2008 Year End Recap

2008 was a great year! I thought I would take a few moments to sum up some of the highlights. Mostly this is for me to journalize it but I thought some of you who still check here occasionally might find it interesting too.

Family

First on the list has got to be some highlights in the family/home area.

The biggest change has got to be the addition of our 3rd and probably final babyfinn. Emmy Claire was born on July 22nd and is my/our sweet baby girl! She is destined to be the most spoiled by her daddy and yes little girls are so different from boys. The big brothers, Aidan and Trace, adore her. Amazingly, no jealousy issues…yet.

Aidan turned 4 and had a Rockstar birthday party. (I’m so proud!) He’s now officially a kid and not a toddler. He’s smart as a whip and he knows it. I’m in awe of how much a 4 year-old can know and how much they pick up on. We have to be REAL careful.

Trace is 2 years old and almost shared a birthday with his sister. July is going to be a busy month for us for years to come with 2 birthdays 4 days apart. He’s getting so big and tries to do everything his big brother does. He gets into everything and is starting to potty train. We had a scare with his speech development this year due to a string of bad ear infections in the past. After just a few short months of working with a speech pathologist though, his ability to communicate has skyrocketed!

My boys love to tickle and wrestle with dad, and I am all too happy to appease them.

Kelly went back to work part-time in the Fall as a Band Director at McMichael Jr. High. She is loving it! This is really a passion for her. She loves teaching music to the beginners and younger band students (not something for the faint of heart or ear!). The great thing is that she is still able to be home by 11am and be a stay at home mommy. They’ve asked her to go full-time and she would love to but these early years in our kids lives are too important to miss.

I took the boys on there first camping trip this year. Aidan had been asking about it for like forever. Just to play it safe we went and camped out in my parents’ yard with the tent and the fire and the whole nine yards. Hot dogs, marshmallows, sleeping bags. They were thrilled! We’ll be planning some more for later in the Spring.

I’ve been very busy with work at the church this past year, but I still love it. Even amidst the busy and sometimes stressful times, this is still the best job I’ve ever had. Sometimes I still can’t believe that they are paying me to do this. Although, if they stopped, I’d have to seriously reconsider!! I was planning to include a recap of what I’ve been working on at the church here, but I’ll do that in a separate post.

That’s about it for the Finnerud clan for 2008. A good year. Finally falling into the new business as usual for us with 3 kids. 2009 is going to be AWESOME!

Hope you had a great year too.

 

Life Update

So life’s been a little crazy around here in the past month. Let me give you an update.

First of all, Baby Emmy is 1 month old and doing great. The boys adore her and amazingly there have been no jealousy issues. Several people warned me that going from 2 to 3 kids was a bit different. Boy were they right! Now we are in a zone defense instead of man-on-man. It’s been a tiring adaptation but we’re kind of getting into the flow.

You may or may not know that before being a stay at home mom, Kelly used to work as a band director. She loved working with kids and teaching them the wonders of music. A few months ago, she began teaching a few private lessons in flute to some girls and we knew that eventually, when the kids got bigger that she would probably go back to working as a band director.

Well, we had some exciting development in the last week. Last Thursday, Kelly got a call from out of the blue from the Head Band Director at Nacogdoches High School. He told Kelly that they were looking for an Assistant Band Director at one of the Middle Schools and asked if she would consider taking the job. This was only  4 days before the beginning of the school year. It was a full-time position and Kelly told him that she was not interested in going back to work full-time. We really value her being able to stay home with the kids. He called her back later and said that he had worked out an arrangement to be able to hire her part-time if she was interested.

We began walking through the process to see if this would work out. We didn’t need the job for extra income, but Kelly was excited about the possibility to teach again. Well, we were able to work out childcare arrangements fairly easily and they made her a great offer and so she started back to work Tuesday of this week. She only has to work mornings about 20 hours a week and she still gets afternoons at home with the kids. So far it is working out well.

