Just had to check in to share the lovely pics we had taken this morning. As usual, Analise was quite the little beauty, if I do say so myself! Every day, she looks more like a little girl rather than a baby. It amazes me. If you’d like to compare her to just 9 months ago, when she was 9 months old,
here are those pictures.

Thanks for all the well-wishes on our baby boy Toone-to-be:) I’ve got all kinds of chit-chat I’ve been meaning to put into a blog, but I’ve just not had the time to pull it all together. I’ve got a long to-do list this afternoon, but Analise just laid down for a nap, and I’m determined to get something posted. I won’t be distracted by the internet or the laundry basket or the vaccuum… here goes! (Besides, I’ve not let either of the latter two distract me in the last week, so why now??)

A Growing Little Girl
Analise has been a busy girl latey! She turned 18 months old at the end of December, and I’m just amazed everytime I look at her, realizing how much she’s growing up. She’s trying to be very independent. Yesterday I was letting her go diaper-less to give her rashy bottom some air. After a bit, Brian found her in her room, sitting on a diaper, trying to put it on herself:) The other morning, after napping with me on our bed, she woke up snuggling next to me. She leaned over pointing to my eyes, and said “Eyes” and then pointed to my nose, and said “nose”, and followed this linguistic burst with “mof” as she pointed to my mouth. She’s still jabbering all the time, and we’re starting to make out more and more words that she’s trying to use. These were a couple very distinct, thought-out words. She’s enjoying the new Baby Einstein movie, Baby Wordsworth, with words and signs, and she’s been trying her new words out on us, as well as doing the signs with the movie, and when we ask. I’m rather impressed! (I personally thought this Baby E movie was the most boring, but it seems that she’s gotten more out of it than any others!) The word of this week, though, is a very distinct “YAK”, which she learned from the Fisher Price A to Z Learning Zoo, our Christmas present to her. We figured we’d start with the easiest animal to say… she hasn’t picked up flamingo yet:)
She’s also got very distinct things that she desires, and we’re working on communicating those with her limited vocabulary. She’s doing pretty well! She’s eating great too… specially since she’s learned to dip things. Ketchup, ranch dressing, and salsa are all happy additions to her plate, and make every meal more interesting. Another trick to getting her to eat is giving her a fork and spoon. For some reason, things taste better if it’s on a utensil, and she enjoys doing it herself, even if one piece of pear takes 5 minutes to get from plate to mouth!

Our Ultrasound
I just have to recap our ultrasound from last week. It was so funny, because I was really expecting to hear that we were having another girl. At our ultrasound with Analise, the doctor told us she was “80% certain” that we were having a girl, so we kept the possibility of a boy open in our minds, even up to the moment she arrived. At the beginning of this appointment, Brian asked the technician if she’d be able to tell if it was a girl or boy. She promised that she wouldn’t guess, but more than likely she’d be able to tell. Halfway through this ultrasound as the tech was doing all the measurements, Brian excitedly asked, “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl yet?” I chided him, saying, “Let her get the technical stuff done”, but she said, “I think I saw what I needed to see”. !!!!!!!!! Brian said, “YOu SAW something???” “Yes,” she said, “I’m pretty sure it’s a boy.” We were both so surprised, just because of the certainty of “seeing something”, and sure enough, we saw what we needed to see to be convinced as well. 🙂 I was in shock, and still am at the thought of having a little boy, since I had so imagined another little girl and Analise having a sister. But I’m really excited either way, and I hope and pray that they are good friends, given that they’ll be just 2 years apart in age. She’s going to be a great big sister, I can tell already!

Beyond the Gates of Splendor
Years ago, I read a book by Elisabeth Elliot called Through Gates of Splendor. It’s a true account of her husband and 4 other men’s experience in reaching out to a savage Ecuadorian tribe with the Gospel, ending tragically as they were all 5 speared to death. It’s an amazing story of faith and love. A new documentary is out called Beyond the Gates of Splendor, created in part by Steve Saint, the son of one of the men who was killed. It tells the complete story of what happend, from the mouths of the Waodani indians themselves, and shows the tremendous story of redemption that God has worked in their people through these 5 men giving their lives. Last Friday was the 50th anniversary of the tragedy. Next week, on January 20th, a full-length movie will be released in theaters called End of the Spear telling the story in drama format. It looks excellent as well. I can’t reccommend the documentary enough, and I’m sure the movie will be equally as good. Though the men all had guns, they said they would never use them on the indians, even if their lives were in danger. The summarizing quote that remains with me is this: “They’re not ready for heaven… we are.”

