if you saw deb’s devotional video yesterday you heard her mention during the end that we were giving this site a little more attention and we would both be contributing more often.  we’ve even set up a schedule and themes for us to post on.

so here it is:
Mon:: devos with deb (devotional insights from a mom/wife/princess)
Tues:: married life (thoughts on marriage from a guy/dad/husband/pastor)
Wed:: parenting life (hints/tips/encouragement on parenting from a mom of SIX kids)
Thur:: FamilyLife Update (all the news/updates on our progress to moving to Little Rock by abe)
Fri:: house to home (recipes, family fun activities, cleaning/organizing tips by deb)
Sat:: pic/video of the week (a look into the lives of the laras chosen by abe)
Sun:: theacousticlife.com podcast (every 1st & 3rd sunday we’ll have a new episode posted)

as we enter a new month and new phase of ministry life, abe and I have decided to add a new format & hopefully more regularity to this blog. we look forward to sharing parenting & marriage insights with you as well as quick & easy recipes & podcasts on various topics. don’t miss out on a single edition – we’re gonna have a lot of fun!

we’ll we’re just about to head out on our trip to Akansas, so i thought this would be the prefect time to update my blog and web hosting.

actually the real reason i did it was so that i could get with a webhost that offered unlimited space and bandwidth. last week deb and i recorded our pilot podcast. so i wanted a place that would host it all.

i’ll still have to figure out how to upload the podcast and make it itunes and rss compatible, but watch the site for updates. hopefully i can get it all worked out today and be able to post updates and a new podcast episode while on our trip.

we’ll be covering life, faith, marriage, parenting, our journey with FamilyLife Today.

we’re heading out on our trip tomorrow morning at 4am. a huge thanks to grandma rebecca for taking ALL 6 kids for us this week. plus she’s taking them and cousin cathy camping for the first part of it! send lots of prayer her way. here they are just about to pull out of the driveway.

so enough is enough. i’m fed up with why the search/tags feature of my blog isn’t working.

so i’m taking some drastic measures this weekend. i’ll be exporting my blog, deleting it, and then reinstalling wordpress on my hosting.

so if you’re unable to get to this site this weekend, i give my apologies up front in advance.

i’ll be trying to get things back up and running as soon as possible.

have a great weekend.

i hereby propose the inception of the “120-club”. what is it? i’m glad you asked. :)

to become a member of the 120-club your sole requirement is to write a minimum of 120 posts to your blog a year. that’s it. this works out to 10 posts a month, which i don’t think is unattainable or unrealistic. for some of you reading this that add to your blog on a daily basis, 10 posts a month seems kinda low. for the rest of us who would like to write more often but have really been slacking off since we joined twitter (or some other excuse like having more kids, etc) then 10 posts a month will be an effort. but it’s an effort i think we’ll feel good about doing when the year’s over.

there’s no requirement on how long the posts need to be, or if they include or exclude video or photographic posts. simply that you add content to your blog on a consistent basis.

it’s not a contest of who can write the most. it doesn’t matter if you write 10 per month to get to 120, or if you just wait till next december and cram all 120 posts during your Christmas vacation. as long as you achieve 120 by the end of the year, you’re in the 120-club. of course you can write more if you’d like, but you can start your own “club” for any number higher than 120.

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i recently got an email from a friend asking about how to increase traffic to his blog, my response to him is what follows:

How do I get my blog more action i.e. visits?

simple answer: let people know you have one and keep them coming back by having content they want to read about.

what that means is include your blog site address in your email signature as seen below. when you write a new blog post, let people who follow you on twitter or facebook know about it. (and so you may also want to get more people to follow you on twitter and/or facebook, including people you don’t know but seem to have similar interests. Continue reading

so if you follow me on Twitter then you already know Deb and I’s big news…

we got our iPhones today!!!

so how did these turn of events happen?

we were already planning on getting them this tuesday, but circumstances changed when (through my constant talking about it) our pastor decided it was time for him and his wife to also get new phones.  

to be fair… our pastor is already a big apple fan and was planning on getting an iPhone sometime in the future already.  he just wasn’t thinking it had to be on the very day that our sprint contract ended.  but after we talked last wednesday about some details about transferring our phone numbers he said he’d talk to his wife about possibly getting them some iPhones too.

well I was planning on getting our phones on tuesday during my lunch hour.  and then have the at&t guys call pastor to get the information they needed in order to port our numbers over. (for those who didn’t know our sprint phones are on the same “family plan” as our pastor’s and his name is the main one on the account, so i would need his authorization if i wanted to keep my same # on the iPhones.)  well once pastor decided that they also were going to get phones then it was more convenient for us to do go together on a weekend then during the week sometime.  he had talked with the at&t store and asked them if there was any way to pay/get the iPhones now, but not have the number ported over until tuesday when our contract ends (neither one of us wants to get charged $200/phone line by sprint for canceling early).  the guy at at&t said they would be happy to set up our phones with a temporary number now and then have us call an 800 # on tuesday (or anytime afterwards) to have our old numbers ported over.

and i was none to eager to agree that that would be a great idea.

i’m also excited that deb is so enthusiastic about her iPhone as well.  a few weeks ago when i asked her if she would also like to get one she was indifferent and said she’d be fine with just a “regular” phone.  but now that she’s had a chance to play with it for a little bit she loves it.  she was having so much fun browsing the AppStore on the drive home from the tri-cities- playing games, listening to music and surfing online.

