jonandnic dot com

Well, I can’t say we miss spring in Ontario — when winter is still clinging on, and spring has not yet fully pushed it out. Far too much chance of snow, and far too little sunshine. Once summer hits, though, it sure is beautiful, and we’re glad we’ll be able to afford a trip home.

Not that we have much to complain about here. Although there are still many gray and rainy days — and likely many more to come, we’ve had a week of beautiful sun, clear skies with views of mountains on all sides, so sharp in detail that it feels like they’re right in front of you. On my way to work, I roll down from the foothills of the Cascades, pass Mt. Rainier on my left, and steer straight for the Olympic Mountains in front of me. God’s majestic creativity surrounds us.

Ontario hasn’t the mountains, but we’re looking forward to seeing the friends and family. We haven’t quite got the dates nailed down, but it will be some time near the end of July. It’s a complex month, with birthdays, a wedding, a cottage get-away in BC (fingers crossed) and a new baby joining the family in Calgary, so we’re still hammering down how we can make it all work. But we’re looking forward to it, nonetheless.

All of us here are happy, healthy and growing. If we don’t see you in July, come visit us here!

PS: If you know anyone in Calgary who needs a car, I’ll cut them a great deal on a super sweet Saab…

When we moved from New York to Ontario, we left behind a great babysitter — and in fact, a great pool of babysitters. We prayed that God would provide one just as good back home. God answered that prayer with an 11-year old girl, with a big smile and a bigger heart, who introduced us to her wonderful family.

But it wasn’t just one babysitter — she had a little sister. And although they both grew up just as fast as our own kids, and their social and sports calendars kept getting more full, they always found time to spend with Ben, Abi and later Eli. We were so grateful for their contribution in the lives of our little ones — and especially grateful that the girls could rarely be convinced to take money for their time. Most babysitters are little mercenaries!!

So when we decided we were going to take the kids to Disneyland, it was obvious to us that some of our favorite people should come along — and help wrangle our little monsters!

So we saved up our SkyMiles and flew the two sisters to us. After a brief tour of Seattle, and a less brief shopping trip to Target, we loaded everyone into the mini-van, hooked up Netflix to the van’s TV, and started driving to California. We drove hard on the way there, stopping in Sacramento the first night, then pushing on to Hollywood before LA rush hour. We spent the afternoon doing the tourist thing, then escaped to Anaheim to rest up for two days of theme park fun.

(Two days for everyone else — Ben, either from excitement or some other psychosomatic trigger, barfed all over the hotel room that night, so he and I spent half a day in the hotel, doing school work and making sure he was OK.)

Disneyland was awesome. I’ve been to theme parks, but Disney has it down to a science. Fastpass works great, the lines (on the few occasions we stood in them more than 15 minutes) were smooth and often entertaining, and fun rides were available for all ages. Ben loved Tower of Terror, Abi rode the Little Mermaid twice, and Eli even got to go on some great ones. Thursday night we stayed up late, road the amazing Cars ride, and watched the fireworks.

As always, having our favorite babysitters along made things much easier, and let us split up and try different things. We were sad when the two days were up, and we had to say good-bye to them at LAX, so they could be home before their March Break was over. We spent the next 3 days making our way up the coast on 101, stopping where we felt like it. We explored the cheesy Confusion Hill, ran across a very cold beach to put our feet in the Pacific, were humbled by massive Redwood trees, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and had BLT’s on the other side, wound through hair raising winding forest roads, and ate far too much McDonald’s.

We got home Sunday night, and were back at school and work the next day. It was an awesome family vacation, and we were so blessed that we got to share part of it with two very special people in our lives.

Way more pics on the sidebar and on Flickr…

After getting hit by a car, I was no longer able to drive a manual transmission vehicle… and I was no longer allowed to drive a motorcycle. God provided a very nice, very well priced high-end sport sedan. It’s a 2007 Saab 9-3 2.0t, and it is beautiful.