I think that’s all my chit-chat:) I’d better post this before it gets lost or I get distracted. Hope everyone’s well!

Here’s the first pictures of our little baby boy! We found out this
past Friday at our 18 week ultrasound appointment that we were
having a baby boy that will be due to arrive on June 6, 2006. This
picture above is my favorite.

Here is a collection of other pictures taken from the video clip posted at the
end of this blog. Reading clockwise from the top left picture:

1. Here is the little guy holding his knee and leg.
2. Here the four chambers of our baby’s heart are circled.
3. Here you can see his index finger outstretched.
4. Finally, here you can tell we’re having a boy! (Hint: look for a turtle)

Today was the big day for our 18 week ultrasound and to find out if Analise would have a little brother or sister. As you can see by the balloons above, we’re expecting a little boy Toone in early June! Analise is going to be a great big sister, and she’s been practicing with the baby doll she got for Christmas. It’s nap time here, so I’ll check back later with more fun chatter from the Toone household. But for now, just wanted to share our exciting news about the newest Toone-to-be!

You know you’ve left the winter wonderland when
it’s 73 degrees and people are walking around
in shorts and short sleeve shirts. We left
LaPorte, Indiana Friday evening in a heavy
rain/snow mix, which turned to all snow
briefly and coated our car with about 1/4
inch of snow while we were eating dinner
in Lafayette, Indiana. Driving through the night,
we made it back to Birmingham by 6
Saturday morning. Yesterday, we went for a walk
around our neighborhood in very warm
73 degree weather! Birmingham had a record high temp on January 2nd of 78 degrees!

Let me tell you about the rest of our fun trip
to the Wisconsin Winter Wonderland. We first
drove from Shell Lake all the way across the
state to Green Bay, Wisconsin where we had
a fun time catching up with Kristine’s college
roommates and friends. Clockwise from the top left
in the collage above:

1. We went to Mackinac’s with Dan and Dena (middle) and their son, Derek
   where we met Robyn (right) and her husband Rick, Betsy
   and her husband Eric and son Gabriel.
2. After spending the night with Dena and Dan, we met Jen (center) and Pat and
   their 8-month old daughter Callie.
3. At Dan and Dena’s house, Analise and Derek played together.
   When Dena took this picture, Analise had on her own just gotten up and went
   right over to Derek and sat down to be close to him.
4. This last picture is of Kristine and Dena, roomates of 4 years and their lively little ones!

After leaving Green Bay, we headed down to LaPorte, Indiana
to visit Grandma Vivian and Charlie. We spent the night
at Steve and Connie’s house, where Analise had fun playing
with some baby dolls and a dollhouse. I came in from the garage at one point
to find Analise taking a handfull of dog food and throwing it
at Brandy, the family dog. In the afternoon, I decided to go on
one more bike ride to head the 15 miles one way to the Michigan
border hoping that it would start snowing along the way.
I unfortunately didn’t make it to Michigan because
I got a flat tire near the Galena Marsh. Kristine had to borrow
a car to come pick me up since I didn’t have any bike tools
with me to fix or replace the tube. I’m glad it wasn’t snowing
because I had to sit next to this sign for about 20 minutes, and
it sure gets cold fast when you aren’t moving at all.

At about 6pm we left for Alabama in a driving rain storm that
soon turned into snow. When we stopped for dinner in Lafayette, Indiana
it was snowing pretty hard, and we had a quarter inch of snow on
our car by the time we came out! The snow quickly turned back to rain as
we headed south, and the snow was completely gone even before we
made it to Kentucky.

