Deneall has started to mail out our “New Years” letter, I’ll post a copy here pretty soon.  Well… until then, catch you on Facebook!

See pictures of our new house:

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We have my mother staying with us this week while my brother Ed & our father are driving back from Florida.  Oh yeah, Claire started to crawl last week, pretty awesome, and today was her first day on solid foods.

I’m working on uploading video, hopefully that will be soon.  Gary

    Imagine hundreds, about 700, Geek Squad agents,  dressed in their uniforms all in a huge huge warehouse with hundreds, if not thousands of computer desks setup to work on up to 4 laptops at one time.  There were racks and racks of what looked like bakers racks that might have roles, or pizzas ready to go in the large commercial oven, but instead they were loaded with laptops all about to be fixed.    Anyway, here are a couple of pictures, as for the rest, you’ll just have to go to geeksquad.com and read more about it.  

Otherwise life is good, Claire is great and growing up fast.   she is already talking, and she skipped crawling altogether and decided to take her first steps last week.  I must say I’m very excited, as I’m already looking into getting her into online classes when she turns 3, as I’m sure by then she will already be doing 86 WPM on the keyboard, and have mastered most the basic computer functions. 

Well, hope you’re all doing well, Love ya guys.

Gary

“I’m great”  so I guess that didn’t take 30 minutes, and isn’t too far off from what I tell people while I pass by.  But here are the reasons why.

1. I’m saved by Grace
2. I’m the proud husband of Deneall Jean Blok
3. I’m a proud father of a beautiful baby girl
4. I’ve got awesome family / in-laws / friends
5. I’m the proud owner of a VW Passat
6. I’m the owner of a plain Jetta (Pregnant and Cravings… for a Car?)
7. I do great work for District 833 Schools
8. I work for Bestbuy Geek Squad
9. I’m in Andrew Boom’s wedding on June 28 2008

So I guess those are some of the reasons.  Anyway, now on to some more exciting stuff.  I nearly died.  I was driving home from Bestbuy (work) at about 11:30 PM on Friday night with the Passat.  As I was pulling off the freeway, my front passenger tire blew out.  I don’t have a spare… yes, that’s right, don’t ask, and it was like 5 degrees, I was tired, and I couldn’t do anything about it.  So I drove home the last 2 miles, slowly until I got it parked in the garage.  So now you say, “Gary, you didn’t almost die from that”, and you’d be right, just wait, I haven’t gotten to that part yet.  So I get the tire off  in my garage, and leave the car on the jack, figuring I’ll take the tire to get fixed while I leave the car on the stand.  So the next day, I come out, and the car fell off the jack, crashed down and caused some nasty damage to my front passenger door.  Yet, you think, “Gary, still failing to see how you were almost killed”.  So let me explain.  My Passat is basically an extension of my body (you other car enthusiasts will completely understand), when I came in and saw the damage to my car, I imagined how my car will never be perfect again, and how much it will cost to fix.  That was nearly enough to make me keel over right there.  So now I need new tires, and some body work done to my car, which will be difficult on a budget that is already incredibly diminished thanks to the addition of Claire in the family (though I wouldn’t change that for the world).  So, Lord willing, I’ll be able to have insurance cover the body damage, but I’ll still need to get some tires.  Anyway, my parents were in town this weekend, and my Dad (Awesome Man you all should know) helped me get the car to the dealer tonight so it will hopefully get fixed this week.

Bonus today, we got over to Grace & Truth Chapel to see the Believers and fellowship with them this morning.  It was grand.  I was so glad to hear that you guys got your Christmas cards / Letters from us.  Click HERE to download the PDF version.  If you didn’t get one, I’m sure it was the US Postal Service’s fault.  Please email me with your Name, Address, to confirm with the ones I have for you, and we’ll send one out to you again with the Christmas Picture.  Better yet, print one yourselves and sign our names for us like this “To: INSERT YOUR NAME HERE”  From: Gary, Deneall and Claire with Lots of Love“.  The dollar you save me in expenses I’ll consider as your Christmas gift.  Thanks in advance.

So now, finally, info about Claire.  She is growing, she is cute, and she likes to complain.  She likes to be held all night, she likes to be super cute and smile randomly, I still have yet to figure out how to make her smile at my command, and she seems to be going bald.  While I hear this is normal for a baby to loose their hair, and grow new hair, I can’t help but worry it will not grow back, I mean it doesn’t always grow back right?  Look at Peter Grul, didn’t grow back for him.

Christmas is gonna be sad, Deneall is leaving me to spend nearly 2 weeks in Rochester while I have to work.  Her sister from MI is coming to visit, who Deneall really misses, and hardly gets to see, now that she lives in Holland MI.  So it will be a lonely couple of weeks coming up for me.  I figure I’ll try to work more hours at BB, since its depressing to be home alone, and this will help pay for the medical bills and car bills.

Prayer requests:

• Deneall’s continual recovery
• That we’re good parents for Claire and raise her up right
• Strength for me and my hectic work schedule
• My Wednesday Night Youth Group boys
• Ed & Nat as they go to Florida this week.

Thanks everyone, hope you enjoyed another installment of “The Memoirs of Gary W Blok”.   Eventually all of my writings will be available in book form (paper back and hard cover), so at least you know you’ll have something to look forward to.  I predict it to be a good stocking stuffer… when available.  I recommend waiting for the extended version with commentary.

Click HERE to get the Claire Pictures.

Oh, also, I believe this will be our first and only child as I have Deneall saying, on several occasions, she will never do this [give birth] again.    

Look how cute Claire is!!!  I made her!  Deneall’s Mom and Deneall’s Dad are pictured below.  This is their first Grandchild.  They were super excited.

  
Check back soon for more info / pictures / videos / quality written materials with fairly good grammar.  - Gary Walter Blok

So yesterday, Deneall and I spent some time together, went to Perkins, went to MOA, went to Burnsville VW, where I looked at cars, begging my wife to let me trade in her Jetta for a slightly older, but way more awesome Audi A4, but Deneall was the voice of reason and kept saying “No”.

Well, we’ll let you know more when we know more. We go in on Monday Morning!