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.

Day 1 of the Integrity Seminars 4 Worship was great! Actually, day 1 is really tomorrow. Today was the pre-seminar Worship Labs. Extra fee but worth it. They offered multiple all day tracks.

Tracks included: 1) Worship Leading & Songwriting, 2) Worship Space, 3) Audio Excellence, 4) Worship Vocals, 5) Worship Band (separate breakouts for guitar, bass, drums, keyboard), 6) Worship Next.

I chose the Worship Leading & Songwriting. I was between this one and the Audio Excellence because they were talking about a lot of sound tech tips, discussion on wireless mics, etc. post February 2009, and digital consoles (with 6 Yamaha M7CLs). As much as this would have been beneficial for me to bring back some info for our sound team and fun to be a geek, I opted to hear some insights and experiences in my primary job area of worship leading. I’m also somewhat interested in the writing although I’ve never had much success here.

I made a good choice and got to hear some great and inspiring thoughts on worship leading and songwriting from three different, annointed worship leaders. Joel Auge from Toronto, Canada, Freddy Rodriguez from Las Vega, Nevada, and Paul Baloche from Lindale, Texas (East Texas baby!) shared a variety of their ideas and experiences. Joel and Freddy are fairly new to the Integrity family and to the global worship community. It was nice to hear some new voices and some fresh ideas. Paul is of course a seasoned and proven resource and wealth of knowledge to the worship community and it is always good to sit under his leadership.

What was most interesting to me about these sessions was the differences in perspective and approach that these three men brought to the table. In all honesty, this at first frustrated me. How could they talk about the same topics and yet have such different things to say. There were even moments when they seemed to contradict one another. Sidebar: I’ve noticed that this seems to occur often in various seminars around the various topics of Christian leadership.

In the end what I realized (and in fact am still chewing on), is that at the macro end of things they were all pretty much in agreement. Worship leading and songwriting is all about magnifying God, giving Him glory, and bringing people to a place where they can draw near and giving them a voice to express their praise to God. Their differences seem to be more a product of their personal experiences and of the cultures of the churches they have served.

I’ll try to recap their presentations on these topics in a follow-up post.

I’m at the Integrity Seminars 4 Worship conference in Houston today through Friday. I was really excited about getting to go to this. I usually try to go to one of these type of things every year and most of them are in the summer or middle of the year. This year none of those worked for me because Emmy was due at the end of July/beginning of August. I found this one many months ago and planned to go because the timing was good, the location was close and it was just a few days, not a week long.

Worship seminars like this are great for a couple of reasons.

1) Refresh and renew. As worship leaders in the church leading every week, we spend a lot of time leading in corporate worship but don’t get many opportunities to worship in this environment without the pressures of leading. Personal worship is important and helpful in refilling, but it is a whole other thing to gather with a group and be led by someone else.

2) Knowlege and insights. No matter how much experience, knowledge and skill you have in the craft of worship leading, it is always good to hear fresh, new and different thoughts and instruction in leading people into the presence of God. Especially from seasoned and successful worship leaders and pastors but even from other attendees who are in the trenches just like us.

3) Resources. Even with the easy access we have through the internet to discovering new songs, tools and study/training materials, it seems I always come away from these events with something that I wasn’t familiar with before.

I’ll try to post my experiences from this week and share some of these nuggets.

Today was a great day. Busy, but great.

We started off early. The kids were up around their normal 6am. (Can’t seem to break them of this.) About 7:30 I decide that we needed to eat some blueberry waffles for breakfast. Blueberry waffles is one of the fairly frequent weekend treats that my family loves. So Aidan, Trace and me get to work on those. (I think they just like to eat frozen blueberries while I mix the batter.) We get the waffles done and some sausage patties…um um good…and get our grub on. Then Kelly was out the door to get her band ready for the SFA Homecoming parade.

Meanwhile, I scramble to shower, dress and get 3 kids ready to go to the parade at 10. We made it by 10:05 and caught the whole thing. The boys sat still and well behaved while I fed Emmy a bottle. Shortly after the SFA band and some homecoming court cars passed, here comes Mommy’s band. The McMichael 8th grade band was great. Kelly slowed and said hi to the boys but I don’t think Trace figured out who she was til she passed. (He was a bit confused.) Then some floats, more bands and fire trucks. A little boys idea of a perfect parade. I think the theme had something to do with the 80’s because there were floats depicting 80’s movies. I remember Risky Business, Back To The Future, and Ghostbusters. Really clever float work. The whole thing was over by 11am and we headed back home.

Kelly got home, my parents came over and we packed up real quick to drive to Rusk to see Thomas the Tank Engine. If you don’t know, he’s the really useful engine from the Island of Sodor that children, especially boys, are fascinated with. We had gone to this event last year and Aidan loved every minute. So we head to Rusk and stop to get some Taco Bell for lunch. Then drive the short run out to the Texas State Railroad there in Rusk. This was a really great event for kids. Bounce houses, tattoos (the fake kiddy ones), toy trains to play with, bubbles, and of course a ride on Thomas the Train. The best part everything was free. Well with the exception of the train ride ($18 for age 2 and up) and concessions and Thomas paraphenalia. The weather was great and lots for the boys to do. The crowds weren’t bad because they did two weekends this year instead of one.