Speaking of snow, we had quite a bit of fun in the snow before
we left Shell Lake as evidenced by the collage above. Clockwise from the top left
in the collage above.

1. Hal and Anna joined us for a rousing game of electronic catch phrase.
   During the game, it started to snow! We headed down the street to a fun
   hill and went sledding. Here is Kat, Hal, Anna, and Analise all piled
   onto each other at the bottom of the hill.
2. Snow or stars? You decide.
3. Here is a picture of the three beautiful sisters and Analise
   right before we left.
4. Here it is snowing in Spooner on our way out of town
   where we stopped at our favorite coffee shop in the whole world, Alley Cats, for one last
   coffee drink to go.

Earlier in the day, I had to go for one more bike ride … this time to retrace
my tracks on the lake and find out what really happened!

I started out by riding on a railroad grade converted into a snow-mobile trail.
Eventually, I turned off the railroad grade and followed a different trail
through a corn field before taking some beautiful snow-covered roads back
to Shell Lake.

Then I headed out onto the lake which was now covered with between 1/4
and 1/2 inch of new snow. After venturing out a little ways onto the lake
and realizing how firm the ice was because of the colder temperatures and
how easy the riding was because of the new snow, I set out to follow my
tracks from a couple days earlier when I
got lost
in the heavy fog.

Here is an updated map. Recall that the green
line was the intended track, and the red line indicated my best
guess at the actual track. The new blue line gives a more accurate
picture of my actual track after I was able to find my deep
track still frozen in the ice two days later.

From the top, reading left to right
in the collage above (the numbers correspond to the
numbers on the map):

• 1. Here is an ice fishing hole that I had just barely missed in the fog.
• 2. Here is the outline of a bicycle accident. If you look
  carefully, you can see where both wheels slid out from
  under me and from where my body hit the ground.
  Notice the two sets of tracks that I was following. One
  was from my outward track in the fog, the other was
  from my returning “lost in the fog” track.
• 3a. There are two pictures for the number three.
  The first is of the island which was much more visible
  than on the day I got lost.
• 3b. The other number three picture is of a place
  where my outgoing and incoming tracks crossed the
  day I got lost in the fog.
• 4. Here is where I started to sink very deeply
  into the ice, and I made a 180 degree turn heading back,
  ironically, in the correct direction. Note how
  wide the track is in the ice from where the ice
  was seperating.
• 5. Finally, here in this last picture, you can see a number
  of things. First, you can see that my track veers from one snow
  mobile track to another. Also, you can see the difference in the
  depths of my tracks the day I got lost when temperatures were
  warmer and the ice was slushier compared to our last day in
  Shell Lake when it was much colder.

Merry Christmas, everyone! We’ve been having a wonderful
Christmas vacation up here in Wisconsin. Here’s a family
picture when Kristine’s sister, Anna, took us snow shoeing
in Platteville. We have all had quite a bit of fun in the
snow up here. The next three pictures tell the story:
cross-country skiing with mom, sledding with dad,
and sledding alone! Even if you are on 56k dialup, please
take the time to download and watch the video of
Analise sledding. It will be worth the wait!

Click here to download a video of Analise sledding
Click here to stream a video of Analise sledding

Analise has also seemed to be on an accelerated development
schedule. She has been talking quite a bit more and added
the following three words to her vocabulary: “baby”, “up”,
“down”. She’s also pulled off a number of other feats
in the four picture collage below. Clockwise from
the upper left:

1. Stacking five creamers on top of each other while visiting
   with Kristine’s Godparents Kathy and Jerry Shultz and their
   daughters Anna and Sara.
2. Walking with daddy in the snow, as evidenced by the
   little set of footprints next to the big set.
3. Balancing her new baby on top of a
   Christmas bull.
4. Carrying five baskets all by herself around the
   Cardwell house.

I have been having some more fun adventures on the snow
and ice, too! Dale took me skiing with his mentee, Daniel,
on a frozen river —
the Namakonga — the same dreaded river that was the demise of
my digital camera the day before my wedding almost exactly
two and a half years ago. Pictures below with captions!

Molly (the dog), Dale, and Daniel talk about strategies for
negotiating skiing through the rapids.

