Media Meets Religion - Day 5

We started today with two speakers and the pace was a bit slowed because one of the speakers originally scheduled couldn't make it. Elder Fred Kinsey has a long history working in media, he got his start as a rock DJ and made a deal with God that he would go to Seminary but if it didn't work out God would leave him alone. It turns out that it did work out and Fred has been working in the church and communications for quite a while. Fred gave us a great quote: "We are in a world that is so connected that it is disconnected." That's a very cogent thought and reflects on how our relationships have changed with the advent of new technologies that are supposed to make us more connected to each other. In some ways we are more like a small village since we know what everyone is up to but in some ways all of that knowing is leading us to be more selective about the things we talk about online.

Next we heard from The Reverend Kellie Anderson-Picallo from Auburn Media. Kellie is part of an interesting project that is trying to make religious professionals more media savvy. Kellie took us back to day two with her reminder that we need to be very aware of our personal brand and how we present ourselves online. This was a good reminder at the end of the week that has been very busy and focused on learning so many things that it's easy to forget about ourselves.

Media Meets Religion Day 4 - Mixed bag

Today was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The speakers were again excellent but my energy is flagging. There's only one day of class left but I don't have rest to look forward to since I'm getting on a plane early Saturday morning for New Orleans and a week of service with college students. I always look forward to the Dickinson trips but this two weeks is going to be grueling for me.

I took the time today to send some tweets while we were speaking with people. It occurred to me that I had been announcing who we were speaking to, but I never really shared anything that we learned on Twitter, so I made an effort to find the people and then share a quote from them that I found thought provoking. The first thought that I shared was from Ash Greyson when he spoke about the roads built by the Romans. They built them for trade and kept them secure, but the early Christians used them for evangelism. He urged us to think about the social media tools that exist in the world today as the new roads that we can use to spread our word.

Our next speaker was Pastor Elise Brown from Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan. I was honestly too engrossed with the conversation with Elise to even tweet that we were talking with her. She was willing to share the details of her church re-branding efforts with us (something I'm wondering if even members of her congregation have seen). I have been a part of the logo design process for both professional and personal organizations and it's always interesting for me to see the formation of an identity take place. Tristan offered some very good insight into the process as well and really got to highlight his background in the arts.

The next speaker was Frankie Fredericks, a very accomplished young man. He had a lot of what I would call "big ideas" to share that took us back to thinking about bigger picture things and I think he might have been a better fit for an earlier class session. The pearl of wisdom I took from Fankie was that technology is a how that answers a bigger why. This fits in with how I view technology but Frankie puts it very well.

Next up was Paul Edison-Swift from the ELCA. Paul went beyond the Click 2 Save book and talked about some of the places where he saw gaps. Paul's talk was informative but coming where it did at a low energy point of the day it was difficult to process it all. I'm glad he setup some web resources for us to look at so that I can go back to them later.

The last speaker of the day was the Rev. Peter Panagore from Daily Devotions. Peter talked about how they use social ministry to achieve saturation in the market of their videos. He puts a lot of work into making sure they are posted to seven different networks although he said it only takes him about twenty minutes every day to get it done. I shared a quote from Peter: "Social media is a beast you need to feed." Peter was referring to the fact that if you don't pay attention to social media every day you'll lose your following and then all of the work you did in the first place will have to be repeated.

Media and Religion Day 3 - Crisis, Ethics and Getting Noticed

I keep trying to think of synonyms for interesting, because I feel like I have used that word too often here in the past few days. The class has already been more than I expected in several ways. The speakers we have had so far in addition to the expertise brought by Mat and Eric has really added to the course.

Neva Rae Fox works in the Public Affairs Office for the Episcopal Church of America. Yesterday provided a perfect developing case study for us because the news was breaking that the National Cathedral just announced that they would be using the new provisional rights for blessing same sex unions. This was huge news for the Episcopal Church and Neva Rae gave us lots of information about how to keep up with the news in a "crisis" situation. One of the important learnings we all had from her talk was that we don't have to work in this type of situation alone. Neva Rae herself doesn't use Twitter and relies on another person in the staff for that work. She also spoke to not needing to respond to every thing that's out there, especially those that are known to be hostile to your cause. It's sometimes important to let someone else respond first and give yourself a moment to calm down and think through the situation.