Around 5pm, we load up to head back to Nac. Get back to Nac and everyone is tired. Eat some dinner and then Kelly decides to take Aidan to Scare on The Square downtown. I stayed home to put Emmy and Trace to bed. Hopefully they will have a good time and bring home lots of candy. That’s what Halloween’s about anyway, right? What is Halloween about…? I guess it is about candy.

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.

Ok so I found the middle picture the other day on the Facebook profile of my boss and Senior Pastor Justin Beadles. I was shocked at the amazing resemblance to the internet famous Ronald Jenkees whose music videos I often find at Todd’s blog. What do you think?

To the best of my knowledge this was just coincidence. I don’t think he even knows who Ronald Jenkees is. Pretty crazy, huh?

Todd requested that some other folks try a “My Friday” post in an effort to demonstrate his power and influence over us! And so here it is…

Friday is normally my day-off anyway but I’ve been off all week since Tuesday with the baby.

5:52 am – Awoke to Aidan (3.5) crying out from his room. Got up to go check on him and tell him to stay in his bed until 6am. (Our rule to keep him from getting up at 5am or earlier everyday. He really likes to attack the day.) Finally got him to calm down and went back to lay down for 8 minutes.

5:58 am – Get up because Trace (2) is crying out now. Go to get him and let both boys get up. (Close enough.) Got the boys their milk and Aidan went to wake Grandma up. Kelly’s mom came up to stay with us for the first week of the new baby.

After that, the boys and Grandma watched Playhouse Disney and Kelly got up too. I changed Emmy (2 days) and brought her to Kelly to nurse. I checked emails and blogs for a little bit and then made some coffee. Jackie, Kelly’s mom, and I made breakfast (eggs and potatoes, ummh good).

About 9:30 am, I loaded up Aidan and Trace to head to Lufkin for a boys outing. We went to the Lufkin Zoo and they were pumped. As soon as we got there Aidan wanted to ride the train (the primary attraction). I had already figured on riding twice. Once before the zoo and once after, so I brought my $2. The train ride was exhilarating as usual, but then, just as we arrived in the train station to finish the ride, I realized that we were going to fast. The train slowed but didn’t stop and we were off for a second trip. Awesome! 2 for the price of 1. The boys loved it although, by about half way through the second round, my caboose was tiring of the wooden bench seat.

After the train, we went into the zoo. They love the zoo. I guess most kids do. There’s something about watching kids experiencing these animals that’s different than how we as adults do. It’s like, even though most of the animals are laying around out of boredom or trying to stay cool, they still see them as the wild and ferocious creatures that they are supposed to be in their natural habitats.

The zoo was cool and as we left, (yep, you guessed right) I got the “Can we ride the train again?” So off we went to ride again. This time Aidan wanted to ride in the very last car, which happens to face backwards. So we rode the last time looking at where we had been instead of where we were going. Thrills a minute.

By this time the boys are waning but they still want to go play on the playground at the zoo. This was number 2 on our must do list for the day. So we did. They swang?, swung?, swinged? on the swings. They climbed and slid down slides.

Then we went to McDonalds. (Am I the most awesome dad or what?) Ate lunch and skipped the McPlayland. I took them to Soundtechs so I could pick up a new component for my pedalboard. They got to play on some of the drums and look at lots of cool stuff. (Sorry Bill and Tim if we made you nervous.)

We finished that up and loaded into the van to head home. Less than five minutes later, both boys were out cold. Got ‘em home and put ‘em in bed for a good long nap.

We had my parents over for dinner tonight along with Kelly’s mom, Jackie and here sister, Jessica. I grilled some superb steak cuisine.

Tomorrow is Trace’s 2 year-old birthday party. It will be a small affair of mostly family due to the new baby. It’s a Trash Truck theme with a Trash Truck Cake and Trash Can Cupcakes. My boys are obsessed with Trash Trucks. I think we own about six toy versions and they love to watch the one come by our house once a week. Hopefully, they’ll have higher aspirations later in life. Either way, I’ll love ‘em like nobody’s business.

Hope you had a good Friday. Have a great weekend!
Ryan

She’s here! And yes it’s a girl so everyone is happy. Kelly said, “It’s a girl, it’s really a girl! Oh my gosh.”

Emmy Claire Finnerud arrived at 11:31 am today. 8 lbs 14.5 oz. We’re still waiting on them to measure her. Baby and mama are both healthy and Kelly did a fantastic job!!

Kelly and Emmy get acquainted

I’ll post more pics later.

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.

We’re here in the hospital. 2 hours in. Kelly’s doing well. She got the epidural a little while ago and is starting to feel good. We should meet baby girl around or before lunch.

I tried to get the video on Mogulus working but it is not happening yet. I’m on the wifi but it may be not allowing me to stream video. We’ll keep trying.

More to come later…