Grace and Carter

Tara had some pictures of Grace (baby pics) and Carter (6 year old pics) done today. We were going to do all the children together, but Jackson has a rash, so we'll do all the children and Jackson (4 yrs old) soon. Some of these came out really great I think so I had to share.

We've Made it 10!

Ten years ago today on a hot, smoky day in Orlando, FL (fires in North FL), Tara and I were sealed for time and all eternity in the Orlando, FL Temple. Ten years later we're here now with four beatiful children! What a great ten years that it has been in retrospective. Thought I'd share a bit about our beginnings.

In January of 1998, Tara and I were both at BYU but didn't know each other yet. I had a Book of Mormon religion class as the Joseph Smith Building (JSB). For those who don't know much about the JSB is the religion building, and there are study tables in a common area, however it's very quite, almost like a library. I had a free hour before the class, and sat down the first week of the semester to study. I looked up and was taken aback by a beautiful young lady sitting across the table from me. She was wearing a white button up shirt with blue jeans, had short brown hair, astoundingly beautiful eyes and a wonderful smile. I was smitten! The problem was, that I was here in this quite room and didn't get up the nerve to talk to her.

For the next few weeks, I looked for opportunities during this hour break to find her and maybe meet her. Days passed where she wasn't there, or I coundn't sit near her. The idea of just walking up to her and introducing myself in the middle of this very quite atmosphere was very daunting. Then one day I decided that I was going to meet her. I circled the building and found that she was sitting right outside my class in the hall. I made my way and found a seat right across from her and sat there trying to get up the nerve to say something. Right when I'm finally about to say something, a girl (Tara's roommate at the time) comes up and begins to talk to her, and talks to her for the next few minutes until class starts. So I go disappointedly to my Book of Mormon class.

My professor lectures on, as I ignore him sitting engrossed in thought about what to do next to meet this girl. Then I decide to do something completely immature (all though for some stupid reason at the time I didn't think so): I'll write her a note. I guess the idea of handing her something rather than walking up to her and talking seemed less daunting and an accomplishable task. So I wrote her the following note:



After class ended, I walked out of my class in into hers across the hall. I walked right up to her and held out the note and handed it to her, and I think just said "This is for you. Have a great day" smiled and walked out, hoping I wasn't sweating and that you couldn't see my heart beating. She took the note stuck it in her pocket and didn't read it until an hour later! Then she decided the next day after discussing it with her roommates a bunch to go ahead and email me. (Regardless to say, I was checking my email every hour). In her email, she asked me to call her. I did and we talked for a very long time that day, met the next day in person and had our first date that weekend. The rest of the story will get shortened to we fell in love in ways I'm still working to understand got engaged on March 31st (engagement picture below) and were married on June 26, 1998.

How grateful I am for Tara and the blessing she is to me. She has been perfect for me in so many ways that I feel that I would truly be lost with out her. Hopefully I have been half as good to her as she has been to me. So 10 years down, an eternity to go. Hope it continues to get better!

We're Still Here

Life's been busy lately, but I thought I'd get on and say we're still alive and well :-). The children are taking swimming lessons this week, which I think is great, because I'd like them to learn to swim a little better. I have always loved swimming and not been to afraid of the water, but the boys are a bit nervous, even with me, and don't like to put their heads in the water, so hopefully this will help with that.

I got to go to be a priesthood leader last week at Girl's Camp for a day. That was a lot of fun. We really have a great group of Young Women in our ward, and excellent leaders. I played some games with them, and just enjoyed chatting with the girls and the leaders and Paul Hailstone who was the other priesthood there. It was a Ward level girl's camp, so it was just our ward, and I think they did a great job. This Thursday, I'm also chaperoning on the youth temple trip, which I'm looking forward to. I haven't done that in probably five years. I love working with the youth, maybe I'll get a youth calling again someday. For now, I'll just get to call them for interviews with the Bishop (I'm the Executive Secretary).

Grace is doing good, except that she's decided to not sleep very well lately, which Tara isn't very happy with. So hopefully we can get that figured out. Babies develop good sleep patterns at around 10-12 weeks, so a bit more to go before she should get really good sleeping patterns. She's getting very big though. It seems like she's grown a ton each day before we get her up. She's really starting to smile a lot, and even make a few baby cooing noises now and then.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try and post some more later.