We really wanted to have someone come into our home to watch Emmy since she is so young. On Saturday, a friend of Kelly’s emailed her and told her about a college student who had approached her to find out if she new anyone who wanted a Nanny. So we called her and it looks like we’ll be hiring her next week to Nanny twice a week and she’ll even do a little house cleaning while she’s here. And we have another friend who will watch her the rest of the time. We got the boys squared away too. Praise God!

In the end, after paying for childcare, Kelly will still be making a pretty good amount that we can put into savings. Kelly really wants to save up so we can upgrade our minivan. Another blessing is that after getting the job thing worked out, we realized that our refrigerator needs replaced. It is old and the freezer is not sealing properly and is letting the cold out and mildewing around the seal. We went appliance shopping last night and it looks like we wil be able to replace it with the money she’s making. Whew!

It’s been a crazy week getting all of this settled, but it seems that God has once again provided for every need even before we knew about it. He is faithful!

It’s Labor Day weekend and the boys are going to visit Grandma this weekend. We’ll take them this afternoon and pick them up on Monday. We’re looking forward to a little R&R this weekend and they have a whole list of things that they will do at Grandma’s!

That’s enough for now. I’ll try to update some more later.

 

Baby Update #2

Still no baby. That’s ok. We actually want to wait about another 30 minutes or so.

Here’s some before pics from this morning.

Kelly before heading to the hospital.

Kelly looking comfortable after the epidural. Hope she'll be here soon.

 

Baby #3

So much has gone on in the last year since I blogged last. Probably the biggest change in my life is a few days or at most a couple of weeks away. For those who don’t know, my wife Kelly is pregnant with our 3rd child right now. The baby’s not due until July 28th but we are hoping that maybe we’ll bring home a new addition sooner.

We are very excited to welcome a baby girl into our home. Aidan our 3 year old can’t stop talking about his baby sister. We’ll see how long that lasts once reality sets in for him.

Kelly goes to see her doctor again Monday morning and we are really hoping that he says we need to schedule the delivery for this week. This would be two weeks early but both of the boys were scheduled two weeks early as well.

Anyway, that’s the big news around our house. Thought I would update those who may read this from a distance who may not have known. Please pray for us as we look forward to the changes that will inevitably come.

 

For my #1 fan – Paul

Link to the person who tagged you — Paul. Thanks for giving me something to blog about.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Write six random things about yourself.
- Tag six people at the end of your post.
- Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I like blueberry waffles. It’s the favorite weekend breakfast for me and Aidan to cook together.

2. I just finished a book about learning HTML and CSS and it was a page turner. I’m such a nerd.

3. I was in a band in college called the “Jiffy Deli Band.” Just typing that makes me wonder what we were smoking the night we came up with that one.

4. I once worked for a nationally known comedy recording artist. Willie P. Richardson the Phone Prankster.

5. In that job, I had to call gas stations and truckstops and try to sell them tapes and CDs to sell in their stores. And yes it was a lot like calling most customer support numbers nowadays…impossible to understand the person on the other end.

6. I’m a late-comer to the TV show Lost. And now I have to stay up late at night to watch old episodes online to catch up.

I’m tagging Romack, Angela, Philip, Maegan, Michael, and Kelly.

 

I’m back!!

Ok. So it’s been awhile, I mean a loooong while since I posted. Over a year. I’m going to try this blogging thing again. I won’t make any of the lame excuses of why I’ve been too busy or whatever. Thanks to all of you who have continued to check in on me and encourage me to come back. Especially you Paul. Thanks for sticking it out and posting comments every month for over a year. You re-define true friendship.

Look for more to come soon.

 

Tennis, Guitar Center, Traffic, and American Idol

It’s been awhile. I’m sorry! No excuses. No long explanation.

My day.

