Kylan, Newest Gast Extraordinaire

A big shout out to Andy and Dawn (mainly Dawn!) for a most excellent looking son, Kylan Bradford Gast. Seven pounds and 20 inches of pure nephew cuteness.

This one's for Lindy

My sister Linda is 28 today. Mother of 2 and friend to many, her life is worth celebrating. I am proud to call her my sister and my friend. We've been through high school together, college together, marriage together, childbirth together, and momming. Linda is really good at loving people. Because of her this world is a better place and my life is a better thing.

Cloudland Hike

Oak, Meadow, and I hiked to the first waterfall of Cloudland Canyon this afternoon. We may have hiked on to the lower waterfall but for the sub-freezing temperatures. However, but for the cold air the kids wouldn't have had fun holding and sucking on foot-long icicles.

I am so in love with these kids (Dove too!). I suppose every father, every mother thinks their kids are the greatest, the best of the bestest, better than all the restest. In one sense this is indeed true for all, as each parent has this golden window to know, watch, listen, learn from their children as they g(r)o(w) from infant to experience in all things. Each day, each hour these fleeting window-moments sneak up on me, or sometimes smack me in the face (or butt), forever infinite, forever gone. Sometimes I wonder about the curiousness of God in how these humans He has made choose to respond to all the golden window-moments of our lives.

Two Movie Recommendations

We've seen two really good movies lately, each one was sad but with a dash of hope sprinkled in. They made me think of the myth of Pandora's box. The story goes that Zeus decides to punish the mortals by sending to earth a beautiful but silly woman named Pandora. He gives her a box and tells her never to open it. But like Adam and Eve, her curiosity gets the better of her and she eventually opens the box unleashing hate, envy, greed, slander, sickness, disease, war and every other evil unknown to mankind...but at the bottom of the box is hope, in the form of a pure and simple flower.

The movies are The Motorcycle Diaries and Born Into Brothels. I came away from both movies wanting to be a missionary. It seems like bringing hope to people with no hope is what really matters in this life, people with leprosy, people oppressed by their governments and treated unjustly, children with no future, criminals, those afflicted with AIDS. I want my life to show love like Christ's even if only one person receives the flower.

We are What We Read

We've always read our kids lots of fairy tales and you can kind of tell. It comes out in their conversations. For example, Oak was on the hammock the other day with Noelle and Marielle and he said, "Marielle, I know you want to marry me but I'm going to marry the most beautiful woman in the world." (and just for the record, Marielle is pretty dang cute)

And here's one from Meadow. Oak wasn't believing something that Meadow was telling him so Meadow responded with "Oak, what do you think I am? a foolish tricker? I am not a foolish tricker." Only Meadow's way of saying it, it sounds more like foowish twicker.