Well, it is official.  One year ago today was our first full day of living in California and being Oklafornians.  We didn’t have a place.  We didn’t have jobs, but we knew God had us here for a reason and we were excited about our new SoCal lives!  Since then our lives have been pretty non-stop with so many different things.  We have met new people, moved to Huntington Beach, started working at Kingsfield Church and House Of Blues, enjoyed concerts thanks to the House Of Blues, lost 35 lbs., oh, and got pregnant!  It was a great first year.  But now it is time to look forward to what year 2 may have for us.

I might as well just start with this one.  Obviously we are so excited about our first born baby girl coming this March!  We are very ready for her to be here.  We have things already waiting on her and I know my wife is ready to finish up this pregnancy thing!  Also we are looking forward to the awesome things that God is doing in so many lives in Orange County through Kingsfield Church.  I’m looking forward to keeping off the weight I lost this past year and hoping to find a soccer league of some sorts to join.  I can’t wait to date my wife some more, too!  And those are just a few things!

The biggest thing though is that we want to live our lives for the glory of God.  I wanna be a dad that points my daughter in the direction of Christ.  I want to point those who come to church toward God.  I want Christ to be the center of our marriage and keep learning how to be a better husband and daddy.  I know that I am not capable of doing these things on my own, though.  So if you want to pray for me, those are the things you can pray for me.  If those things happen, the rest will be cake.  Thank you for all of you who have been and continue to pray for us.  We are very grateful!

I just wanted to share this with you all.  For those of you that don’t know my dad, this won’t be a big deal, but I think it is hysterical.  Here in Huntington Beach we just had the Hurley US Open Of Surfing.  It was great!  I had a blast and have a new desire to be an awesome surfer.  Well, maybe that isn’t new.  Anyway, I  didn’t realize this but apparently my dad came down from Alaska to watch the tournament and didn’t tell me!  I’m pretty disappointed he came all this way and didn’t even tell me he was coming down.

Here’s me and my dad in Israel.

And here’s dad watching the surfing tournament!

We have a great condo here in Huntington Beach.  We really love it.  Yeah there are things that we would like to make things ideal like a full second bath, more room, less rent, etc.  But all in all it’s a pretty sweet place.  I mean it’s right by downtown and only a few blocks from the beach.  Plus we have a pool and hot tub and look out our back door and see palm trees.  Really it would be tough to beat!

So it’s all fine and dandy right?  Well not quite.  Of course there always has to be that one thing.  You know what I mean.  That ONE thing that just really drives you crazy.  I’m a pretty laid back and easy going guy.  I can handle the old lady that sometimes pushes both buttons at the elevator because that makes it get there faster (and makes you ride up before you can go down).  I can handle the white guy that calls himself T-Bone.  I can handle a million kids playing and being loud while I wanna sleep in.  I can even handle the traffic when trying to get out.  But the ONE thing for me is our neighbor.  Is she loud?  No.  Is she trashy?  No.  Does she call the cops on us?  No.  But, she smokes.

We have an awesome back patio.  It serves as our AC (which we don’t have) because we can just open the back door and get the ocean breeze in to cool us off.  So what’s the problem?  Her back patio is right below ours.  Therefore when she smokes (which I’m told she will NOT do inside her condo) our condo is filled with the nasty smell of her cigarettes.  I really don’t know what to do about it.  She smokes all the time.  Several times a night.  I mean she smoked twice while I wrote this post!  I don’t know that I can really ask her to stop smoking on her property.  Right?  So what’s a guy to do?

Any ideas?  Suggestions?

This past week my favorite city, Huntington Beach, CA, held the US Open of Surfing.  It was a great week!  Not only the US Open, but it was the 50 year of surfing tournaments in Huntington Beach.  Not only that, but it is a huge year for Huntington Beach celebrating 100 years of existence!  So needless to say, it has been quite a party here for a while now.  But this year was no ordinary US Open.  Nike recently purchased the surf company Hurley and sponsored this year’s surfing tournament.  This meant that the stage, prize money, and festival village were all much bigger this year.  This brought in more of the world’s pro surfers vying for the title.  Nike also had BMX and skateboarding competitions as well!  It was huge!  God even provided the biggest waves they have ever had for the tournament!

Now I’m not going to pretend like I knew everything about all this stuff prior to this past week.  I didn’t.  But I did like to watch these action sports and I’m a learning surfer and a resident of Huntington Beach.  But I learned!  I didn’t know the pro surfers names like CJ Hobgood, Rob Machado, Mick Fanning, and Kelly Slater.  I didn’t know how they scored the surfers.  But I do now!  This tournament upped my desire to be a good surfer a ton!  All I have wanted to do is get out there and surf (when the waves get much smaller of course)!  I got to see guys catching some awesome waves, snapping their boards into pieces, shooting the pier,and riding some sick barrels.  Not to mention the huge barrel that Kelly Slater caught right in front of me and scored a perfect 10 on!  That was nuts!

