The weather has been beautiful, wet, but not wet enough. The days have been mild and we have actually been to church on time. I have been serving in the church as an assistant scout master on Wednesdays and Shirley has been called as president of her youth group. We are working to get ahead of the financial curve again but for now we are making the bills, paying rent and have been blessed with furnishings and other things handed down from people that hadn’t the need for them anymore.

We have been given enough time to refocus on the children’s schooling, and our larger goals for the years ahead. Our evening prayers are that we can continue to enjoy the blessings that have been bestowed upon us. Every day we remember what we had possessed in Florida and lost. We remember the ones we almost lost, and those that have been lost, and give thanks for the promises found in the scriptures. None of this would exist without prayer, and we give everyone thanks that has put a word in for us with our Heavenly Father.

Above this we have been fortunate still, in being able to come to the need of others, and make a difference in their lives. This as been the greatest blessing of them all. And pray to be able to do it more.

Until the next update.
- Dan.

When I posted last Gwendalynn had marked the end of our birthday season, and Megan was pregnant with Ethan. We were settling into what was going to be a record drought for a Texas summer which was looking to be pretty dull. We have a rule of no kids going outside after it’s 85 deg. The door doesn’t get opened and closed as the older 5 came inside and out letting the heat in, and the cold out. The A/C in the duplex was small. The tipping point was 76* on the inside. If the temp got above that point the A/C wouldn’t be able to keep up. Using the stove or the oven before 9 or 10 was not permitted unless we wanted to roast until about 4 am when the AC caught up. The other reason for staying inside is the heat and the kids staying hydrated. Tough to do when the temp is 105+. I was riding a bike to the train station to save money on gas during this time, and even I was having a problem with it. It was far safer to shelter in the duplex rather than attempt to do anything outside. We did this for the entirety of the summer. Didn’t have enough money to do anything at the pool, and no gas to get to a river or anything else anyways. The new job was going good, but the van is a thirsty girl.

It had started to cool off and it felt like we had come out of hibernation. We had to shave everyone bald to fix a hygiene issue that couldn’t be handled with chemicals because of Megan’s pregnancy. A pregnancy that had been a little rougher than usual. We had about a week or so before Megan dropped into labor unexpectedly by going straight for Toxemia. We had been told the Friday before that Ethan was breech and up high in an odd position. The signs of shock she was displaying combined with Ethan’s position was enough for Megan to agree that a C-section was prudent, before it became an emergency. Hence Ethan was born on the 23 of October. We have a tradition of not taking a newborn anyplace or to see anyone for at least the first month of life. Primarily for bonding, establishing a healthy nursing pattern and taking time to for everyone to get to know their new sibling and for Mom and Dad to recover from all this. Our “BabyMoon”, our time of peace when Ethan can eat and sleep undisturbed for his first 30 days in this world wasn’t going to happen.

from September to November we were also scrambling to find a new place to live since the lease was up and it wasn’t going to be renewed. Rent was also being increased and the duplex was in a location where the police chopper was an evening regular. The last night we were there the police were pulling people from our back yard. We had found and been approved for the new apartment the day before Megan went into labor and bought a couple baby jumpers before going home. While Megan was in the hospital I moved the bulk of our living essentials such as beds, desks, computers and accessories to the new apartment. Megan went from the duplex, to the hospital to the apartment without having to take Ethan to the old place. Normally we could have received help from fellow church members to pack and unpack transport for moving. But we had another infestation to cure and everything had to be dismantled, sprayed and transported in small chunks. In total it took me about 7 trips in the van with the benches out.

We had about a week to settle again and put up our feet before my Mom came over for her annual visit from Oregon and Shirley’s 14th Birthday. This was a nice time as well as about a week of peace before Megan’s Dad died of a massive stroke brought on by undiagnosed diabetes and high blood pressure. We have about another week until we could collect my paycheck and head to Fremont California for the viewing and funeral. It was about 1900 miles one way, and done in just under 72 hours. Ethan turned 1 month old the same day of Jay’s funeral.

