Hurricane Katrina

It's almost unbelievable what has happened in the Gulf area over the last few days. It seems the news reports are getting worse by the hour. I have no relatives in that area, but I feel for those that are struggling just to survive right now. I can't even imagine what it must be like. Not quite Hell, but pretty close...

Please say a prayer for those in need today...

I thee commission ye

Sunday night was a special night. We went back to the church I grew up in as the pastor who has been there for the past 24 years was resigning to become the President of Central Bible College in Springfield, MO. They had a very good catered dinner, and then a commissioning service with various speakers including "roasting" by a good friend and a "looking back" photo montage video. It was really neat to see some of the people come back to the church who I grew up with and hadn't seen in a long time too. Going back to the church now will just not be the same with a different pastor there. This pastor performed the wedding ceremony for my wife and I also. I've sat under a lot of preaching and teaching from this man and he is truly a man of integrity and faithfulness. It was a really neat service and I'm glad I was able to attend.

Friday night we went out to eat just so we could all get "out of the house" for awhile to do something different. I also picked up the old movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still." I've always wanted to get that movie, and Target had it at a pretty cheap price. I'm also wanting to get "The War of the Worlds," the 1953 version. I've seen that a special edition version is coming out on DVD on November 1st.

Saturday I got the yard mowed, but that was about it for the day... Oh, well, I also put down some fertilizer too. :-)

Tomorrow is payday! Yes! I think we made it through the month... but these gas prices are killing us. We had to fill up the car Sunday and it cost me almost $40 (I had to pay $2.57 a gallon)!!! Ugh!

Blessings!

Finally Friday

It sure has seemed like a long week... School started, my work hours changed, it's been raining all week, etc. I'm just glad it's Friday. We were suppose to have a Royal Rangers Father/Son campout tonight, but I don't think we're going to go. I don't even know yet if they're still having it since it's been raining so much. Due to that, my wife hasn't been able to get out of the house this week with our daughter, so we're just all going to go out for dinner tonight.

After today, we're suppose to get a dry spell, so I'll be mowing the yard tomorrow again... Hard to get back in to the habit of mowing since I haven't had to do so in quite a while (not counting last Saturday...)

Blessings!

Drenched

Due to me coming in to work later, parking is a problem. I had to park in a gravel lot a little farther away than where I used to park. While walking into work (in the pouring rain - yes, I had my umbrella), I was walking on the sidewalk when this car came zooming by, hit a large water puddle and just soaked me from head to toe. AAHHH! Took me a couple of hours to dry out... Man, what a great way to start the day....

Blessings!

Traffic Problems

For years, I've come into work at 7am. Traffic wasn't too much of an issue and even less of one since we've moved into our new house as I can get on to the highway pretty quick and easy now. Now that I've had to change my schedule so I can take my son to school, it's become a real problem. Now I get to work at 8am, and that's probably when most of the city is going to work (it seems like it anyway). Plus, where the school is, it's a real pain to work your way around to get back to where I need to go. Lots of stop signs/lights, lots of traffic (cars backing up at intersections), etc. It's just a real pain, and to think I have to do this for many years to come doesn't improve my outlook.

We're also hearing from upper management here at work that the schedules are changing too. No one can work before 7:30am and then they want support coverage until 5:30pm. No more 10 hour work days (so no more 4 day work weeks), and no more telecommuting. They just keep messing around with people here... It's all to be effective 9/1, but they are going to give us 2 weeks to work out our schedules for people that have to deal with daycare issues, etc. How nice of them. First, they take away our casual days, now they muk up our work schedules... what next? They say it's all due to help give better coverage for our "customers." We'll see.

It's been a rainy day... Maybe the reason for my mood... :-)

Blessings!

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for my son. He's starting the 5th grade at a brand new school. We're sending him to a private school this year as we just became frustrated with the public school he was attending. He at least knows a few kids there and I'm sure he won't have any problems making new friends.

