Greetings, 2011!

What a year was 2010!  I started out the year with the 2-week-old news that I was going to be a father, something made all the more real by my wife's constant morning (and afternoon, and evening) sickness.  Silly me, I thought I could handle a 100 book reading challenge, regular book reviews, Bible reading updates, and other normal blog updates while finding a house, trying to rent out a house, preparing for a baby, and taking care of Rebecka.  A quick look at my updates from 2010 shows how well that went.

With the year beginning with plans for a baby in the late summer, we worked busily to get everything in order so he would have a place to stay.  At the time we lived in a two-bedroom apartment where the second bedroom was my wife's work-at-home office, leaving maybe a drawer for our coming son to have as a bed were we to stay there.  So, we upgraded our house search to level orange.

Meanwhile, Rebecka has a home near Cleveland where she lived before we got married and she moved down here to southern Ohio.  It was at the time occupied by some of her family members and her mortgage was taken care of and everything went well.  However they found themselves a house, which then required us to prepare that house for rental.  We had tried selling it before, but the market for houses was historically dismal, so we took a week in the spring to fix up little things here and there and put it up for rent.  Renters finally in place, we no longer had to worry about that house (except for, of course, the problems arising from being a landlord), and we pressed on to find our new house.

Through what can only be a divine intervention, we found a house that had been on the market for only a week and that was only being sold by the owner instead of through a realtor.  The owners, however, had found that house through the realtor we were using to buy a house, and things just fit together just right for us to get the house: a 3-bedroom with 2 garages and a nice, fenced-in backyard with a swing set already in place. 

The main obstacle then was the fact that we had two months before our son was due and had to move from our apartment to the house and (the nesting urge so great in Rebecka by now) prepare his room.  Of course, new obstacles arose (getting rid of a pest problem, having to replace the carpets, moving in and out of the garage several times), until we finally had everything in place nearly a week before Samuel arrived.

Ah, yes: Samuel, our new son.  First-time parents never expect that first month, and I was not at all prepared.  It (the whole parenting thing) has gotten much better since then, and he's so fun now with his smiles and learning to laugh.

So, forgive my absence this past year.  This year promises to be bigger.