We spent the next week in a house that her Aunt owns and Megan got to see her children live and play in the house she herself spent some childhood in. We took care of some paperwork we had left behind when we had Left California for Florida in 2006 and picked up Jaydn’s birth certificate since his original had been lost. We then took a trip to some of the places around Hollister we had been frequented when we first became a couple and took photos. It was a tremendous blessing for our family to be able to take our children to where we met, and some of our more memorable early moments in our relationship. Yes, there was the ever iconic tree involved in these photos too. No, we aren’t the type to etch our names into a tree though there is ample evidence of others doing just that.

With Thanksgiving just the next day we spent Thanksgiving with family we hadn’t seen for 5 years, and started packing up that evening. getting the majority of everything in the van that we didn’t need for sleep. We left around noon on Black Friday, for another trip of 1900 miles, done in 48 hours. Getting better rest before the initial leg made a huge difference. We got home Sunday afternoon, brought in perishables and collapsed. Later that evening we unpacked the van, cleaned it, and washed the road grime. Time for an oil change, tuneup, front tires and rear brakes.

I had about a week of normal work getting caught up on the larger items that required special attention. I than Took Little Debbie to the hospital for a fever that was discovered to be caused by a bladder infection. Most likely acquired during the endurance drive from California. On Sunday I took Megan to the ER for a huge Fever for which she would spend the entire week in the Ante Partem wing. temps there reached 104+ and required ice packs in various locations to keep her brain from cooking. She seems to have come out of that ok but it’s the second time this year she’s made me start planning what I would have to do to raise our children if she had died.

All this time we hadn’t been able to get to church. It was a physical impossibility. The only optional weeks were right after we had shaved everyone, and that was only two. Today, we were able to return. Not only were we at church, we were on time!

Some people would look at this and see how tough it’s been for us. True, it’s been hard, but the Lord has been in full evidence for the blessings we have received along the way. We have a wonderful new boy, we got to spend time with my Mom, and she and the children got to spend some time with Grandma. The great-aunts got to meet all the kids and we had Thanksgiving with family we hadn’t seen in a long time. We came home with some of the little inexpensive things that were sorely needed like silverware and bowls, towels and some blankets. We were blessed with a safe trip and with an awesome Job that provided an income that enabled us to complete all of these challenges, and still remain stable as a family, as well as residence and employment. Oh, and somewhere in all this, I made employee of the Month for November. First. Time. Ever.

I am very proud of my family, for we have faced these multiple life events. Which for many even one would rend the fabric of an individual, much less a family. We have faced all these and are home and safe, ready to start the new week. I pray the lord see’s fit to bless us with peace, tranquility and Serenity for the next year or two. Because while we survived all this, it sure would be nice to have some dullness and regularity back in our lives. :)

Photos will begin appearing on the Baker Family Photo Album soon and will continue to be updated as we process them.

Peace and God Bless,
- Dan.

Progress has been made in Austin despite getting fired from Hostgator in January. They weren’t hiring Linux admins, they were hiring tech support, advertised as a Linux Admin position and I tossed a perfectly good job with Farrowmedical.com because of it. We had a small buffer built and I started contracting through Odesk. we are still in Austin which technically should make things easier as far as jobs are concerned. I have done some work for people and not received payment, which has put the crimps on more than a few plans. More on that later.

I apologize for getting hopes up with friends and family members, but it looks like we will be staying here after all. After much prayer and deliberation we felt prayers were answered here, and in the process, we have been the answer to others prayers as well. Right now it appears I have found an incredible match and for the first time in a long time I feel this is something can be a very long term deal. Which would be good. I am so absolutely tired of moving.

Austin is really interesting. The weather here is really odd though. It’s a strange mix of all the different places we have lived. I just wish it would rain more but apparently this is a record year for a drought. Not exactly what one would expect from a city sitting on top of an Extinct Volcano (wikipedia) . We look forward to visiting some pools this year, and maybe actually getting out and doing something.

Wish us luck!

- Dan.

No clanbaker.com is not one of them.

