Friends

I've had the same 4 best friends since middle school. It's one of the first things that people are sure to find out when they get to know me. When we all got together last weekend we realized that we'd been best friends for 10 years! That is wild. We became friends through 7th grade basketball and have managed to only get closer and closer over the years. We had a big BBQ last Sunday with all of our families and it was so great to hang out and again make it seem like we still live down the street from one another.

The group: Laura, Jessica, Katie, Alayne, and myself

The family BBQ after our senior year of high school!

It's crazy to think back to that year and how we wondered how we were going to stay best friends after we left home and moved off to college. Almost 5 years later, I still don't know exactly how we managed to do it. But we did it... and there aren't too many things I'm more thankful for than my friendship with these girls.

Here's to 10 more!

Big Friday

Today was a big day in our household for two reasons:

First, Kolby mailed in his acceptance to the Seattle Pacific MFA program. Here's an excerpt from the program's website to give you an idea of what it's all about:

---

The low-residency MFA at SPU is a creative writing program for writers who not only want to pursue excellence in the craft of writing but also place their work within the larger context of the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith.

The spiritual dimension of this program is not intended to produce didactic, sectarian, or sentimental literature. Nor is this MFA intended to produce writers of “Christian fiction.” Far from it.

This program seeks to extend the tradition of Christian writing in which the highest levels of art, an open-eyed exploration of human experience, and a respect for transcendent mystery are all held in a proper balance.

Our models are Augustine and Dante, the Pearl poet and Sor Juana de la Cruz, George Herbert and John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Fyodor Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot and Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Annie Dillard.

We believe that our program will appeal to writers for whom matters of faith are central. We also intend to cultivate reading and writing as spiritual disciplines.

We are convinced that writers flourish best when they engage in a sustained dialogue with the great literature that has gone before them. Therefore, our program maintains a strong emphasis on reading classic works from the Judeo-Christian tradition and responding to them in a series of critical papers.

What distinguishes our program from other MFA programs, then, is its focus on the relationship between literature and faith, its integration of the spiritual disciplines, and the reading of literary classics of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the curriculum.

---

If you know Kolby well, you can easily see why he's so pumped about getting to enroll in such a fitting program. It suits him perfectly and it is the only faith-based program, which is ideal. The low-residency model involves sending packets of completed material and receiving detailed feedback from professor mentors. It allows students to maintain their current locations and only requires two intensive 10-day residency periods per year. The summer residency is in July/August in Santa Fe, NM and the winter residency is in March and takes place on Whidbey Island, just off Washington state. The program will take two years of coursework and a third year of writing a graduate manuscript. So that's the scoop!

Second, I submitted the final copy of my thesis today. It was the biggest accomplishment of my life thus far. I spent a full year working on the econometrical analysis that I used to obtain the results used to write my paper. I used the statistical software program, STATA, to merge and clean the data as well as run regressions, and the statistical code that I had to write to do this turned out to be over 60 pages long. C-R-A-Z-Y. It was a whole lot of work, to say the least. Then I moved on to the write-up, which luckily only took about 2 months and ended up just under 60 pages. Thank goodness that is all behind me now! Most of you know already that my thesis was on the topic of micro-credit; specifically, how micro-credit impacts household productivity. This post is getting too long already, but when I get some time in the near future I'll share my findings.

***

In other news, I had a round of job interviews at a great organization in **** on Wednesday. Everything went well but I won't hear anything for a couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Great News!!!

Kolby got an acceptance letter from the Seattle Pacific MFA in Creative Writing program in the mail today!!! It is a really selective program and things were looking especially bleak as we discovered the number of applicants was way up this year due to the withering job market. He's a great writer and getting accepted into such a great program affirmed it! He has until April 15th to accept or reject, but I'd say there's a 99.9% chance he'll be happily accepting admission into the program. When he officially decides, I'll write a post with more details about the program. The main detail of interest to most of you is the fact that we will NOT have to move to Seattle because it is a low-residency program (I'll explain that later, too).

Here's a picture of Kolby telling Maya that he gets to go back to school! She's a great listener. It is such great news and he is one happy camper today!

And no, that's not a large pile of games on the chair in the background. We are grown-ups now and owning so many (awesome) games would be childish.

Examination Results: Pass

 I passed the oral examination (defense) of my Master's thesis this afternoon! A special thanks to those of you that called, emailed, texted (is that a word?), prayed, and offered encouragement today... I really appreciate your support! I have until March 27th to make the necessary revisions and then I'll be officially DONE with this thing. Then it's downhill to graduation!

