Some days you just feel a bit blue. So on those days, you pray and thank God for life (eternal & temporal!). I'm glad that I'm around my kids all day to remind me of life's joys! Ahhhh, the bliss of being a child, a child of God :) Here are some pictures of our fun at Pump It Up to celebrate EB & Alyssa's summer birthdays. Even Mommy and Daddy had the opportunity to try out the equipment!

Birthday Boy Ethan enjoys a big slide

Tita Jing, cousin Phoebe and Erik take a plunge
(although Erik doesn't seem to get as big a kick out of it)

Lexi enjoys a big slide too

Ethan takes his first-ever stab at a climbing wall

The entire party. Where's Waldo...er, Alyssa and Ethan?

The Birthday King and Birthday Queen enjoy their birthday kingdom

We dedicated Henry to the Lord this past Sunday (September 21, 2008).

Noticeably, Pastor Lutzer didn't hold Henry (or the other two kids being dedicated that morning). This might have something to do with physical strain relating to his recent eye surgery...or it could be he just thinks it's easier to have the parents hold their kids. Who knows?

The cameraperson is Lolo, sitting about 15 rows from the front. Thanks, Lolo!

Ever watch "Extreme Home Makeover" on TV? We decided to do an "Extreme Blog Makeover."

Let's face it: Blogger templates are pretty tepid (read: ugly). WordPress themes, on the other hand, are often way cool...but you can't use them unless you have a web host (read: pay up). Being too cheap to pay for a web host and too creative to settle on ugly templates, I discovered that some people have been porting some snazzy WP themes into Blogger templates. Can you say "Woo hoo"? (go on, say it)

Anyway, I found a Blogger template called "Dreamwork Redux" and liked the possibilities (kinda like scoping out a house that's for sale and then envisioning what you'd do with it). So I used it for our blog and started gutting it down to the studs and rebuilding it from the modernistic look-and-feel to a more family-oriented style. Took a few days but I finally have it under control. Hope you all like it.

If you want to use the template,
1. Follow the link in the footer of our blog.
2. Download the template.
3. Upload the xml template to Blogger (note: you'll lose any existing widgets in your blog, but you can add them back).
4. You're done (if you like the style as-is out of the box).

The images and .js files in the template are stored on the web by someone else. If you're lazy, just leave it; if you're anal and concerned that person will someday close his account and take down those files, you can upload the files yourself. The images can be stored on sites like ImageShack, Photobucket, etc while the .js files can be uploaded to pages.google.com.

So basically, we're rebooting our blog. Feel free to bookmark it and check back often. Or if you're lazy like me, you can subscribe via email or RSS (your choice) and get blog updates automatically so you don't have to keep checking back here. As the old ads used to say: try it...you'll like it!