a baby named soleil

It has been a whiz-banger of a weekend. Liz and I received a call last week on Wednesday night while at the Claimjumper Restaurant. Tina was with us. The call went something like this. "Hi Mark, this is Jennifer. My water just broke and I'm on my way to the hospital. Have fun getting to Kentucky!" The call was in regards to Liz and I going through the adoption process for several months now, and the call to get to Kentucky started the last stage of the adoption adventure. The birth mom, Jennifer...

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shotgun trip to yosemite

Last weekend, Bruce Larson and I took a shotgun, 36-hour trip to Yosemite National Park and climbed Half Dome. The trip had been planned for several months, but had to be altered a little due to work constraints. Sucks to have to work and be responsible. Even with the tight work schedules, we were able to pull off a super successful trip, and summited one of the more known and traveled peaks in the nation. Driving the Yosemite Park tunnel Bruce, the driver The trip started off with Bruce...

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hasta luego and some kayaking

I'm finally getting around to updating my blog. We started out last weekend with a pretty good adventure. You can read about that somewhere else on my blog. I wanted to continue the recount of the weekend adventure here. We first ended up hooking up with my sister and family. We played it low key and met at a park in Laguna. I only know it as Dinosaur or Prehistoric Park because it has dinosaur fossils and bones to play on. Laura, Mike and Liz Bailey and Liz, two peas in a pod It was awesome...

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the beginning of a labor day weekend

Since I've returned home from my backpacking trip last weekend, I've not wanted to do anything with anyone except that my wife, Liz, was there with me. So when the weekend started for Labor Day (long weekend!) I made sure she was there with me. We woke up Saturday morning and decided to go for a bike ride down the Santa Ana River Trail that leads directly to the PCH and Huntington/Newport Beaches. With Liz on her beach cruiser and myself on my Kona, we took off for a nice 1.5 hour leisurely bike...

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some spiritual and physical inspiration

So lately I've needed some more inspiration in spirituality and fitness. It's kind of weird that they get mentioned in the same post. But at this point, what motivates me for one, motivates me for the other. So quicker than I could reason out why, I picked up a heavy pen and marked down my two favorite scriptures on my gym shoes today. Picture below. It may be tough to actually see what the writing says on the front most silver stripes, so allow me to tell you. The left one says 1 Corinthians...

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loving liz

I think for my first post I want to focus on my wife. I've been learning Spanish this week. Last week was pretty monumental due to my quitting WoW for the first real time. Quitting has happened before, but never actually cancelling my account. So I'm learning Spanish in my free time. This post is dedicated to her, and what I'm going to do is post pictures that I have of her, and declare a few words in Spanish. The words are what stand out about her in the picture. It's good practice for me, and...

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hello world

Well I'm back blogging again. Hopefully to stay this ti...

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