broken water

Telia's water has broken. Stay tuned here for updates...

Preparing for our little guy

So...we are having a baby boy in about 2 days. We are making all sorts of preparations. Telia has been feathering the nest with the vigorous instinct of hardwired anticipation...as for me, it is more of a cognitive thing. I KNOW we are having him, but I think I’m going have SEE, hold and smell this little guy before the realization sets in. For the moment, I am content to help Telia and try to stretch my mind like taffy around this life altering change in my own way.

We’re trying to close in on a name. I know I’ve said it a lot lately, but the hard part isn’t coming up with a great name... it’s coming up with a great name that we both agree on. We both like the name Peter. He is my favorite figure in the New Testament save Jesus Himself, but I thought that name was sort off limits. It is my opinion that Peter had more faith and joi d’vivre than any other contemporary of the Savior. I mean, come on... I didn’t see any of the other Apostles getting out of the boat to walk on water ... and, just for the record, the names Peter and Benjamin in the same family is in no way an allusion to Beatrix Potter’s Peter rabbit and Benjamin Bunny. I am pretty sure she was one egg shy of a dozen. I know. I saw the movie (Miss Potter) ... well, half of it.

As part of my preparation, I have begun 2 paintings. Neither is finished. One is found in our “painting” section of this site entitled “unfinished” meant that we are never finished becoming fathers. The second one is WAY more ambitious and symbolic (pictured above). In fact it includes a lot of symbolic imagery that is significant to me at 3 levels. For now, I think it will suffice to say only I hope it is esthetically pleasing and that I finish it within the next 6 months.

Preparing for a child is a spiritual process. It is forcing me to examine who I am and contrasting that person to the father I want to be for my son. Although I cannot clearly see the future or know precisely what the next few years will bring, I am teeming with hope. I don’t know if my body has enough room to hold it all...I have hope coming out of my finger tips, eyes and lips.

If anyone has a suggestion for the painting, names or fatherly advice in general, give me a shout out in the comments section por favor.

Before and After

We recently decided to put in wood floors. January, we were given the oppourtunity to do so, and since the baby will be here soon, we wanted to get them put in as soon as possible. Now they're done! I think it was the fastest home improvement ever.
Before

Wednesday, February 13, carpet was riped out.



Floors were put in on February 14 and 15. This was our Valentines Day. We will have a date another night.

Saturday they put in the quarter rounds and called it a day. Sunday, we were happily back into our home.

Ben's Haircut

Over the weekend, Ben asked me a question that I had not been asked for a long time. "Would you like to cut my hair?" Wow. I have not been asked that since I lived at home. In fact, I remember the last time exactly. I was a junior in High School(1998), and my brother Jed asked me for a haircut. Well, I think that I may have asked him if I could cut his hair since it was getting really long and curly. I told him that if I just cut the ends a little bit, that his hair would be more curly and look healthier. After agreeing that I would only cut a little, I began to snip. After a while, about an hour, I couldn't seem to get the ends even. I was just going about it my own way. Faithfully I continued, pretending to know what I was doing. After another hour, Jed heard me say the word that no one should ever say when you are cutting hair!!
"OOPS!" Jed, having been patient enough, just sat there waiting for me to say something else besides "OOPS." After the couple of hours of me trying to cut his hair and Jed just waiting patiently for this torture to finish, I ended up just using the buzzer and buzzed his head. And after all of that, Jed said, "THANK YOU!!!" Can you believe that, "THANK YOU!" Jed, you are so kind and wonderful. Thank you for being so patient and loving with me. Now, back to cutting Ben's hair. I think that he may have forgotten that whole episode or I just conveniently for got to tell him. Whatever the case was, it was a successful cutting. Ben's hair looks amazing and as always, so does he.

Family Fun

Anderson Family in front of our very own Sacramento Temple









Grammy Stout and Wesley


















Here are some fun pictures of Christmas and family. We enjoyed being home and in the company of our family and friends.




Uncle Jedediah and the Baby Anderson Cake that we made!!

President Gordon B. Hinckley

President Gordon B. Hinckley died yesterday. I just wanted to say how grateful I am for his service and how happy I am that he is able to be back with his wife. I will miss him but I know that he finished his work here and deserves a rest.
In the Salt Lake Tribune, an article stated that, "He dazzled people - members and outsiders alike - with his encyclopedic memory and almost superhuman work ethic. During his nearly 13 years as president, Hinckley gave more than 2,000 speeches, visited more than 150 countries, and greeted hundreds of diplomats and ambassadors. He was interviewed by journalists from nearly every major American newspaper, charming many with his folksy wisdom and self-deprecating humor.
"Treat me well," he would say with a sly grin. "I'm just an old man."
Yet even in his 90s, the figure Mormons consider a "prophet, seer and revelator" rarely thought like an old man.
"His keen intellect and thirst to understand how everything works resulted in a storehouse of knowledge that will be nearly irreplaceable," said Elder Marlin Jensen, the church's official historian. "I believe he was a true prophet but it didn't hurt that he was a genius, too."
I too know that he was a prophet, a seer and revelator and feel grateful to have him in my life.

Happy Holidays

Time has just flown bye. I cant even believe that it has been over a month since our last blog entry. This reminds me of keeping a journal. I wasn't the perfect journal keeper, however I tried. When ever time passed with the absence of writing, my whole entry would be a catch-up. At least there would be some type of record. Anyway, the holidays were amazing.
We were able to go home to California for a couple of weeks. We spent time with friends and family and saw those faces we love, even visit the places we love and eat all the Great Harvest we wanted(thanks to Dad Stout). It was wonderful to have the warm weather, the Sees candy and watch movies in a real theater!! We LOVE home. Thank you to all who made it so special.