Probably the coolest part of skiing on the river was all
the animal tracks. We saw deer, maren (weasel-like)
predator, and river otter tracks! Yes, a river otter
leaves a very unique track … long tubes where the otter
will slide on its tummy. We saw these kinds of tracks
leading from a small breathing hole the otter had made
by the bank of the river. In the top picture above, you can
see the long tube tracks just beyond the ski tracks.
Above, in the bottom picture, you can see the otter’s breathing
whole near the center of the ice puddle.

Seeing these tracks from a very large bird, most likely an eagle,
was also really cool!

Finally, I went biking again today on some snow mobile trails
and only ventured out a little ways on to the lake. It was
clear enough today that you could just barely see all the
way across the lake to the other side.

I’ll come back to this map in a moment, but for now let’s just say that “green”
represents the intended path. The “red” lines indicate my best guess at the path
I actually followed across the lake.

Let me preface this blog by saying that it’s me, Brian, writing this blog so
that you know that everyone is alive and well. I brought my mountain bike
with me on our trip to see family up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
Our first stop on the trip was Platteville, Wisconsin where temperatures
at one point reached the coldest temperature I have ever felt: 9 below zero.

(See my previous blogs: Leaving Alabama and
Frozen and Not So Frozen.)

Temperatures had taken a big swing upward all the way to the lower 40’s, though,
by the time we drove five hours farther north to Shell Lake, Wisconsin to stay
with Kristine’s parents for a week.

I was not happy about temperatures in the 40’s as I had been looking
forward pretty much all year to riding my bike across a usually quite frozen
Shell Lake.
The average ice depth reported here was just under 7 inches. Six inches is usually safe to drive a car onto the lake. I decided
that armed with this information, it would probably be safe to bike across the lake.

Riding through quite a bit of slush to reach the lake, however, did not help my confidence. So I decided to play it safe and stick close to the shore and head to the part of the lake that usually freezes first — the South Bay. Let’s return to the map at the top of this blog. The green line indicates this nice safe, intended path. The numbers on the map indicate the locations where the following five pictures were taken. I will use these pictures to help tell the rest of the story.

1: getting my feet wet – real ice skating

First, note that it is VERY foggy in this picture as I begin my journey. Note also that there is free standing puddles of water (not open water) from ice melt. I was following snowmobile and four-wheeler tracks, so this helped somewhat in rationalizing that what I was doing wasn’t completely insane. Nevertheless, seeing large puddles on a frozen lake isn’t necessarily a good thing.

2: island in the fog

As I was biking down to the spot on the lake where I took this picture, there was
a couple times that I lost site of the shore because of the heavy fog. This didn’t
worry me so much as I was following the marks left by quite a few snow mobilers
and four-wheelers — and I knew that I was heading in the right direction. When
I just barely could make out Scout Island to my left, I knew exactly where I was.
At this moment, I can remember thinking that it sure would be easy to get lost in
this heavy fog since the island less than 200 yards away would normally have been
easily visible.

3: the south landing

I made it to the South Landing marked on the map at the top of this blog
with a three. Here you can see a truck and a sport utility vehicle parked
on the ice, with the headlights of a third vehicle coming onto the lake
via a landing where I went kayaking with Kristine after only knowing
her for two months! At this point I actually exited the lake thinking that
I would just bike the couple miles back to the house via the roads.
I decided that with all the slush on the roads and low visibility it would
be better to just turn around and head back the same way I came via the lake.
Besides, there were numerous cars on the lake, and three drove right
by where I was standing when I took this picture. I thought I had nothing to
worry about. Big mistake.

4: pressure ridge and merry men

I started out by following the track I had made earlier.
Then I decided that on my way out I had stayed closer to the shore than I
wanted to because I remembered last year that the ice would crack really bad near the shore. So as you can tell from the red line, I veered to
the right … a little bit too far to the right! When I passed by the island,
I thought I was heading due north and passing by the airport shore somewhere
near or along the green line.