My Saab and I have literally travelled across the continent, I’ve learned its personality and its adapted to mine. I’ve had it stripped down to the metal on both the front and back ends, and I’ve pulled apart the dashboard a number of times. I’ve upgraded it personally and learned a lot while doing it.

I like that its quirky, I like that some of its quirks were put there by me, and I like that very few people on the road have the same car as me — and that I can pass most of them like they’re standing still.

Sadly, while Saab was once selling briskly in the US, this is a European car, made for European markets with Canadian allowances — this particular car was not designed to meet US specifications. And although they’ll acknowledge that Canadian regulations are more stringent than their own, the folks working the border still won’t let me import it. And I’ve tried everything.

So with 4 months left before the tags and my Ontario driver’s license expire, and no way to get insurance on the car beyond that date, I made the tough decision to buy a replacement. Which means we currently (and ridiculously) have 4 cars.

We’re working out a plan for the Audi back home in Ontario, and an old friend and I will be road tripping up to Calgary to leave my faithful stallion behind for sale there.

So what do you replace the car you love with? A newer, faster version of the same car!

Unfortunately, this arrangement means a (hopefully) temporary dip back into debt (for one of those 4 cars!), as the new vehicle has to be financed. Fortunately, we were able to do this using only US funds and US credit — an achievement we’ve been working toward since we moved. When the other two cars are sold, we’ll pay off most of that loan, and service the comfortable monthly payment for another few months to build our credit rating some more.

This isn’t quite how we wanted things to go, but having this in the driveway helps with the cognitive dissonance…

Meet my 2009 Saab 9-3 Aero XWD: 280 horses in a 2.8 liter V6 turbo-charged engine. Originally retailing for $46,000 it was a pretty decent buy at $20,500. It sounds and feels more throaty and powerful than my old Saab, takes off even quicker, and has improved maneuverability and control due to the pre-emptive cross-wheel drive system. It has every feature I added to my last car, and a couple more, and although it’s got a few cosmetic issues I can tinker with, it has the distinct advantage of being legal to drive in the State of Washington.

Although I spent a lot of time leaning toward a newer, slightly cheaper and bigger 9-5, and a little bit of time thinking about an Audi A3, I decided the car I know how to troubleshoot and fix (and have spare parts for in the garage) was the better choice. Hopefully this Saab treats me as well as the last!

So the excitement has worn off, and life has settled into a routine. After 6 months here, it feels pretty much like home — with only a few gaps still to be filled. The kids are doing well with the schooling choices we settled on, Nic has the house running like a well-oiled machine (most days), and the job… has its full days and quiet days like any other. A few more quiet ones lately, but that’ll even itself out, I’m sure.

The first half of 2013 has us hosting a series of visitors — which we are delighted to do. Nic’s parents were here in January, February brings an old friend from New York, March has our two favorite babysitters from Ontario coming to road trip with us to DisneyLand, and in April a buddy from college is coming to hang out for a bit.

This summer we plan to visit with my siblings somewhere in Western Canada, welcome my sister’s baby in July, visit Ontario to catch up with family and friends there, and see my parents — whenever they decide where they’re going to be (something makes me think they’ll be close to my sister for as much of the summer as they can manage!)

It feels like both feet are in place after this step, and while there are some clear ways we can prepare for whatever the next step is, mostly we’re just here trying to figure out how to steward what God has given us, and how we can give this experience back to God for His glory. We’re grateful for such a beautiful place to live — come visit us, we’d love to show you around!

Oh ya, and I got this taken out of my leg.

We’ve had the cord cut for a number of years as far as digital content goes. For a long time it was all about a NAS in the house and making sure everything could get to it from anywhere. The most recent iteration involved the soon-to-be-euthanized Windows Live Mesh, and continuous synchronization. Times continue to change, and managing 100s of gigabytes of photos, music and videos is most simply done now in the Cloud. Of course we’ll keep local back-ups, and use sync services so that we can still have our content on-hand as appropriate, but here’s how we’re storing/accessing things (this year!)

