Ghana You Tube Video

Click on the link below to watch a good You Tube video about a girl who volunteered at an orphanage in Ghana. I hope to make a video like this with our pictures and short video clips when we get back from our second trip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyz21L4Kjc

JJ & Jayla Update

Just wanted to post a lil update on the kiddos (more pictures & a video below). JJ is now officially 2 ½ and Jayla just turned 8 months! The most exciting thing right now with JJ is that he is FINALLY really talking …..I mean, phrases – choppy sentences – opinions – everything! It is so much fun to be experiencing what it is like to hold a conversation with a 2 year old! Everyone kept saying….it will come, it will come, and I believed them and patiently waited & waited……and all of a sudden one week his vocab just exploded. Jake and I laugh and tell each other stories about funny things that JJ says. We can really see his personality now that he can express opinions and use different tones & reflections with his words. My favorite is when I do something that he thinks is either silly or annoying and he will say “Ohhhh, mom” like in a way that sounds like “Seriously, I can’t believe you did that." He has also started counting and can get up to 8 without much help. I also just started to try and teach him how to play Old Maid. This was my favorite card game when I was little. My grandpa and I used to play it over and over and over. JJ really likes the cards, but it is hard to reason with him to stick with the rules of the game. But, we have fun playing the JJ version. He also discovered Wii bowling at Uncle Todd’s house one night, and now every time we go there he asks over and over to go ‘bowlin’. JJ plays extremely well with other kids his age….it is so fun to watch him run around with his little friends. His face literally lights up and he gets a huge smile if he sees one of his friends walk in the gym. They typically find things to do that do not center around toys….for example, on Super Bowl night he and his friend Nyla jumped off the rotating chair onto pillows at least 50 times. Then they chased eachother around the kitchen island with a tape measurer. This month we have also really started to see JJ’s red-hot temper! WHEW! Watch out if he gets mad! He can throw a fit that puts his earlier toddler tantrums to shame. Let’s just say that JJ is learning all about trying to keep ‘self-control’ in all situations. JJ also continues to show us that if he could surgically attach himself to his Dad, he would do it in a heart beat. It is going to be interesting when Jake leaves next Wednesday for 7 DAYS in Africa....in fact, you can start praying for me now! I wonder how many times an hour JJ will be asking me when Daddy will be 'done ballin'?

As for Jayla, her new thing is that she can now imitate clapping! I'll have to try and get it on video, because it is so cute. One night Jake was sitting across the living room and started clapping, and then she looked at him and clapped back! She now will clap on demand and also claps when she hears music. Just this week Jayla added a new sound to her vocab….’da da da’! She also says ‘na na na’, ‘blah blah blah’, and what sounds exactly like ‘hi’. No ‘ma ma’ yet. Everytime she says ‘da da’ I will urge her to say ‘ma ma’ and she usually spits and laughs at me. Today JJ kept trying to get her to say his name....I told him that if she says JJ before she says ma ma then we are going to have major issues. :) Jayla also started on finger foods this month. I am going about it in a completely different way than I did with JJ….meaning, she is going to get to try a lot of variety! I was so picky with what JJ ate at this age that I think I turned him into a picky eater. Jayla is doing great with the finger foods, and she has not yet found anything that she doesn’t like. So far she has had banana, apple, pears, peaches, grapes, black beans, peas, carrots, cheese, hashbrowns, macaroni, cheerios, yogurt, oatmeal….things like that….and she hasn’t turned down any of it. It’s also been really fun to see Jayla interact with her dolls….she has a few of them that she plays with. Actually, she gets a kick out of anything that has a face, like a stuffed animal or baby. The first thing she does is usually squeeze it and poke it in the eyes and then hold a conversation with it…..smiling the entire time. Jayla, of course, just adores JJ and sometimes is content just to sit and watch him play. She enjoys his random squeezes, hugs, and kisses, and if she sees him coming over to her she will squeal with delight. She also thinks it is funny when he runs and jumps. No crawling, scooting, or pulling up yet for Jayla. In fact, her crib is still at its highest setting! When I realized that today I couldn’t believe it and I told Jake that we better get that lowered! She really is just content to sit and play with her toys...I don't think she has even given one thought to crawling. When JJ was her age he was so frustrated at being ‘trapped’ in his body and unable to move. You could tell that he really wanted to just get across the room…..but Jayla doesn’t seem to be at that point yet. She does love to stand up at the couch though….I think that is her favorite place to be!
Well, that’s our update! Enjoy the pictures and videos!

