This used to be my Grandma's baby blue hutch cabinet. Now, we've painted it and it's going to be Pedro's new changing table. 

Pedro's closet is already filling up! 

This is his ultra-cool Fisher Price cradle/swing! It has some really cool nature sounds and a ton of fun classical music. 

Here's lil' Pedro's crib and nightstand. 

¡Estoy en Chihuahua!

¡Hola, Hola, Coca-cola!
¡Bueno, Bueno...mas o menos!
¡Nada, nada...limonada!

I´m here in Chihuahua in the host home of my new parents, Felipe y Olgita. They are great people, but they do have the slowest internet connection on the earth. So I´ll keep this short and sweet.

I haven´t gotten to talk to my wonderful wife yet, but I love her and miss her SOOO much! I´m really excited about Pedro coming soon, but it better be after I get back. Everything is going really well down here. Our group is doing awesome and the host family and church are some of my favorite ever!

If you read this, please tell Kerrie that I posted this and I´ll talk to her soon.

The following are all pictures from our January trip to Kauai. It's definitely the most beautiful place we've ever been and it was such a huge blessing to go there. Enjoy!

I took this out on the catamaran. It's amazing to think that when God was creating the world he was looking forward to January 19th, 2005 so he could share this with me.  

Check it out...this is the waterfall from Fantasy Island. We also saw the dock where Tatoo yells, "Da plane! Da plane!" Doesn't get any better than that. 

These are spinner dolphins playing underneath our catamaran. 

Endangered Hawaiian monk seal

Kauai mountains 

During a hurricane in 1992, a bunch of chickens escaped from their pens. For some reason, chickens are a protected bird in Kauai, so now they are EVERYWHERE!  

Humpback whales winter in Hawaii. 

Computer Troubles

Hey! Sorry we've been gone so long. We had some computer problems and haven't been able to get on the internet. I've been workingon it, but I finally broke down and took it to the church today to have our IT guy look at it and he fixed in in about 20 seconds. Oh, well.

Things are going pretty well in the House of Archer. We've been working on getting Baby Pedro's room together. It's actually looking really good. I'll take some pictures pretty soon and post them up. I just downloaded Picasa so I can send pictures of that and some other pics, too.

In fact, I'll end this post and work on sending some Hawaii pics. Adios.

BIG NEWS!!!

Hey, ya'll! Many of you guys already know this, but for those of you who don't...Kerrie and I are adopting!

We are going to be adopting a little boy who will be born in early April. We even get to bring him home from the hospital! We've been praying about it and talking it over since late October, but we decided not to tell anyone until recently, just because we santed to be sure. This has been a really big decision, but it's been a huge blessing to see God's hand in it every step of the way.

The past few weeks have been spent filling out adoption forms. For anyone who hasn't ever done this, it involves a ton of paperwork. Almost a bigger workload than I had when I was an outdoor recreation major. We also spent a few days registering for baby stuff. We had no idea what we were doing, but thankfully Abel and Sarah Schafer and Hollie Voth went with us to help. We're registered at Target, Toys R' Us, and The Baby's Room in Rogers. Kerrie already has a couple of showers coming up, and we're planning on having some "meet the baby" showers in April, too.

Which brings me to my question...what do you think we should call him? I've been calling him Pedro for the last few months, but Kerrie's not really voting for that. We have some thoughts, and I think we've got one that we've pretty much decided on, but we're welcoming any new suggestions. Thanks for sharing in this with us!

You can stop holding your breath...we're back!

Break time's over!

OK, I know it's been awhile...but I have to tell you--Kauai is awesome! Kerrie and I had a great time. Here's an ultra-abbreviated summary of our 2-week trip

We got there at 6 in the morning after a horrendous 5 hour flight delay in Los Angeles. Definitely, the worst part about Hawaii is the trip to get there. We stayed at the Radisson and it was pretty nice. Kind of a moderately up-scale hotel. We didn't really get bored with it, so that's nice. Most of our days consisted of sleeping in for a bit and the lounging around the pool or the beach. The hardest thing to decide all day was where to eat. We saw a TON of humpback whales, seals, and dolphin. I got to go deep sea fishing for yellowfin tuna, which rocked. I tried surfing, which didn't rock. And, we got to go on a really fun tubing ride up with a company called Kauai Backcountry in these irrigation ditches that were dug in the mountains in the 1800's. That was really cool, because most of it was underground in these crazy tunnels. (By the way, that is the first hyperlink that I have ever done...I'm really proud.)

It's crazy that Hawaii is part of the U.S. Think about it--you're in a total tropical paradise that's almost equal distance from California, Alaska, Japan, and Australia. So, it's literally in the middle of nowhere. Every native Hawaiian looks exotic, but then they come up and say, "How's it going, bro?" But, I think the most wild thing about Hawaii is that everyday we could jump in our sweet Chevy Cavalier and within 10 minutes be at the nearest McDonald's, Starbucks, or Pizza Hut.

donde esta mi hermano

mateo???????? remember when you used to write as a kid a lot? at least i think you did, i always thought of you as a very literary person. always reading something or rather. from calvin and hobbes to choose your own adventure. readers make great writers too. escribe por favor. :)

remember knocking on the wall between our bedrooms as we read? i am happy that our parents made us readers. i can't go to sleep without reading, how about you, mi hermano?

long day

I spoke today in FSM, which always means that I don't get much sleep the night before. I think I probably slept like 3 hours last night, but I was able to sleep straight through my alarm this morning and wake up an hour late. Fortunately, I was able to get to the church on time...it was just a bit stressful.

After speaking for 2 services, we went to Ron and Pam Sweeney's wedding in Bella Vista at 2. Needless to say, it was a little unorganized. Kerrie was basically a spur-of-the-moment wedding coordinator for them. (She found out last night!) It was a little crazy, but they left the chapel married. That's the most important thing, I guess.

This is unprecedented...I think we're going to bed at 9 p.m. This may be the earliest ever. Well, goodnight.

deep thoughts

alright, so i started checking around other people's blogs and i found that pretty much everybody else blogs about really deep stuff like the meaning of life, the doctrine of the Trinity, the overcommercialization of christmas, etc. i felt bad. so i'll try and talk about deeper stuff from now on. so here goes...

...


...


...


i got nothin'.

ok, i have this game called bejeweled on my palm that i play about any spare moment i have during the day (meeting a lunch appointment, waiting in the doctor's office, going to the bathroom, too much information). i'm pretty addicted to it, and i hear that lots of people play it, but i have no idea if i'm any good at it or not, because i don't have anyone else to compare it too. my high score is like 110,000. is that good, bad, laughable? who knows?

that's my deep thought for the day. my last blog of 2004.