Due to my having to drop him off at school, I have to change my working hours, but it's a small sacrifice so he can get a good education. Plus, I get to sleep in a little bit more. :-)

Well, I finally had to mow the yard since we had been getting some rain. I think it has been over a month since I've mowed.

The Satellite Guy came early (11:30am) on Friday, so I took off early from work and we got it all working in about an hour. So now we're enjoying our SkyAngel satellite programming again!

My son tried out for one of the lead roles in the upcoming Children's Christmas program last night at church. He says he did really well and I know he'll do a good job if he gets it. He's really good at memorizing lines and almost has the whole play memorized by listening to the CD over and over.

Blessings!

The Satellite Guy

I'm taking off at noon again today as at 1:30pm, the "Satellite Guy" is coming out to install our dish. My dad and I tried installing it, but never could find the correct satellite signal. I did find three other signals, but not the one I needed. Hopefully, the "pros" have a way to find it. We took our dish with us when we moved, but I never had time to put it back up at our new house.

We had a lot of yesterday at the ARC. They have a real nice swimming area. Afterwards, we played a little basketball in their court area. When we were all done, we went to a local pizza place (Cici's Pizza) for dinner. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet, and that swimming sure made me hungry... :-)

Nothing real special is "planned" for this weekend, but you never know what might happen...

I'm just glad it's Friday and that I get to leave early!

Blessings!

The ARC

Yes, it has been raining quite a bit lately, and we even got a pretty good rain storm this morning too (one thunderclap was so loud, that I thought something had hit the house!), BUT, I'm not quite ready to build an ark yet. The ARC I'm talking about is an Activities and Recreation Center that's located about 30 miles from us in the next town and run by the local Parks and Rec. I'm taking off at noon today to go with the family to the ARC for a little swimming and whatever else they have there to do (ping pong, weights, walking track, etc.). Its almost like a health club, and you can join a yearly membership, but we can get in with a family group one day rate of only $12. We're doing it as a little "fun before school starts" event.

Speaking of school, we went to my son's school's Open House last night. It was just a "come-and-go" thing where you met the teacher, find out where you sit, find where your locker is, bring in your school supplies type of thing. The teacher seems like a really nice guy. My son's desk is in the front row... Ha! But, it will probably be better anyway to help him pay attention.

Blessings!

Open House Night

Tonight we go to my son's new school for their Open House. I know my son is both excited and nervous about going to a new school. At least he knows a few kids there which will help and I know he'll make some new friends too.

Last night while the kids were attending the third night of the Kids Crusade at church, I went to the church's board meeting. The dinner is always good and I was glad we got done about the same time the Crusade was finished as we all rode together to the church as a family. I was a little worried as sometimes the board meetings get a little long winded. :-)

Due to having to go to the Open House tonight, the kids will miss the final night of the Crusade, but that's life sometimes...

To Podcast or Not To Podcast... That is the question... I'm always a sucker for new tech stuff, so Podcasting really interests me. I've been checking into it and I found some free software that helps in the creation of the RSS files, etc. The only thing is, I don't really have anything to Podcast about... No sense in doing something inwhich you have nothing to say... Well, I guess if they can do a TV show about nothing (Seinfeld), then I guess I can do it with a Podcast. Who knows, maybe I'll try it out someday... :-)

Also, I found out I'm a terrible speller. I was going through a bunch of my old blog posts and saw a lot of spelling errors. I apologize for that and I guess I need to start using the spell checker feature in Blogger... :-)

Blessings!

Rain... Finally!

Starting Friday evening, it started raining and hasn't let up since (although it's suppose to clear up this afternoon). Thankfully, it is only a light, steady rain and not a downpour. We've been in a drought for so long, we really needed this rain. I heard on the radio this morning that we've gotten a little over 3 inches since it started. I know my backyard is starting to flood... I almost wish it would have rained one day, then dry one day, then rain one day, etc... to give the rain a chance to soak in. Guess when it finally dries up a little, I'll have to go back to mowing the yard again. :-)

As I mentioned in my last post, on Friday night, our Sunday school class had little get togethers at various homes in groups of four couples so that people could get better acquanted. We had a real nice time at our group. Had BBQ hamburgers and chicken and played several rounds of the Uno Attack card game. Having all the kids there was a little bit of a distraction, but we still had a good time.