Grace's Blessing

On Sunday we blessed Grace. We were able to have her two Settle uncles, Grandfather and the Bishop stand in the circle with us. Hard to believe she's over a month old already. Life is starting to seem more normal with a fourth child now, although I'm not sure if Tara would say that or not. Tara's got a half saved draft of our now somewhat recent owl encounter, but I'll let her finish that post another day. Just a few pictures from yesterday at church of Grace in her blessing dress that Tara made, and blanket and booties that my mom made. Also a cute picture of her curled in a ball asleep on our bed.

Jumpin' Time

Saturday was Jackson's 4th birthday. I want to say I can't believe our baby is four, but now he's not the baby any more. But it's hard to believe he's getting so big. Well for his birthday and for the family, we bought a trampoline. I got it on Friday night and Saturday morning my dad help me put it together after tennis (my team won both sets this week :-). It was not to difficult to put together at all, and we had a lot of fun with it.

The kids have always loved them and always want to go to the neighbor two houses down to jump. Now they can wear themselves out at our own house. It's a good amount of exercise. We had a family birthday party/cookout for Jackson, so his cousins and aunts and uncles were over and they jumped all afternoon. Grant and I even played a game were we had our older brother throwing us a frisbee and seeing who could catch it more often. Not the safest of games but a blast and a good work out. So here's some pictures of the kids and I on the trampoline that Tara took, and a video too.

I'll post some more pictures of Grace soon too. She fell asleep during her "tummy time" (as Tara calls it) on our bed, and we were trying to wake her up and I got her holding my finger while she was asleep and we got a cute picture of that, so I'll post it soon, after I get it off the camera. The picture below of Carter and Jackson with another boy, that boy is Braden Baxter, a friend of Jacksons. It was hilarious, I got the camera out for opening presents and he took on look of it and got right in front of me with this same smile on his face. Then I got Carter and Jackson to turn around and smile and took that picture.

Mark

Real High Speed

I got the 8.0 high speed from Comcast installed today. I've had BellSouth FastConnect Ultra for a while which is just 1.5 Mbps for 3 years now and they still haven't offered the 6.0 in my area, so I decided to switch. The upload speed was awful, especially since I large files for work quite often. Here's the AT&T results:



Here's the first test results with the Comcast high speed:



Woo Hoo! Can't wait for the next time I need to post a large file, or download something large. I think I'll go download some big file now....

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

I wanted to post this yesterday, but never got enough time. Yesterday morning, I was reading the Conference Issue of the Ensign in the morning before Church. Since it was Mother's Day, I thought that I'd search by topic for motherhood and see what I could find. I saw all of the Saturday and Sunday Morning sessions, but only parts of the afternoon sessions each time. I only saw Pres. Monson's talk on the Sunday afternoon session, so I'd missed Elder M. Russell Ballard's excellent talk on Motherhood. I read that on Sunday, and it was excellent.

He talks about the divine nature of Motherhood and that "there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood." He then goes to talk about things that: 1) Mothers can do to reduce pressure and enjoy their families more 2) What a husband can do to support his wife, the mother of their children and 3) What children, even young children, can do to help their mother. With each topic he gives great counsel on understanding the role of the mother in the home and the support that she should receive from the other in the home and how our families can be blessed by following this counsel. The talk is really excellent. Two excerpts that I really enjoyed:

"Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: 'The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, capture only in photographs. . . . I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.'"

"Families need unstructured time when relationships can deepen and real parenting can take place. Take time to listen, to laugh and play together."

"[S]how extra appreciation and give more validation for what your wife does every day. Notice things and say thank you--often. Schedule some evenings together, just for the two of you."

"[H]ave regular time to talk with your wife about each child's needs and what you can do to help."

The talk is really excellent and you can find the full text of the talk at the links below.

Daugthers of God
Elder M. Russell Ballard
April 2008 General Conference, Sunday Afternoon Session
Text  Audio  Video

So I hope all you mothers out there had a great Mother's day. You deserve it. I know that Tara and I are always grateful for our mothers, and I'm extremely grateful for the mother that Tara is.

Mark