Neva Rae had prepared several case studies for us to work through and reflect on. They included handling requests by the media to attend a funeral, dealing with a congregant that is charged with a crime, and having a dignitary attend a dedication for a new church ministry. These were helpful exercises to work through with someone that has been dealing with public relations and crises like Neva Rae.

In the afternoon we spoke with John Brooks from North Park University in Chicago. John is their Director of News and he had extensive experience as a news director and was able to share many techniques that he has used successfully to get his institution noticed by mass media outlets. One thing that struck me was his emphasis on the importance of relationships. John seems to put a lot of time into building relationships with reporters in the area where he is working. In today's age where there aren't as many dedicated religion reporters it takes more effort to become noticed, but by making sure that the local reporters know who John is, they are more likely to be receptive to the stories he sends their way. John is also very selective about sending stories to reporters and puts an emphasis on local stories of interest. By local he also looks for news outlets that aren't geographically local to him but have a connection somehow to the story. For instance, a story about a student will be sent to the hometown paper of that student. While many of the things John spoke to were more applicable to a large institution it was valuable advice on dealing with the media even for a local congregation.

In the afternoon we had some time to compose some tweets and I had asked on twitter whether "No website is better than bad website" is true or false. I haven't received a ton of feedback but one insight was related to how we are defining bad. If bad is incorrect then that is a definite problem. One commenter (@syre) noted that if the website had incorrect information that is more damaging. A very simple website with just the basics like time of worship is better than no website.

Other Media Meets Religion Bloggers

For those interested in others in the When 21st Century Media Meets Religion class, here's a list of their blogs. Some of the members are still new to blogging, so the blog titles are a little messy:

Media Meets Religion Day 2 - Branding and Language

Day two was great for me. Not only did I survive through most of the day without any coughing fits but the discussion was excellent, too!

We started off the day talking about branding and what that means. Parts of this discussion got pretty personal since we were talking about our personal brand. Mat asked who among us had given thought to our personal brands and then asked me specifically. I'm wondering if that was partially influenced by our brief conversation the previous night about my political aspirations but it might have just been the attentive look I had on my face (I think that's how I looked, at least). Since I am interested in pursuing a career in politics I have given quite a bit of thought to my personal brand. I shared some of the things that have gone into that thought process and also the struggles that this had led me to.

The discussion morphed into the possible clash between our individual brands and our corporate brands that we might represent. The entire class was very engaged in trying to sort out the ramifications of what we were talking about and topics ranged widely from theologies to praxis and all sorts of things. In the end I found the entire discussion to be very helpful, especially once we were assigned the task to start developing and writing down our personal brand. I found myself going back to this document throughout the day and adding things as I thought of new aspects about myself that I wanted to be included in how others perceive Chuck Steel.

The bulk of the afternoon was spent speaking with Verity Jones who is the Director of the Center for Pastoral Excellence at Christian Theological Seminary and also the Director of the New Media Project now at CTS (formerly Union). Her brief lecture provided a lot of points and one of the most salient for me was concerning the language used on Facebook pages. Because it is a social network churches should be sure to use welcoming language when posting on a page, rather than treating it like an advertisement of old. For instance, instead of saying "Bake Sale on Saturday. Volunteers Needed" a much better tone would be "We're having a bake sale this Saturday and would love to see you there. Let us know if you can help out."

This focus on language has been a theme in my learnings when studying theology. Often times the language we use plays a key role in how we think about a subject, and this language will cast overtones on how we interact and relate to the thing we're describing in ways that we may not fully understand at first. This also goes back to some of the things we said yesterday about being very intentional with how we are using social media.

