Shamu!!!!!

Well, we conquered Sea World. We spent Wednesday and Thursday in the land of Shamu and had a good time. Emily rode on her very first roller coaster and loved it! After leaving yesterday she replied that the Shamu roller coaster was her favorite part of the whole trip. They also loved the little kid's area where they had a little mini water park. Emily was in absolutely heaven running around like an uncaged animal while Josh was frozen in dumbfounded stupor. He literally just stood in the middle of a frenzy of water and saturated children and appeared to be in deep thought trying to solve the global energy crisis or something. He finally warmed up to it. Overall we had a great family trip.

Hammer Time!

one of the traditions we have in our house is the kitchen dance party. at any time...at any moment we could potentially put the dishes down, lay the bills down, lay our maturity down and completely cut a rug right there in our kitchen. each dance party session varies. sometimes we'll go all out and turn on our sponge bob stop light that doubles as a strobe light and kill all the lights. sometimes we'll do a family train that will journey through the kitchen, through the living room down the hall, through the dining room and back to the kitchen. sometimes we'll have family choreography where we'll go between the chicken dance, pizza, butterfly (invented by Emily) and the bus driver. Sometimes we'll have couples dancing. As one that has been known to make my wife go into hiding during wedding receptions, dance to the killer 80's instrumentals they play in grocery stores, etc it makes me quite proud to see Emily and Josh embracing the crazy dance gene that God has blessed me with.

The poor

Many of us are familiar with Jesus' words about caring for the poor especially teachings from Jesus like "if you've done it unto the least of these you've done it unto me." Quite a powerful and vivid picture to think that everyone time we help someone in need or fail to help them that it's if that was Jesus standing there. This concern for the poor has always been in the heart of God. I've been recently reading through Proverbs and on this go round I've been noticing certain themes that seem to run through the book. One of them is regarding how much God is concerned about the poor and our response to them. There are so many verses like this one Pr 19:17 - "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done" (also see Pr 14:31, 17:5, 21:13, 22:2, 29:7) So many of us are really feeling the pinch financially right now as gas prices continue to soar and of course everything else with that. I guess the good thing about these times is maybe it will force us to have to press into God more and really depend on Him and be reminded that He is the source of all things. Everything we own origninated in Him and we are this little vapor that occupies some space for a few years and is gone. Maybe this will be a time in our country that they can start to see a different side of Christianity besides the televangelists and the fundamentalists. Maybe they, through us, can start seeing a Christianity that is pure and undefiled. One where its more about how we care for the poor and all those who are in desperate financial straights and love them through our actions rather than rattle off empty words.

Princesses, Pizza and Pinatas

Well we survived birthday party #2 as Emily had the big 4 year "Disney Princess" and pizza birthday bash on Saturday. We had 17 sugar infested little ones unleashed on our backyard. My not so shining moment during the festivities centered around the Cinderella Pinata. So, my experience with pinanas in the past is like everyone else...blindfolded kids, swinging baseball bats and bashing a random multi-colored paper mache donkey filled with candy tied on a string that is lowered up and down by the mature adult person. Obviously in our 'let's minimize all the risks and sterilize our world' mentality we have nowadays that kind of pinata doesn't pass the safety codes. The new technology is the pinata with pull strings. So Whitney fills me in on this latest technology and we buy one for the party. So basically the way it is 'supposed' to work is that there are a plethora of strings hanging down from Cinderalla and each kid gets a string and we all count to 3 and then pull and the candy comes gushing out and everyone scrambles for candy. So we get the kids into position, so far so good, and I'm holding Cinderella up in the air for everyone and we do the big countdown and then yell 'Pull!'......And.....nothing, absolutely nothing. Not even a dot or a smartie comes cascading down from Cinderella. So without thinking the inner savage comes out in me and I start beating Cinderella mercilessly trying to make candy come out and finally I bash the pinata enough where it starts gushing out (It was only later I thought about the potential traumatizing effect that most likely had on a number of the little girls there as they witnessed this crazed dad beating a Disney Princess). In the end they got lots of candy (on top of the cake they had just eaten) and they were all blissfully happy.

Questions that Haunt me

So I was thinking about this thought while driving down Woodlands Parkway to get my cell phone replaced yesterday....I have been challenged by the little quote 'the good is often the enemy of the best.' It's so much easier to put Christianity in the same box the Pharisees did. That box was filled with rules and laws and 'good' things that appeared holy and godly. The problem with this box is that it puts the individual in charge instead of God in charge. The box is held together by our own rationale, pros and cons lists, justifications, and selected acts of service. God I did this for you aren't you proud? God, I'm going to serve you here because I'm good and 'gifted' at it. God, I'll go help out some kids for an hour and you can chalk that one up for me. But is that how we really follow Christ? On our terms and conditions? Or is it on His terms: "If you want to come after me you must deny yourself, pick up your cross daily and follow Me." What if He clearly calls us to something that is not rational, not easily justified, doesn't add up on our pros and cons list? What if its something and somewhere we're not even familiar with or gifted at? Would we follow Him? On His terms?

