend) and because I don't want to see the team that beat us (Georgia Tech) win it all. Alec Hendryx is coming over to watch the TiVo-fied version, but with the game beginning so late (8:00pm CST) we won't be able to pad it very much in order to skip commercials. Maybe the first half ... we'll see!

Well, Andrea took the kids back to the doctor this morning. Si had done better at the end of last week (after a bout with Strep Throat), but started to run a low-grade fever on Saturday afternoon along with his brother. Yesterday (Sunday) he started to develop small red spots on the inside of his mouth & complained about his mouth/throat hurting. We found out from the doctor that they have what's called the Coxsackie virus, otherwise known as "Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease." It is not as bad as it sounds (it's not an extremely serious condition & rather common among children). The bad part is that it will get worse before it gets better - especially when it comes to mouth pain. He said they may not want to eat because of the pain. They're quarantined to our house for the next week & all we can give them is Motrin/Tylenol for the pain (antibiotics don't affect it). It is contagious & viral, so we gave them both the "wash your hands, don't touch Emerie, etc." speech.

Be in prayer for Andrea who'll have to bear the brunt of taking care of them this week. The good news is that I'll have Thursday & Friday off this week due to Easter so I'll be able to help more than I normally would be able to.

Well, it's official ... this is the worst year for Andrea & I picking for March Madness (by far!). While there is still one game to be played, the standings are pretty much set (all except the top three spots) - and Andrea & I finished 9th & 8th, respectively. That being said, last night's games were great! I don't remember a Final Four that was that exiting in a long time! We had my guys small group over for dinner & to watch the games. We had a little challenge going amongst our group that if they beat me in picks they would cook dinner for Andrea & I, and if the reverse happened we'd treat them to dinner. Well, dinner was on us. It was a lot of fun though - good laughter!

I finally got all of our former photo albums back online. Found a great album solution called nGallery. I'll be looking at how to customize the look/layout a little in the future, so expect that the look will change at times. I'll be offering it as an add-on option to the websites I develop through re:IMAGE Design (see below) You can get to the gallery anytime by visiting http://gallery.theedigers.com. I'll continue to post a pic or two from a set here with a link (as in the past) whenever we upload a new album (which I have a few to work through & upload sometime in the next couple of weeks).

Continue reading "Galleries Online Again!" »

Well, we've had sick kids the past couple of days. Josiah came down with Strep Throat, but is doing better now. Emerie has some kind of virus & is still feeling pretty cruddy. Micah, amazingly enough, hasn't got anything! We'll see if it holds up!

Also, I've finally got some photo gallery software up again on the site. I'm in the process of posting our old albums & will let everyone know when it is up & running!

Send yourself an email into the future through this great web site! I just finished dropping myself a note that I'll receive a year from today! Check it out at www.futureme.org