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Beautiful

Grandpa and Grandma Ellis and Auntie Esther have arrived. Ariana has loved meeting them. I would write more but these pictures will have to speak for themselves today. I have to run. So, here they are.

Home at Last

We were finally able to leave the hospital last night. It was a cool moment, bringing her home for the first time. Ariana was supposed to be able to leave Saturday some time but she had Jaundice (this is common with most newborns). She had to be in a light blanket all day friday. On Saturday the Jaundice was worse and the little 5 pounder dropped to 4.9. The doctor pulled out all the stops and by Sunday she was significantly better. The doctor said we could go home at that point. We praise the Lord for keeping her safe and giving the doctors wisdom.

Uncle Taylor finally got up the nerve to hold Ariana on Sunday and hasn't wanted to stop ever since.

Ariana Marie Ellis

She is here. God answered so many prayers. March 16th at 6:42 in the morning Ariana was born. She is 5lbs even. 19" long. She is doing great. Mommy is doing great. Daddy is tired even though he dosn't have the reasons that Mommy has. Vanessa did a great job, I am so proud of her. Ariana is so tiny I can't believe it. Thank you all for your prayers, thoughts and notes. We are still at the hospital and will be for the rest of the week. Enjoy the pictures.

Christianity is Shocking

Good Morning. I am posting an article from my birthday present from my dear wife. I am 26 today for those who need to know and yes I feel old. Vanessa is due in 10 days so I will be a Dad. Everyone knows Dads are old. Well, anyhow, enjoy this excerpt.

For many contemporaries God has dwindled into a noble abstraction, a tendency of history, a goal of evolution; has thinned out into a concept useful for organizing world peace–a good thing as an idea. But not the Word made flesh, who died for us and rose again from the dead. Not a Personality that a man can feel any love for. And not certainly, the eternal Lover who took the initiative and fell in love with us.

Is it shocking to think of God as a pursuing lover? Then Christianity is shocking. If we accept the supernatural only as something too weak and passive to interfere with the natural, we had best call ourselves materialists and be done with it–we shall gain in honesty what we lose in respectability...

So strong is the materialist climate of opinion that even convinced Christians sometimes feel compelled to defend Christianity against the charge of “otherworldliness”–to slight its value as the passport to heaven in favor of its usefulness as a blueprint for remodeling earth. Yet we must blame our earthliness entirely upon Western scientific progress, as if materialism had waited for Edison to invent it. By no means. The Rome of Lucretius, the Athens of Epicurus–even the Isreal of Ecclesiastes–were hardly without their materialist philosophers. Devotion to the prince of this world is one of the ancient temptations, and perhaps our remote ancestors had no sooner invented the slingshot than they reared back on their hind legs and proclaimed that their technical progress had now enabled them to do without religion. The choice before us today is just what it always was–whether to be worldly or otherworldly; whether to live for the unloving self or to live the love God.

Joy Davidman (1915-1960)–Poet, author, and the wife of C.S. Lewis.

Updates

Take a look at my recent portfolio updates here. The boating work is some of the freelance I have been doing for the last year or so.

Temps have been threatening zero (and hitting it) the last week or so and and before it got to cold I was able to enjoy the frozen lake down the road from our house.

Our church gave Vanessa a baby shower last week. At this point the baby has more stuff than I do.

That's it for now. Baby will be here soon.