But after all the heats were finished and all the foam had settled it was still Huntington Beach’s year.  Despite my thoughts that no one could possibly beat Kelly Slater, he got knocked off short of the finals and Huntington Beach’s own Brett Simpson took the title and the biggest prize check yet!  Needless to say the beach went crazy!  After a longer than expected victory lap (including the jetski wiping out twice) he was mobbed and tackled in celebration before he even made it to dry land!  They proceeded to carry him on top of the crowd all the way to the stage.  It was an awesome site!

So through all the traffic and mobs of people, I have to say that I absolutely love living here in Huntington Beach and can’t wait until the US Open next year!  If you aren’t busy this time of year next year, you should book flights now and make sure Hotel James is open and come out for the madness/awesomeness of my city!

Well, it is that time of the year that everyone that blogs on a consistent basis (well probably even those that don’t blog that often too) sit down and reflect on the year that has been conquered. I don’t know that I am much of a reflection type of guy or blogger so I will just give you some of the highlights of my year…and of course they will not be in order so that I don’t have to try to rank everything because that is insane.

• I got married! Still not really sure how I convinced her to do that. I think my parents must have paid her a large chunk of money under the table that she can’t touch until 10 years down the road or something like that. I mean I know I’m pretty freakin’ cool sweet gorgeous amazing rich famous funny different (I’m sure that one we can all agree on), but not sure that it warrants this. But for real, this is amazing. I couldn’t have picked a better woman or wife for me. I am seriously blessed…and I’m going to move on since that could take all day.
• My sister got married! They had a great wedding and are now well on their way through their first year. Take care of her Beto. Work on that golf game because me and my 90′s scoring will take you out!
• My brother-in-law got married too and is now expecting a baby girl! Have some estrogen, Toby!
• I resigned from LifeChurch.tv, a church that I love. We felt God calling us to an unknown place (which of course we will get to soon enough…”hold your horses” as my mom would say) and left everything that we had know for the past 3 years. Maybe some day I will have the honor of working for LC again. Craig did tell me that if I ever needed a job I should call him. Ha!
• I taught KK to wakeboard. That was awesome! She was amazing. A freakin’ natural. After we got past the lymnohydrophobia and the massive panic drinking of lake water, she tore it up. I must be a stud teacher. PS – she was pretty freakin’ hot ridin’ that wakeboard. Guess I will have to find someone out here with a boat and do that again!
• We moved to Huntington Beach, California!…by way of Dana Point, California and the Snyders. Before we left LifeChurch.tv we knew that God was calling us somewhere and it turned out to be the sunny state of California! Woo hoo! (and I was so worried as a little kid that God was gonna call me to be a missionary to some place in the desert…yes desert, not dessert because then I would be a really fat missionary…and never have a shower or TV or sports or anything fun ever again) (and no, Jesus I’m not saying that I wouldn’t go or using the words never or not a chance or anything like that, just in case) We have been here almost 2 months now and are loving it! We are looking forward to the jobs and relationships and life that He has planned for us out here!
• Me, KK, and Jack all got a year older. Hard to believe, I know.
• I learned to surf! Well, I am still learning. I have done it though and I got a surfboard for Christmas! Now I just gotta get the lingo down. Then I can be stoked for the break with the killer swells for me to shred…but not yet.
• We sold our house in 3 weeks! We felt bad for the other houses on the street that had their houses on the market for several months prior to ours…wait…no we didn’t. Thank you, Jesus! Ok, that was kinda mean, but we were still excited.
• We had some hard times too. There was a gall bladder surgery, job changes, crappy jobs, sicknesses, apparent chronic illnesses of the tummy region, the loss of family members, expenses, moving away from friends and family, housing issues, I had a toothpick shoved into my foot, and the list goes on and on.

But I think that we can say wholeheartedly that we have had a great year. No matter what the bad stuff was, we grew closer together and got to deal with everything together! We have been told many times that the first year of marriage is the hardest. Good! It’s almost over and it really wasn’t that bad! So, for those of you that pray for us, please keep that up this year. Pray for good jobs for us. Pray for us to continue growing closer to each other and keeping God right in the middle of it all!

We are looking forward to a year ahead. It has lots of things to come. A wedding in April. A potential trip to meet the Masad (Israeli special bad A forces)…and see lots of sights. Another year with my wife. More surfing, wakeboarding, and snowboarding. Endless summer (like for real, not the movie…well maybe the movie too). A church home. 24 (need I really say more?). Bring it on 2009!

We love you all!

We have gas.  We have gas.  Thank God Almighty. We have gas!

Yeah.  We got gas today.  Hot showers were had all around…well not yet, but they will be had soon enough.  So, go ahead and schedule your time to come and stay with us because Hotel James in Huntington Beach is officially open!  

Kevin, you are correct.  This is a pretty cool city.  We are actually like right across the street from that breakfast place that you love so much!