Day 1 Recap

Today was a long day, both in class and then afterwards for me, at least. First off, I actually woke up feeling pretty well this morning which was a minor miracle considering how I felt going to bed last night. I think that Barbara Bradley Hagerty was right when she said in Fingerprints of God that modern medicine is like a miracle.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the class, so I'll get on with it. We spent a lot of time today getting to know one another and the course instructors, Eric Shafer and Matt Tombers. They both have a lot of experience in the area of media and religion but their backgrounds are different enough that I think they will complement each other very well throughout the week. The morning was wrapped up with looking at an article on the Simply Zesty site showing some interesting trends and metrics on social media. I think that one of the more interesting statements for me was the following: "Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%". This prompted some discussion of some of the things Michael Hyatt said in his book Platform with regards to twitter. He mentioned having a set of links periodically tweeted to his account on a rotating basis based on a schedule and it seemed to me that I would find this rather annoying. I know that the volume of tweets on twitter is large enough that I don't see everything that is posted but I got the impression that these links would appear with enough frequency that I'd remember them.

Our afternoon session began with a very good talk by Dr. Scott Thumma from Hartford Seminary. Dr. Thumma studies the sociology of religion and he shared some very interesting statistics regarding growth (and decline) trends of churches over the past several decades. It was also intriguing to see towards the end that using technology in the church doesn't guarantee that membership will increase. This further emphasizes the point that we must be deliberate and intentional about how we use technology. Just as "no website is better than a bad website" it's also important to remember that any use of technology and media needs to be matched to the needs of the congregation at hand.

The rest of the afternoon was spent creating blogs and twitter accounts for everyone in the class. This led to some confusion which I think could have been alleviated if some of the terms were discussed prior to having everyone go through the process. It might have been helpful if Eric went through the process on the classroom computer and everyone else followed along while he created his Wordpress account and blog. As it was we had different people progress through the process at different rates and that led to more confusion in a few instances. I also might have reversed the order that we setup our accounts so that everyone could have posted their blog URL to twitter, making it easy for everyone else to click on the link and get to the sites to follow it from there.

All in all it was a good beginning to the week and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

When 21st Century Media Meets Religion

I'm taking a course at LTSG called When 21st Century Media Meets Religion and we will be blogging for class. This is my first post related to this class and there should be a few more to follow. 

Haiti 2012

I promised folks that I would write something up about my mission trip to Haiti from November 30th through December 8th, 2012, so here we go...

We gathered at Allison United Methodist Church in Carlisle at about 2:00am on November 30th. Our trip leaders Rich and Mira had already put a lot of organization into this moment so we were quickly in our vehicles and on the way to Reagan International Airport. Despite a slight detour through downtown D.C. and Arlington we made it to the airport on time and the American Airlines staff got us checked in and ready to fly quickly. We didn't have any issues getting through security, which was a minor miracle, and before we knew it we were in the air bound for Miami and then on to Port au Prince.

The airport in Port au Prince has gone through some renovations and was in much better shape than when I was there in May/June of 2011. The immigration and customs process was smooth and getting our luggage together was much less of an issue. The airport was very crowded, however, so moving around with all of our luggage (we each had a carry-on bag plus two suitcases of donations) was difficult. When you exit the airport there are a lot of Haitians there to "help" you with your luggage. Walking into this unprepared would be a difficult experience but we had warned everyone about how things work. Fortunately we quickly found our contact from the Methodist Guest House and he was able to assist us with getting to the parking lot to load into the vehicles.

The trip through Port au Prince to Petionville did show some signs of progress. There were still some piles of rubble to be seen, but not as many as previously. There also weren't nearly as many piles of garbage littering the streets, although there was still a fair amount in some places. During the week we learned that the government has been paying for people to collect garbage and I did see at least one garbage truck while I was there and men were shoveling garbage into the back of it. There was also some construction going on in the city and later in the week we even saw heavy machinery being used to install sewers and make road improvements.

We spent the rest of Friday getting settled at the Guest House and took a tour of the campus there. The Guest House is part of a large complex in Petionville that houses a school, church and the offices of the Methodist Church of Haiti. In many ways it is like a little oasis amongst the chaos that seems to define much of the country. The Guest House even has a pool which was a welcome treat Friday night.