Spring Break

Kolby, Maya, and I took our first family road trip this past week! We had a quick visit with our friends Jessica & Steven in Oklahoma, spent several days with Kolburt & Kellie (and their sweet baby Reagan) in Colorado Springs, visited Laura in Boulder, and then headed back to Oklahoma for a night and then home. It was a wonderful trip and we enjoyed the break from school and from Waco!

Here's Maya taking in the fresh Colorado air. This dog LOVES to ride in the car! Kolby and I with the Schultz family: Kolburt (Kolby's college roommate), Kellie (also friends with Kolby from Wheaton College), and little Reagan.
We visited The Garden of the Gods Park just outside of Colorado Springs one day when Kolburt and Kellie both had to work. Here are a few pictures from our day there. FYI: Maya is in a lot of pictures on this trip since we didn't have anyone to take a picture of Kolby and I together and neither of us care to pose for a picture alone.


On our way from Colorado Springs to Boulder we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, CO. It was BEAUTIFUL! Here are a few pictures from Bear Lake inside the National Park, which had a view of the continental divide.

One main reason why we drove up to the park was so Maya could have her first encounter with snow. It was love at first sight!

She played and played and played in the snow with no sign of losing interest. It was quite a spectacle for people passing by. "My goodness... she loves the snow, huh?" was a regular comment. People got the biggest kick out of us telling them that we're from Texas and that this is the first time she's ever set foot (paw?) on snow. It was really fun to watch her have so much fun.

Boulder, CO was our last stop and Laura took us to see Boulder Falls, which were nearly frozen solid.

We had such a great time catching up with friends and enjoying all the beautiful scenery that we certainly don't have here in Texas! Now it's back to the grind.

***

Speaking of back to the grind, what I most certainly SHOULD be doing right now is preparing for the oral defense of my Master's thesis... which is tomorrow. Yes, TOMORROW. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how it goes!

Cabin Fever

Both of our parents have recently purchased land to build family cabins on. Technically my parents are building a ranch house and Kolby's parents are building a main house and a couple adjacent cabins (or casitas, if you will)... but you get the idea. We're super pumped about having new places to go to to hang out with our families! And who knows, if our life plans go sour Kolby and I may need a new place to live :)

Here's the most recent picture of my parent's ranch:

(You can click on it to make it bigger)

It's situated on a bunch of land in middle-of-nowhere Texas, sort of near Waxahachie. The house will have an awesome view and there's a fishing hole and plenty of room for four-wheeling, campfires, pitching washers, playing whiffle-ball, and putting in a kickin' zip-line if Kolby has his way. Mostly, it'll be a great place to "get away from it all" and hang out as a family. My family is really close with our extended family and it'll also serve as a gathering place since we can't fit too many places all together now that several of us have gotten married and the family has expanded to 21 people on my mom's side and 23 on my dad's. The house they're building has beds galore, so it'll be great not to have to split up anymore when we get together with each side. It should be finished by mid-summer and we're definitely looking forward to enjoying it!

And here's a picture of Kolby and his sister, Kassidy, repainting an old cabin on Kolby's parents' new land:

Kolby's parents just recently bought several acres of land in Wimberley, a cute little hill country town just south of Austin. They have been dreaming of building a house there for years and have finally found the perfect spot! Kolby spent this past Saturday down there with them and they worked on getting an old cabin that was on the land ready to function as a place to stay while they get the main house built. The land has access to a beautiful river park on the Blanco river and has tons of space to eventually build little casitas around the main house so the whole family can gather there.

Both places are really convenient to Waco so it provides even more support for our fallback plan of staying put for a little while. We're excited about the progress being made and are so fortunate to have such wonderful places to get together with our even more wonderful families!

Life Update

Here's a life update from our household!

Kolby sent in his fourth and final application for creative writing graduate programs last week. Now it's the tough part... twiddling our thumbs for two months awaiting letters. As I mentioned before, the acceptance rate for the schools he's applied to are VERY low. But we're excited about the possibility of him getting to go back to school- after all, it is his turn again. In the meantime, he loves teaching English and is ridiculously good at it.

I don't have any good words to summarize my feelings towards my thesis at the moment. I've never worked so hard at anything in my entire life. Not even close. But, the end is now in sight. My oral defense has been scheduled for March 17th and I'll have to turn in a final copy of my thesis to the professors on my committee by March 5. That's in less than two weeks! Somehow I'll have to get it finished by then. I continue to work on it 8 hours a day and I survive it all by eating half a pan of Rice Krispies Treats when I need a break.

