Memorial Day Weekend Recap

Was an exciting weekend and expensive too! Two of my sister-in-laws came for a visit. My wife has been wanting to get to the local nursery to buy some flowers for the new house, so Saturday afternoon, the three of them headed out. They came back later after spending about $200 on flowers, bushes, and hanging baskets. Then they went to Lowe's and bought about $100 worth of more stuff (topsoil, mulch, etc etc etc). I told my wife later that her sisters cannot come anymore as everytime they do, it costs me a lot of money. :-)

We got everything planted that evening. Sunday, we all went to church and then went out for lunch at Ruby Tuesdays (man, I like that place, but it's kinda pricey too). Came home, and the sisters headed home. I mowed the lawn that evening and just relaxed. Monday, we did a lot of odd jobs around the house and went out and bought a few more things.

Today, I'm back at work and what a day it has been. More network problems galore. I barely had time to eat lunch and I now have to run to attend a conference call with IBM tech support which means I have to stay past my leaving time. Ugh!

Blessings!

I Have You Now...

Saw the new Star Wars Ep. III movie last night after work. Whoo Hooo! What a ride! That opening sequence just about put me into sensory overload! :-) The only downside to the opening battle was that I thought there was too much "silly" stuff in there. Making jokes, battle droids acting funny, etc. kind of took away the "seriousness" of the situation, but Lucas may have wanted the Saturday morning "Flash Gordon" serial "look-and-feel" too it. Didn't work for me since the rest of the movie had a more darker/serious feel to it. Besides that, I loved the movie and was very impressed with it all. Sorry to see that it will probably be the last of the Star Wars movies, but I'm looking forward to the TV series.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend. I've got two of my sister-in-laws coming down tomorrow for a weekend visit. They are always fun to have around.

Blessings!

In the Arms of Jesus

Yesterday we attended the visitation and funeral for my little baby niece Bethany. It was a very beautiful service and a lot of people turned out. For part of her healing therapy, my sister put together a photo montage of Bethany that was played during the funeral. My sister said that was the hardest video to work on, but it was very precious to her at the same time. Today, I feel so emotionally drained. We spent all day with family and friends and I'm just wiped out. My brother-in-law is carrying a very heavy load of quilt and hopelessness. He needs a lot of encouragement and prayer.

I'm back at work today, dealing with all the network problems we've been having lately, but they don't seem to be as important as they used to... And I hold my own children a little closer now.

Today is also my son's last day of school... Last day of the Fourth grade.... He's growing up way too fast!

Heading out tonight right after work with a friend to go see the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith. Can't wait! :-)

Blessings!

2nd Place

Our church leagues men's b-ball tourney's championship game was played last night. Somehow, our team made it to this final game. We actually played really well in the first half and was only down by 4 at the half. Something happened to our team in the 2nd half and we ended up losing badly. We still got 2nd place in the league after coming in last place last year.

I'll be taking off work tomorrow to attend my niece's funeral. It's gonna be a rough day...

Celebration and Tragedy

Friday was my 16th wedding anniversary. Since our checkbook is getting on the lean side for the month, we "celebrated" by going out to Fazzoli's (a fast food Italian restaurant). We even brought along the kids as we didn't feel we could afford a baby sitter. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed the night out. Hey, free bread sticks... How much better can it get? :-)

That evening, after we got back home, we watched part of Star Wars, Episode I (my wife hadn't seen it before).

Saturday was just beautiful and I worked outside most of the day doing yard work. I trimmed the bushes and trees, mowed and weed-eated. I took breaks after each activity, so as to not overdo it, and just took my time and enjoyed the day. That evening we finished up the second half of Star Wars, Episode I (we have next Friday night scheduled to watch Episode II...)

Sunday, it started off just like every other Sunday... Running late to church as usual, enjoying the services, coming home and eating lunch, relaxing throughout the afternoon, and going to church again for Evening service. After getting home, we were hit with a bomb. The Pastor from the church we used to attend (and where I grew up - the rest of my family still go there) called us to tell us of a terrible tragedy. My sister and her husband's new 9-week old baby girl stopped breathing and the Dr.'s could not resuscitate her. My brother-in-law is taking it VERY hard as he was at home with her when it happened. Please stop what you're doing and say a quick prayer for them. Goodbye Bethany... See ya in Heaven.

Happy Anniversary

Happy 16th Wedding Anniversary Darling! I love you very much and always will!!


Blessings!

The Saga is now Complete

Well, not quite for me yet as I haven't seen Episode III yet, but at least it is now out in theaters! Not sure exactly when I'll be going as I'd like to wait until the mad rush is over, but I don't know how long I can hold out... I've been waiting for this long... I can surely wait a few days/weeks. :-)

The church board meeting actually went pretty quick and we were done by 8:30pm! That's almost a record except for the one month we didn't meet due to nothing to discuss. :-)

My son has been sick for most of this week and hasn't been able to go to school. Being stuck at home with two kids has just about driven my wife crazy as our daughter hasn't been wanting to take her afternoon naps.