The sites affected have been redirected to clanbaker.com until we can clean out the links. I don’t think anyone actually visits them, but better to be safe than sorry :D

In other news, Dan is working from home as a contractor through odesk.com and is working on his website at daniel.clanbaker.com. The kids are all healthy, happy and growing. I’m slowly taking midwifery classes and buying books as I can. I’m hoping to apprentice later this year.

I know we don’t update this website very often any more. Most of our day-to-day stuff gets posted over on facebook. If you are on facebook, but haven’t friended us yet, look us up!

I felt I had to smudge a few details to protect the identities of Brothers and Sisters in the church, but the letter is by no means any less genuine, and a jewel in my heart.

Way to go Bug, Good job, and please keep up the good work.

- Dad.

It seems difficult to identify news-worthy events when new jobs and moving becomes so much wash rinse and repeat. But that seems part of the cycle for now. Upgrading income, a little more space for the kidz, a little better neighborhood, or a little closer to resources. Check, Check and Check. Work? 5 minute drive, 15 on bicycle. Walmart, 7 minutes by car. Been to lazy to ride the bike there yet. We have a 3 bedroom again and we are up on rent, bills and getting ready to start sending money to those we owe.

Like I said, wash rinse repeat. At least we are avoiding the mistakes made in the past. I have been working on software projects after and before work for the extra cash we need to get to the next stage, Either a house near Austin, or moving closer to home. It really depends on how we feel led by the spirit.

Megan is crunching to take her midwife exams and start apprenticing, we both have a gym membership and have vowed to knock off the pounds. It’s late, and I wish I could think of more to update everyone with but facebook pretty much says it all. This site will be upgraded from wordpress to drupal in the year.

Until the next update,

Happy New year!

Since I started posting to the facebook page this site has seen little traffic but it’s good for info and such that exceeds what facebook’s post limit will allow.

Quick Recap of the last 7 months…

We have moved again. Just north of College Station to a smaller town. Rent is less and we are actually financially stable now. We still owe people money, But there’s a Long list and we still don’t have a wild excess. For now though, bills are getting paid, food is on the table, and we are looking to be able to start paying people back by November. Work is work but I am still seriously homesick for family and the Pacific NorthWest. The Church has been a great family to us, but I am thinking, if I can have both Church and Family, the cooler weather and gold in the hills to chase, then why the heck am I still in Texas? Cause Jobs don’t grow on tree’s. For now I will hang onto what I have, and look for government work. They at least have the resources to keep you employed after 2011. Obama is bound and determined to Insure the nations working class out of employment. How you figure? Well for every one person a company is forced to insure, is another they are going to have to Lay off in order to afford it. Imagine McDonald’s trying to insure all their employees. The Dollar Menu just became the five dollar menu.

We have another little car, a Geo Metro ( Thank you President Mitchell ! ). It gets me to work and back for the week on $20, instead of the $100 the Van was sucking down. That’s with no extra trips. We grabbed a new Digital Camera from a Pawn shop for $35. That’s high spending these days. Which reminds me. August 3rd in 2007 was when I lost the best Job I ever loved. And I miss it still. The course of the last 3 years has taught us more than the nearly 14 years we have been together. When I got laid off we managed to hang on another 8 months, 3 of that without power and intermittent water / Gas. Gwendalynn was born by the light of a Hurricane lamp. We then lived with Freedom for a couple of weeks, then moved into a 1 bedroom trailer, then a 2 bedroom trailer ( Thank You Clyde ). In January of ’09 I got this Job I have now. I would mention the name but I learned with Xslent that’s not quite a good idea. At least this new knowledge comes to us in time to better prepare our children for the future!

We are kicking ourselves in the butts for how much better that money could have been spent. If we knew then, what we know now, yea that phrase again. Not going there. If we were to find a job like that again, we would be spending the money much wiser. Look to our facebook pages in the next couple of days for a link to the single book we read that describes the method we used to create our budget. 2 words. It Works. Moving forward we hope to get ahead of this curve and prosper. Shirley is nearly a teenager, and the rest are screaming ( sometimes literally ) right behind her. The truth is simple, and this one book, rather than the $100′s of dollars other schemes will scam you out of, is the epitome of simple.

