Katy Perry (Hudson)

So she used to be Katy Hudson, now she is Perry. She sings a song about kissing girls and people really like it. Before they were famous.

JMM part 2

Check it out here.

Hospital visit take ? 10

So i have been bed ridden for the weekend with various symptoms. Fever, cough, sore throat, back pain, joint pain, and vomiting. After a while i could barely make it from my bed room to the living room without blacking out. I felt better after church sunday and went out to have lunch. That went well for about 20 min then i was sick in a whole new way. After returning home i decided to take a look down my throat to tell where the pain was coming from. The back of my throat was all red and swollen and I had little white spots all over. My fever came back and it was a steady climb so we went to the ER to get some antibiotics and pain pills for the back. I mistakenly told the doctor that my fever, last I checked, was at 106. He looked at me wide eyed and had a bit of a chuckle, guess i was ment to be in a coma at that temp. After a brief exam which included him sticking a swab down the back of my throat and asking me to say awwww, he determined I had strep throat. 4 out of 5 symptoms. I was really shooting for the 5th but came up short with a solid passing grade none the less. We filled the script and went home to rest. At the hospital I was given the option of getting a shot of penicillin or going home with the pills, he asked if i was allergic to pen and i told him i wasn't sure but I am allergic to a select few food items. Again a chuckle and he sent me on my way with the pills. Two hours after taking the pills i was in bed, covers off cause kendra is a furnace and touching her skin while having a fever causes mine to melt, my head, fingers, and back stated to itch. First sign of allergic reaction to pen? Hives. I go to the bathroom and turn on the light, sure enough welts and itchy spots in those places. While i was looking in the mirror i heard james asking "Do i look swollen to you?" As I returned to bed Kendra was on the phone with the ER, I think she has em on speed dial now, and they said stop the pills, take benadril and come back in the morning for a different prescription. As I am sitting in bed, chuckling to myself, I see a mosquito on my head board. Yep a freaking mosquito. Not hives, a freaking mosquito. So at that point i had a tough decision to make, risk third degree burns from exposure to Kendras' spider spooning or mosquito bites that send me into a panic thinking a am going to die due to anaphylactic shock. I took two more penicillin this morning and no mosquito bites have been found.

John Mark McMillian

We have part one of the interview done with JMM before the concert last month. Check it out here.

Work and Pain

Ok i know i am no good at this blogging thing but here we go. As Tyson sleeps at my feet (oh which reminds me, he is getting fixed tomorrow) my elbow hurts. I spent the weekend in Vegas for some fun and a UFC fight. UFC is a fighting league where guys get paid to punch, kick, knee, choke and try to break arms legs and ankles, and I love it. But that post is coming as soon as I get a few pics of the weekend. Anywho i bring up vegas cause i think it started there, the pain that is. I think i got Hold em elbow. A condition which occurs when a player gets a blister on his or her elbow from playing to much texas hold em. So my left elbow all of A sudden started bothering me on monday and when i inspected it i noticed a large blister right where i rest it on say a kitchen table or in this case a poker table. I didn't think much of it, i mean come on its a blister am i a wuss? So i went about my work day with only slight discomfort for the next two days. Today, today is a new chapter in the pain. Im gunna get a bit graphic cause its funny for those that know me and know the strange things that have happened to me in the past, ie: various nut allergies, almost killed by surfboard, bitten by some bug and taken to hospital, extreme reactions to ant bites. Ha freaking ha. So today i wake up and my elbow hurts more and now the blister is back, or so i thought. Just off to the side of the blister i feel heat and I see a pocket of nasty. As we all know this is a classic sign of infection, but why did my blister get infected? Well we can start by how I got the blister in the first place, a poker table in Vegas, but i think its more recent then that. You see I have been working at a job here in the phx that would make pest control and health inspectors ill. The building I am working on used to be KFC, right before christmas they closed it and it has been sitting vacant ever since. Recently it was broken into and all the copper was stolen from the panels and ac units and we were brought in to re-pull wire and hook everything back up so new tenants could move in. Well apart from the nasty 1/4 inch layer of grease on everything there are an extreme amount of cockroaches, pigeons, and rats in the building. The first day i had a huge roach climb my leg and almost make in into my shorts. Since the thieves destroyed the ac units on the roof the pigeons moved into the duct work inside the building leaving piles of poo where ever there is a register for the air. I opened up one panel and the bottom of it was overflowing with dead roaches, they like the heat the panel gives off i guess. The roof was nasty, pigeon nests everywhere with all stages of egg, half embryo and baby birds cooked by the heat. Well the new ac units were installed but the guys didn't clear out the birds from the duct work and now there are a number of dead birds in the ceiling some sticking half out of the registers in their last hopeless attempt at escape. This is how i think I got the infection in my elbow. We have been installing a new main panel in a closet kinda on the outside of the building, but right where we are installing it is where the drain is for the roof gutter. A roofing company came by and cleaned the roof by washing it down so all the pigeon poo and half babies and feathers and nasty drained right down then dried at my panel room doorstep. In the installation process i have been rolling around in that fine little dirt pile trying to get a 56 inch panel into a 55 inch closet. Every day i come home a pile of filth, a few days i just wanted to burn my clothes. I was taking a shower today and felt the urge to use a wash cloth and scrub myself till i bled, you know like they did in mid-evil times, a good blood letting. It reminded me of being a kid and mom would come up with that wash cloth and it felt like a cheese grater on my face. I needed a cheese grater all over by arms and legs today. I sent out a picture the other day of a few goodies I found at the job, i called it the three main food groups of KFC. If the infection gets worse I will go get some antibiotics, as far as staying clean at the job, not so much, I don't do well in pants and long sleeves due to the heat. I have been draining my elbow all day and it seems to be getting better, but time will tell. ( I had to add that part just for gross factor).