yes, this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

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PS.  i think this is going to allow me to start blogging on a more regular basis, since i’ll be able to write and publish posts from anywhere, not only when i’m in front of my computer.  plus the fact that i’m joining a “van pool” to get to work starting on monday, i’ll have plenty of time to write, read, listen to podcasts, etc.

if you want to know what our temporary numbers are you can see this tweet.  you’ll just have to know us well enough to know what our area code is where we live, or be good enough with google to figure it out.

it’s amazing the difference a week can make. i’ve been at my new job at efcom for a little over a week now.

so what’s so different. for one, i actually like going to work now. and if some one asked i’d even say i love my job now. for those who don’t know, efcom is an Apple Reseller and Service company in yakima. and if you’ve known me very long you know that i like computers. but not just any computers, Apple computers. so to get to come to work and help others with their computer issues or helping them make up their mind about which mac to buy is just awesome. i’ve been doing that for years already and now i get paid to do it.

and now i’m getting to learn about taking apart the machines and doing hardware repairs. and i’ll be studying to actually become “Apple Certified” on the software and perhaps later on the hardware as well.

i actually really enjoy having a commute. i’m more of an introverted type of person. that may be hard for some to believe since i do such a good job of “pretending” to be extroverted sometimes. but i truly do love being by myself. and so i like the times in the morning and afternoon to just be by myself in my car with either nothing to clutter my thinking, or as a chance to catch up on podcasts or audiobooks i’ve been meaning to listen to.

there’s another guy that works here that lives about halfway between grandview and yakima so we’ve been carpooling from his house on. one week i’ll drive and then the next he’ll drive. so it doesn’t cut my gas bill all the way in half since i still have to drive to his house, but it does help cut it down a bit.

one of the things i was looking forward to about the commute was the chance to catch up on my un-played to podcasts and i thought that commuting with someone else would interrupt that. but trenton likes listening to them as well and even asked me to bring my shuffle and car adapter with me on the weeks that he drives. so that’s cool.

but i’d have to say that the biggest change that’s happened this past week is that i can now say i’m a “family man”. now for a guy with six daughters it might sound odd to say that i wasn’t a family man before. but i now see that at best i had good intentions, and at worst only vain words.

you see before i disliked my job, i felt the need to have my “alone” time to recharge, and yet still wanted to spend time with my family. but since i hated my job and hadn’t had time to myself all day i would come home seeking time to be alone. so every-time that my girls would run to come climb on me or want to tell me all about their day i’d be annoyed because i hadn’t had my time yet. yes, it’s probably selfish but that’s how i felt.

but now i have plenty of time to myself and can fully devote myself to being with my family as soon as i walk in the door. i come home everyday excited to have the girls run out and give me a hug. i walk in the door ready to help deb and lift her load after a long day alone with the kids.

in fact the week before i started deb and i were talking about how little family time i would be getting with the girls. i leave home around 7:30a, sometimes one or two of the girls are awake but not always. so i don’t always get to say “good morning” or “good bye” to them. and then i get home around 6pm. so we have dinner, have a little time together and then put them to bed around 8 or 8:30. so i only get to see my kids for 2 or 2 1/2 hrs a day! and then time alone with deb is just maybe a 0.5-1hr beyond that.

so i now i cherish every moment i have with my family. the downside to all this is that my blog has been neglected, twitter updates are becoming fewer and farer between. and honestly i’m not sure if either will pick back up again.

maybe i just need some time getting used to my new schedule and will find a time to squeeze in blogging somewhere. but right now that’s not the case.

so until next time (when ever that may be), so long blog world. i hope to get to know you again a little better sometime. but i can’t have you come between me and my family, so i’m gonna have to say good bye.

so do you have any tips on how i can balance life, work, family, blogging, twitter, etc?

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// today i’m thankful for:
1. my family
2. my kids
3. my job
4. my sister’s birthday
5. my new car tires.

PS. my personal iPhone day is only 21 days away!!!!

so you may have noticed that i’ve started updating my blog with a daily digest of my tweets. there’s lots of life that takes place in between when i have time to write a blog post.

but, since i’m not as faithful as other bloggers to write something everyday or multiple times a day, it started to seem like my tweets were overtaking my blog.

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well, it’s only fair that i do an interview with danielle. i can take advantage of her patience for only so long :)

i believe it is a job of a parent to be a student of their children. parents should study their children and be very knowledgeable about that “subject”. we must know what makes our kids tick, what excites them, what upsets them. for instance, danielle is a peacemaker; she is sensitive to the feelings of others and tries to make people happy. she is great company- she easily transitions between her sisters. nonetheless, danielle will not be pushed around. she’s not the oldest, but she still works hard to get her way. somehow she’s a peacemaker and a fighter at the same time. she is great to have on your side- if you’re the underdog, she’ll have your back. but if you’re “not in her club” life’s can be rough. (julia is ever trying to do the right stuff to be in danielle’s club). anna has even commented “why is it that sometimes we’re best friends and other times we fight?

she’s always runnin’ around and flipping upside down. we, as her parents, are constantly on her to turn right-side-up. it is fun to have a kid like danielle. i don’t know if i could handle more than one of her, though. my girls are all so different. anna is very careful about whatever she does and is quite creative and scholarly; danielle is compassionate and a people pleaser; julia is a talker (grandma rebecca tells her she has the ‘gift of communication’) and is always ready for a party; rachel is determined to get what she wants and she has ways to get others to help her- with babbling, gestures, pinching, etc. sarah and naomi are still too young to label their personalities :)

anyways, its fun to watch them all grow up together and interact with each other.