Look for more photos in the Photo Album !

God is good, and God is great We have The Church, Family, Friends and God to thank for getting this far. Btw, we are in a House again, instead of an apartment or trailer. Keith, Warren, Benny, You’re still on the list. Pretty soon, it will start getting back you. Just keep having patience!

The Accident:
It got interesting on the 23rd when we were sandwiched between one person screwing up, and another screwing off. We were cut off and had to swerve to avoid hitting another van jumping out into our lane when we were slammed by a woman speeding in hers. I will post exact details later but the long and the short of it means we were without a van. Yes, we were hit that hard. Everybody is ok, which was a real blessing! Not even the driver that hit us. On the dark side it’s looking as though the insurance company is doing everything in their power to give us the bone. We are definitely going to have to get a Lawyer on this one. Our Van is drivable but I don’t know for how long, and how it’s going to fail. It creaks, groans, pops and squeals from various locations along the body when going down the road.

Christmas:
We are still at the point of barely keeping up, but we are still doing a lot better than we were last year. Gifts from Us weren’t overflowing and most of the gifts under the tree came from donations made from anonymous friends and members of the Church. More family sent their gifts ahead of time in the form of cash for the buying of presents, and we got a few things from the local Christmas box. But after the accident it really felt that our Christmas gifts were nobody getting hurt. The children opening their gifts seemed anti-climatic for us, but the kidz had a ball for certain. Everything was well received. Christmas for us came on the same evening that Erin came over to offer the ride to the rescheduled NST. Annette and John called and offered us their old 15 passenger van. For Free, which is newer than ours, and has a bigger engine. Needless to say we were, and are blown away by their generosity! Words cannot describe how we feel still! As soon as we have the money we can get insurance and title. The old van was insured in Florida, as it still had the Florida plates, so I just can’t transfer it to the new van in Texas. We still don’t know what to say…

Debbie’s Birth:
I went in to work as normal on Monday. Nobody is really in any serious mood to put their nose to the grindstone but we managed to make it through the day. Tuesday I setup for the in-service and clocked out for Megan’s NST appointment which doesn’t happen. I end up catching up on sleep since I hadn’t gone to bed until 4:30 that morning. Tuesday evening Erin came over and offered us a ride and babysitting to reschedule the NST visit. Almost Immediately after she leaves John and Annette call and offered us their van ( Read above) Wednesday morning Erin gives us a ride to the NST appointment at 9. When we arrive we get put on the machine to check the Baby and everything is fine. When the doctor gets there we are told we are being induced because he wants to go on his vacation and none of the other doctors will do a VBAC, Despite Megan having two successful VBACs at home, unassisted.

We are not asked, or advised, but flat out ordered, at the top of the doctors lungs no less. ( There will be *much* more on this little tidbit later. ) This has caused ripples that are going to have a most pronounced effect on the direction of our family’s lives. We intend to do everything in our power to effect a change that will prevent this kind of behavior from being possible at all. Individual discipline of the incident is a waste of effort, compared to getting above the problem and preventing it from propagating across the discipline. I have 6 girls I hope will never have to go through what we did on Wednesday. If there is anything I can do to prevent that I will.

After getting to the hospital things went pretty much as expected, Megan was induced against her will and we had our little baby girl at 12:18 am on the 31st. The date was auspicious but the means were not. Deborah Elizabeth Baker weighed 9 pounds, 9 ounces and is 19.5 inches long. Rowan still holds the record as our smallest at 9 Pounds 5 ounces. The Biggest was Jaydn at 11 Pounds and 5 Ounces. She was born on the 2nd Blue moon of the year, the next 2nd blue moon is not expected until 2028. The 31st was also the night of an eclipse in Europe. As Spaceweather.com put it

BLUE MOON ECLIPSE: Blue moons–rare. Blue moons on New Year’s Eve–really rare. A lunar eclipse of a Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve–well, that’s just ridiculous.