Saturday was another traveling day. We drove from the Guest House to Cariesse Ferry Terminal.  The trip gave more opportunities to see progress in the country, including a large complex of houses being built outside of the city. Many were painted in bright colors which are evident in other areas of the country, although here in what is now the middle of nowhere made them seem out of place. I was wondering what kind of lives the people that move into these houses will have waiting for them. There wasn't any evident industry in the area that I could see, but perhaps that will come with the houses once they are complete and people begin moving into them. Haiti does have a good (if confusing) system of transportation provided by the private tap taps, and I'm sure they will begin servicing these neighborhoods once there are people in them. The tangled traffic in Port au Prince already has people accustomed to long commutes, so perhaps moving miles outside of the city won't prove a barrier. I'm also guessing that people would rather live here than in a tent city, as they are now.

We took the ferry to Anse-a-Galets on the island of La Gonave. The ferry was supposed to leave at 12:00pm but instead left around 1:30pm for the two hour trip. It was a bright sunny day, however, so there were plenty of opportunities for naps and working on tans. The port we landed in was small and we experienced a similar desire from workers trying to help us with our baggage there. We were met by some drivers from the church and loaded into two vehicles and went to the church where we would be working and staying for the next week.

The island did not experience any damage from the earthquake and we were there working on a church that they have been working on for about nine years. The compound we stayed in housed the church and a school where a little over two hundred students between kindergarten and twelfth grade are taught. The building will be two stories tall and the walls and second floor were complete. Our task for the week was to remove the old cement floor and install a new one. All of this would be done by hand, of course.

On Sunday we attended their worship service which was a joyful experience. The sermon was titled "The Price You Pay" and it was interesting to hear the pastor speak about sacrifice and giving in a community that does not appear to have much to give. It was an excellent stewardship sermon and I think it highlighted something that exists in Haitian communities that we don't see much of in the States. It showed that no matter how bad things may be and how poor they might be, they are still a tight knit community that will look out for one another and protect each other when they can and need help. The service included a lot of singing and lasted about two and a half hours, which is on the short side for them. We spent the rest of Sunday getting to know the community a little by taking a walk around the town. La Gonave has about 60,000 residents and close to half of them live in Anse-a-Galets, so the town is more urban than I was expecting. On our walk we stopped at one of the locations where they weigh fish that are caught and provide the major industry for part of the community.

The area had some beautiful sites although similar to what I experienced on my last trip they were tainted by the amounts of poverty that are also there.

One of the places we visited was a school started by a woman from California called Great Good Haiti. They provide education for students that have difficulty in other schools and work with them to pass their sixth grade exams. Throughout the trip I learned more about the Haitian school system than I knew before and it was interesting to learn that some of their standards are higher than what we have in the States. For instance, all students in school are required to learn French (the official language), Spanish and English. Our interpreter was a little taken aback to learn that in the States every student isn't required to learn a foreign language to any proficiency (they have to take an exam in each language). Before graduating each student has to take fourteen exams to show their proficiency in many subjects including the sciences.

Monday morning came bright and early and our day began with breakfast at 7:00am. By 8:00am we were on the worksite and work we did. We worked along side about twenty Haitian men throughout the week and formed relationships with them that added to the meaningfulness of the trip. Most of Monday was spent breaking apart the old cement floor which looked like it was either very old or had been put into place as a temporary measure. The floor was broken apart with pickaxes and shovels and then removed by buckets or picked up if there were large pieces. The rubble was placed in a pile which we would be dismayed to learn the next day had to be moved again, this time into the street. It would have been more efficient to move it directly into the street, but that's how things tend to work in Haiti.

On Tuesday we started putting the base coat of rocks into the church and then the Haitians laid out rebar on the floor. Once the rebar was all in place we started pouring concrete one bucket at a time. We formed a bucket brigade and started passing buckets down the line. We did this most of Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday, but by Wednesday afternoon the church had a nice level floor that would be ready for whatever kind of finished flooring the church would choose (either tiling or smooth cement). Also on Tuesday or Wednesday we visited an orphanage in the town. The woman who started it has no formal supporters and just gets along however she can to provide a home for the children that don't otherwise have a place to live.