Also Kyle wrote on this after I sent him the pic you can read his thoughts here.

Thank you China for warning us.

Dang I was going to try this one on my fall salmon fishing trip. Back to the lure drawing board.

I watched Juno

It is a beautiful movie, very funny, great acting, and nice to see young talent in movies who make you feel rather than make crude jokes and do drugs. I recommend this move.
Before I went into the movie I got a call from my mom. She was asking me what my thoughts were on adoption, if i had thought about it for Kendra and I, and if I hadn't, to pray about it. If you are reading this asking yourself why I would be talking about adoption let me splain.

Kendra and I have been trying to get pregnant for three or four years now. Just until the past year we just thought we weren't going about it the right way, it wasn't the right time of month, or i had been drinking to much mountain dew. Things of that nature. We decided to each get a physical from a doctor to maybe see if our parts were working up to par starting with me. I had a bad test the first time, a horrible experience that i have posted about before. Then a month later I went back in to re-test, this time i studied, and i had a miraculous change of results. With this new found vigor we started the path of getting Kendra checked out. She has a regular cycle each month but as we have found out that means nothing. She is healthy, beautiful, and in her exams they have found nothing wrong. There was another test they had to do and that involved injecting a dye into her fallopian tubes and watch the path it takes from her ovaries to her uterus. I sat in the doctors office waiting room, pretending to read magazines and watch the t.v. I wasn't aloud to go into the exam room because they were using x-ray equipment to fallow the dye down the path. I paced the hall, stopping any doctor/nurse/lab tech/ i could and asked how things were going, can i go in, when can i see my wife. As one doctor left the room Kendra was in I could see her lying on the table, with another doctor bedside, I could make out the sound of her crying as the doc explained what was happening on the screen at the end of the table. "I'm sorry but we cant let you in because of the x-rays" were word that I couldn't bear to listen to. Were they hurting her? What were the words coming out of the doctors mouth and why did i want to punch her so bad for making my wife cry? Kendra came out and we sat in waiting for a few min before they called us in to go over the results. I found out that they weren't hurting her physically, but our emotions were about to go through hell. They found that her tubes failed to make the path from point a to point b. The dye didn't enter her uterus like it is supposed to, but instead stopped. Just stopped. After some discussion we found the reason behind the blockage. When Kendra was 16 her appendix burst. She stayed home thinking it was a flu or food poisoning for a week. As things progressed and got worse she went to the hospital and was admitted before finishing the paperwork. The doctors couldn't believe she was conscious, or even alive. They put her on a major antibiotic, it was actually a form of kemo or radiation they use for cancer, to fight the infection. Since she had made it this far with the burst appendix in her they didnt want to do surgery and risk spreading the infection even more, so they left it.

