Mario & Leah Engaged

Here is a shot from Mario and Leahs' recent photo shoot. More to come on the fickr site.

MDR Photography

I have had the pleasure of doing a few photo shoots with some of the seniors in our church. Check out the photo page link to the right. Love you guys, cant wait to see you all (Oregon crew) in may.

Celebrating Two Births

Today we celebrate Mark's day of birth and what an amazing 32 yrs he has had so far. I have only had the privilege of knowing him for his last 11 years but what an incredible time that has been. I love this man with all my heart and I'm so grateful to the Lord for bringing us together and continually growing our relationship. There are so many qualities I love about Mark; his sense of humor, tenderness, compassion, boldness and devastatingly handsome good looks. Mark is truly everything I could have dreamed for in a husband but so much more. Babe - I love you so much and am so thankful to God, Bing & Debbie for bringing you into the world on this day!

The second birth we celebrate today is the birthing of a new chapter in our story of adoption. We turned in all our paperwork to the agency today which begins our 2 month home study process which hopefully leads to us being certified adoptive parents! Then, we wait.... Wait for the call from the agency that there is a birth mom that wants to meet us or that there is a baby at the hospital that is ready to come home with us. Basically, we are within possibly months of having a baby! This is exciting and terrifying all at once as I'm sure any of you with children can attest to. I had a dream last night that I think sums up my feelings about this journey we are launching into......

In my dream I was getting on a roller coaster and was really nervous but wanted to go on the ride. I had a friend with me who was sort of a combination of a few people in my life who remained in her seat, calm, peaceful and ready to go where the ride takes her. I on the other hand was having a complete panic attack! I didn't think my seat belt was fastened properly so I kept screaming to the guy not to start the ride, I wasn't ready! He came over and sure enough, I was belted in just fine but there were all these other belts around me that I wanted to use too but couldn't find anywhere to attach them. He assured me that the one that I had over my lap would work just fine and that I was secure and had nothing to worry about.
The ride started, click click click went the coaster up the giant hill. My heart was racing, I wanted to tell them to stop so I could get off but at the same time I was really excited to be on the ride. I closed my eyes as tight as I could, grabbed onto the seat and off we went down the first big drop. I screamed OH SH#@! Nice right? I was completely terrified and thought oh no, I can't do this, I'm not going to make it! I look over at my friend and there she is, cool as a cucumber, looking around enjoying every minute. I started to relax a little and then all of a sudden I was loving the ride, laughing, yelling and just having the best time! There was a moment when we came up to the top of another drop and I could see the whole city around me, it was beautiful. The words of our pastor's message on Sunday rang in my head "don't be so focused on the destination that you forget to enjoy the journey". For the rest of the roller coaster ride there were moments of sheer terror but more moments of incredible joy and in both emotions I was enjoying the journey for all it was worth.

I think that sort of sums up how I'm feeling about our adoption process. We are at the click click click part of the roller coaster, starting up the hill only to launch out into the great unknown where undoubtedly there will be moments of incredible excitement, great fear and unspeakable joy! I'm beyond excited about what the next few months will hold for us and I know that with Jesus, Mark and I all on this ride together it will be a great ride indeed!

Eight Years Ago....

I married the woman that I couldn't have even dreamed of. I was thinking tonight as we were out about how I fell in love with Kendra, watching her on stage in Guys and Dolls, knowing that the star of the show had the hots for me. Watching her sing in a swing band, sing to me, in a bar full of guys wanting her hand. She would sing Fever right to me, like she did on the way home tonight. Today I took her out on the town. First we went to Ulta to get her the new fangled hair iron that she has had her eye on. Then we drove down town and parked, she was asking me the whole time what we are doing and where we are going, to be honest I had only one plan for the night and that was dinner later, but I was going off the cuff during the day. So we walked around the up and coming area of downtown Phoenix and checked out the old buildings, new condos, and little nuggets that we will take in another day. One of the most recent, and much needed, additions to town is the lite rail train that runs from north Phoenix to west Mesa. We hopped on the train and headed to Tempe to walk around the college district of Mill Ave, had a coffee at a local shop, walked around and window shopped, then hopped back on and headed back into town, literally ridding into the sunset. After arriving back in town we headed to the only place I had planned to go, La Piccola Cucina, a small mom-and-pop eatery in Phoenix. It had won "best of" Phoenix last year and Kendra and I are always up to going to the local spots over the chain. It was an old house turned restaurant, run solely by mom and pop, and daughter. It was us and two other couples, enjoying the food and vocal styllings of pop. After being wished well by the two other couples, married 42 and 21 years respectfully, we drove home wondering what this next year will bring. More family time, more friend time, a lot more ministry time with our leadership at LCC, but what we are most excited about is the prospect of bringing a child home soon into our 9th year of marriage. We have had tough times, we have been blessed, but we know that we know that we have each other. That we love, and have love. Thank you everyone who has loved us for 31 and 28 years, thank you to those who have loved us for 4. We couldn't have done it without all of you, we couldn't have done it without the Lord. Also I want to thank those of you that have helped recently with our adoption fund, to find those cards in the mail has really blown us away. Know that everything we get goes in a special box and will be dealt out as the charges come in. You are amazing, thank you. Babe I love you, you amaze me. My beautiful, my star, my song. I am blessed, blessed indeed.

