Just over two years ago, I started a new job at Dawson Community College. When I started, their website was a mess. That’s probably an understatement. It was not in good shape, and had probably fifteen different styles throughout the site. The front page looked like a circus, and it was difficult to find what you were looking for.

On Thursday, we launched the new site. It was exciting. At least, I’m excited about it. I’m sure there will always be more work to do on it, and we’ll probably redesign it in two years again, but I’m pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished.

Breitlahn is now over three weeks old, and she’s been having a grand old time. She attended her very own baby shower, a wedding (congrats Aftiana), went on her first elevator ride, and had her first visit (of many to come) to Makoshika State Park.

She’s had fun trying on a few of the outfits she received, and I think my favorite so far is her giraffe hat from Aunt Stephie.

Oscar and Judy came over for the shower too, and they’ve got more pictures over at shutterfly. With all the family around, especially great-grand-parents, we had to take some family pictures too, and we’ve got a few with four generations. I’m sure there will be more to come, as we have more family here this weekend.

Welcome to the world, our home, and our family, Breitlahn Maëlle.

Click on the picture for the full album.

It’s been quiet on the “western front” for a while, and that’s because we’ve been busy working on the baby’s nursery the last month or so. My wife did an amazing mural, and I put together furniture, and put up a lot of the decor. It was a load of fun, and turned out really nice. Now we just need a baby to put in it…

That’s a teaser, you’ll have to visit the gallery to see it in all it’s beauty (http://www.shanebishop.net/zenphoto/nursery/).

I don’t spend as much time on Facebook as I used to. And so it’s been a while since I went to the familylink app to update things. I clicked on it today, and noticed a funny thing. I was no longer on Facebook and it wanted me to login to a totally different site. So I clicked on the familylink app link in the Facebook bookmarks pane. Now, they wanted permission to use (steal) my email address (thanks for exposing that Facebook). I said NO, and then they tried to be sneaky and get me to update my personal info, which included my email address. I entered my name, and skipped the email, then they wanted permission to pull info from facebook. It was then that I realized I was no longer on Facebook (again). I promptly went to ‘authorized apps’ on Facebook, removed the familylink app, and gave them a 1-star rating. I don’t need another site to keep track of, I don’t like giving out my email address, and I wish they would go back to being a real Facebook app where I can see all my relatives that are on Facebook. Thanks Familylink. Thanks for making a pile of poop.

After a quiet month, I’m making up for lost time. I just got my new issue of Relevant Magazine, which is my favorite magazine. Ok, so it’s the only one I’m subscribed to. My cousin hooked me on the Relevant Podcast a while back, and while I haven’t caught every episode (or should that be webisode?), it’s always entertaining, engaging, challenging, and many other -ings. The magazine is cool, but the website takes it a whole new level above that, and I just discovered (possibly my favorite) a really cool section of their site: The Drop. Now, they mention this on the podcast all the time, but I’ve never bothered to actually go see what the hubbub is all about. Free music that doesn’t smell, that’s what it is all about. You should go check it out. Now. Hurry, it might disappear. Probably not, but you should go. Quickly. They also happen to be featuring Seabird right now, which is one of my current favorite bands.

It’s really easy to forget what Christmas is all about, so the title is an extra reminder. We had a great Christmas, and while I got some really nice gifts, my dad had one of those moments again. He said, “we need to be thankful for friends and family, that’s what’s really important, not all the material stuff.” Don’t know if I can really expand on that too much, but I just want to take a moment to mention some of the ‘important’ things I’m thankful for before I post some pictures of all the presents and such. I’m thankful for my wife, and my parents, and my sister, and my cousins (all of them, even Afton…). I’m thankful for the little girl that’s on the way, and I’m thankful for my friends, at work, at church, and anywhere else. And I’m thankful for Scooter, Roo, and Oliver.

Now that I’ve gone all serious on you, there’s some completely unserious pictures and one of Amanda at seventeen weeks along (she’s in week twenty now) in the gallery.

It’s a girl! And not a puppy this time. As mentioned before, due in late May. The ‘awesome’ ultrasound machine was broken today, but we still got to see some pretty neat things. She was sucking on her fingers for a bit, and yawned several times. We got to see her little heart pumping away at 153 beats per minute, and even were able to see the four chambers of her heart.  It was incredible the amount of detail that could be seen, even with ‘old technology.’ The scanned images are over in the gallery.

A couple of my cousins posted their Christmas letters on their blogs, so I figured I’d follow suit, sort of. I actually put together a little photo collage that we sent out this year, but in case you didn’t get one (sorry), here it is:

For more details, you can of course read back through my blog posts for the year. The side project I started, God Impact, is going quite well also. I’ve only missed one day (except for yesterday, when I forgot to hit the publish button).

We’ve also had a lot of exciting things happening at our church, and there’s a little info over at www.glendiveag.org.