Jeffer and I got to go to see the Fresno Grizzlies play on Sunday night. It was a fun time with Popop and Uncle Joey. We had some awesome seats right behind home plate.

On the 8th, Erin and I celebrated our 5th anniversary. We’re staying in a fancy hotel in Seattle, and it’s been a good relaxing time to get away. The hotel was actually so fancy that we had to eat at MacDonald’s for our anniversary dinner. I know you’re all thinking that I’m a cheap tightwad, but let me assure you that I let Erin supersize her meal.

One of the goals Erin had for our trip was to see someone famous. Well, today while we were at P.F. Chang’s for lunch, my wife’s keen eye spotted Lord Saruman from across the dining room. At first, I was skeptical, particularly because he wasn’t wearing a robe. But after a quick IMDB search, we realized that the actor Christopher Lee portrayed Lord Saruman (a fictional character) in Lord of the Rings (a fictional movie). We are 98.6% sure that Mr. Lee was eating Chinese/American food in the same room as us today. Coincidentally, our waiter looked just like Andy Serkis.

Good night from the Emerald City.

I am proud to announce that my past grieving over the loss of my faithful 4Runner has come to an end (but I will never forget you, dear one!) A month ago, we purchased a new Scion XB. My wife fell in love with it right away, but I was reluctant to show any excitement initially. I knew it was a great car SUV wagon box ride, but I wasn’t ready to be emotionally attached to another inanimate object quite yet.

I was impressed by the large list of standard options, the coolest being the iPod attachment which allows the stereo (and steering wheel) controls access to the playlists, etc. (As of yet, the iPhone is not supported). Also stock are 4-wheel disc brakes, a Camry engine, a buttload of airbags, and a surprising amount of interior space.

Although the XB continued to grow on me, it wasn’t till two weeks ago that I received the confirmation I needed to call the car my own. I have two friends from Hume who are, in fact, the earth’s official decision makers of what is cool and what isn’t (and I need to check with them to see if “cool” is still a cool word to use). Anyways, when Karley and Eric came down to see us, they seemed to be more excited to see our new car than our house. When I showed them the Scion, they used words like “sick” and “pimpin”, which I don’t know the definitions of, but the tone of their voices made it appear that my new mode of transportation was cool! Who knew?

Dear 4Runner,

I am sorry we had to part ways. You were always good to me and my family. Remember, friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the lord of them…too bad cars can’t go to heaven. Be kind to your new owner.

So long,

Nate

Ok, our DSL is now hooked up and, as promised, here are some photos to help tell our story from the last 2 weeks.

On Wednesday, December 12th, we loaded up a trailer with our golf cart and a few other things and headed down to get the keys to our new house. On the way, the kids got a little restless, so we stopped half way down to take a breather…and a picture.

An hour later, we met our realtor at the house and got the keys…yipee!

That Friday I drove back up to Hume to get the rest of our stuff loaded up in the moving truck. A lot of nice people pitched in to make the move very easy. In particular, my friends Chester and Damon both helped load up a bunch of stuff Friday night, which allowed us to get on the road Saturday morning. Hume was cool enough to let us use one of their big trucks to haul all of our stuff…although I thought it might have been easier to rent a semi and tow our singlewide (full of our stuff) down to Clovis.

When the truck arrived at our house, we had another crew of people who helped unload, which took all of about 45 minutes.

By the following evening, we had most of the downstairs rooms set up. It was nice to have some places to come relax while other rooms were still in disarray.

Now, a week later, we’re almost completely moved in…just in time for Christmas. It’s been a fairly tiring couple weeks, but very satisfying. It’s amazing to see the Lord do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.

Happy Christmas.

Wow. We’re actually moved in to our new (20-year-old) house! Yesterday almost all of our worldly posessions were hauled from our 700-square-foot trailer at Hume Lake to our new 2100-square-foot home (with no wheels) in Clovis. We had a number of friends work very hard to help us out with the move, and it went without a hitch. We don’t have Internet hooked up yet, and I haven’t figured out how to post photos from my iPhone yet…but I’ll post them soon.

After living in the mountains for over 4 years now, we’ve spotted our first bear…in our living room…wearing underwear….(the bear, not the living room).

We got it! The house we’ve been trying to buy is now ours…assuming everything goes well during escrow. We just have to make sure we can liquidate the appropriate investments and sign our names about a billion times.

We’re really excited about this house. It’s a 5 bedroom, 3 bath home in Clovis on a really nice sized lot. I’ll give more details later, but it’s been a very busy week and I’m zonked.

Nighty-night.

After some meetings last week at ShowitCon, DJ and Todd offered me a full-time job with Showit. So, after 4 years at Hume, we’ll be moving back to Fresno. We’re really excited, and particularly amazed to see how the Lord has orchestrated everything so far.

We’ll miss our Hume family quite a bit, but our hope is that we will be able to stay in close contact since we’ll be just an hour and a half away.

This past week, we put an offer on a house in Clovis, and we’re hoping and praying that it will go through today.

Stay tuned for the ongoing saga.

We recently found out about a Gap photo contest for kids. By that, I mean that the photos are of kids, not taken by kids. We briefly considered the the fact that our kids are, indeed, the cutest children on the face of the earth, but realized that it may not be fair to the rest of the contestants if we entered. After a brief debate, we read about the prizes which include a trip to San Francisco for a Gap photo shoot and $5000 to spend at Gap. We decided to enter.

I grabbed one of my work cameras (a Canon Mark II) and we scurried the kids out to the lake. I had never shot the Mark, and quickly realized that it was definitely a camera for professionals. I couldn’t find any button or knob that said “auto”. Nonetheless, after some trial and error, I found some settings that worked. Here are some of our favs. (We apologize in advance to anyone who had hopes of winning this contest.)