There is something really cute about Joel with eyewear. These are for onion-chopping.

Updates:
It has been really busy. I guess that is assumed at this point.
1. Had a great time at a wedding. It was nice so see some people there.
2. We have been continuing going to the Friends meetings. I have realized how frenzied my life has been with how difficult it has been to approach the silent worship time. It is good to get that "check" in periodically.
3. I have been reading through the Story Bible to get a quick read/context to Bible reading. It has lead to some pretty neat insights that were lost for me in a traditional reading.
4. Work is going well enough. I have been doing some rather fun work.
5. Dissertation is close enough to put up the final checklist and I am working through it step by step. The stats are revised and I have so say that they make good sense for the first time ever.

We have added some stuff to the house:
1. We just got a huge (secondhand) upright freezer to store meat in and ordered a side of beef from the Belleville market in BG. Anne and I are struggling with how to be good consumers and we decided that buying meat from Meijer (who uses one of the nation's largest meat packing companies) is not as good as using a local butcher that prides itself on buying 4H animals. The meat from the market has been fantastic every time (we used to live a block from it). It will also be great to get all of the cuts that I always pass over due to cost. The freezer will also be good to have because we joined a CSA and we are expecting more vegetables than we can reasonably eat while fresh.
2. After messing around with burning MP3 cds for my car stereo and some of them not work some of the time and leaving me to listen to NPR fundraisers on my way to Detroit, I finally bought an iPod-like music player. It is the Toshiba F40 and it runs the super-geeky-cool RockBox opensource firmware (mine looks like winamp (rockamp)). I have been using Juice to download podcasts, particularly NPR podcasts. This has solved the stereo problem. It is also more fun than I had imagined to be able to random list my entire music collection.
3. We got a dishwasher. It actually cleans the dishes. It also holds about twice what the old one did.
4. Tony from a few doors down gave us the paving stones that he is having replaced along when he has all of the concrete in his yard replaced. I can make that patio out back that I have been wanting to do as soon as the time comes up to do so.

We are really excited that winter is over. We are planting/revising the yard and playing with Joel outside a TON. Joel now makes animal sounds, is playing with language more than ever, and is helping with yardwork best he can. He really likes his mini-shovel and rake. Joel even helped push the wagon (while moving pavers) to the neighbors' yard! There are few things more entertaining than helping your kid help out and him having a great time doing it. Now that Anne is done with classes for a month, she and Joel are going to have a ton of great time outside.