Blessings!

One More Game

Wow... unbelieveable... We played at 6:30pm and won! But, because we won, we then had to play the loser of the next game at 9:00pm.. So, I had to stick around and play another game. The team we ended up playing was a team we had lost twice before during the 'regular' season. Somehow, we pulled it off and won that game too. Now we play again next week in the "CHAMPIONSHIP" game. Whoo Hoo... That'd be cool if we could pull that one off. We lost to the team we're playing in that game too, but we have nothing to lose, so it's going all out for me... Yeah, right benchwarmer... :-)

Got a church board meeting tonight... So, it's going to be another long night....

And the Star Wars movie is another day closer.... :-)

Blessings!

Mother-In-Law Visit

We actually had a nice visit with my wife's mother this past weekend and also got to see two of my wife's sisters. My mother-in-law was a little upset with her mower person as he was suppose to come early Saturday morning and didn't end up coming until that evening. She doesn't really get out much except to occasionally go to the store and to church every Sat. evening. So, sometimes, even the simple things can set her off. On Sunday, we took her out to one of her favorite resturants in a nearby town and had wonderful fried chicken.

Last Friday night marked an end to an 18 year run of new Star Trek material on the air. Star Trek: Enterprise showed it's last episode with no other Star Trek show or movie in production for the next few years. As a die-hard Trekkie fan, I'm gonna miss it. Even the bad episodes. At least they will live on in re-runs.

Also, this week will mark the end of the Star Wars saga with the release of Episode III: Return of the Sith. If you haven't been overrun by Star Wars marketing by now, you haven't been getting out much. I'm sure it will be in high gear this week. It's kind of sad knowing that this is the last movie of this grand saga, but at least there is new of a new TV series to continue the story. I'm pumped and can't wait to see the movie... I was 12 when the first movie came out in 1977 and got to journey to a galaxy far far away...

And one more big event this coming Friday is my 16th wedding anniversary. Man, I wonder if I could kill two birds with one stone by taking my wife out on a date with dinner and then to the Star Wars movie... Nah, it'll never fly... She's not much of a sci-fi person... Although she did express a little bit of interest in seeing this one... :-)

My last men's b-ball game is tonight (thankfully the early game at 6:30pm). Hopefully we can pull out a win here at the end of the tourney!

It's going to be a big and exciting week!

Blessings!

Road Trip

Well, sort of a road trip. I'm taking off at noon today, picking up the kid at school, and then we're all heading up to visit my wife's mother for the weekend. It takes us right at 3 1/2 hours to get there (4 hours if we stop to eat). We haven't seen her in awhile, so I guess we're due for a visit.

It's been pretty busy here at work this week with higher than normal network problems, so my blogging got bogged down somewhat. Plus, there really hasn't been that much going on.

The Lewis and Clark reenactment group is in town this weekend with the keelboat they've been floating down the Missouri River in for demonstrations, period music, etc. My son's school is on a field trip today to see all the stuff. The group has been retracing the route that Lewis and Clark took 200 years ago.

It's Friday! I get to leave at Noon! YEAH!

Blessings!

Long Weekend Recap

My son went on the Royal Rangers campout and had a lot of fun. He played paintball for the first time and loved it. Of course, I don't think he got the full effect of it as he didn't get hit hard enough to get any bruses. :-)

My wife and I went to the Sunday school class Progressive Dinner on Friday night (the church was also providing babysitting services for our daughter). We went to the first couple's home for appetisers which were very good and then we headed off to a second couple's home for salad. Then we headed back to the church for the main course of brisket, smoked turkey, and meatloaf. Man, that was good stuff!

Didn't do a whole lot on Saturday... I babysat our daughter for most of the day as my wife went grocery shopping, got her hair roots touched up, and did a few other errands. After my son got back from his campout, I did get the yard mowed.

Sunday was Mother's Day and it was a real emotional day. It's been sort of a tradition at our church for a mother to give the sermon on Mother's Day. The wife of one of our associate pastors spoke about something very personal in her life. 18 years ago, she gave up a baby for adoption while she was in high school. She had struggled all these years wondering what he looked like, did he play sports, was he doing well in school, etc. She'd get real depressed around the birthday time and at holidays. Now, around last Thanksgiving, now that the boy is 18, she contacted the adoption agency to see if she could get an update. She did and through some mighty miracles of God, she got to meet her son this past January. Her son and his adoptive parents were in attendance as she spoke Sunday and there wasn't a dry eye in the place. Her story even made the front page of our local paper. It was a very emotional time and a great ending (beginning?) of the story!