Stirring up the fruit cups.

Hop on pop!

Buds for life.

Wrestle mania.

Picnic at the gym.

Sullivan girls rule!

A kiss from JJ.

Video: Jayla says 'da da' towards the end of it.

I Couldn't Have Said it Better Myself

“Ahhhhh, home”, JJ sighed as we turned onto our street tonight. We had just been out running errands and visiting Jake at the gym. It does feel good to be home, I thought. You know the feeling right? Before you even walk in the door you can smell the pot of chili simmering on the stove, you can feel the warm fireplace waiting to relax your frigid muscles, you melt in the thought of the sheer bliss you will feel once the kids are tucked away all snug in their bed, and you look forward to the peaceful feeling of laying your head down on your own pillow to shut your eyes for rest. “Ahhhhh, home”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Jake's Thought of the Week

Each Monday I will be posting Jake's Thought of the Week that he sends out to all the parents in his All Iowa Attack program. Here is his thought for this week (he 'stole' my poem from one of my posts as part of it!)

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK:
I'd rather see a sermon, than hear one any day.
I'd rather one would walk with me - than merely show the way.
The eye's a better pupil - more willing than the ear,
Fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear.
And the best of all the people are the ones who live their creed,
For to see the good in action is what everybody needs.
I can soon learn how to do it if you'll let me see it done.
I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.
The lectures you deliver may be very wise and true-
But I'd rather get my lesson by observing what you do.
For I may misunderstand you, and the high advice you give.
But there's no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.
Poem By: Edgar Guest

Last week my wife came across this poem and posted it on her blog that she does at http://team-sullivan.blogspot.com/ for our family and friends. The second she posted it she called me asking if I had looked at her blog yet that day and as most days my answer was "Not yet honey!” She told me that I might want to take a look as I would probably enjoy what she posted.

Well that was on Tuesday and ever since that day I have not been able to stop thinking about it and how true it is. I so often analyze my words and how to communicate something to so many people in the program in order to get the best out of them each week.

Then it hit me that maybe the words are not nearly as important as the way we live life and the demonstration we provide to all those that are watching. So, as I often do I started thinking back on the people that were most influential on my life and to my astonishment I do not remember what many of them said, but I could remember in vivid detail how they lived, how they loved, how the cared, and how they taught me not by what they said but by what they did.
As I continued to ponder how I live my life and the demonstration that I have the opportunity to give each day, I quickly became overwhelmed at how hard it is each day to walk a path that is unique, and not fall prey to the world's standards of good enough!! Then as God so often does he provided me comfort letting me know that I would never be able to do it alone but would only be able to accomplish his purposes by the strength that HE provides.

But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed. 2 Timothy 4:17

GO ATTACK!
JAKE

Kurt Warner's Testimony

What follows is an excerpt from an interview between a reporter, Kurt Warner, and his wife Brenda. It details some of the trials they have been through, and how their faith has been shaped because of the trials. I am excerpting from the middle of the interview....previous conversation with the reporter spoke about Kurt & Brenda meeting for the first time. When they met Brenda was a divorced mother of two....here is the rest of the interview:

GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): When Zachary was an infant, he was dropped accidentally. He suffered blindness and permanent brain damage.

BRENDA WARNER: I remember sitting in the hospital room and doing everything that I knew to do: I claimed verses, I prayed with all of my heart, I believed for miracles. I did everything I knew to do and it was not happening. That shook my world and made me think, OK, maybe I am not supposed to understand everything, but I am supposed to have faith. I made the decision then that God had a plan for Zachary's life, and I am still believing for healing, but I can also see this plan developing and I am just thrilled to be a part of it. It is not how I would have written it, but I am blessed to know that I get to be a part of his life and to see what God's going to do with it.

GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): Kurt, meanwhile, grew up with a Catholic background. But faith in God was not something he took seriously.

KURT WARNER: It wasn't the reason I lived my life. He wasn't the focus of everything I did. He was just kind of a part of it. I went to Mass and felt like it was more of a thing I was supposed to do more than necessarily wanting to do it or wanting to have that strong relationship. I felt that with my upbringing, it was a thing I was supposed to do and God was supposed to be a part of my life, but I really didn't know the extent that I needed to give my life to Him like I do now.

GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting) April 14, 1996, a tornado touched down in Arkansas and killed Brenda's parents. That tragic event forever changed the way Kurt and Brenda looked at life.