I've applied to a few jobs, but it's not exactly a great time to be entering the job market. It's going to be crazy to try to coordinate the prospects of grad school and jobs for the both of us, but even if everything falls through--- Kolby has a guaranteed job for next year at the high school he teaches at now, and we're very happy with our life here in Waco. It is such a blessing to have that assurance. It would be exponentially more stressful if we didn't have a fallback plan, and it's a heck of a fallback plan!

So that's the scoop with us.

In unrelated news, Kolby and I joined a co-ed softball team and our first game is this Thursday. Kolby is ecstatic. Also, we're finalizing our Spring Break plans and it looks like we are getting to take our first family road trip! We're heading to Colorado to visit some of our best friends for a few days. And--- we'll get to introduce Maya to snow! She told us that something deep within her tells her she's going to LOVE IT!

Mom, Can We Keep Him?

We are dog-sitting for some friends this weekend and this mondo guy is their pup, Memphis. Maya is super good at playing well with other dogs and they are having the time of their lives together, even though Memphis is more than double Maya's size. We're trying to keep Memphis' presence in our apartment a bit under wraps... Maya has a boyfriend next door, Jake, that would be heartbroken to find out that she has another boy sleeping over. That plus our apartment has a 25 lb. weight limit for dogs, which Maya doesn't even meet.

I couldn't get Maya to smile for this picture because she's a bit perturbed at Memphis at the moment. She likes to spend her afternoons peacefully looking out the balcony sliding door trying to spot the cat that she saw ONE TIME, WEEKS AGO in the parking lot, but Memphis keeps bothering her. You can tell she's less than thrilled that "that goober" (her words, not mine) is still around, but they'll make up soon enough and be back to happily wrestling and playing tug-of-war in no time.

Benia

Kolby and I started sponsoring a beautiful little 9 year-old girl in Uganda through Compassion International shortly after we were married. Her name is Benia. We have been VERY impressed with Compassion and were blown away when we received the following PICTURES of her in the mail this week! For such a huge organization, it's awesome that they make time to take recent pictures of the children to mail to sponsors.

The back of this picture reads: 'Birthday gift of a pig (with her mother)' And this one reads: 'A dress she bought from her Christmas gift'

I think she may be the most beautiful girl in the world.

In her letter she wrote about how she bought a pig to keep at home with the birthday money that we had sent her in June and that she bought a dress, shoes, and fish with the Christmas money we had sent. It's so cool to think that the meager $20 we sent her for each of those occasions meant so much to her and that if we would have kept that money for ourselves we would have probably wasted it on something meaningless. I can see why Compassion places restrictions on gift-giving to keep things fair between all the sponsored children. I would send her the entire contents of my bank account in a heartbeat.

Happy Birthday Two-Five Cloth!

Yesterday, February 5th (2-5), marked the first birthday of my brother's t-shirt company! Brad and his good friend Matt Poe officially launched Two-Five Cloth a year ago with the explicit goal of changing the lives of those in need... all in the name of Christ. The name "Two-Five" comes from the following passage from Matthew chapter 25 and the t-shirts provide an opportunity to live out this call to serve others:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go visit you?'

The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" -Matthew 25:34-40

Thanks to those that purchased t-shirts from Two-Five this past year, FIVE LIVES A DAY were changed! Whether it was someone in Rwanda receiving access to clean water, a child in a developing country born with club foot receiving casting materials for corrective surgery, a family in India receiving a chicken to provide eggs and a source of income, or a victim of hurricane Ike receiving provisions to begin rebuilding their shattered life... the love of Christ was shown and lives were changed.

***

Every year 15 million children die of hunger... that means a child dies of hunger every 5 seconds. This new quarter, Two-Five Cloth is partnering with Feed the Hungry to provide nourishment for the bodies and souls of malnourished children in Liberia, Africa. Each t-shirt purchased provides a child in Liberia with daily meals for two weeks. Each Feed the Hungry food distribution also provides an opportunity to touch the spirit and soul of the children in need through prayer, encouragement, and sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, go buy a shirt... give hope... and change a life!

www.25cloth.com

Mystery Solved!