The doctor told us it was the first time he had heard of a burst not being surgically repaired. Because of the severity of the infection, scar tissue formed inside her abdomen. That scar tissue has formed around her fallopian tubes pulling them away from her uterus, thus breaking the chain of life. He was even concerned about doing a surgery to repair or even explore her abdomen. He fears that even the first cut to open her up might cut into her intestines or other organs that have been moved because of the scarring. Not to mention the fact that such a surgery wouldn't even be covered by insurance because of the fact that its not a "medical or life threatening" procedure it falls under a fertility procedure. He explained that invetro was still an option because her reproductive system, all though not complete, was doing everything right. Still an option but again not covered. I know it is expensive to have children but out of the gate we would pony up 10,000 for a 95% chance. A good chance for sure, I would take those odds any day, and still might.

I know in my heart that I will have children of my own, that my daughter Faith is going to look like her beautiful mother, and I will get to feel her kick and listen to her heart beat inside K. Adoption is something that I haven't thought about all that much because I am hanging on to hope and faith that the promise I have in my heart about my children will come to pass. I know adoption isn't a "fall back plan", adoption is a wonderful life saver for the abandoned and neglected generation of today. I feel it is the place of the Church to rise up and raise these children. Do I feel its the thing for me? I see my wife pregnant, i see the doctor smile as we see our baby in the ultrasound, i feel her kick. It's a reality to me, the hope is fed by faith. Are we going to do invetro? Kendra and I have talked about it a few times but not at length. Do i feel like i am giving up for considering it? Yes. I feel like i am selling God short, selling my faith for 10,000, just to have a child. Is that from God. No.

I liked this movie a lot. It was funny, i related to a few of the characters in the story. But as it ended I realized that I was still alive, still breathing, and I realized my heart was breaking. As we walked out of the movie K asked me if i liked the movie. I was silent because forming words would have made me weep, awkward for a lobby full of teens. As we walked to the car I thought about the pain in my chest, the hope, the waiting. I broke down as i reached the car, wept like I haven't wept in a while. I remembered. "Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick." And I felt my heart breaking. The pain of this experience had been forgotten, no not forgotten it had been there all along, just managed. Our friends and family are having more children, some of them are having there second or even third since we have been trying. They tip toe around K and I not wanting to hurt us by telling us their wonderful news, I don't want them to feel that way but i understand, they have seen our struggle and have seen our emotion. I don't blame them for having more, blame isn't even a word I should use. I am happy for them, to see their families grow. The Lord tells us to be fruitful and multiply. The funny thing is K and I were never good at math. But we hang onto the promise and the word. Thank you for loving us through this. We love all of you and cant wait to one day tell you our good news. With all my heart I love you, as much as it hurts right now.

Top 2

Mark Dean Photography or 1000 Words Photography

Love you all vote away

A Challenge to Family and Friends

OK, so since i have been asked by 10 people this month if i do photos for head shots, weddings, pregnancy, and even product pictures i figured i better get serious and get a business name and even some business cards made. But here is the thing, i have run into a bit of a block when trying to think of the name for it. That's where all of you guys come in, i need your collective creative guineas. The person who submits the name that i chose gets a free, (yeah I am going to charge for these things now) photo shoot of their choice. Need some family pics taken? How bout your Christmas cards coming up? Senior pics? So please submit as many as you want, no purchase necessary, void in um nowhere.

The Post Below

If you are planing on watching the movie 3:10 to Yuma dont read the post below until after you have watched it.

