Andrej, Jessica, Kaiya, Tobi, Eli and Jakob

If you were wondering why this poor ole blog is getting so neglected, one of the things that’s been keeping me busy is trying to launch the South Altanta Bike Shop. I recently wrote a blog post on Metro Merge’s blog that talks about juggling multiple responsibilities.

Baby Ciho and I are 18 weeks and 5 days along in this pregnancy. We are quickly closing in on the halfway mark. The picture was taken before Christmas, in the 14th week, so I’ve expanded a bit more since then. We were really looking forward to yesterday’s ultrasound and Kaiya joined us because she kept insisting that she wanted to “see the baby” too. Thankfully, a friend offered to keep Tobi. Our ultrasound technician was great. After she took all of her measurements, she spent a lot of time going through each area of the baby, explaining to us what we were looking at on the screen. Even though this our third time doing this, I still find it amazing that we can see our baby. We watched the heart beat and at one point the technician explained that the baby had just released a full bladder. She said everything looked great and that the baby was developing right on track and weighed approximately 10 ounces.  (Read more …)

The following is a copy of our Christmas letter that we sent out to family and friends (those we had addresses for) announcing Baby #3 and our decision to move to South Atlanta to join an urban ministry called Sub-Urban.

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On the day before Thanksgiving 2004, Andrej and I arrived at my aunt’s house where my dad’s side of the family had gathered to celebrate the holiday. No one knew we were coming. Andrej and I had decided to spend Thanksgiving that year in Michigan and volunteer at a soup kitchen instead of making the long drive down to South Carolina. That was until we had news to share and wanted to share it in person. As we got out of the car that evening, we could see my family through the glass doors gathered around the table just about to enjoy the feast. Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect and my only regret is that I wish I would have informed at least one person and asked them to video the moments that followed.  (Read more …)

This post is a continuation of an account of our recent trip to SC/GA. Part one is found here, part two here and part three here.

Late Monday afternoon, Andrej and I left the kids in the capable hands of my parents and headed to Atlanta. We weren’t even a few miles down the road when Andrej shared that he had a knot in his stomach. Relieved that I wasn’t the only one sad to leave Kaiya and Tobi behind, I too admitted the knot in my own stomach. We have never left the kids overnight. Even when I was in the hospital for Tobi’s birth, Andrej came home each night to be with Kaiya, so we haven’t had much practice with leaving them for more than a few hours. However, we knew it would be good for us, good for them and good for my parents.  (Read more …)

I’m not sure if anything like weblog etiquette exists, but if it does I’m sure I’ve broken all the rules. I’ve learned that I’m not very good at frequent updates and often start entries that I never finish. My drafts folder holds so many posts that range from nothing more than ideas to pretty much complete posts that were for whatever reason never published. (Read more …)

On Friday 22nd, after several reroutes and airline changes, we finally got to South Carolina to spend the holidays with Jessica’s family. Today 12/27, around 2am our luggage finally showed up. We recognize that far worse things happened to other people around holidays, but just wanted to thank those of you who prayed that our luggage would be found. Also thanks to Pawpaw for contributing to the Clean Underwear Fund.