Rockin' Out...

One of my favorite gifts ever is a family present to our bunch from our babysitters Lindsey and Becca. They bought us the full set of Rock Band 2 for Christmas, and I'm entirely addicted! Caroline, Nicholas, and I have a band called "Ved's Bombshells" and we've played gigs in New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin TX, Montreal, and San Francisco. We've won a deluxe tour bus, and are sponsored by Hot Topic. We even have a street team to get the word out...HOOKED!

We further celebrated Caroline's baptism day by playing ROCK BAND with Becca, Lindsey, and special friends Sassy (Ashley), Wes, and their bambino Ethan. Check out these awesome shots of Ved's Bombshells and their guest artists!

Caroline's Bap-a-tism

Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven to Caroline Georgia Holland! Caroline asked Jesus into her heart on Christmas eve (see earlier post), and today was baptized at Forest Hill Community Church. I had the incredible honor to be the one baptizing her, and I can say that baptizing your own children is one of the most beautiful and humbling experiences that I think a father can have. Tremendous! We had a special day, and celebrated at one of her favorite restaurants, Red Robin. Here are some recent shots of Caroline, after her recent haircut and straightening from Gypsyville. She's so grown! You can see her new "Mia" American Girl doll in the background...her favorite Christmas present.

Carole and Tom

We enjoyed a very special treat this Thursday through Saturday; One of Karen's absolute best friends in the world was in town for a wedding and to visit. Carole Kenney has been a missionary in East Asia for many years, and has moved home to find work in Chicago, near her precious beau, Tom. We had an incredibly special time together, and welcomed several friends into our home that worked with Carole when she was serving in Vienna, Austria. Our former pastor Danny Hall and his wife Ginger, as well as Stuart and Elsie from Northern Ireland, all sharing funny (and embarrassing) stories about Carole. Simply a treat...Here are the two precious ones!

Too Bad We Lost?

Nicholas' basketball team, the Hope Tigers, are off to a 4-1 start to their season. Their most recent game was Saturday 1/17/09. They played the Central Church Thunder, and won the game 19-12. They got off to a slow start, but steadily caught the Thunder, and passed them easily. Nicholas' coach, Coach Greg, told Nicholas that he was an absolute monster on defense, rebounding, boxing out, chasing down loose balls, coming up with steals. We were so proud! He had several great drives to the basket, but couldn't finish at the rim - we'll work on that. The best part of the game was in the car afterwards, Karen and I were congratulating Nicholas on playing such a great game, to which he replied..."yeah, too bad we lost...". We'll work on scoreboard reading too...

No more baseball....

I just can't do it anymore. I have given up on baseball. I really do want to continue to enjoy the game but I just can't. I am so done with all of the players leaving a team to go to the highest bidder. How can you let John Smoltz go? First Glavine, then Maddox and now Smoltzy..... I am done.

Hottie!!

Becca was here the other night and informed us that Nick has a great rating on RATEMYPROFESSOR.COM. Something like 4.3 out of 5 or something. His "bad" comments included "he's too easy on the marching band" ( not that bad of a comment if you ask me). The other thing she informed us is that he has the highest rating (5 out of 5) for HOT-ness! So I'm cracking up at this point but she continues by reading certain comments. Her favorite is "Dr Holland is the most awesome teacher and he's SMOKIN' HOT!!!! I was about to pee in my pants. I of course think he's a hottie but to know his students do was just too much!!!

What's in a name...Part Deux

As we were posting last night, Nicholas sent a shout out from his bedroom for us to not forget how he got his name. So, we thought we'd toss in the history behind the names of our children.

When Karen was a little girl, she used to tell her mother Mary that when she grew up she was going to get married, move to North Carolina, and have a blond-haired boy named Nicholas. What everyone didn't know was that Karen was prophetic - she grew up, married, moved to North Carolina, and was expecting her first child. Before we knew the sex of the baby, we had already decided that if it was a boy, he would be named Nicholas. Karen decided to name him after his father, grandfather, and great grandfather on Nick's side, and we named him Nicholas Vedder Holland, IV, and I couldn't be more proud. When he was little, Nicholas used to call himself "Nicholas Vedder Holland the force."

Karen and I were expecting our second child in 2003, and we always thought that if we had a girl, we would name her Hannah (we both love that name). When we found out we were having a girl, it seemed that everyone we knew had a daughter named Hannah. So, we decided on Caroline, which is a family name on my side, and a tribute to my home state of North Carolina. Initially, we thought her middle name would be Ruth, but in the same week that we learned Karen was pregnant, a very dear friend of ours in Memphis was shot and killed. His name was George, and he was a Sheriff's Deputy delivering an arrest warrant. We were very close to his family–his wife Jessica and their two girls Taylor and Payton. We decided to honor George and his family, and made Caroline's middle name Georgia. It turns out that it serves a dual purpose, which is to honor George Selby and Karen's home state of Georgia (even though she was born in Virginia). Consequently, that's how Caroline Georgia Holland was named. When Caroline was little, she would would refer to herself as "Caroline ju-ja the first". Only later did she get "Georgia" and "Holland" in there, but she was always "the first". God threw away the mold after this one...

And by the way, Nicholas also wanted to make sure there were enough pictures of him on the blog...what do you think? Let us know if you need more of "the force".