You Gotta give the woman credit, she's doing a lot better than I would in this situation. Could you imagine it?

Moderator: So, Dan Ray, what do you think we should do about the economy?

Dan Ray: Is there an issue with the economy? I've been living in Canada for the last 3 years

Opponent: (Rolls eyes)

Dan Ray: Do any of you like enchiladas? Or Star Trek? And if so, do you like red sauce or green sauce? And if it's red sauce do you like it spicy? Can we sing a song? I brought my guitar…

The TV Watch – Palin Recaptures Her Image – NYTimes.com

I just listened to this article and was pretty much sick to my stomach the whole time.  Am I on another planet?

How "video venues" are helping megachurches franchise. – By Andrew Park – Slate Magazine

Since the internetic authority on the definition of "montage" is as follows A cinematic device used to show a series of scenes, all related and building to some conclusion it should be easy for you to see why I've referred to this constantly as a montage. It's going to be fun, and this will be the only time on the blog where you will see this many pictures of the blog author in one place. So single ladies, beware this post contains images of dan and babies and lots of images of dan holding babies. You probably better just move on and see what's going on here or maybe here.

And now that that's all settled, I present to you, without further delay:

THE DAN AT DRAYNET.COM BABY MONTAGE!!!

Part 1: Welcome to Planet Earth: Ciara Alice Palmer

Ciara was born a while back to my friends Vanya and Ryan. She's small and has lots and lots of black hair (insinuates nothing). When she's happy she makes neat little quacking sounds like a duck. For some reason she usually has a white tongue.

I chose to start the montage with this picture of her and I because it demonstrates what a great relationship we have even when she was only 4 days old.

Ciara loves uncle dan (the most?)

Ciara wakes up to a new day

She's just a few months away from an elusive modeling contract

These are her proud parents showing of Ciara and her sweet designer car seat. If you think that's cool, you should see her stroller/monster truck bed thingy. It has better suspension than my car.

Part 2: Naomi Grace Cramer

I said before that Naomi gets priority and she definitely does. She's the best to watch because she has this gazing stare that just really makes a person feel like they are interesting. She gets this from her father. And her mother. Everybody loves to hold Naomi and often Shannon and I have to do battle for her, at least until the other kids show up and then we all get to be happy. Naomi holds the proud title of having spit up on me 4 times in one holding while pooping 3 times. After that holding I declared that I would never change a child's diaper until I had kids of my own. And let's be honest, they can change their own da*^ diapers.

Naomi is sporting the good looks. I encouraged Josh and Grace to ground her one month for every time she cries in order to avoid having to ever deal with boys.

This is Naomi and Phil. Phil is not Naomi's father Josh is.

This is Naomi's mama Grace. Naomi often does cool things like chew on a bottle.

This is me holding Naomi like a football. There you go andrew, My babi3z frienz p0wnz y04z. She always makes cool faces like this.

Part 3: Welcome to the hood, Luke Daniel Nevens

Aww yeah! It's on now. LD Nevens is my homie from another cronie. He's my bro and my bro's bro yo. He's the man. He did the roll at age .05 and he owns it. And he owns. I love this guy. And when he's pissed, he lets you know. I like. I expect him to beat me at basketball by age 3. It's been 2 months since I've seen him and if the guy can't play guitar by now you can call me yellow.

Mom (gretchen) and Luke. Luke is clearly already planning world domination. He gets that from dad.

This one's for all the ladies…

Mike demonstrates the coolest way to hold a baby…

And I find myself sufficiently instructed. Luke enjoys

We were both tired after a long night of partying and wooing the women, so we decided to chill out and take a nap.

Here's Uncle Luke with his namesake

Most babies don't turn until 3 months. LD had it mastered by age six weeks. Mike and I were so proud that we tried to get him to do it several times in a row. This severely pissed him off.

"I'm sorry little guy." Mike had to console him. Well done little man, well done.

Part Gamma: Hannah Twombley

Hannah was born to Jeremy and Jeralyn a little over a year ago. She doesn't really like me very much, as evidenced by the fact that every time I tried to hold her, this happened:

Hannah. Not happy with Dan.

To make things worse, I tried to hold Hannah and LD together. Disaster ensued.

Part X: Anna Elaine Barber

Dillon and Kristen gave birth to Anna and she is just utterly cute. Very much like her parents. She doesn't cry, she's always happy, and she's made of butterscotch and dandelions.

Anna and Dad looking sharp.

Anna and Dad posing

Just plain cute…

But also serious at times…

My bosom makes babies sleep.

Now she's out cold.

But awake in time to play with her toys. Stay back fools!

