isaac ryan bunch

isaac, bored with us


with uncle mark


with uncle david


with dad :-)

so this is our nephew, who was born last thursday and who is adorable. mark is in love with him and today when he got home from work he was acting really weird. when i asked what was wrong he said, i miss isaac. and then he said that he wants to have kids. i asked him when and he said, like in two years. so i said, okay we will talk about it then. and then he got upset that melanie and i painted over the baby room so that i can use it as a guest room now. but, seriously? should i have left it baby blue with airplanes all over the walls for the next 2 years and 9 months?

it looks great now- it is kind of a mango color. the exact color is titled "apricot surprise." i will take a photo for you all manana.

ps. i am really trying to enforce the baby calling me tia mercedes. everytime someone says, look isaac, it's aunt denise, i say, uh hem...it's tia.

Labor pains

It's 3:45 am on Thursday morning and I can't sleep here at the hospital. Denise is asleep on the floor next to me in the chair and my mom and cousin are trying to sleep. I had starbucks at 8pm and I'm still feelin it, I think being in a brighter-than-day hospital waiting room is contributing though.

Amy is at 4 cm, which I didn't know before but one has to reach 10cm of contraction before actual delivery begins. I can't imagine, I know guys we've always tried to hold on to the equivalent pain level of getting hit below the belt but really, think about that rush of pain for 8-16 hours in waves every 3 minutes guaranteed. Now I'd most likely tap out after the first 2 waves. Just knowing that another one was coming would make me cry like a sissyman.

Anyways, watching Amy a little here, a little there has made me think of the part of scripture where Paul says, "my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!" (Gal 4:19) And I wondered how short our life is, compared to eternity, like 9 months in the womb to an entire lifetime. This life, and all its pains are only for a short while, we need to do now what we won't be able to do then, and do those two things (witnessing and trusting) by looking forward with hope to the next existence promised to us.

I told Denise tonight that sometimes I picture the heavenly scenes and think of the huge gatherings / concerts we'll participate in and how Jesus will occassionally appear as the lead guitarist or blow us away with an amazing drum solo. I enjoyed last Sunday's sermon Driscoll gave about how we will hear Jesus sing at the great wedding feast of the Lamb. Looking ahead to these days has helped me see the joy I have in Christ during those monotonous days, the ones where you can sometimes feel like a waste of space as far as kingdom building/disciple-making/prayer-full days go.

Come on Amy...you can do it!

it's july

hi, i don't have much to say but thought i could update you on our lives. we are in summer school right now- taking one class each and mine is over on friday and i cannot WAIT because i will have august off from school so i will just sleep in every day and then lay on the couch eating potato chips all day. not. i will work. but this class that i just took was amazing and so helpful to my life and thinking. it was called cultural apologetics and was about understanding the culture around us so that we can better share god and the gospel with it. i have numerous resources to suggest to you from the class. these include the books: unchristian by david kinnaman, total truth by nancy pearcey and religious literacy by stephen prothero. i think i need to do a post about total truth because i learned an awesome lesson from that book, but i'll have to write it later when i feel like thinking. (i literally just finished writing an 8 page paper)

mark's sister is about to have a baby and we are so excited! we are going to have a nephew. just call me tia mercedes. (that's spanish for aunt denise.) also, in family news, mark's brother is about to get married in two weeks which we are also really excited about because it is about dang time (just kidding if you're reading this) and we are getting a new sister-in-law that we love! 

some things i want to do this summer that i have not done yet are to paint my front door red and my shutters black. right now they are green and green. i do not think mark wants me to undertake this project because he thinks he will end up doing all the work. we'll see. i also need to paint our guest room which we now call our "baby" room because it has airplanes painted all over the walls for a baby boy. however, we do not have a baby boy, nor will we in the near future, so i want to paint it either a light green or mango color. 

guess who

we haven't posted in a while. so i thought you'd enjoy these fun pictures. some of my faves.

Bad week for:

The Week magazine puts out a list of "Good week for..." and "Bad week for..." every week. Here are a few of this week's.

Bad Week for:
Hoarding, after a Massachusetts apartment building burned down because of fumes from 45 gallons of gasoline stored in one couple's apartment. The couple, police said after arresting them, were trying to save money by stockpiling gas before the price went up again. (okay- this could have actually been me and mark. we were talking about doing this the other day.)

Political protestors, after rumors spread that Denver authorities plan to control unruly demonstrators at this summer's Democratic National Convention by unleashing a new infrasound weapon that makes people poop in their pants. For security reasons, city officials will not confirm or deny they've acquired a "crap cannon" but say their crowd-control measures will comply with federal and city requirements.

And this is my new favorite magazine.

unchristian

so i have a book recommendation. i had to read this new book called "unchristian: what a new generation really thinks about christianity...and why it matters" for a class at gordon. it is by David Kinnaman who is the president of the Barna Group, which is a research company that a lot of you have probably heard of. if you have heard a statistic on religion, morals or spirituality lately, it was probably determined by these guys.

so the book- kinnaman has basically spent the last 3 years doing research and surveying hundreds of thousands of Americans to find out what they think of christians. people surveyed were asked, among other things, what words describe Christianity. The top 6 responses were as follows:
1.hypocritical
2.too focused on getting converts
3.antihomosexual
4.sheltered
5.too political
6.judgemental

(not in that order, that is the order that he discusses them in the book. number one was actually antihomosexual.)

so the book is EXTREMELY interesting and has been extremely helpful for me in thinking about myself, how i treat people and how the church treats people. if you are in ministry at all, i would suggest buying it now.

one funny thing from the book that i have to share-
In their surveys when they asked twentysomthings outside the christian faith to identify the best-known Christians, the top 5 answers were:
the pope, 16%
george w. bush, 13%
jesus, 9 %
billy graham, 7%
mlk jr., 6%

when they asked twentysomethings who are christians, their top responses were:
billy graham 29%
george w. bush, 17%
mlk jr., 8%
jesus, 7%
mother teresa, 7%
mel gibson, 7%
james dobson, 5%

according to christians, mel gibson is one of the most famous christians of all time. just behind jesus and mother teresa.

what my darlin has on ebay

Check out Denise's ebay spots...

Guess Shoes

Rehearsal Dinner pair

Banana Republic


She's so savvy. I need to take lessons eh?