Since our work was completed on Wednesday we spent Thursday morning sorting the donations we brought for the school and distributing them to the schools. Most of the team had the opportunity to go back to the Greater Good Haiti school and swim at their beach, which included a barrier reef suitable for snorkeling. This was a nice treat for the end of the work week and we felt it was well deserved after the long workdays we spent there.

On Friday we woke early for a 5:15am breakfast so that we could get to the ferry by the 6:30am departure. Unlike the trip to La Gonave, the ferry to the big island left promptly. Once we reached port we had to wait for our ride back to Petionville but we didn't mind the downtime by this point in the week. It also gave us the opportunity to see some of the commerce that takes place at the port, including the many goats that where brought from the island being herded through the port. On the trip back to the Guest House we stopped at the memorial site where over 200,000 people were buried in a mass grave after the earthquake. It was a humble site with a fittingly humble memorial. At the time I was struck with the how small it was but it now seems fitting, especially since the resources that we would normally put into a large memorial have much better uses in a place like Haiti.

After a brief break at the Guest House we had lunch at what amounts to a fast food place and then visited another orphanage in Port au Prince. The conditions there weren't excellent but are better than what some of the children could have had if they were left in the streets. Many had sad stories of how they were in the orphanage, most of them related to parents suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse or simply not having the resources to take care of a child. The director of the orphanage said that some children are returned to their parents once they have a place for them to live in a safe environment, but I got the impression that most of them stayed there until they were old enough to move out and live someplace on their own.

Saturday was our travel day back to the States and it was a long day getting from Petionville back to Carlisle, PA. We were all tired by the end of the trip, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience that none of us are soon to forget.

More pictures from the trip are available on the group's Shutterfly page. As of this writing only two of us have uploaded photos, but more should be available soon.

Mobile Deposit

This morning I deposited a check to my bank account while eating breakfast, in my kitchen. This amazing feat was made possible with the updated version of the PNC Mobile App for Android.

Part of my morning routine is checking my phone for email and what not and this morning there was an update for the app. One of the new features listed was mobile deposit, which piqued my curiosity, since I had two checks I need to deposit but kept forgetting to stop at the bank. Once the update installed I fired up the app and logged in. Sure enough, there was the button labeled Deposit. After clicking on it I had to agree to terms of service and got some instructions on how it worked. Afterwards I was presented with a clean interface prompting for the account to deposit the check, the amount and two buttons for taking pictures of the check (front and back). The photos were taken quickly and the deposit was "made" within a minute. Pretty slick overall.

You're supposed to hold onto the check for two weeks before destroying it. Right now the deposits show up on my account as pending transactions, so we'll see how long it takes to get them processed through to my account. I'm anxious to see what happens, and also to curious how things will get resolved if it doesn't work out. How will the tellers in New Oxford PA react when I show up and walk up to the counter with an issue on my phone, I wonder.

That's life, Kid

On the way to daycare this morning we started talking about cars and where Jack would park his when he's older. I said that once he's a grown up he wouldn't be living it our house anymore this led to the need for a job. He said that he didn't want to work so I asked him how he would pay for food, electricity, etc. I reminded him that he can't play video games without electricity and he said that he would just put new batteries in. When I informed him that batteries also cost money he said I was making him sad.

I told him that he doesn't have to worry about that stuff for a long time, that mommy and daddy would keep paying for electricity and food and batteries and all that stuff. I think he was happy again after that.

