austinizing it

Early this morning I boarded a plane and flew to Texas.  I'm here until next Wednesday trying to raise some support for our work in New Zealand.  After landing in Houston I hopped in my rental car and started my trip up to Austin.  About two miles outside of the Houston Metro area I stopped on the side of the road and picked up a young tattooed Gent.  Jesse is a 23 year old artist who is backpacking his way to California but was first heading to Austin to stay with some friends.  After a pleasant two and a half hour conversation which covered topics such as music, tattoos, comic books, movies, and politics; I dropped Jesse off inside the Austin city limits and headed to my host's house.  I'm now preparing to meet up with some old friends and have what they assure me will be a great Mexican meal.  The big excitement tonight of course will be the two-hour season finale of Lost.  I can't wait to find out who's in the coffin.

Anyway, from what I've observed so far Austin seems like a pretty cool place.  If any of you who have lived or been here have suggestions for things I should see and do in Austin over the next three days please leave a comment with your suggestion.

out of contact

My apologies for yet again slacking on the blog thing.  Okay, so it's not that I really need to apologize for not blogging.  Seriously, it just means I've been living life instead of writing about it to some faceless audience.  However, I do enjoy keeping up with this as it helps me to think a bit more clearly and I know there are at least a few people out there who are interested in what's going on with us.  

Anyway, instead of trying to catch everyone up on everything that's happened in the last few weeks I think I'll just start blogging again as if there has been no hiatus.  That way I don't need to feel any pressure about doing several posts just to catch everyone up to speed.  Ahhh, the freedom of just saying, "Screw it."  Talk to you soon.

great expectations

For those of you who haven't heard, Brooke is pregnant with our first child!!!  This is exciting, crazy, scary, and lots of other things.  She's almost 11 weeks along but the ultrasound picture is from when the kid was 9 weeks old.  I've been assured that he/she will get cuter.  I was going to list all the things that have already developed by this point in time but the list is too long.  It's amazing how fast this little guy/girl grows.  His or her heart has been beating for over a month and while it's still too early to tell whether the baby is a him or her that is already determined as the testes or ovaries are already developing.  For those of you who don't want to try to figure out the math the anticipated due date is December 1.  Whoah!