- Movies and TV: Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video — these three services have apps that work where we need them, and are well worth the small subscription cost.

- Music: Amazon Cloud Player, Pandora, Zune Pass — Amazon’s Cloud handily holds all the music we’ve ever bought, and provides a DRM-free marketplace for new songs. Pandora provides music discovery and while their apps aren’t great, the price (free) is right. Zune Pass (now XBox Music) is still my favorite way to listen to music-on-demand.

- Books: Kindle rules. There’s never been any debate. We keep Amazon’s physical bookstore, as well as the library and the local used bookstore in business too.

- Pictures: SkyDrive, Flickr — Microsoft SkyDrive is no Mesh, but for $20 a year it holds our 31GB of family photos and then some, and they’re doing a good job of ramping up app availability. Flickr still has a stream of recent photos for other devices, but we’re not paying for that over-priced, long-in-tooth service.

- Documents: Dropbox, SkyDrive — Current and frequently accessed documents are in DropBox, due to our long investment in the service and the bulletproof nature of its syncing technology. SkyDrive holds archives and large files, but its really a shame we’ve never had to give DropBox any money.

- Email/Calendering: Office365. We used Google Apps for a long time, but you just can’t beat Exchange.

As far as devices, we’re still a home full of random technology — we’d rather have a selection of different devices and teach them how to interact with our Cloud services, than invest too deeply into any one ecosystem. Here’s what we’re rocking:

Phones: Nic and I both have Nokia Lumia 900s, running Windows Phone 7.5 (soon 7.8, I hope!) which have the apps we need, rock-solid Exchange access, and a beautiful UI.

Computers: His and hers MacBooks. I have a MacBook Pro from work, Nic has an Air. We also have a Windows 7 laptop upstairs that will eventually get replaced with a Windows 8 touch machine of some kind.

Tablets: We each have Kindle Fire HDs, and the kids have some Kindle Fires. I have access to every tablet device out there through work, and I still prefer the Kindle. I don’t have a Paperwhite yet, but I want one!

Music players: We have a couple old Zune’s that get pressed into service during long trips, and no matter what you’ve been told, they rock. The kids have a beat up iPod Touch, which is handy for its video-out feature in the van.

TV: Roku, XBox 360, AppleTV. Roku’s are cheap, awesome and flexible. XBox360 has the best selection of video service apps and great games. And AppleTV’s AirPlay functionality is just awesome. Between these three we don’t miss cable (7 years plus!)

We pay for a good home internet connection, and data plans for both our phones, but even with that, and a few service subscriptions, what we have is way cheaper than cable (we pay in a year what some people pay per month) and it gives us complete freedom over when and where we consume or create content.

For new readers, this oddly titled post (a Simpson’s quote, which possibly only my brother and sister will properly appreciate) is my annual tradition. Check out last year’s if you’d like!

2011 wasn’t our greatest year — the brightest light being the birth of our third child — and we were determined that 2012 would look different. Less pain and disappointment, and more of that adventurous spirit we hope to raise our children with. It turned out that 2011′s tough times would prepare us for 2012 in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

We started 2012 in a very good place to spend a cold Ontario winter month: in Florida — with some visits to old friends along the way. We had an inkling even then that our month in a different home was a foreshadowing of things to come: the idea of a relocation had been tossed around at work, and subsequently at home, for a few months now. We rented a house in Florida for a vacation, a reclamation of a mostly lost summer, and to exercise the freedom that my job at the time offered. But we also did it to see how the kids would handle doing life in a different place. It turns out we can handle it just fine.

When we returned, it was to a project that seemed to perfectly fit the experiences God had provided for us in the past, and we were pleased to dig in with a little church planting team and learn some more from the other wonderful church leaders God had connected us with. These felt like final things, though — like culminations of relationships and education that rightly closed out a season. And as things with my accident were settled financially, we began to feel even more like we were poised for something… we just didn’t know what. We began preparing the house, and our other responsibilities for whatever that thing was, all the while trusting God — and trying to follow Him day-by-day.