Today is Tuesday so that means that this morning I stayed home with the boys for a few hours while Kelly went out to play tennis. I know, I’m the greatest husband and yes my job is awesome because I can do this every week and its cool. So me and the boys played with toys and stuff, Trace took a nap and I got ready for work. About 9:30 am, I decided that, when Kelly got home, I would go to Guitar Center. Romack and I had planned on going this week to shop for cymbals for the church. I decided I would rather go today instead of Wednesday and he was good with that.

In hindsight, I guess this was not a good decision. Planning to leave Nac at 11:00 am, I headed to the office to drop off a couple things at 10 til. Had a couple of delays at the office and ended up leaving Nac about 11:30 am. Picked up Romack. Ran into traffic delays on the way to Houston. 45 mph behind 3 trucks on a 2 lane for several miles. Hit Guitar Center promptly at 2:15 pm (orig. planned arrival time was 1:00 pm) and we were planning on leaving by 3:30 pm so Romack could be back in Lufkin around 5:00 pm. Cymbal shopping went longer than expected and we left Guitar Center at about 4:30 pm. Racing to get home, we hit more traffic delays on I45 and a long delay on 59 due to a pretty bad accident. Dropped Romack off a little before 7:00 pm (his plans had changed from his previous need to be back at 5 pm) and stepped on the gas to get home. Home just before 7:30 pm.

When I got home, I apologized profusely to my wife for the trip taking longer than expected. She was disappointed that I hadn’t gotten home earlier but she was gracious and forgave me. (Have I mentioned how great she is?) I helped her put the boys to bed and we watched the end of American Idol (vote for Blake Lewis) and House together.

Summary: 1) Bad decision to go to Guitar Center today. I should have gone tomorrow when I had more time. 2) I have no idea why it took so long to get there and back. I’m still trying to figure that out. 3) We did pretty much figure out which cymbals to buy. They are not exactly what I was planning on ordering so it was a worthwhile trip. Romack walked out with a new cymbal. 4) My wife is awesome and I need to do something really nice for her soon.

Tomorrow is a new day with new challenges and opportunities. I’ll try to learn from mistakes made today and make tomorrow better.

Have a great TOMORROW!!

 

My Savior Lives – Crosspoint 3.18.07

 This is pretty much how we ended up Crosspoint this past Sunday. “My Savior Lives” was the new song we were teaching them. I am so proud of the folks on this worship team I handed them the chords and played them the recording for this song like a little more than an hour before this in addition to rehearsing the other songs. They pulled it off and stinking rocked. We will open with this one this week. BTW – the recording is straight from the board mix to CD. Pretty impressive for that.

 

 

I decided to take today as my day off this week and work Friday so I could ride with Kelly to Houston to meet her mom. Kelly had made plans a week or two ago with her mom to meet for a few hours so she could hang out with Kelly and the boys. Yesterday, I threw out the idea of me tagging along for fun and Kelly was really excited to not have to travel alone with the kids. So we decided that we would split up and they would go to the mall and I would go to Guitar Center. Here’s how that turned out–

I am now the proud owner of a Tobacco Sunburst Maple Top Taylor T5 C-1. This thing plays awesome as both an electric guitar and an acoustic. I can’t wait until Crosspoint next week.

 

Welcome to 2007!

Thanks to my many fans who have “encouraged” me to re-enter the blogosphere, I will now make my first post of 2007.

 To Romack and Mike whose persistant “encouragement” (read heckling) proved to me that there is a small yet faithful following, I will try to do better in 2007 to provide you with regular excerpts of my life and thoughts as well as things I may find amusing or interesting so as not to be dubbed the “lousiest blogger” of 2007. Although it was nice to get award, it is always just an honor to be nominated. My apologies for my absence. It is nice to be missed.

 To everyone else, please keep checking in and please keep the comments coming. On the last post I already have 12 comments and that only took 2 months. Maybe if you comment more, I will be motivated to really pour into this thing!

Soon to follow, a real post…