Come and see my adorable nephew!

Daniel and Mommy.
Daniel and Daddy. (look at his precious little face!)
Daniel and Grandma. (my mom is now a grandma!)
Daniel and Uncle Sam.
The happy family (well 2 of them are happy at least...).

Daniel Jacob has arrived!!

I'm an Aunt! I'm an Aunt! I'm an Aunt! He was born last night. He's healthy and happy - well relatively happy, I got to hear him crying over the phone - the most adorable cry I've ever heard. Poor sister is so happy to have him safely born! She has not only been in labor for over 2 months now but the final "pushing" stage took 3 full hours! But he his here! He's 7lb 2oz, not to shabby for being 3 weeks early. I will post a picture as soon as I have one.

My goodness! I have in the last 2 days become, for the first time in my life, both an Aunt and a girlfriend. Since when did life get so exciting!

So I thought you guys might like to know...

...that I have a boyfriend.
His name is Michael. He's an anthropology major. He's pretty much incredible. I'm sorry I'm not going to go into massive details about anything on my blog because that strikes me as weird and kind of creepy, actually even this much feels a little bit creepy, but I knew I'd want the same from you all, so there it is. But don't worry, I'm sure you'll hear pleanty about him in the coming weeks.
Peace and love.

Warmth!

The entire campus is smiling. The most common exlamation to be heard today whilst walking to class is, "It's so gorgeous out!". I went for a walk and had a smoothie. Better yet I DIDN'T WEAR A COAT! And what, you ask, is the temperature bringing on this glee? 44 degrees F. That's right brothers and sisters, we have not only gone above freezing for the first time in over a month but we have actually gone TWELVE degrees above freezing! Ah the rapturous joy. As Michael so aptly put it, "I think I had forgotten that shunshine is supposed to be warm. Like the side of my body which had sunlight hitting it was actually warmer than the otherside. I think I'd completely forgotten that that happens." It's good to be reminded.
Sometimes you have to experience the bitter cold and darkness to appreciate just how wonderful the sunshine really is.

OK ok ok.

That's Michael on my left and Lauren on my right. She's from Oregon - thus the incredibly cute outfit. We are making chocolate covered strawberries with a big group of people to have an all inclusive and fun Valentines Day event with Michael's group of friends. He's actually even cuter than that in real life...

And this is Kenlee, Michael, Sheryl and I sledding on a truly midwestern attempt at a hill... which was just enough of an attempt to be quite a lot of fun.

Are you ever eating hard candy and you bite it and it kind of hurts your tooth and then you feel a small rounded piece in your mouth and you wonder, is that my tooth?! so you have to take the small piece out and check if it is your tooth and are relieved to discover that it is in fact just a bit of the hard candy that you bit off. That just happened and I realized I do it almost every time I eat hard candy.

In other news: There is a guy... who I've been getting to know... who is pretty great. Pretty gosh darn great. And that's all I will say about it for now. Peace!

Apologies and extras

I am aware that I have been remiss in my blogging duties of late. I don't have very good excuses, except that nothing that I've been thinking about lately has been something I've wanted to write on or display pictorally for a large audience. Intellectually my thoughts revolve mostly around social theory these days, and that's boring enough for people in my major to listen to me yammer on about, much less all the rest of you. And personally, well, yeah, nothing to say in this public space.

For now I will leave you with a stanza from my favorite poem (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot)

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To preparte a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

And now some musical reccomendations: I'm sure all of you listen to Sufjan Stevens by now, he's hitting it pretty big, but following closely on his heels are 2 of his good friends Dennison Witmer and Rosie Thomas, both Christians as well and both making remarkably delightful folk-indie music. I also recently aquired the new Shins album which is terrific, and I bought Riot on an Empty Street by the Kings of Convenience, which I've been wanting for ages and which fully lives up to all I'd hoped it would be.

My sister has not had her baby yet! This is great but she needs to actually have him relatively soon in order to be able to return to Norway with Viggo before his visa runs out, otherwise it will be kinda complicated. So our prayers will soon be changing from "keep him in there Lord!" to "let him out soon Lord!" Thank you for those who have been asking about it. We really appreciate it.

And finally, let me just say. The Lord is really beautiful. He blesses me so far beyond what I could ask or imagine, much less deserve. I hope you are all knowing that in your lives often and assuredly.

You know when...

...you're thinking about one thing and then another thought flits through your mind so you try to hurry and finish the first thought so you can catch it but you're too slow and by the time you're done the second has flown up up away and far beyond your reach? Yeah. I hate that.

Oh and here's the link to this incredible video my brother made. Samuel that is, I know how Ally hates it when I don't clarify. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1815139855 Is there anything cooler than playing tag with a chair? I don't think so.