Bowling History is Made

So, I think I might have pulled off a first last night at our bowling outing with a few other couples. So Main Event, who by the way is no longer doing 1/2 price night on Tuesdays (ouch), has this cool feature where they can automatically have the bumper guard come up for a designated bowler as in the case of our daughter Emily. So the beauty of the bumper guard is that it gives little kids this great sense that they're not a complete failure when they're learning to bowl because no matter how they roll the ball they are going hit some pins. So Emily being not quite four was rolling the ball at about 4.6 feet per hour which was taking an eternity to make the journey down the lane to the pins. So I saw another family do this thing where the little one drops the ball and then the parent gives it an extra little push to speed it along the way. So Emily and I were doing this and it was working pretty good. Then comes the impossible physical phenomonen. Emily does her drop the ball part and I kick it along down the lane and its rolling all over the place and the bumber guards are keeping it in play and then the ball starts drifting slowly toward the extreme back corner of the alley and some how discovers a hole about the size of a bowling ball where it can just barely squeeze through and somehow not hit a single pin and just dodge the extreme boundary of the bumper guard. Yes, we somehow managed to outdo even the bumber guards by bowling the world's first gutter ball with bumper guards fully engaged. It was truly a proud father/daughter moment.

In Awe over the Wisdom of God

I was reading today in Proverbs 1-3. The first couple of chapters are really about us pursuing wisdom and the blessings of attaining wisdom. Then in Chapter 3 this verse really hit me today, "By wisdom the Lord laid the earth's foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the deeps were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew." I was thinking so often we are drawn to the latest greatest brilliant scientist or philosopher who has a new theory explaining our origin or how things work and we are in awe of their incredible intellect. Yet in the Bible, an amazingly historically accurate and trustworthy collection of writings, we have God's words. God is the one who imagined, designed, thought out, planned and created and built everything we see. He created the atoms, the DNA, the molecules and cells, organs, and neurons, and gravity, and forces, and wind and rain, and the earth and and the planets and moons and solar systems and galaxies and the universe. His wisdom and brilliance is unthinkable. From nothing He created the inexplicable complex universe we live in. He says come to me if you want wisdom and I will give it. Why in the heck would be be drawn anywhere else. Let's go to the Creator today to receive His wisdom for life. Wanna be a little more in awe of God's bigness today check this out.

God honors our smallest efforts

Unfortuanately I'm not known as the most disciplined person on the planet and I long to continue to grow more in that area. One thing that for the last year or so that Whitney and I have been pretty committed to is the bed time ritual with our kids. They grab their 2-3 books, usually Dr Suess, and they both hop up in Emily's bed. Mommy reads the books to them. Then Daddy, who very often nearly falls asleep on Emily's floor using her pink cushy chair as a pillow, pops up for "Bible book time". So I read a little children's Bible to them, usually only a couple or so pages long. Now I have to admit most of the time they are completely A.D.D. Josh is being goofy and making some weird noise or annoyingly violating Emily's personal space and my words seem to be just randomly floating in the air. But then there are nights like last night. We're reading about John the Baptist and Jesus and when they were 30 they left their jobs and started the ministry and work that God sent them to do. They were intrigued with the whole baptism part with John (and of course had fun with the fact John wore camel hair and ate grasshoppers which when I asked Josh if he would eat a grasshopper he of course said 'nyeth' (yes)) Then we got to talk about how Daddy does baptisms and Josh started saying, "Daddy Baptize!" Then Emily just starts asking questions about Baptism and we explain that when you choose to follow Jesus and ask Him into your heart then you are forgiven and have eternal life with Him. She tells us that she did ask Jesus into her heart 'last day' which translates 'the other day'. She talked about heaven and it was powerful to just hear her tender heart for Jesus as an almost 4 year old and see her childlike faith and trust in Jesus. So, just remember that our God is the God who took the little boys brown bag lunch of fish and bread and fed 5000. He can take our most pitiful and little daily efforts and do the miraculous with them!

My mom and the Flash, bonded forever

So this weekend we were in Wimberley, TX visiting my parents. My dad, brother and I head out the door to go watch Iron Man at the Corral, an outdoor movie theatre right down the road. Little did we know an unbelievable drama was about to unfold behind us. So my brother, Brad, has a dog named Mable who we've nicknamed 'the Flash' because of her other wordly speed. So the normal drill is whenever anybody is driving off the property someone restrains Mable until the car is at the gate to ensure that she doesn't make a bolt for freedom. Well anyway my Mom did her restraining duty and released Mable when it seemed safe. Well, the Flash, made the jump to light speed and somehow managed to squeeze past the gate right before it closed. My mom races down the driveway after her and reaches the closed gate. She hollers for Mable and Mable comes close enough to the gate for my mom to snatch her leg. "Yes!" my Mom thinks. But this celebration only lasts a moment as she realizes that she is stuck in a really weird dilemna. If she lets go of Mable's leg, the Flash is sure to collide with an oncoming vehicle. My mom in her panic ran off with no cell phone and no way of opening the gate. At this point its about 8:30 PM and quickly daylight is fading. Meanwhile my wife Whitney and sister-in-law Katrina are enjoying a wonderful time of fellowship and conversation inside the house and watching our kids. Every once in a while they'll have a fleeting thought like "huh, I wonder where Sandy is?" and then they rationalize different activities that she probably was doing. Anyway, my mom continues to endure her love-lock with the flash. She, in vain, attempts to scream out in the night for help but to no avail. The minutes slowly pass by. Finally, after a full hour elapses, now 9:30 and pitch black out there, Katrina finally decides that maybe she ought to walk outside and check for Sandy. She starts heading for the driveway and out of the blackness of the night hears Sandy screaming. She panics and grabs Whitney. Whitney panics and puts Emily (our 3 almost 4 year old) in charge of Josh our 2 year old and they race out into the night to locate my mom. They're thinking "she's overturned the golf cart", "she's been bitten by a poisonous snake". Finally they find her. Katrina grabs the flash and my mom works her away to the other side of the gate and the Flash and my mom are freed from their prison sentence. Anyway, it was such a noteworthy act of bravery and sacrifice I just felt it necessary to write it down.