This past weekend was our 6th anniversary as a married couple. We didn’t celebrate, because we had a house guest, but we took ourselves away for a weekend in July to celebrate our birthday’s and anniversary combined. We did, however, go up to Howe Cavern’s this weekend, which was mildly interesting, and I’ll probably post a few pictures.
Also, speaking of being hitched. Our good friend Jon recently proposed to our good friend Brooke’s cousin, Virginia, with a very large ring and a promise to see her at least every 3-4 months when he’s not on a submarine. Congrats to you both!

Recent changes in our lives have dictated changes in our technology infrastructure. Last year I decided I had outgrown the part of my life where I should have a webserver in the bedroom to tinker with, so I moved it to a new location with a proper network infrastructure that I led the development of. I built the best system I knew how, by building up and around the technology I’d put into place for our family, and expanding those principles and leveraging those systems for a larger organization. I’m proud of what I built, but now I’m leaving that part of my life and need to leave that work behind as well. So unfortunately, the webserver that started it all — and that a half-dozen of us, or so, are using, will be orphaned.
I have been very busy over the past couple evenings, moving jonandnic.com and the associated technology and tools, such as e-mail, to a new managed host. I’m trying out a company called WestHost for a few months, because their rates are good, their tech support is very accommodating of my weird requests, and the service will allow us to (eventually) move over our other users.
If you’ve sent us an e-mail in the past couple days, I’ve recently become aware that it probably wasn’t working. It is now, but it might still be flaky for the next week or so. If you’ve come to the website and found it down… well, I can’t promise that won’t happen again either. Those of you who are depending on us for hosting — especially for e-mail — once I figure out how to move ourselves safely, I’ll be ready to move you over as well.
If you live in Asia, I’ll take care of everything for you, and send you updated instructions for accessing your mail. If you live in the States… I’ll help, but you’re going to need to move yourselves somewhere else.
Its been fun providing free hosting and learning through that experience, but all good things must come to an end. I’m quite familiar with HostRocket, and would generally recommend them as a provider for e-mail and WordPress blogs.
I’m not sure what will happen to the archives of jonandnic.com. It looks as if they’ll have to be pulled offline for now. Its been a tremendously frustrating week, moving our online lives (which, for me, is a pretty significant part of my whole life) into a new infrastructure, but in the end, it will be worth it to have our resources managed by someone who is not dependent on our location or the state of our lives.

Tonite I: moved a website, re-routed our mail, went for a walk with Nic and Ben, helped a friend mod his suspension in his new truck, and cleaned the bathtub.
Maybe having just one job isn’t so bad…

One sanity-maintaining tool we used on our 12 hour road trip was (as usual) music. I’ve recently discovered Sufjan Stevens, and managed to obtain 9 tracks to listen to on the road. We played them almost on repeat the whole trip, and did not get sick of them.
He uses so many different instruments and pays tribute to so many different musical styles, that you can hear a song differently each time it plays.

So that drive took just minutes shy of 12 hours. By contrast, the drive typically takes between 7-8, but has been done in less than 7.
The border was backed up for an hour, and there was the mysterious, disappearing car accident when we were about 60 miles from home that cost us nearly 2 hours — by the time we got to the accident that was slowing everything down, there didn’t appear to have been an accident at all.
We did also stop at Kelsey’s in Canada for some spinach dip, but the rest of the delays weren’t our fault!

So we have two weddings to go to this weekend, but as they’re in two different countries, we had to chose. Family wins, of course, and we’ll be driving home tonite for the wedding, but we’re still very happy for our friends here in the States who are getting hitched.
Congratulations to Cindy and Jeremy who will be wed tomorrow afternoon. And to Jeremy and Shelly (obviously a different Jeremy) who tie the knot on Sunday afternoon!

Well, I told myself that by the end of today, I wanted to have a clear enough picture of where God wanted us for the next 8-12 months, that I’d be able to blog about it. I got the picture loud and clear today.
The four of us are going to work on just being a family this year.
Yup, you read right — the 4 of us. The news is generally out, so I apologize to the people we didn’t get to in person. We’re going to have another baby.

I’m gonna be honest, this is not where I thought we were being led… but I’ll readily admit, I’ve been wrong before. And it turns out I was quite wrong this time, and I guess I owe a few people an apology for that.
Nonetheless, its been a blast, and I’m honestly kinda happy for the opportunity to focus on us for awhile. No one has ever given me permission to worry about my own health, and I’ve always been the kinda guy who just tries to push through everything — and I guess I’ve carried that into family life.
But there’s no pushing through this one — its time for our family to grow and to heal and to figure out who we are.
So I won’t say I’m not disappointed… or confused… or hurt, or sad, or any of those other things that come with failure and with change. But I can say with confidence, that I’m at peace, and that I’m ready for this challenge — for our own challenge. For the first time in a decade, its gonna be about us for awhile, and the things God wants for us.
Meanwhile, you’re welcome to drop by and visit with us. You’ll find us together, in our home. Which is where I want to be until baby #2 is ready to face the world. We’ll be back out there again — but not until God sends us out.

I have no idea what just happened!