It was May by the time the next step became clear. Although we had assumed an eventual move with my then-employer, organizational changes and diminishing opportunity opened us up to looking elsewhere. I secured a job that I now know is a very tough one to get, and with the suddenness of a starting gun at a race, we were off across the continent… where God had clearly gone before us, providing the paperwork exactly when it was needed (and not a moment before!) and a beautiful new home (nearly twice the size of what we were leaving, with a mortgage payment in the same neighborhood!)

While it cost us a month of togetherness, by August we were whole again, planning school for the kids, finding a new church home, and exploring the beautiful part of the world where God had led us. I have been delinquent in blogging about the mountains, the trees, the lakes — the beauty which surrounds us, but I need to be clear that this place is wonderful. We discovered last weekend that while there is rarely snow at our house, just 30 minutes up the highway into Snoqualmie Pass they have 10 feet of wonderful fluffy stuff; enough to comfortably coat perfect ski and tubing hills in a winter theme park of fun. In the warmer months we’ve been here, we’ve ridden the ferry to a nearby island, hiked through the forest to a waterfall, and picnicked at the foot of a mountain.

We’re excited too to have family relatively close. After years of rarely seeing my brother and sister, we’re now within a days drive of each other, and got to spend a fun Thanksgiving weekend exploring Seattle and hanging out with them. The in-laws cottage in BC should provide some fun summer get-togethers, and the annual visit home with my parents should be a lot easier now as well.

It hasn’t been as easy as maybe I’m making it sound. There was, and still is, the loneliness of being somewhere new and missing your friends and family, the stress of managing finances in two different countries, the risk of starting a new job, and the uncertainty of leaving what is comfortable. But as we make new friends, and learn new things, and see God’s world from different angles, I hope everyone reading can understand that we will always be strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Hebrews 11:13). The only home we desire is in heaven… but while we’re here, we want to see everything we can, steward wisely the blessings God gives us, share what we have with others, and raise our children to know obedience, and the glory and wonder of God’s creative power.

I’ll wrap up 2012 with my favorite quote I learned this year…

The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

Are you ready?

Today, Benjamin turned 6 years old. We’ve been parent’s for 6 years!

For Ben’s birthday today, he’s enjoying his first grounding. No lego and no electronics for two days — that thanks to a new Christmas break habit of delayed obedience. Yesterday, he paused his video game when called for supper, then decided he’d go build something with lego before he came downstairs. He ambled down the stairs 5 minutes later and straight into being grounded for the first time ever!

We’ll celebrate the day tomorrow with another first — he and I will finally get to watch Star Wars together! Another little friend and his dad will come over, and the girls will go hang out elsewhere, so we can have the volume loud and not have to share the popcorn. We’ll be watching the original, unedited movie “A New Hope” on widescreen LaserDisc, so he can appreciate its original form. He’ll also be getting some classic Star Wars toys to play with. I’m at least as excited as he is!

Happy Birthday, little man. We sure do love you!

Just so no one can accuse me of being too much of a Conservative, I’m going to spend some time railing on the fact that Christians need to get out of their “holy huddles” and re-focus on helping those in need… But before I do, two anecdotes:

The other day I was walking between buildings in my employer’s downtown Seattle campus, when a pair of scantily dressed ladies in tight dresses crossed the street in front of me, one of them flinging her boa over her shoulder as she passed. As they got close I realised that they weren’t ladies at all. They were young men. This is Seattle.

Seattle residents generally identify themselves as liberal. In fact, I was in a volunteer information session in downtown Seattle, and as the facilitators laid out the facts about poverty, prostitution, and child sex workers in this city, they expressed genuine surprise that such things could even occur in such a liberal, educated city like this one! The absurdity of the notion that more liberalness should somehow lead to less sin completely escaped them.