Part 5: Welcome to Vancouver, Christian Grey Ratzlaff

Christian is just over a Year old and Heather and Derek adopted him a few months ago. As one person said in our church, Christian Ratzlaff just won the new parent lottery, 'cause Derek and Heather are as good as it gets.

This little guy is beyond words. He's fun, smart, and happy, always present with a smile or mischievous grin. I generally like to hold him upside down until he laughs. We get along great. He doesn't talk yet, but if he did he'd say, "Dan Ray, you are so cool."

Here he is planning something.

But it seems that he got distracted by some food. What is it with the little ones and food?

Part Alpha: Welcome to earth BENJAMIN WADE SPLINTER HALTON

BWSH, or as I like to call him "swoosh" (dane, that's for constantly calling me "deep chocolate") is better than bread. And that's quite a compliment coming from me. He came into this world a little bit early, so he's been gaining ground ever since. I know Luke Daniel rules, but just to be fair, Ben Wade started rolling around at age negative 2 weeks. Yeah. This guy is going places. big places.

He has been already in many ways a HUGE blessing and source of joy for Jane and Dane and their loved ones, so he basically started doing ministry the moment he was born. I love this guy.

wtf?! What am I doing here? Ben was a little startled at his early arrival.

But he acclimated quickly…

I met him on this day. He commented on how nice that sweater looks on me.

Here I gave Ben the "lion king" treatment, so that all the jungle animals could see who rules.

Bow before king swoosh.

This is Jane's favorite Ben picture. And consequently mine too. I suggest that he will be driving the car inside of 4 weeks.

Check out Jane and Dane's blog for more pictures of Ben

Part Omega: Welcome to Earth: Maia Charis Reid

I haven't gotten to meet Maia yet, which is a point of contention for me. So trips must be planned and planes must be caught soon! She's gorgeous though, just like her parents Uncle Luke and Beth.

Welcome Maia

Good morning! Anything exciting planned for today?

Proud parents Luke and Beth. We're fairly certain Maia won't have a beard, but with a dad like Luke, nothing is out of the question.

Last minute Entry!
Welcome to the World Addison Elizabeth Wilhelms!

Addison was born seven days ago and she's a doll. Had to make sure that she was added. Congratulations to Kyle and Sarah, two of my very best friends and Addison's new parents. If you want to get a deeper understanding of who they are, check out the quote on the right side of the home page.

Naked Addison: We definitely need more pictures of naked people on this blog. Seemed like a good place to start.

Addison is looking for food. Apparently these babies aren't too particular about where their food comes from.

This dude is one of my heroes. He's gonna be a great dad. As long as he doesn't sell his kids.

Addison is all ready to go with a careful glare, and alien abduction protection?

Part Revelation: Welcome to Earth, Daniel K. Ray

And the Final Picture. Worth the price of admission. This is a picture of me, age nine, hanging out with some baby in a wagon. Isn't I cute!? Too bad I didn't have a beard then.

The real question here is, which one is the baby?

Seriously Though…

Congratulations to all my dear friends and their new found joys. There's no way to adequately express the joy that we all feel with this much addition of new life, so I'm not even going to try. Hopefully this post will be an indicator though of how much all of this has blessed me and the many people (especially grandparents) that get to see their loved ones walk into this new phase of life. One day, I'll have my own kids, but in the meantime, I'll take great comfort in knowing that there are this many new people in the world who will grow up in loving, caring, Christ-centered homes. Blessings to all of you.

I can't believe it. This monster post is finally done. On that note, I'll be taking a couple of weeks off. Watch for an update or two and lots of twitter feed updates. But other than that, it's finals time for me baby. Oh yeah.

DK

p.s. Additional Congrats to Nathan and Karen on the birth of Luke Daniels (confusing, I know) little brother Caleb. I don't have any pictures but will gladly update later.

p.p.s. If you're a single girl who reads this blog and are now profusely in love with me, check out the about page for contact info or search the site profusely for the dating application. I'm sure it's on here somewhere.

p.p.p.s. Seriously though. I don't really mean that.

p.p.p.p.s. The cease fire is officially over. You can go back to birthing new babies.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Special thanks to gmail search for all the middle names

p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Three cheers for the laptop. Not one crash yet and it's soldiered through a weekend of powerpointing, 4 classes, and some online nintendo golf. I still got the skillz to pay the bills.

I was having a nice coversation with some colleagues when all of a sudden one of them threw out that phrase. I don't know who Masrapstalnik is or why he would be being trade, when it dawns on me…
...Oh yeah, I'm in Canada. I sometimes forget, but then I'll be in a conversation where three office workers, one who is a manger and a male, and two who are in completely different departments and are female start a conversation about somebody with some strange foreign sounding last name and they all know who they are talking about. This is not my experience of all things sports.

