Scott's and Steve's birthday

Scott's birthday is March 3 and Steve's is March 5. We celebrated both with a cake, lovingly baked by Karen, Kennedy, and Cole.

Breakfast with Santa

Just a couple of pictures from Breakfast with Santa at Middletown Frisch's.

Trick or Treat with Kennedy and Cole

The kids had a beautiful night for trick-or-treating with Mommy and Daddy. They spent about 2 hours walking around Grandpa and Grandma's neighborhood.

Helping Grandpa

Cole and Kennedy, as well as Daddy Scott, helped Grandpa Steve with the cleanup after the windstorm took down a tree in our front yard.

Kennedy is 3

Here are a few photos of Kennedy's third birthday party. It was a perfect day for the pool and for fun with family and friends.

Keith is on the Internet, and he's going to officiate football (but not at the same time)

It's been a while since I gave any sort of update on this blog, so here are a couple of things I've been up to lately.

On the work front, I'm done with the NLT Study Bible that I previously blogged about. It will be available in September, but you can get some glimpses of it right now at nltstudybible.com and the NLT Study Bible blog, written by the general editor for the project, Sean Harrison. I'm working on a couple of different Bibles that will come out in 2009 right now, but I can talk about them later.

I'm also now officially blogging at work as well. This means I get to spend nearly half of my day on the Internet, and I get paid for it! The NLT Blog is a group blog, and I am only one contributor. Right now we only have three confirmed contributors (myself, the Bible editor; Laura, the Bible marketer; and Kevin, the Bible development guy). We will soon have one of the scholars behind the NLT as a contributor and a pastor who uses the NLT as well. My first substantive post went up Monday, and it actually created something of a buzz among Bible bloggers (see the links and comments at the bottom). It certainly got more attention than I expected on the first day of a new blog! But that is how the Internet works sometimes, I guess.

In other news, now that I don't have a thesis to write, I'm picking up a new hobby: football officiating. I'm in the middle of a class right now about how to be a football official, and by the fall I'll be certified and ready to start ticking off parents, fans, players, and coaches at will.

I'll probably have to start with youth league and lower-level high school games, but hopefully I'll land some varsity assignments before the year is out.

With any luck (and if I actually enjoy it), you'll be able to see me patrolling the sidelines on Saturday afternoon TV sometime in the next 10 years.

Oh yeah, and I also forgot to mention that I got to work on Jim Tressel's new book a couple of months ago. I was one of the primary editors, and I must say it is a pretty good book if you are into football or self-improvement type books. It will be available next Tuesday, July 15.

Katya's Preschool Gradutaion

Hello Family,

Here are pictures of Katya's Preschool Graduation. She looks beautiful! Genne asked me to put these up. I think she should learn to do this herself.

First Trip to Kings Island!

We bought passes to Kings Island this year, but Sunday we went for the first time, and Kennedy had so much fun. Cole had fun for awhile, but grew bored and tired quickly. Here's Kennedy's first ride, Blue's Clues

Here they are in their Kings Island hats (which lasted 1 minute with Cole)

Kennedy was excited to see the Dora show... this is just after her doing the limbo.

Here's Cole's only ride (which he was a little unsure of)

And Kennedy's favorite ride... Swiper's Sweeper.

One more little one!

Ok... not long after i posted the last post...another slid out like he was coming out of the bottom part of the water slide...you know....when you burst into that little pool at the end of all the water slides. yeah. he was the cutest one too! I'll put up mug shots of each one in a day or two once they open their eyes.

Miscount...only 9 not 10

New members of the family!

There are 10 so far, i will post later if anymore come, but i pray that's it. 8 girls, 2 boys. mostly black, 2 are brown, and 1 has the typical rotty brown markings. they are adorable though. if you know anyone that wants a puppy let me know.

Our new home

Claudia and I have been pretty busy lately with several things, not least of which being that we have been house hunting. Well, it looks like that search is over.

We came to an agreement today (we'll sign the contract tomorrow) for a house in Lake Zurich, IL. It is about 28 miles from work, but less than 5 miles from church--and we could ride our bikes to the beach!

Here are some pictures of the house:

This one is from the yard looking at our front door and the back of the garage. The house is a quadraplex, and we will own our quarter of the structure as well as the land it sits on. The door between the trees (on the right) leads into the garage, and the white door toward the left is the front door of the home.

This is the living space on the first floor. There is a sliding door to the left leading out the the patio, just out of the view.

There is also a half bath on the right outside of the picture.

Here is the kitchen. This picture was probably taken from the same spot as the last one, just turning about 90 degrees to the left.


This is the finished basement, with a third bedroom and room for a pool table (if someone wants to get us a pool table).
(And convince Claudia that we want a pool table).

Here's a closer view of the front door and the planter box if we want to keep it





This is the back yard, and the picture doesn't do justice to the quality of the landscaping. The grass could use some help, but the bed in the back is well done and looks really nice in person.

We're scheduled to close on May 30, so if anyone wants to come visit on May 31, we'd have plenty of work for you. :)

Update: The contract is signed, so the deal is done, pending inspection, mortgage, etc.

Cole is ONE

Where's Cole? He has been learning many new things and now is one year old (4-6-08). Here are a few pictures from the party that Karen and Scott had for him.