So yes, I’m going to side with liberals briefly here, but always with the understanding that sin, a liberal lifestyle, and the corrosion of morals will lead to more sin — not less.

But then you have bewilderingly “conservative” viewpoints like “If only we had more guns, there would be less gun violence!” and “Health care shouldn’t be controlled by the government!” while the conservative agenda continues to make it difficult for people who genuinely need either mental or physical care to get it.

Its these two horrifically polarized sides of the national debate that leave a giant gap of un-met needs, rather than coming together to solve problems. Its the middle of America that is largely unserved by either political position. Conservatives won’t invest in liberal activities to the benefit of their country (or the rest of the world). Liberals won’t invest in Conservative activities to the benefit of their country (or the rest of the world).

I’ve personally had to wrestle with this debate. Seattle is a city with needs. Seattle is also a city more-or-less devoid of God (as an example, at my job you can create internal online communities and groups for anything — literally anything — except your faith.) In Seattle you can worship sports, or theater or music, you can invest in cars and yachts, you can go to strip clubs, and bars — but I’ve yet to see a church. I’m sure they’re here, but their presence is not tangible. I have yet to identify another Christian in Seattle.

So as a Christian who loves God, loves others and wants to serve the world, the most Christ-like expressions of that desire can be found within liberal programs, liberal organizations and Government-entitlement-spending-leveraging services. The Conservatives, for all their righteous indignation, have apparently abandoned the needy in favor of their comfortable east-side churches. Me included, if I take no action!

Indeed, this problem is not restricted to places like Seattle. The most noticeable community service organizations I’ve ever seen are United Way or Red Cross. Soup kitchens are in government funded community centers, not churches. Out of the Cold is run by the YMCA, not the local congregation. When did we turn over loving others to the secular world? When did the American church decide it was better to fight for Conservative values than for lost souls?

(As an aside, I’m well aware that many — if not most — of the unpaid volunteers who make these secular organizations work are Christians serving humbly and without advertisement of their obedience. Its the leadership of these efforts that we’ve given up on — not service entirely.)

We have similar frustrations with giving. We ache to apply good stewardship toward effective, impactful ministries reaching the world. But we can’t find them. The local youth shelter can clearly articulate their mission and vision, and the strategy and actions they’re taking to execute on it, then tell you exactly what they need, how much of it, and when. Church congregants dump some money in the offering plate, and once a year fill shoeboxes, ship them overseas, and hope that somehow American plastic junk will change lives and win souls for the kingdom.*

(* Operation Christmas Child is a wonderful program, and I’m sure it does have a beautiful impact every year — but its no substitute for getting off your butt and actually doing something!)

I don’t want to read another Christian apologist explaining where God was when mass shootings happen. I want Christian’s making God famous by being first on the ground when people are hurting, with tangible ways to help — and a message of hope. When I can’t find those people or those Christian groups doing those things (or worse, when I can find them, but they’re too busy defending their agenda to make an actual difference), my volunteer time and my money will have to align with liberal groups doing what Christians should be leading the charge in. If I’m to be obedient to God’s direction to help the least of these, what choice do I have?

Seriously…someone, give me some choices.

As much as I love my Saab, it’s pretty much the base model. 4 years old when I bought it for $13,900, it sold new for $39,000. My theory is, its better to buy a high end base model, then add what you want yourself after-the-fact. Here are the repairs/upgrades I’ve wanted (with dealer prices, installled, next to each.)

• Stability control module replacement ($579)
• Stereo head unit replacement ($1800)
• Auto-dimming mirror with garage door opener ($1200)
• Clear tail lights (MY2008) ($620)
• Bluetooth handsfree integration ($800)
• Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio (N/A)
• Foglights ($500)
• Parking Assist Sensors ($500)

For a total of just shy of $6000 in OEM upgrades (where available) installed. Buying the parts online, either new or on eBay, and doing most of it myself over the past year, cost a total of $1940… and a few afternoons in the garage cursing.