3:10 To Yuma

I just watched this movie last night with my bride and loved it. A nice action flic with a bit of blood and with blood comes violence, and a bit of language but other than that a solid movie. Apart from that though this is why i liked it, it plays out a great story of adventure and danger for a father and a son to partake in. Now granted there was a lot more adventure back in the old west days, everyone carried a gun, there was a lot more open range and a lot less law enforcement to keep the piece. But this story goes a bit deeper than that. Now i get into some spoiler stuff so if you haven't but are going to watch it then plug your ears. The father was wounded in the war between the north and the south, a wound that led to the removal of his leg, he is a cattle rancher in the Arizona desert during a drought. His oldest son has no respect for him as he watches the landowner burn down his barn in the middle of the night, watches them go with little to eat and his younger brother struggle with TB. The only source of pride he has is that his father lost his leg in the war from a sniper. Witch as we find out later in the movie he lost from friendly fire while he was running away from the battle. The father stumbles upon a great opportunity to not only get some much needed cash for his family, but the self respect that has been drained out of him for years. The scene is played out as the father comes into the house one last time before heading out on the epic journey. A dialogue between him and his wife after she asks why he is doing this and why he doesn't just stay home.

"I am tired of being dirt poor. we have nowhere to go. I'm tired of the way the boys look at me, and I'm tired of the way you don't. I've been standing on one leg for three years waiting for God to do me a favor, and I'm tired of waiting."

Both the main characters in the movie are men by the worlds standards, a cattle rancher and a wagon robbing outlaw. But as the movie progresses we find the hard exterior is a front and they both are broken inside. One cant live up to the war hero he has made himself to be, and the other is a boy of an alcoholic father who died when he was young, and a mother who abandon him at the train station. The under story is of the boy who wants to look up to his father, who needs a hero and needs to be called out as a man. A story that every boy from the beginning of time has lived out.

It is important for men today to be the hero's their children look too, to be present in their homes and absorbed into their lives. Sure i don't have any children (yet) but i know the importance of this. I know that I wouldn't be in the place i am today if it wasn't for my father, leading and shaping my life. Letting me be a boy, be rough, wrestle and play basketball with me. To show me what it means to be a man, provide for the family, and love my wife. Was he perfect, no, but that's the great thing about it, in his imperfection i learned. As men we want to be looked up to, as a leader, adventurer, wild at times, but also the safety, and the lover. It is no wonder that the majority of gay men had no father or strong male presence in their lives. It has led them to seek that male attention in unhealthy and dangerous ways.

It is equally important for men to feel wanted and appreciated. To feel like they are fighting battles and winning the prize. They want to be respected and see their prize blush and swoon over them as they come in the room. To be desired and loved, and boasted about. To ultimately get the girl.

Recently Kendra and I have been released to start our connection (small or home) groups from our pastor. My connection group is focused around calling out the men of today out. To be men that some of them weren't released to be by there own fathers, like the outlaw in the movie, and also, not the man they have painted themselves to be, like the war hero. God placed an order in the house, the man is the head (not in a chauvinistic way) and the leader. and its time that we learned to do it the right way and honor our wives and raise our children. To stop passing it on to the women to be the leaders and the ones who try and train the boys to be men. They don't how and it only leads to problems in that boys life later down the road. I could go on for a while but i really feel this is a important piece and has been missing for way to long in our world today. If you have the interest please read Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, it reflects the importance of this natural progression. Love

At last!

Man I have so many friends that this applies to, where to begin.....