My first hymn

Last week at Schola Cantorum practice the director, Stephen Folkemer, was complaining about the letter 'r'. It's sometimes difficult to sing words containing an 'r' without putting too much stress on it. Stephen is a great composer of music and joked that he would someday write a hymn which would avoid that problem. Below is my first real attempt at writing a hymn, and you will notice the lack of a certain letter:

The Messiah has come

Let us sing to Heaven

Good news we behold

God's joy to us given

We sing to give thanks

The angels sing laud

The light to us given

The King's advent is now

The chosen of God

Angel's joy come down

The Messiah has come

The Messiah has come

Repair Permissions on a Mac

A professor recently asked me about his home computer acting a little strange. One of the things that I’ve found useful to do on a Mac which is acting weird is to run a procedure called “Repair Permissions”. To do this:

1. Open your Applications Folder
2. Open the Utilities Folder
3. Run the Disk Utility program
4. Select the Macintosh HD from the list on the left and click the Repair Permissions button

Once that is done, restart the computer, and hopefully things will act better. I’d also recommend making sure that your computer is up to date by checking for system updates in the Apple Menu.

This day was supposed to be relaxing

I returned from New Orleans yesterday evening (I know, I should have mentioned more about that here, sorry) and life quickly returned to normal. There were kids to be disciplined and things to get done around the house. I was hoping that today would be a nice relaxing day, but that didn't quite go as planned. I was able to sleep in until around 10:00am, which was nice. I know that I should have gotten up for church, but I was super tired and woke up with a sore throat and bad cough, so it probably wouldn't have gone well.

Once I was up and about I got some breakfast and Ivy pretty much immediately asked to go outside. Once we brushed her teeth and hair we went outside to play for a while. She pretty much occupied herself, so I took the opportunity to climb up on the roof and fix the garage cupola. I put it back in place, but still don't have a good way to fix it without major work, so I climbed back down. The rest of the morning wasn't too bad, but when there are kids around, nothing can really be considered restful.

After lunch I had to fix our tire pump so that I could inflate the tires on the wheelbarrow and the tractor. Angela had done some pruning on Saturday and she didn't want to carry everything down to the brush pile by hand. It turns out that the switch on the compressor was bad, so I left it taken apart so that I can just make contact with the wires when I need it to run. The pump runs off of the car's cigarette lighter, so it's not like I'm dealing with a lot of voltage, so I figure it's safe.

Once the compressor was working again, I inflated the wheelbarrow's tire and got to work on the tractor. This isn't trivial, since I have to first remove the wheel weights in order to get to the tire stem. While I was working on that, I decided to go ahead and leave the car radio on to listen to the CD I had playing. After a little while I noticed that the music stopped, which quickly led to the realization that I killed the car battery. I tried jumping it, but that didn't work, so it was off to buy a new one. Once I got home I started working on putting it in and found that the bolt which holds it in place was rusted beyond belief. After much cursing, WD-40 and time, I was able to get it loose enough to get the battery out. I then put the new one in, but for some reason, the negative terminal connector wouldn't get tight enough to stay on with any amount of confidence, so I came up with a nice solution using some cable ties. I'm sure it will never pass inspection, but that's a problem for June, not March.

That was about it for the major problems of the day. All in all, it was actually a pretty productive day. The snow plow is put away for the summer, and the mower deck is on the tractor. I got the shed cleaned up a little and put out most of the patio furniture. I even considered starting on some gardening work, but it was soon going to be dinner time, and the twins were asking to play, too, so that will have to wait for next weekend.

Ads everywhere

I was getting a banana yesterday and saw something unusual. I had to take a closer look at the usual sticker because I could have sworn it had the Wii logo on it. Sure enough, there it was. Apparently Chiquita is now selling advertising on its bananas in the form of stickers. This is a pretty clever ploy, since kids love stickers and who hasn't taken the sticker off of a banana and put it on their shirt. Kids then become a walking billboard (albeit a small one) for Chiquita and further the advertising.

Flavors.me

There's a new service called flavors.me which I'm trying out. The basic gist of the service is that you configure a page for yourself which pulls in information from other pages. I know that sounds a little silly, but it makes for a great landing page for a person, so I'm trying it out. If the DNS information has moved for you, then heading over to chucksteel.com should bring you to my flavors page (flavors.me/chucksteel) also works. Right now the page pulls in this blog, Flickr, Facebook, Netflix and shared items from Google Reader. There are a variety of other services which it will pull in automatically using the API from the service, or you can add any RSS feed, which is pretty cool.

