Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.

Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

-Proverbs 31:10-12, 29-30

I celebrated another year of life yesterday with my wife, and I must say… it’s great to be married. Food tastes better, the company is prettier, and the experience is much more memorable. We headed over to Shabu Fondue for a wonderful birthday dinner surprise. I was fairly excited about this because I had not had ‘real’ fondue before in a restaurant setting. The atmosphere was great and the restaurant was themed pretty well; distinctly Asian-decor (think lots of red and black). The food was fantastic, albeit a little on the pricey side (especially since you’re the one cooking half of your meal…). All-in-all a great experience, and one I would recommend in moderation (your wallet will thank me).

We are also picking up the keys to our finished condo today! After nearly a year of waiting, the place is finally built and ready for the newlyweds to move-in. I must say, with this being my first piece of non-rental property, I’m quite excited. Celeste and I are both keenly aware of the fact that this, along with many other things, is a blessing from the Lord. We are so very thankful to our God for giving us this opportunity and pray that we are able to honor Him through the use of our home and lives together.

During the course of the next two weeks, I’ll be traveling a lot. Next Tuesday we will be heading over to Orlando Florida for the Photoshop World Conference with our friends Vinny and Elizabeth from Xaris Studio. Upon returning, I’ll be preparing for another trip with my Creative Services team at Food for the Hungry. We are having our annual vision planning trip which will help us brainstorm new ways to be productive and innovative with our branding and marketing during the course of this next year.

It’s a busy time in our lives, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

My wife and I have been taking online quizzes in an effort to better understand how our views translate to the political realm. While I was fairly sure that I knew the finer points of my own political views prior to taking the quizzes, I did discover some unique quiz tools online. Both Celeste and I agreed that our favorite test was taken at: http://politicalquiz.net/. We liked this one the best because it doesn’t give you the generic, “Your a Republican/Democrat!” answer. This test assigns you a 4 digit numerical value which tells you about the specifics of your political views. It is apparent that how you prioritize your values in politics makes a huge difference in how you vote. After completing the test, you can plug the numbers you are assigned into a ‘voting match-up’ section of the site that will pair you with a presidential candidate. Pretty nifty!

Tomorrow I will have officially been married for three weeks. Can I wear the hat of the old married man now? These post-wedding days have been filled with cleaning, organizing, and preparing to move to a new home yet again. The contractor that is building our cozy, little condo has moved up the production time a whopping four months; that puts our projected move-in date at March 27th. I am excited to finally own a place- no more rental fees and upkeep to a house/apartment that you have no monetary investment in. We couldn’t ask for a better location too. Once there, we’ll be 2-3 minutes from our church, my gym, our bank, and a host of other very convenient places. God has been so good to provide us with this opportunity and we look forward to using this blessing for his glory.

Work has been busy recently with a host of projects coming down the proverbial design pipeline. I’m pulling double duty as a print and web designer right now which offers unique challenges, but also great pay-off in the end. I think the work that is being created in conjunction with the web and creative service teams are deliverables that we can really stand behind. I’m especially excited about Food for the Hungry’s new website which should be launching in the not too distant future. I have been recruited to do all of the conceptual/development design work for this goliath of a project and am looking forward to the challenges it will provide me with. We are really hoping to deliver something here that will blow people’s expectations away. It’s exciting to be working for an organization that you completely believe and support- it makes the drive for excellence and desire to further the reach of the organization that much more personal. I’m really praying that this new website, as well as the accompanying print materials, will do just that.

We were able to get ‘back in the groove’ with church activities this last week, which was wonderful. The wedding planning had taken up much of our free time and we hadn’t been able to participate in ministries or extra church activities too frequently during that time. However, this week I was able to jump back in the saddle by giving my first devotional in awhile to our college and career group (thank you so much David for covering during our wedding planning!). I did a talk on legalism in the church… more specifically though, what a Biblical definition of legalism is. It was a somewhat weighty issue to touch on, but the Lord taught me a lot through the experience. We also had a men’s group this past Tuesday; this was an edifying time for me. It was great to be surrounded by good, encouraging Christian brothers.

April will see many new experiences as well. I have back-to-back conferences scheduled at the beginning of the month (Photoshop World in Orlando, FL and a Creative Services Retreat in Strawberry, AZ). I’ve also promised my wife that we would begin a search for the first addition to our family… a cat (I had you going there at first didn’t I!). Truth be told, I’m a dog person, but there are certain cats that seem to have a ‘dog-like’ personality about them- I’m hoping for one of those. At any rate, it should be a really fun month and I’m looking forward to what the Lord has in store for us.

Life continues to be a trip for me! I’ve now been enjoying the married life for almost two full weeks. I am exceedingly thankful to the Lord for what he has done in my life and I am so very happy to have my best friend and helpmate by my side (I love you Celeste!). I still have yet to get a copy of the audio feed from ceremony from our sound guy, but my friend Elgin sent me over a small snippet yesterday of us leaving the wedding reception that he had edited. He also was kind enough to give me his raw video footage and tapes so that I can edit and arrange video later on.

Elizabeth (our dear friend and official wedding photographer) snapped a terrific shot of Elgin at the wedding which I think looks great and really captures him in the moment. Both her and Vicente (her husband) did such a great job with our engagement photos and I know the wedding ones are going to be absolutely amazing too. Celeste and I will be going to Orlando, Florida with them during the first week of April to attend the Photoshop World Conference. Once or twice a year my work will pay for me to attend conferences like these so that I can continue taking courses to hone my skillset as a graphic designer. This is a huge blessing to us, because much of Celeste’s family lives in Orlando and we are going to be able to have another mini-reception there for those who were unable to attend our original one while we are there.

My great friend Darryl Poenisch was our official videographer for the big day and I know he’s been hard at work editing video (Darryl you are incredible!). Between people like Darryl and Elgin, as well as our photographers Vicente and Elizabeth, we just feel so very blessed to have extensive documentation of our wedding day.