I didn’t realize it was the island until I started crossing pressure
ridges like the one in this picture, which I had not seen on my way down
to the south landing. Suddenly, I came across a three foot high pressure ridge
and two men on four wheelers pausing for a drink. They confirmed my suspicion that I had come around on the wrong side of the island. They warned me that
I had best turn around and come back the way I came as they had heard
that there were open areas of water still on the lake. I turned down the
drink they offered me in a flask — “one for the road” — which may
have turned out to be the best decision I could have made as impaired
judgment could have led to a story with a not so happy ending.
See “moments of panic” after the next picture. I turned
around and headed back the way I came.

5: through the fog, the north landing

This picture was taken after the scariest part of my trek across the lake.
Nine out of the ten moments of panic listed below all happened after I left
the “merry” ATV men. I’m not exactly sure how to explain what happened
since I don’t know myself, but I got quite lost and disoriented in the
fog with near-zero visibility. As you can tell from the red line on the map,
I did successfully make it around the island, but when I was attempting
to find a good track to lead me back to Shell Lake, I picked the wrong
track, lost my bearing and headed out across the longest part of the
lake, which is exactly where any open water (if there was any) would be.
I of course did not know this at the time.

The snow mobile track I was following
was a very good, straight one so I decided that I would just stick with
it and follow it. The track initially had other tracks crisscrossing
it, but eventually it became the only track visible. The fog kept getting
thicker and thicker leading to moment of panic #1, which was certainly
the scariest moment — when the fog was thick and the snow had been blown
enough that for a moment (probably less than a second) I lost complete
sight of the track I was following. During that moment, several realizations
happened:

1. There was no land in sight, and I had absolutely no
   idea where I was. 
2. I had been biking for probably close to thirty minutes and had not seen any
   sign of land at all. I realized I was probably heading in the wrong direction, but I had no idea which direction I was heading. In fact, I was thinking that I might be heading south or southeast across the lake and at any moment would hit the south shore somewhere directly below the 4 on the map. This was in fact quite the opposite of the direction I was heading. 
3. The sun had already set and I would have no hope of navigating in the dark.

A few minutes after having these realizations and confessing that I believed
that Jesus was my savior both here on earth and for the life to come … not
sure which of the two ways He was going to choose to save me today … I saw
a garbage can. My immediate thought was that I had taken a direct route to the
town landing and that it was a garbage can from the city park. Unfortunately,
I quickly realized that it was just a garbage can from where an ice fisherman
had been. I keep biking and about 100 yards later a car came into view. I biked
up to about 25 yards to the side of the car and called out to the man who was
in the car with the window down asking him which way was the nearest shore.
I told him that I had gotten lost on the lake and had absolutely no
idea where I was. He responded that I was only about 100 yards away from the north landing.
He went on to say that he was so surprised when he saw me and said to himself: “There’s something you don’t see everyday…

Imagine someone on a mountain bike coming
into view from out of a thick fog in the direction of the middle of the lake. It
might have actually freaked him out a bit. This last picture above is
a picture I took looking back after I made it to the north landing. You can
see that visibility is probably less than 25-50 yards. The tire tracks are
from the car driven by the man I talked to. Notice that his car, less than 100 yards
from the shore is not even close to being visible. Even after making it to shore, I was a good 2 miles from home, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or which road
I was on to get home. I’ll let Kristine comment or write
her own blog about the search and rescue party that she and her father conducted
to try to find me. I was gone for almost two and a half hours — more than an hour and a half longer than anyone (including me) was expecting. I had probably ridden close to 15-20 miles in the snow and ice on the lake and on the roads by the time I made it home. Kristine was still out looking for me when I got home.