For instance, I'm quite certain that had I gone to Sheryl Kerner, my former manager at another company I used to fork for in the U.S., and asked her, "Hey do you think Cal Ripken Jr. will retire?" Her response would be, "Who's that?"

For those of you who don't know, Cal Ripken Jr.. is probably one of the top 10 most significant baseball players of the last 20 years, if not all time. Most american sports fans remember vividly the moment that he broke the record for consecutive games played in 1995, the event which some think saved baseball after the 1994 players strike. You get the point. There isn't an American sports fan alive that doesn't know who Cal Ripken Jr is.

Even in light of that, I wouldn't be surprised that Sheryl didn't know who he was. Neither would I be surprised if a number of men and women in the office didn't know who he was. Some Americans just aren't interested in Sports. Likewise, a lot of Canadians aren't interested in sports, but that has nothing to do with hockey. In Canada, knowing about hockey is as central a daily concern as what one will eat, whether one will have a good day, or just the weather in general (which is a BIG daily concern here). Anyway you get the point. Somehow everyone who's Canadian is clued in. And I honestly don't know where they get their information. Maybe it's in the water. And maybe they drink special water that I don't drink. Either way, Canadians (even Canadians in "sunny" Vancouver) are crazy about hockey like…

...well like Canadians are crazy about hockey.

That was supposed to be my Monday Morning Update. Um. I also went on a retreat this weekend. That was pretty fun. You can get info on that here. The baby post is done, but since I put it off, new babies are being born every day (Congrats Kyle & Sarah). I need to get two more picures and hopefully it's up tomorrow.

DK

For whatever it's worth, the hockey player in question was named Trevor Linden

All's Quiet on the Northwestern Front

This is one of those weeks where all in my world seems to be filled with peace and free of trouble. Maybe I'm just feeling sentimental, maybe I'm on drugs. I'm not sure.

Top of the good news is that Jane and Dane are finally home with Ben and officially "out of the woods." Now I can go meet Ben and get my picture taken with him, and the baby montage will be complete and ready for posting.

I had a cold all weekend which stunk, but somehow the weekend was still able to be filled with fun and frolick. I also somehow managed to meet a bunch of new people, hang out with old friends, and even hang out with a really old (chico) friend who was in town visiting. That last one was my friend Meg Wolf who is visiting Vancouver from Southern California (northern mexico), but she'd get shy if I mentioned her name, so we'll just keep that between you and I.

In my leisure (being sick) time, I've been reading books that are far too complicated for me to understand and watching old episodes of Star Trek – DS9. This, combined with a foggy head from a stuffed up nasal passages makes for some pretty interesting dreams. Think commander Worf on the Bridge of the Defiant travelling through time while speculating on the extent to which Christological events may be efficable on our eternal redemption.

If Worf was a preacher, I would totally go to that church.

I had good conversations at Fun City. This is nothing new. But particularly Lynsey and I got into a couple of topics that I think are pretty interesting and crucial (apologetics – blogging about it now). Fun City's pretty much the greatest. The difference between my house and the Friends house is that none of us sleep with each other and Friends is lame.

Other than that and the fact that every conversation last week and this weekend were about the white people blog, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, TAL was good this week, as always.

DK

I have to admit that I'm as shocked as the next person at the untimely passing of Heath Ledger at age 28. He stood out as one of the better actors in a film industry plagued by mediocricy and corrupted by the bottom line; I think a lot of movie fans expected great things from him, but it's fair to say that he accomplished a lot already at age 28. Sad to see him go, and I suspect that once the cause of his death is revealed, it will raise more questions about living and living in despair in our culture.

Rest in Peace

"My God requires sabbath, but He never sleeps"

(this is in reference to the taunting by Elijah to the 450 prophets of Baal, whether their god was asleep)

Reflect.

As you can see:

The other day I went upstairs and the girls were in "goofy and have a mac" mode. Which means lots of pictures of people with square heads, spiral heads, and weird looking heads. I also ended up recording an impromptu song by the end of the evening and recording it on facebook. It was horrible. But at least I like this picture. This is kind of how I imagine myself as a pygmy. At least a pygmy on a Monday. – dan

That's right, the Suburban Refugee is back, but now he's the World Wide Refugee or something. Just like Randy Johnson at the bottom of the 8th, right when I was about to space out and stop blogging forever, SBR is back to finish the day. Whohoo. But I guess all that R.I.P. stuff and the enless tears and the shrieking and the counselling were a waste of time. Dude sure knows how to play with a guy's emotions.

Anyway, Now you don't have to be bored anymore. I'll throw up a feed for the right column as soon as I have time.