Hey, I already have one

So I'm looking to change how I run www.chucksteel.com and went to setup a blog here on Blogger. I went to register chucksteel.blogspot.com and was told that the domain isn't available, so I opened up the URL to see which other Chuck Steel had already grabbed it. Low and behold it was some jerk that hadn't updated his blog since 2006. Upon further examination I found that the jerk in question was me! Ha!

The blog was under the old blogger.com account, so I claimed it using my Google Account and now I'm good to go with updating here again.

Moving...

I'm moving the blog to www.chucksteel.net. This space will no longer be updated.

Gotta get better about this...anyway...

Lesson in parenting from last night:
Keep the diaper under the butt until you're absolutely ready for the next one. This will help avoid accidents which require outfit changes.

A Long Couple of Days

Angela and I both came down sick Thursday night and Friday morning. She was up all night and couldn't even keep down water, so she asked me to stay home from work and take her to her 7:45 am non-stress test that she had scheduled. Since I wasn't feeling well either, I wasn't super-excited, but I got up and drove her there.

The nurse hooked her up to the various sensors and came back in a little bit to tell us that she was having contractions two minutes apart and that we should go to the hospital. She had been through this before and figured that she was just dehydrated and that the hospital would give her an IV and send us home. She felt bad that I would be so bored. Little did we know...

When we got there, they had her put on a gown and one of the midwives from her practice, Deb, examined her. Much to our surprise, whe was dilated 3 to 4 centimeters! So, we weren't going home any time soon. She was admitted to the hospital at about 8:30 am. We got settled into the room and started making some phone calls. My brother was able to go to our house and pickup the items that we would need, since although they were packed, we didn't bring them along. Things were progressing slowly, but Angela was a champ, most of the time she didn't know she was even having contractions, since the pain from the stomach ache was worse.

By about 5:30 PM the pain was bad enough that she had a shot of staidol to "take the edge off". It was enough to let her sleep through the contractions at first and at least be able to bear them later on. Around 7:00 PM she asked about the epidoral and the midwife told her that she probably didn't have a lot of time to go, and she should try to make it through.

Sure enough, around 7:15PM the midwife told Angela that with her next contraction she should start pushing, and they started to get more people in the room to get ready. At 7:48 PM, we had our daughter, Ivy Elizabeth Steel. We got to hold her for a short time, but before I barely had cut the cord I had to get back by Angela's side. At 7:56 PM, we had our son, Jonathan Thomas Steel.

We later found that Ivy's weight was 4 lbs 5.3 ounces and she was 18.5 inches. Jonathan was 5 lbs 0.7 ounces and 18 inches.

They were both taken to the NICU since they were only 36 weeks old and quite small. The last two days have been a whirlwind of activity. As of this writing, Ivy is still in the NICU, but Jonathan has been released to the Nursery. While this is good news, it has actually made things a little harder, since Angela has to be in two separate parts of the hospital to feed them. She has little time for herself, which means her meals are rushed and her rest is minimal, but she is hanging in there and doing a great job.

As for me, and I tired and starting to become drained, but I am hanging in there and doing all that I can. Getting to hold Ivy and Jonathan and stare at their beautiful faces gives me all the energy I need.

Getting close

We're getting close to the big day. We had the Baby shower on Saturday, which went very well. The house is full of stuff that needs to be organized and assembled. Seeing everything really makes it sink in that there will be two more people in the house soon.

Sierra has become increasingly nervous about boxes and things around the house. I think she knows that something is happening, and is getting a little anxoius. I still think that she'll be great though, once the twins have arrived. We may have some jealousy issues to deal with, but other than that, I think she'll enjoy it.

To accentuate that things are progressing, Angela called today saying that the doctor sent her to the hospital, since the non-stress test indicated that she was having contractions. When she got there they gave her some water and told her to put her feet up for the rest of the day. Apparently they were sporadic enough that she wasn't actually in labor (phew), so they sent her home. Hopefully that does the trick, since we have a little while until we hit the 36th week on December 23rd.