Saturday I spent a couple of hours upgrading the software on our main video switcher computer. That all went fairly well and I made it home before lunch time. We were going to go out for a walk at a local park, but as I mentioned, it started raining (it had stopped during the morning time and started again after lunch). So we just stayed home and I played various games with the kids. My daughter really likes playing foosball. She stands on a chair and likes hitting the ball. She doesn't quite "get it", but whenever she or anyone else makes a score, she likes to give "high fives." :-)

Starting Sunday evening through this Wednesday, they are holding a "Back to School" kids crusade at the church. The kids seemed to enjoy it. We didn't get to go last night (Monday) as my son wasn't feeling too good. With all the rain and all, he started what seeems to be a sinus problem, but he also had a slight fever yesterday.

We also had problems with our daughter again last night not wanting to stay in her bed. She woke us up about 3AM this morning and we had a couple hours of dealing with her again... She finally fell asleep on the floor by our bed because we just couldn't get her to fall asleep in her own bed. So, I'm tired this morning. You parents out there that have been through this, please tell me she'll get over it... :-)

Hopefully the kids can make it to the Kids Crusade tonight, and I've got a church board meeting tonight too. I hope that doesn't last long as I may not last long... Unless I can get a quick nap in here at work (uh, I didn't say that...). :-)

Blessings!

A Good Night's Sleep... Finally!

This week has been pretty trying for my wife and I. Our 3 year old daughter has been waking up in the middle of the night and then not wanting to stay in her bed. She did this almost every night this week and it'd take about 1-2 hours trying to coax her to stay in bed, which usually didn't work. One night she just stayed in our room, standing by the bed (we didn't want her *in* our bed due to the fact that we're potty training her), until she just finally sat down and fell asleep. Last night she slept all night long... finally... But she did wake up at 6:15am (after I had already gotten up) this morning. I don't know if it's the potty training or if something has scared her in her room, but I hope we're almost over this... If I don't get my 8 hours of sleep a night, I'm pretty much a lost cause the next day. I can handle one or two nights like that, but not a whole week's worth... I'm just glad tomorrow is Saturday so I can finally sleep in if I have to...

Our Sunday school class is having a special thing tonight where groups of four couples get together for dinner, games, fellowship, etc. We're looking forward to it as it's always nice to get to know others in the church a little better.

We were sent a memo here at work indicatiing (dictating?) a new dress code. For quite a while now, every Friday was a Casual Day. Starting Oct. 3rd, no more casual days... And they put a few restrictions on what types of clothes you can wear. Actually, I'm kind of glad (not really about losing Casual Day) as some of the ladies in the building were getting kind of skimpy if you know what I mean. Anyway, at least they didn't go back to the "Dark Ages" where I'd have to wear a tie...

Sweet Dreams!

Extreme Makeover

The Associate Pastor who's in charge of our TV ministry at church and the Youth Pastor (who knows quite a lot about sound boards, audio, etc.) installed our new TV room's sound board yesterday. It's a Yamaha MG24. We just have to finish running all the cables and we'll be wired for sound! While they were doing the install, the Associate Pastor also "cleaned up" our TV room and while I was at church last night, I couldn't find anything (sounds like what happens when my wife cleans the house...HA!). I also removed some old computers we weren't using anymore. Now I just have to plan how to implement this new sound board into our overall setup. It'll really improve our recording capabilities by not having to rely on the output from the main sanctuary sound board. Those guys were always messing us up! :-) I'll probably go to the church Saturday morning for awhile to finish getting things connected and hopefully we can start using this new board this Sunday morning.