KURT WARNER: That situation showed me that you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. You have to live life for today and for this moment. It was at that point that I realized the Lord needed to be at the center of my life. I couldn't wait until tomorrow or next year. It needed to be right now.

BRENDA WARNER: When someone is dead, there is not a happy ending to that, in a sense. That was hard, because this great God that I believed in, I didn't understand why He wouldn't stop that tornado. Again, I don't have the answers. It brought up a lot of questions. Kurt let me say some awful things and did not preach back to me, and that helped a lot. There are still some tough times. I don't understand it, but I know that the devil destroys and God doesn't. God was there to pick them up and take them, and I hold on to that.

GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): About that time, Kurt's football career in the arena league was showing promise. But a matter of convenience turned into an issue of compromise.
You've admitted in your book that you guys lived together. What did you go through in your own minds about that?

BRENDA WARNER: I remember after my parents were killed, Kurt said, 'Move down here.' I needed help with the kids. I was a single mom with two. My parents were there to help me in a bind and suddenly they were gone. The relationship Kurt had with my children, it worked well, because he was already a father figure. When I moved in with him, it was more I needed that strength. I was really having a hard time dealing with my parent's death, and so that's how it started. Then it gets comfortable and it becomes, you know, why change it? If it seems to be working, why change it?

We look at it now that we would definitely do it differently, but we learned a lot through that and we try to take what we learn from it. We also didn't take each other for granted after losing mom dad, and that caused us to want to make our relationship stronger and get it going. We would change it. I know that we would both admit that we would do it differently and that we would love to give that gift to each other on the wedding night, but we made our mistakes and God's grace covers it. That's what is so neat. Our story shows that we are not perfect, but that we are sinners and have repented and we want to move on to be better people for God.

GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): You have heard it all before: athletes who are quick to publicly thank God for victory or success. Kurt Warner does it a lot, but what does it really mean?

KURT WARNER: When you stand up and say, 'Thank You, Jesus,' they think you are saying, 'Thank You for being here. Thank You for moving my arm forward and making the ball go into that guy's hands so that we could score a touchdown and win the game.' But, in essence, it is a matter of thanking Him for the opportunity, thanking Him for being there in my life, for being the stronghold, for being the focus and the strength to accomplish all things, to accomplish anything, and to be where I am at, to have gone through everything I have gone through. It is a constant thing in my life. It is not just for something specific He did on the football field to help us win; it is for everything that He has done in my life up to that point and for everything He will continue to do in my life from here until eternity.


And, here is why he wears #13:


TAMPA, Fla. — Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner is a born-again Christian whose faith informs his every decision, right down to his jersey number. By choosing No. 13, Warner means to send the message that his spirituality allows no room for superstition. He was one of five players on the active rosters of the 32 N.F.L. teams to wear No. 13 in 2008. The others were wide receiver Steve Johnson of Buffalo and quarterbacks Richard Bartel of Cleveland, Brock Berlin of St. Louis and Shaun Hill of San Francisco. Warner is the sixth Cardinal since the franchise joined the league in 1920 to wear the number, and perhaps the last. After leading the franchise to its first Super Bowl, Warner may have his jersey retired someday to the team’s Ring of Honor. “A lot of people believe 13 is an unlucky number,” Warner said, “but I’ve kind of embraced it.” He added: “A lot of negative things come with the No. 13. My life is never dictated by superstitions. My faith is first and foremost. If you believe that God’s in control, there is no reason to believe in superstitions.”

Sorry, I can't resist, here is one more article:

Faith still at core of Warner's success
Cardinals quarterback goes out of his way to credit God
The Arizona Republic

"If you ever really want to do a story about who I am, God's got to be at the center of it. Every time I hear a piece or read a story that doesn't have that, they're missing the whole lesson of who I am." - Kurt Warner

It has become part of the sports landscape. Athletes congregate on the field after a game to pray or offer a soundbite to a higher power.It rarely makes the news.

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner understands this. The man who led this organization to its first home playoff game since 1947 knows that discussion about resurrections comes only in the context of career revivals and that tape recorders shut off when faith references start up.
During a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show, Warner "basically had three sentences to say, so, in the middle one, I made sure I mentioned my faith, because how could they cut it out?" he said. "I went to watch the show on replay . . . and they cut it out!"