I know I've mentioned before how we don't know exactly what breed(s) our dog Maya is. She was listed as "husky mix" at the shelter we adopted her from, but of course they didn't know for sure. We're VERY obsessed with our sweet Maya and have naturally developed a slight obsession with figuring out what exactly she "is". We are always on the lookout for dogs that look like Maya to offer us any clues, but our best luck was running into a dog that looked a whole lot like her, even in size and build, only to find out that it was a husky/wolf hybrid puppy that would grow to be 70 pounds. Maya tips the scales at only 33 pounds and is most definitely full grown as she is nearly three years old (or even older... we aren't totally sure). Anyways, we get questions ALL THE TIME about what she's mixed with or why she's so small.

Fast forward to this past Christmas. I was trying to think of something to get Kolby and remembered hearing about a dog DNA test that could determine the breed composition of mutts. I figured it would be super expensive but looked into it and found a "DNA Breed Identification Kit" online for $35. I realize that even $35 sounds like a stupid amount of money to spend on something like this... but whatever. So I got it for Kolby (and myself, of course) along with plenty of non-dog-related Christmas gifts. A few weeks ago we got the kit in, swabbed Maya's mouth with the included q-tips, mailed the kit back, and waited for the results.

Today we got her "Ancestry Analysis Certificate" in the mail. As expected, she is at least 75% Siberian Husky. Quite unexpected, however, was the news that she is 10-20% DALMATIAN! Isn't that awesome? I love Dalmatians. Her husky markings are so dominant that she of course doesn't look like a dalmatian, but it does explain the traits that keep her from looking 'all husky' like her straighter tail, narrower face, and thinner fur. Unfortunately, the fact that a mix of those breeds should have Maya weighing between 45-50 pounds confirms that her small size means that she likely spent all of her pre-us life on the streets and that year of malnourishment stunted her growth, which is sad. But she's healthy and happy now and we're blessed to have this little husky-dalmatian mix in our lives!

Catching Up

It's been awhile since I've updated our blog (minus the Australia trip) and there's good reason for that --- not much has been going on. Nonetheless, here's the latest news from around here... however mundane.

Kolby had to start back to work this year a week before my classes started so I was able to go on a fun mini-vacation with three of my best friends. My friend Laura is now at grad school in Colorado so Katie, Jessica and myself drove back with her and then skied for a couple days before having to get back home. We've been friends since 8th grade and there's nothing in the world like hanging out with those girls.

Jess, Laura, Me, Katie

Last Tuesday was my last first day of school and it was bittersweet. I've been in school for 19 years straight so I'll be happy to FINALLY be done, but at the same time --- I love school and I'm good at it, and the thought of entering the real world and (hopefully) starting a real job is scary because I don't know if I'll love it OR be good at it. I guess I've got to grow up sometime.

Kolby is still loving teaching and is very often commended for being great at it. The kids (or adolescents, I guess) really look up to him and it makes them so much more interested in what he has to say. His latest funny story from school was that a student came up to his desk and upon seeing the framed picture of us, commented "woah Mr. Kerr, your wife's really young... she's like 22!", implying that he had robbed the cradle. Kolby replied to her, "how do you know that I'm not 22?" and received a very puzzled look. Apparently he has them fooled into thinking he's much older than he really is.

Today I FINALLY started the write-up for my thesis. Even though I have been working steadily on my research for over a year now, I had yet to put pen to paper on the actual thing. My oral defense will be coming up in early March and it is quite likely that I will implode from the stress of trying to write a graduate thesis paper in a matter of weeks. My research is all empirical (i.e. I am doing completely new research by running statistical analyses on a dataset from Bangladesh) and it took me much longer than expected to get everything ready and output some meaningful results. The other day I received a copy of a previous student's paper and just about died when I saw that it was sixty pages long. OH. MY. WORD. In lighter thesis news, I had to write an acknowledgements page --- thanking my advisor for his guidance, thanking the econ dept for financing part of my trip to Ghana, etc. --- and I seriously debated including a shout out to Maya. OK, maybe not seriously, but I'm home alone all day long working on my research and I don't know what I would do if Maya wasn't here keeping me company. I mean, who wouldn't be grateful for this little cheerleader:

I'll end this less-than-riveting post with a quote:
Kolby, to his parents on the phone last night: "you know that sweater that you got Emily for Christmas... the blue one... well she tried it on and it was too small around her arms... do you have the receipt?"
Thanks, honey. Heaven forbid you had just said it didn't fit.

Home Alone

There is an unfamiliar voice emanating from our blog this week as I appear to be the only one left around here to do the writing. Maya is willing, but the opposable thumb dilemma persists.