We're also starting this weekend to begin video recording the second Sunday morning service instead of the first service by request of the pastor. He says that the second service is more lively and more responsive (meaning "more awake"), so that's the one he'd like to see On the Air (we broadcast on our town's public access channel) and on the church's website (we put the sermon videos online). It's kind of a big change for us as all of our support staff has to make the switch to coming to the second service now... Most have agreed to switch, so that's good news. My wife wanted to come to the second service anyway as it's been really hard to get to the first service on time with getting the two kids ready and herself too. Hopefully, it'll work out better all around for everyone. The only regret I have is that I liked getting out of church early. Now, with the second service, they don't let out until 12:15 or even 12:30pm sometimes... Our evening service starts at 5pm, so that really cuts into your afternoon... It'll work out though.

Blessings!

Mission 1 Complete

Recently I started volunteering for my state's government archives. My first project was to transcribe a section of the 1940 death certificate index for our state. They sent me 50 pages containing approx. 2500 names to enter into an Excel spreadsheet. I worked on it for about an hour each day (not including weekends and vacations) and it took me about two months to finish. I finished it today and sent it off to them. Of course, with this type of work, it is never ever actually finished, so they've asked me if I'd like to work on another section of 2500 names. Sure, send them on! At least I'll get a couple days break until the new packet arrives... Pop the cork! :-)

Blessings!

Safe Return

Good to see that the space shuttle had a safe return to Earth after being delayed a day due to bad weather. Welcome back Discovery!

Sorry to hear about Peter Jennings passing on Sunday. I watched the evening ABC World Evening News broadcast and it was very touching. It's pretty scary how fast something like lung cancer can wipe you out so quickly.

We're planning on going swimming tonight with the kids. They each got a coupon upon completing their swim lessons that gave them a free pass along with an adult. Therefore, all four of us can go tonight free! A great way to beat the heat tonight! :-)

Blessings!

Monday Monday

Ugh... Seems the weekend went fast and it's Monday already...

I really didn't do anything special over the weekend since it was so hot. We did go to a local park to let the kids play and take a little walk. Then we stopped by the car wash to get the car... washed (what else?) :-)

Sunday was the normal church routine. We were also going to go to the visitation for Jim (who I mentioned in my last post), but the lines were so long, we just couldn't do it with the kids. Jim's funeral was today, which we went to. It was really nice. Jim had played gospel music in a bluegrass band and the fellows he "jammed" with played some old hymns, bluegrass style. It was really neat to hear them played that way.

Remember the really important things in life today... like your family...

Blessings!

Mourning Rain

We haven't had any rain in a long time. My grass is dead and I haven't had to mow the yard in over a month (I'm not complaining about that one!).

Today it rained... We also laid to rest a precious lady from our church today. Her and her husband are a very wonderful couple who have been in various ministries all their lives. Mona was 70 and will be greatly missed.

I also just found out that another long-time member of our church passed away this morning from a long fight with brain tumors. He was a very respected business man here in town. Jim, I'll miss your cheery face and uplifting attitude.

Please say a prayer for the families today.... Thanks.

When it rains, it pours.

Just another day...

Well, it's just another day at the office... But a long distance family member whom I've never met, except via email, sent me a bunch of obituaries for my family genealogy research/website. Thanks, Pete!

Got church tonight, which on Wed. nights I try to get some video projects done I'm always working on. I'm going to try to create a DVD for the Missionettes Honor Star Crowning that took place a couple of weeks ago. I would have done it sooner, but I had to create a DVD video from a funeral first. There's always something to work on it seems....

And life goes on...

Blessings!

Vacation Wrapup

As promised, here is a little overview of our little family get away vacation....

Last Tuesday, I took off work to stay with the kids so my lovely wife could go out of town shopping with a good friend. She left at 9:00am and didn't get back home until almost 6:00pm. The funny thing was, that they didn't really find anything at the mall out of town. They came back to our mall and found gobs of stuff on sale. Imagine that. My son went over to a friends house just about all day, so it was just me and my daughter, which was pretty nice as I didn't have to entertain both kids all day. I don't know how my wife does it. :-)

My parents came down Tuesday afternoon to try to help me put up our satelite dish. We worked on it for a couple of hours, but didn't have much success in locating the satelite signal.