Warner, 37, is right. There is dishonesty in telling his story if you ignore what drives him, especially if you accept its role in one of the NFL's great success stories. In five years, he went from a 22-year-old stock boy at a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, grocery store to Super Bowl MVP. He has morphed again, from unemployed veteran to record-setting starting quarterback with the Cardinals, who on Saturday in Charlotte, N.C., will try to advance to the NFC Championship Game by beating the Carolina Panthers.

"I wasn't always this way," he said.

During his final season at the University of Northern Iowa in 1993, Warner went to a country-music dance bar called Wild E. Coyotes. He spotted Brenda Carney Meoni and asked her to dance. Her immediate reaction?

"Get away. Get away," she thought.

"Here's this cute guy in a bar with an entourage of females, and I'm the last person that makes sense for him to go to," Brenda said. "I'm a divorced woman with two kids, one with special needs. And Kurt's 21. Twenty-one."

They danced, and the next day, Warner was knocking on her door with a rose.

"Again, I'm screaming in my head, 'Go away!' but I opened the door and said, 'C'mon in,' " she said. "My 2 1/2-year-old grabs him by the hand and shows him every radio we own.
"He fell in love with my kids before he fell in love with me. When we'd have a fight and were going to break up, he'd say, 'Well I get the kids.' I'm like, 'But they're my kids!' "

They stuck together, even when it appeared football wasn't in Warner's future. He signed with the Green Bay Packers as a free agent in 1994 but was cut before the season began. He returned to UNI to work as a graduate assistant football coach and spent nights stocking shelves at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. He moved in with Brenda, who was struggling financially and turned to food stamps for a while. They drove a car that died every time it turned left.

He landed with the Arena Football League's Iowa Barnstormers in 1995 and three years later was signed by the St. Louis Rams, who allocated him to the NFL's developmental league in Europe. His backup with the Amsterdam Admirals was Jake Delhomme, now the Panthers' quarterback.

Around this time, Warner began challenging Brenda about her faith. She had become a devout Christian as a 12-year-old after seeing a fundamentalist Christian film called A Distant Thunder (1978). Warner questioned her, suggesting she was picking and choosing her beliefs from the Bible at her convenience. During this exploration, he closely studied the Bible.

"When I did, it was obvious what the truth was," Warner said.

He committed himself to the Bible's message. That's Warner's way, why he has succeeded in football. He studies, commits, believes.

Before they married, he told Brenda they should follow the Bible faithfully, which meant, among other things, no premarital sex.

"I'm like, 'Dude, we've got so many other things to work on. Why that one?' " Brenda, now 41, said, laughing.

They married in 1997. In 1999, he took over as the Rams' quarterback when starter Trent Green was injured. What followed was two Super Bowls, two MVP titles and a legion of Christian followers.

He was both revered and scorned for his outspokenness about faith. Since Warner's arrival in Arizona in 2005, and the revival of his career, people here treat his religion with more curiosity than debate. Many were amused by Warner giving an invocation one year at Celebrity Fight Night, a popular black-tie fundraiser for Muhammad Ali's Parkinson Research Center. Ali is of the Muslim faith.

"I never feel like, 'Should I say this, or do I not,' but I do try now to strategically figure out (during interviews) how I can get somebody to include it because it's so important to who I am," Warner said.

How does Warner express his faith? He always has the Bible in his hand when he does postgame interviews. He joins players in postgame group-prayer sessions on the field. He loves to engage in spiritual discussions with teammates but says he tries not to be in-your-face about it. He wants the words of the Bible to guide his everyday life.

When he and his family dine on the road, they always buy dinner for another table in the restaurant but keep the purchase anonymous. The children choose the family. Brenda Warner said it's their way of teaching their kids one of the Bible's messages: It's not your circumstances that define you but what you do with those circumstances.

Warner shouldn't be categorized only one way, Delhomme said.

"Football doesn't define Kurt Warner, and I think that's the biggest thing to me. It's not who he is. Kurt Warner is a lot bigger."

Added Cardinals defensive tackle Bertrand Berry: "To limit Kurt as a Super Bowl champion would do a disservice to him. I think his legacy will be that he's just a great human being, and I think that's the highest compliment that you can give anybody."

To listen to an audio interview of Kurt Warner professing his faith, copy and paste this link into your browser:

http://web.mac.com/reidferrin/Site/AUDIO_SPORTSCASTS/Entries/2008/3/12_Arizona_cardinals_QB%2C_Kurt_Warner.html