Baby News and First Photo

On September 25th, Monica and I had our first prenatal doctor visit. We were surprised to find out that we’re a week further than we thought, nine weeks on the 25th. We got to see the little fluttering heartbeat and that cute little jalapeño outline of our baby—what a joy! The doctor said everything is going well and all is normal—praise God! Our due date is May 3, 2009.

Thank you everyone for your prayers, but please continue to pray as these first weeks are critical in the baby’s development. Monica is doing well, feeling great and looking more beautiful than ever. She’s showing quite a lot already, we’ll post photos soon. She’s been so blessed—so far she’s had only limited nausea and her nose has gone into super-sniffer-overdrive. That’s about all the “symptoms” of pregnancy she’s had.

That’s all for now. More later as there’s still TONS happening in our lives that’s worth sharing. We’ll post more shortly.

You got a little something on your face...

Ah, 1995, the year my sister started wearing sideburns and my brother grew his first beard. I started sporting the stylish half-stache. Very fashionable back then.

I have no idea why we taped my hair on our faces, but it makes me laugh just looking at the photo. I loved growing up with family I could be silly with.

Carry on. Sorry for this completely random photo. Sometimes you need to post this kind of stuff just to see who’s paying attention :D Love you guys!

International Talk Like a Pirate Day
September 19, 2008

In honor of Captain Bucca (Billy), why not celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day this Friday? Yes, this is a real holiday where you talk like a pirate. Don't know what pirates talk like? Perhaps you need to watch some classics this weekend like Treasure Island, Peter Pan or Pirates of the Caribbean. If you don't have time for a pirate film this week, you can also check out the Wikipedia's listing on this international holiday.

It’s official. We’re employed. And pregnant.

As of Monday, September 8, Monica and I are employees of Zondervan. The events leading up to this are long and detailed, but what’s important is God has answered our prayers. We are so blessed to have the opportunity to work for the Christian publisher and to do God’s work in a way that can potentially reach millions of people. The Lord has been so good to us over the past several months despite the tragedies we’ve faced and despite the tough economic times. We patiently waited, prayed and trusted that He would provide for us, and He did. The funny thing is, at the beginning of the month I had a conversation with Monica and I told her, “I don’t know how long we can keep going like this. If we don’t have some full time paying work by the end of the month I’m going to have to start really look for something.” Here it is September and we are both employed.

But the blessings don’t stop there. We are so happy to announce that next May we are expecting another child! We found out last Friday, the day after we signed our offer letters with Zondervan. God is so good and His timing is perfect. Great things are coming in the months ahead. We will be sure to keep the blog updated with our baby's progress, and as we do, we would like to ask for your prayers for a healthy pregnancy as we go forward. Our first doctors appointment will be at the end of September / early October. We are especially excited to see our baby's heartbeat and are looking forward to getting an official due date.

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us about our work situations and about having another baby. We are so grateful to have so many people praying on our behalf. Is all this news is a testament to God’s goodness and faithfulness or what?! Praise God that our prayers do not go unheard!

Incase you're wondering what exactly we'll be doing at Zondervan, you can watch this YouTube video about Symtio. Symtio is the first multi-channel digital media platform for retail. That's a mouthful and in layman's terms what this means is that Symtio is a platform that will allow Christian book stores and other retailers to sell e-books, audio books and other digital media online. As art director Monica will be designing all the marketing materials for the sales team, book stores, retailers and the website. As senior editor I will be writing copy for everything that Monica creates.