Truth be told, Emily has left me. Personally I thought I could make things last at least a couple of years, but she's packed a bag and headed north. She claims that she is only going skiing in Colorado for a couple days with some of her friends, but time will tell.

After two of my five days alone, I'd say I am faring admirably. To give you a proper perspective on my current state, I will provide a few comparable movie images:

Cast Away--think scraggly beard, abandoned clothing, spear fishing, and talking to inanimate sporting equipment.

Home Alone--at first frightened and hesitant, then dancing wildly to Frank Sinatra tunes before being forced to defend the family home from bad guys using comical booby traps.

The Great Escape--think mainly of 'the cooler': a defeated, dashing Steve McQueen endlessly thumping his baseball against the wall as if to say, 'I will not let this break me.'

As you might have guessed, I've already long since passed my breaking point, else you would never have seen this post.

Graciously, Emily left me a frozen lasagna and some gift cards to various places around town, which I have bartered with the natives for beads, tobacco leaves, and maize. Unfortunately, she selfishly did not hand pack lunches for me to take to school as she usually does. In my rush today, I made it out the door with a cup of applesauce and a snack pack of pudding.

Have a great week everyone. If you don't hear from me in a while, you can assume I have been gruesomely dispatched by Emily upon her return to our now markedly untidy abode.

Kolby

Webb Family Vacation -- Australia

Our family had the most A-M-A-Z-I-N-G time on our trip to Australia. We saw wild koalas and kangaroos, went scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, spent Christmas at the beach, learned how to surf on Bondi Beach, went sailing on the Sydney harbor, celebrated New Years watching the fireworks over the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge, and kicked 2009 off to a wild start by skydiving over the outback. Best of all, we spent two weeks enjoying uninterrupted time as a family!

The Webb Family

Front: Me, Mom, Remy (sister-in-law)

Back: Kolby, Russell (younger brother), Dad, Brad (older brother)

Kangaroo Island

Our trip started with a visit to Kangaroo Island, a very small island off the southern coast of Australia known for its diverse wildlife and natural beauty.

Admiral's Arch, an ancient limestone formation

Cape du Coudic, home to an active colony of New Zealand fur seal

Remarkable Rocks, natural granite formations

Once again our family's luck with finding wildlife struck again (we were very, very lucky to see all of the "big five" on our trip to Africa) and we found a mama koala and her little baby up in a eucalyptus tree. We watched them for awhile and the mama eventually decided to change trees--- take a look at the progression below--- it was awesome to watch and was probably the cutest thing I have ever seen!

A wallabie A koala bottom A male koala climbing (and then sitting in) a tree. Doesn't his fur look strange up close? A kangaroo and her (big) baby... they were very intent on keeping an eye on us.
Kolby and I getting a closer look at some wild kangaroos we happened upon.

A little joey hopping over to his mom to nurseSome pelicans

Seal Bay, home to the bulls, cows, and pups of the Australian sea-lion colony

Russell getting ready to sandboard at Little Sahara, a bizarrely huge sand dune in the middle of nowhere on the island. My mom is standing at the bottom (on the far right of the photo), just to give you some perspective. It was kind of like snowboarding (or sledding if you went down sitting on the board like I did) except you end up with sand in your ears and a sunburn. Still quite fun, though!

We went to a wildlife park (basically a really casual zoo) and Kolby fulfilled his childhood dream of hugging a koala. It was a BIG DAY for him. There were multiple times when I realized he was missing and eventually found him back in the koala habitat. One time I walked up and heard him whispering to the koala "shhh... shhh....shhh" as he stroked it back to sleep. It was a highlight of the trip for sure-- those koalas are just as cuddly and cute as they look!

We also got to pet and feed a lot of kangaroos, which was really neat. They weren't big like the wild ones we had seen, but they were fun to hang out with.
We also saw a kangaroo with her albino baby. At one point they were both standing and the baby got scared, hopped head first into the mama's pouch, and then had to wiggle its way inside. It was probably the grossest thing I'd ever seen. It was like watching a kangaroo give birth... backwards.
The whole family, overlooking the North Coast beaches.

Kolby and I at "Double Beach", a beach where one cove was nothing but big rocks and the other was nothing but white sand.

As we were driving back to the airport, Kolby spotted this guy up in a tree on the side of the road. He took this picture out of the window after we had pulled over. Unbelievably cute!