We had a State holiday on Monday, so I had the day off which was nice. I got to sleep in a little and played with my daughter quite a bit. My wife scheduled an eye appointment since I could watch the little one. Monday evening I had another men's b-ball game. We're nearing the end of the tourney. In our game, if we won, we play again next Monday night for the final game. If we lost, we would have to play again that same night at a later game (we played at 6:15pm and the loser had to come back to play at 9:15pm - UGH!)... Needless to say, that was enough incentive to win... which we barely did! Whew!

I didn't sleep so well last night.. I woke up at 3AM and couldn't get back to sleep... Too much on my mind I guess...

Blessings!

The Force is NOT with me

Ugh. I bought the Star Wars Ep. III soundtrack last night at Target as it was on sale and also contained a coupon so you could download a special bonus track (no other store offered that). I went to download my bonus track today and there was a goof up in the download. When I tried to do it again, I got an error message saying that I had already viewed the content. Wha? No way! By viewing the source of the pages, etc., I finally found the link to the actual audio file download and snatched it. Trying to play it in Windows Media player and it says it needs a special license to play it. Wha? Drat! It's that stupid Digital Rights Media junk in the way again... I gues due to our firewall here at work, it wouldn't successfully download the license, so I'm still out of luck. Where's Yoda when you need him? I'm taking the file home tonight to see if I can get the licence there.

Don't forget about Mother's Day this Sunday!! We're going up to see my mom after church and spend the afternoon with her.

We have a sunday school class Progressive Dinner tonight. We'll be going to a couple of different homes for appetisers and salads, then back to the church for the main meal. My son has a Royal Rangers campout that starts tonight too, so hopefully he's still willing to go. I would've gone too, but my wife really wanted to go to this dinner thing, but not by herself. The dilimas of being a husband and a father...

Blessings!

05/05/05

May 5, 2005 (05.05.05)... Pretty cool... That kind of thing won't happen again until next June...

Can't really complain about today except that I don't want to be stuck in a cube on this very beautiful day...

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Holding on... Just two more weeks.... AAHH!

Blessings!

Floating On By

We had a nice treat today... Due to this being Employee Recoginition Week, our department offered all the employees ice cream floats today. It was really good and I haven't had a root beer float in a long time. They also are having a drawing for a parking space in the directors' lot which is nice as it's close to the building. I know I'm going to win that! :-)

Got an email from the lady running the family DNA test that I mentioned in an earlier post that the DNA lab received my samples. She said it usually takes 6-8 weeks to get the results even though in their email they mention it only takes about 4 weeks (unless they samples have to be retested for some reason). Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it comes out.

Read today that Sony Pictures has announced that they are going to be doing six (6) Spider-Man movies. That's cool with me as long as the standards stay high as with the first two. I just wonder who the villians will be... Sandman is rumored to be the next villian in Spider-Man 3... But we have the Vulture, Scorpion, Lizard, Electro, Shocker, Venom and many others to choose from I guess.

Man, I can't wait until Star Wars Ep. III starts... :-)

Blessings!

Today's News

Blogger seemed to be all blogged up yesterday, so no updates...

This past weekend was beautiful... Got the yard mowed and fertilizer down. My date with my very lovely wife on Friday night went fairly smooth. We got to the restuarant around 6:15 and they said there was a 30 minute wait. The play we were going to started at 7:30... We opted to stay and signed up for first available table. Turned out we only had to wait about 15 minutes, but the table we got was in the smoking section RIGHT across from the bar. So, it was a little noisy, but not much problem with the smoking. The food was excellent though. We got to the playhouse right at 7:30 and had about 5 minutes to spare before they started... Whew! The play was excellent and very funny although there was this older lady in the audience that laughed at every single thing and she had a real obnoxious voice that was real loud.... We went to a local restuarant afterwards to get a dessert which was huge and we couldn't finish it. Made it home around 10:30, paid the babysitter, and made it to bed around 11... It was a fun evening overall!

Saturday night, my son had a friend spend the night with him. They always have a good time playing all kinds of various things like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. They both have a good imagination. It was a little more stressful in getting an extra kid ready for church the next morning, but we made it and everyting was fine.

Last night we had our second game of the church league men's b-ball tourney. We had exactly 5 guys on our team show up, so we had to play the entire game... That wears on you when you're not exactly used to it. But at least it was more of a relaxed game as the other team wasn't the best team in the league (probably the worst), so it wasn't too hard to pull out a win. Shoot, I even made a couple of baskets, a block and many defensive stops.

Today has been pretty slow at work, but at least we've been given the great news that no layoffs will occur in our division. I was a little worried this time around as things are getting pretty tight. At least that's one burden not to have to worry about now.

Blessings!