An update on our story.

Hello friends,
Mark and I were asked to write about our journey of starting a family and since some of you only know bits and pieces of our story I thought you might like to read more about how the last few years have played out for us. The worship leader from our church, Kyle Campos, who many of you know, has a blog and his latest series is called "God in our worst times" where he has asked some people to share about how God has brought them through difficult times in their lives. You can click on God in Our Worst Times: “Our baby is Faith” to read our post and click on http://feeds.feedburner.com/OurRisingSound to subscribe to the blog so that you can continue to be notified of new posts.
Feel free to check it out if you would like to :)
love,
Kendra

Our Friend Alyssa on MTV

So a long story short our friend was on MTV, Made. Well apparently she has a big fan base all over the world. Check out the link here to read others but I had to post this one. (Sorry if I offend any of my french friends with this, wait do I have any french friends?)


"Hello! sorry my english is bad beacause i am french!
I see theese video on made! and, and I have a lot have fun! wouhahaha hoho ect..
also because it resembles me, delay, always funny, second degree a lot!
on top of that I also am in the artistic world professionel, I am drummer, and music professor! but my pass time favorie is humour! And outside her, it really corresponds to all that I like at a woman! physically I had the blow of lightning, and its mentality, is identical to mine, they would say my ame sister! I would really like to meet it! but the language, the country separates us, then I have moin of chance that any American of etre happy with her! Snif!
So i'm a men so tired"

Thank you Dennis from France.

I love Jelly....

So, here is the story. On a recent trip to Oahu to visit Jr and Kate, I did as much face time with the ocean as I could. From the first day I got there to the day I was leaving I made sure to get into the water at least once. The water there is warm and a beautiful shade of clear that lets you see the bottom and everything in between. The first day I went swimming went off with no problems, I had a good time boogie boarding with my pops. The second time, well the second time was the first time getting stung by what I like to call "PMoW". aka Portuguese Man-o-War. The first time I got stung on the foot, I liken it to getting stung by a bee kinda but also getting whipped with a small willow branch at the same time. Questions like "do I pee on it" or "how long is it going to sting" were going thru my head, but on a scale of pain this was about a 6 maybe 7. The second time I got stung was around my wrist, (there are pics below the wrist on is out of focus but you get the point), now I am used to getting my arms beaten and whipped, we would play a game at work where we get a bit of wire and whip each other with it. Sometimes we would even make shapes, a heart or even the company logo and "brand" it on our arms with welts. So this wrist thing was uncomfortable but familiar. Now I can't remember if I got hit again before the last day, must be all the toxins in my system, but I will skip to the last day. So I am out there and I can see them floating on the surface of the water sailing along with the wind, so I would push them away with the boogie board and continue my swim. After about 10 min of not seeing any all hell broke loose, I must have insulted one of their mothers or something because they came at me with such force, knocked me off the board and held me under water till I couldn't breath. I struggled to get to the surface, clawing at the water hoping someone would see my flailing, then just as I was about to yield to their grip, they let go and all was calm and I stumbled to the beach. I know, sounds crazy right? Well even though it didn't go down like that it still felt like that. See, I was out there and it seemed like the made a ninja attack on me, it might have been one or could have been 12, but the stingers were doing a number on my sides. As I got out of the water I was pulling the long (3ft) tentacles off of my body. They were wrapped around my arm and hand and up and down my sides, you could even see the little blue stingers on my skin. I went back to the house and had a swim with the Finner, got all packed up and headed to the Ward for some last minute shopping. As we were down there I was feeling worser and worser, like I went on a binge the night before and I had all those toxins in my system. The flight home was good, I was kinda uncomfortable the whole time but as the hours past so did the hangover. I did have welts for a few days after, I was able to show the guys at work, who got a kick out of it. Anyone that knows me and the things I have gone thru (if you dont know what I have gone thru should I do a post about them?) can have a good laugh at this one, I know my family in Oahu did.