Off to a good start?

I know, I know! No posts since last August. You want to know why?

His name is Jacob Owen Dey, born September 24th, 2011.

The plan was to hit the ground running when we got back from Christmas in Tacoma; to get back into life; to tackle projects that have lain dormant for months; to renew our commitments at church; to update this blog. Now midway through January...nope, at its end!...I've adjusted to reality. We came back and among other things got the flu. First Charlie. Two days later I got it. Three days after that little Charlie was sick. We quarantined ourselves, bleached and aired out the house (with days in the 60s that was actually a pleasant possibility), and watched the entire Band of Brothers series. Honestly, retching aside, it was a nice change of pace. And Jacob escaped the epidemic, which made the whole ordeal much more manageable.

In the meantime, we said good-bye to the Fowler's, our friends of almost five years. But it's more than just the time that we've shared together that makes their departure so significant. It's the quality of that time. Lindon and Charlie "did" seminary together. They struggled, excelled, studied, complained, got annoyed, learned and drank a lot of beer...together. Megan and I...well, among other things, had our first children together: four boys between us--Levi (Nov. '09), Charlie (Feb. '10), Jacob (Sept. '11), and Shields (Nov. '11). Levi is Charlie's first friend, whether he knows it or not. And we mustn't forget Sofie and Nash! If you can believe it, the facts of our big dogs and our fixer-uppers were what originally brought us together. "You mean, we can take Sofie with us when we go to the Fowler's for dinner?!" All that to say, we love them, and as all good friends do, they have left a hole in our lives when they left.

The rest of the month we've spent recovering from these two major events. So...no blogging. But now that the silence has been broken I feel a little better plunging into picture up-dates. Here you go, Grandparents!