( Read More )

As for the birth, Outside the office, the Doctor was a different person. Once induction was started they left us alone to do our thing with the monitors on. He let me help catch which is practically un-heard of, and offered to let me cut the cord. She had lots of vernix ( Wikipedia Link ) which tells us she was due in the oven for a lot longer.

Wendy had come over to watch our brood while we went to our appointment, and then took them all over to her house to spend the night when it became apparent that we weren’t going to be coming home until the next day. Annette and John took them over to theirs in the morning for a few hours. .

New Years:
Having been born on New Years Eve we were allowed to go home a little early so we could all be together, which again after the exhaustion and getting the kidz settled made the new year really anti-climatic. The only reason I was awake for it is because two of the alarm clocks in the house that keep track of the date went off on their own accord. Knowing how dangerous I am in the kitchen, The relief Society at church has been bringing over meals so Megan doesn’t have to cook.

Other than all that everything seems almost normal. It’s been a very blessed, eventful and life altering two weeks. Stay tuned and your almost certain to hear all about it coming up!

Oh and as promised, photos are available!

It’s a little early to start the year in review for new years but this ThanksGiving we had a lot to be thankful for that describes the better part of 2009. First a Big Thank You to Aunt Debbie and Family for sponsoring a fair chunk of Christmas both this year and many more to come! We didn’t have space in the Van to take the Christmas tree with us, and the decorations we had brought were stolen from the storage unit in front of the 2 bedroom apartment. Up until a couple weeks ago we didn’t have a single ornament or Light, and there wasn’t going to be a Christmas.

Here’s the digest version of the year:

In January I got this new Job with FMI. On my first day I didn’t have a place to live until I clocked out that evening. Many Thanks to Benny who allowed me to share his apartment. In March I moved the rest of the family here. Arrangements had fallen through and Benny allowed the 8 of us to share his 2 bedroom apartment. We were going to take over the lease until the Ex-Wife started taking her money again and I couldn’t afford that location. God stepped in and sent us an angel in the form of Warren with HD&Co who rented us an apartment of our own in May. This gave us a little more room but it was still pretty tight. At the start of November Warren offered us a 3 bedroom for $25 more than we were spending on the two bedroom.

We now have the same amount of space we were using when we lived in the house in Florida, sans my workshop in the Garage. Moods are tempering and we are all eating at the dinner table again, but we are still having trouble getting the little ones to stop sleeping on the living room floor though. We have been fixated on the house in Riverview, can’t get this or that out of our head for the last two years. I am thinking it’s because until recently that was the last normal place we lived. This new apartment feels like home, and I pray things continue to improve, and begin to repay those that put themselves out to see us get ahead. It’s been a tough tough two years. I will go into better detail after new years. It’s going to take more than a lunch break to compose.

Everyone will also like to know that our latest has turned herself into the proper position and is no longer breech and is still expected somewhere in mid to late December !!

Wishing everyone Christmas Cheers,
Peace and God Bless,
- Dan.

It’s said that Laughter is God’s favorite music, Lord help me when my girls start dating cause I have a feeling he’s going to be highly amused. I expect it’s payback for my own amours when I was a teen. I wasn’t *That* bad… Was I?

It’s not like I am saying almost all girls is a bad thing, they are certainly very very beautiful. I am not looking forward to the number of boyfriends I am going to have to intimidate in as short as 5 years, and then on from 2014 through 2026 by which time Shirley will be 30, exactly as old as Megan is now. It wouldn’t be unheard of for her to have say a 10 year old of her own by then. I am feel older by the minute… I will be 55 and Megan 48 when the last one is old enough to leave the house.

Anyhow, everyone involved is healthy despite some strong contractions for a bit. We have some really awesome friends that have been helping out with babysitting and things. We will be posting more on that later.

As for the last post about garnishments on the wages, it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be. They took less than $40 per paycheck, and it goes towards paying that off our credit report anyways so that is really going to help us in the long run.

Keep the prayers coming everyone they are most appreciated!

Peace and God Bless.