How sweet it is

Hello people how ae we today? Nice, well Kendra and I are doing good, things are begining to heat up here, dips down into the 90's at night. (JR its a dry heat, you still got me beat). Nothing has changed on the baby front, still thinking over the sugery/invetro delema and praying in the meantime for another miricle. Please continue to lift us up in your prayers on that issue. Work is kicking into high gear for me, we have a lot of jobs and we are working long weeks but i have learned to ride the waves pretty well. Josh and Jose (workmates) are doing great at picking up the slack and making things smoother for me which in turn makes things smooth for the whole co. Kendra is ever battling the wieght of being a good friend/strong leader at her job. Putting the smack down when needed but most of the time she works for the bomb squad it seems, always defuseing some issue. I am working on some ideas in my head for photo stuff, it seems it has been on the back burner for a while, but a restored passion has come upon me. I have an engagement shoot tomorrow and then a wedding in Mexico next march for the same couple. I still love to shoot children (kinda sounds a bit sick, but in the right context) they dont shy away from the camera like adults do. I love it when people commit to the picture, it makes me feel good, and in turn the pics seem to turn out better. I will be more dilligent in posting photos, i have been going through my iphoto and deleting some of the not so's, I have 8000 pics in there and not all of them need to be taking up space. I have found some friends here also have a passion for photo and I plan on forming some sort of group so we can help chalenge eachother. Kendra is teaching some of the local kids hip-hop, and then thursdays she goes to the gym with some women from church and takes a hip-hop class there, pastors wife included. They have a great time the lot of them, like a bunch of little school girls giggling and huddling. I am continueing on my quest to loose weight, what i have lost hasnt found me, i took a left and pointed right, classic bait and switch. I have lost 20 pounds but more importantly lost two pant sizes. I am currently going to physical therapy for a back injury i sustained on the softball field, freak batting acident, i was swinging...... did i mention i was 30? They are working me pretty good there, helping to strengthen my core and get my bones cracked. I miss my neph Finn tremendously, he is so freaking cute and i swear i hear him scream everytime i go to JR's blog. Anyways thanks for reading, ask me a question and i will post on it. Love you.

Check it out

Our churches new name and web page. Check it out here.

New Pics

there are some new pics on the fliker site so go check em out by clicking the photo link on the right

First of many

So the other night Kendra and I come home from eating out at My big fat Greek and on our way home we see an accident happen. One car making a left after the light had changed was met by a car running a red head on, then red light runner continues to drive away much to the consternation of the other driver. He sped off after her, which is exactly what i would have done, his was a new Jeep, he didn't even have the plates yet. Hers was a beat up little geo or something and from the brief look I got at her she looked to be a bit anebreated as well. But thats not the pic for this story.

As we pulled into our hood I saw flashing lights coming from our cul-de-sac, Is my house on fire, did Tyson get stuck in a tree again, or did our neighbor flip his Jeep trying to turn it too fast? I was right, he came into the sac at to high of a speed, as he made the turn his foot slipped off the clutch and whammo over he went. He was okay and as he and another neighbor were trying to flip it with their Toyota all the cops in Goodyear came blazing in to save the day. They tried hard to convince the guy he had been drinking, but he told them again and again it was a simple mistake of underestimating the center of gravity to speed ratio that caused the topsy turvy. Anywho all was well, no one was hurt and the entire neighborhood got to hang out in my driveway. Good thing I just vacuumed it.

A Post

This is not Mark, this is Debbie sitting under strict orders from Mark to post something on his blog. I'm not sure that I can write under so much pressure, I mean it's like Joni Mitchell said on her "Miles of Aisles" tour, you just can't say to Van Gogh, "Hey paint another Stary Night Man!" So I guess that's me saying that I am an artist who needs inspiration to be clever and under this heavy pressure I can't just preform.

One thing I will say is that I am so happy to be here, a friend of mine said recently that I need to be present where I am and enjoy the moment. I am enjoying the moment and the moments. Mark ribbing and bossing me, mornings with Kendra and coffee and raisin toast, our dog Scout chasing their dog Tyson, lunch with my old friends and Wednesday night home group with my new friends. I'm enjoying the moments of answered prayers and small and large miracles, like the recent reversal of Mark's swimmers, the new test that says that he has more than enough. My faith rises to say that Kendra is next to receive and I am not alone in this, I am in a community of the faith filled, the ones my age who have lasted through the trials and the young who are audacious enough to believe with no evidence. I am reunited with a daughter in a new trial and I bring my faith to the challange and I belive in miracles and that old patterns can experience new hope.

One day, in mid-May we'll fly from here to see our other son, our grandson and our Kate and then we will return here to make the drive back to our "real life" in Oregon the first part of June, I will live in those moments too, I'll be "present" and I will give thanks, in the meantime, writing this has won me some time in front of the tv with Mark, Kendra, and Bing, we'll watch the recorded shows we love, we'll decide if we agree with the Idol judges and we'll be present and enjoy this moment.

Hey

Im 30!!! Get excited