Wednesday after lunch, we packed up the car and headed out of town for our little vacation. Got to our destination about 4:00pm. The hotel lobby was packed full of people, so I had to wait almost 20-30 minutes before getting checked in. We went ahead and just went to dinner and then got changed to go swimming. This hotel had an indoor water park (which was why we picked this hotel to start with). It had two large hot tubs, a toddler area, a lazy river, and a huge complex to climb in with water slides and a huge bucket on top that filled with water and then dumped it ever so often on the crowd below.

On Thursday, we went to a Belgin Waffle House restaurant for "brunch" and then headed for the "Family Fun Park," which had go-karts, kiddie rides, mini-golf, bumper-boats, etc. We spent a couple of hours there just goofing off. My 3-year old daughter had a blast doing mini-golf (it was her first time trying it). They had a huge go-kart track, but my son wasn't tall enough to drive his own kart, so we did a two seater with me driving. They had another track that my son could drive on, so he did that one. Before we left, he also did the bumper-boats. Each boat had the ability to squirt water at another boat too. At the end of the ride, my son didn't wait for the worker to secure the boat before he tried to get out of it. It of course moved on him, he lost his balance, and he fell out of it and in to the water. I was first afraid that he would have hit his head on the side of the pool, but he was okay but overly embarrassed and soaked. Thankfully, we had our suitcases with us and got him a change of clothes.

After all that, we headed to a local fish hatchery located below a dam. It was really neat to see how they raised all those fish for stocking the area lakes and streams. Then we headed to the next town for our next night's stay.

At the next town, after checking in to our hotel, we headed out to dinner. We had picked a steak house we had been to before which was really good. When we got there, there was a sign outside the building that said "For Sale or Lease" and there was no one there... Oh great! Now where do we go? We came across a T.G.I.Friday's and stopped there. The atmoshpere was a little too "lively" and the music a little too loud and it was making my wife pretty upset. She wanted to leave, and she couldn't find anything she really wanted on the menu. We ended up staying, and she ordered a steak which turned out really good. Got done with dinner, headed back to the hotel and did some more swimming in their indoor pool.

The next morning, we had the hotel's "deluxe breakfast," which wasn't too bad actually, and then we headed out for the day. We went to a Bass Pro Shop's Zooquarium which had a lot of really neat displays. Even got to see a rare albino alligator. After that, we went over to the actual Bass Pro Shop and picked up a cast iron skillet for the next time we go camping (either that or my wife wanted one for bopping me over the head with...). After a lunch at McDonald's, we headed for the big local mall (which is way bigger than our local mall). My wife hit the major stores, but didn't really find too much. On the way home, we stopped at a Mexican place for dinner which was really good, even though the kids didn't want to eat anything they had to offer (typical....). We got home about 9:00pm Friday night, unpacked, and crashed.

Over the weekend, on Saturday we didn't really do awhole lot. Sunday after church we met my folks, some cousins, my uncle and my grandmother to celebrate her 93rd birthday (which was actually on Friday). We all went out to eat, then went back to my uncle's house for ice cream and cake. My folks and us then went to church and afterwards, they came over to our house to work on that stupid satelite thing again. We finally locked on to a signal, but it ended up being the wrong one. We never could get the right one, so we gave up after it got too dark. If I can't get it working soon, I guess I'll have to hire a professional to do it. Ugh.

Back at work on Monday, I had over 1200 emails to go through... I think I'm subscribed to too many mailing lists... ha!

Blessings!

I'm Back!

Well, we made it back safe and sound from our little vacation, but I've had so much catching up to do at work, I don't have time for a full report. I'll try to do that tomorrow....

Blessings!