Moments of panic:

1. When the fog got so thick that I momentarily lost the one snow mobile track I was following.
2. When I first realized that I had no idea where I was and that I couldn’t see land in any direction.
3. When I had to ride through large puddles where the ice had thawed and pooled on top of the deeper ice below it.
4. When I began thinking irrationally and recognized that I was actually starting to panic. The irrational thoughtthat scared me the most was that the track I was following was actually going in circles and that I might not be anycloser to land then I had been 15-20 minutes earlier.
5. When I was told by two “merry” ATV’ers that there was open water on portions of the lake and that I should becareful crossing pressure ridges as the ice might “just open up underneath you”.
6. When I realized that the sun had already set and that I might not make it shore before it got too dark
   to see anything. 
7. When I heard large sections of ice “splashing” underneath me.
8. When I came across sudden difficult sections of riding not because of snow on the ice, but rather because of icethat had melted so much, that my tires were sinking a good inch or two into the slush.
9. When riding became so awkward because of the snow and ice that had accumulated on the spokes of the wheels that I thought I had a flat tire and would have to walk the rest of the way across the lake.
10. When I realized that if I dropped my sunglasses that I was currently carrying in my mouth, that I was pretty sure Iwould not stop to pick them up.

We’re having a wonderful first leg of our winter wonderland vacation visiting Hal and Anna in Platteville, Wisconsin. Today we drove down to Dubuque, Iowa (about twenty minutes south). Dubuque is located on the Mississippi River, which you can see is mostly frozen in this picture.

This part of Wisconsin and Iowa is really quite amazing. We saw four bald eagles today as we were driving on the highway. Two were sitting on the edge of the ice near open water on the Mississippi, and another two were perched in a tree near the highway. Eagles are amazing. To think such a huge animal can actually fly!

Our main destination for the trip was the Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. It was awesome! There were all kinds of river animals ranging from tiny turtles to huge alligator snapping turtles. I’ve included the pictures below with a caption describing each.

Don’t be fooled … this alligator was huge … imagine how big that means the alligator snapping turtle next to it was! I definitely won’t be wading in the Mississippi River any time soon.

Here’s an interesting family portrait from the “Toadally Frogs” exhibit. There were frogs from all over the world. There were some cool little orange ones, blue ones, and green ones.

Here’s everybody waving!

Analise decided that the frogs were neither moving around nor jumping enough, so she decided to try to do both! She still hasn’t mastered jumping, but she sure can run. Aunt Anna did a great job of demonstrating how to jump. Here’s some short video clips. (Click on the picture to see them).

Analise also thought it was appropriate to kiss all the frogs with their big lips. I’m not sure if she was looking for her prince charming or not, but even if she finds him, she has to wait until she’s 30 to date him!

What would an aquarium be without playful otters? This aquarium is no exception, although these are certainly cold water river otters … something you don’t see every day. Note the snow and icicles!

Speaking of cold, here’s Analise right before we headed out the door. She makes the funniest face when we first get outside; it’s kind of a grumpy what’s going on face. I think she is torn though, because I think she likes the snow — she waves at it a lot.

Lastly, I went for a bike ride yesterday here in Platteville. As you can probably tell from the picture below, it was cold. Yes, that is an icicle hanging from my lip. No, it didn’t hurt. Yes, it’s kinda gross. How did that happen? Well, I was riding my mountain bike on some snow mobile trails when it was only 3 degrees … imagine the windchill! Whew.

A few hours after participating in the December graduation ceremony, I finished grading my last exams, biked home, loaded into the car everything Kristine had packed, and we headed out of town for our Christmas vacation! Nearly 16 hours of driving later, we made it to the cold, beautiful white north!

We stopped at a McDonald’s in Maquoketa, Iowa for breakfast after driving all night. It was 8 below zero and there was snow everywhere! After a nice breakfast, we zipped up Hwy 61 through Dubuque across the mighty Mississippi River to Platteville, WI. Uncle Hal and Aunt Anna got to play with a well-rested Analise while Kristine and I got caught up on some sleep.

Before we left, Analise was as cute as ever — here is her latest adventures. She enjoys bringing the holy family together with the floating family (Noah and the animals). Also, she can climb up onto her rocking horse all by herself now. Merry Christmas everyone!

We just got back from an awesome adventure at the Birmingham Zoo. This one is for sure to become an annual tradition for us. When you first walk in the zoo, there is snow falling from an artifical snow blower. Looks pretty realistic! And then there are lights everywhere! Kristine may write more later, but I think I’m going to leave the pictures in the rest of the blog speak for themselves. Look for the animals in the lights!