The day has finally come!  Wow.  We finally have a home here!  We have been searching and searching for a month now trying to find our place and we have finally done it!  The search was long (to us) and difficult.  We had a condo picked out that is across the street from the beach.  The guy seemed great.  The price was fine.  The beach was less than a block away.  The guy even held the condo for us!  Then he freaked out!  He was worried because we didn’t have jobs yet (even though we had just moved…and in the middle of the whole thing, both found jobs).  So we settled on a 3 month less to be paid in advance.  Then there is no chance of him not getting his money.  Then we didn’t hear from him for a week and a half (part of which was when we were supposed to be moving in…obviously that didn’t happen).  Good times.  Last we had heard we were good to move in!  Then nothing!  What the crap?!?!?!  So we started looking again!

We then found our new condo!  It’s right downtown Huntington Beach!  Sweet.  The beach isn’t less than a block away, but it is only about 3 or 4 blocks.  Not too bad.  So I get some exercise.  I’ll live.  The condo took a little work to get everything ironed out, but the lease has been signed and we are in it!  We are working on night number 2!  Only thing is that the gas was turned off and so therefore we have no heat!  That means no stove, no oven, no heater (no that big of a deal), and no hot water!  None.  Cold water.  Good times.  So of course we called to get it turned on.  They will be here to turn in on Jan. 2nd.  Yeah that’s right.  14 days later!  Wow!  Seriously?  14 days?  I called another gas company.  They said the same thing!  Crap.  So apparently there are multiple gas companies but they all use the same technicians for the city!

(PS – can anyone tell me what curds and whey is?  I mean I know it is food of some sort and I could look it up, but is there anyone out there that has ever actually had or seen this dish?)

So we have been talking with the landlord trying to get all this figured out.  A phone call was made to the gas company this morning.  They were told that the first time they could schedule a technician out was now the 7th and if they called again tonight it would be the 17th!  Good lord!  Are there that many people that need to get their gas turned on?  Dang.  So yeah.  We have our new condo!  Jack is still a little freaked out about it (and probably a good bit confused).  There is no hot water.  We can’t cook on the stove or in the oven.  But it is ours!  And it’s great!

For those of you that need our new address, email me!  For those of you that want our address because you think I’m a crappy blogger and want to send me hate mail, guess!

A HUGE thank you to the Snyders!  They let us live in their 2nd bedroom this whole time!  I’m sure it was a great inconvenience to their way of life!  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!  (more to come)

Ladies and gentlemen, my first official celebrity sighting has happened! Today as I was hanging out downtown in Huntington Beach, it happened. I was in a local surf shop just looking for some Christmas gifts and as I walked out of the store a Range Rover pulled in right in front of me. I thought nothing of it. Ranger Rover isn’t that nice of a car out here when there are Lamborghini’s driving around. Then 2 young kids with some crazy hair got out of the car. They had some fun hair so it attracted my attention. As I look over, a very tall, pierced, tattooed, black guy got out of the car. I seemed to recognize his voice as he told his kids to go pick something out of the store. I looked again and realized it was true. Dennis Rodman. Yup. That’s right. The crazy-haired, rebound-collecting, former-wedding-dress-wearing, NBA star dropped by the surf shop I was in. Hmmm. Who knew. Good to see you Dennis Rodman! Family looks great!

The countdown to the most probable move date has begun.  Yes I did just start the countdown.  Doesn’t every countdown start with 58 hours and 17 minutes?  Hmmm.  No?  Oh well.  That’s when mine starts.  In a couple days we will be (probably) moving into our new home on PCH in Huntington Beach!  We are excited!  It is pretty sweet.  It does just so happen that the weather for that day is forecasted to be a little on the “don’t move today” side of things, but what can you do.  When it is time, it is time!  Hang on a second…

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…Ok.  I’m back.  Well, actually I just went to weather.com and the forecast doesn’t seem to be bad that day.  So never mind!  I think it might turn out to be just perfect.  So, anyway, I guess I am just posting this to tell you that we are moving this weekend (probably) and excited about it!  Oh, and our house closes on Friday!  Woo hoo!  That’s freakin’ sweet if you ask me!  But don’t ask me.  You already know what I will say.  Ok, off to convince the GM at Cheesecake Factory that he needs to hire me now!  We’ll see.  Wish me luck…or pray for me if you aren’t into the luck thing (personally I am not into the luck thing…oh well…that was probably a waste of a breath for you.  Sorry about that.).

Well, I think we may have found our home for the next year (at least)!  You may know already that we are basically living out of a storage unit and crashing with some very generous friends of ours right now, but our house is scheduled to close in 11 days and then we are free!

Today we went and looked at another condo in Huntington Beach, CA.  We loved it!  It was in great shape!  It has been completely upgraded and is much bigger than the others that we have seen.  There is a pool and hot tub, underground parking and storage, and we can get it furnished or not furnished (or apparently anywhere in between)!  We are pretty excited about it!  It is directly across the street from the beach!  Amazing!

The only problem is that it is a good distance away from the friends that we have made already.  I guess we will have to make new ones.  Oh!  Did I mention that there is an extra bed in the living room that is part of the house so that you can all come and stay with us!  The list is starting and will fill up quickly!  Save your date at our house on the beach NOW!