Happy Thanksgiving

Well it's been a full visit out here in Georgia. One of the greatest things that Emily and Josh discovered yesterday were these things called leaves and lots of them. Grammy and Poppaw have a massive lot with lots and lots of trees thus lots and lots of leaves. Aunt Amanda paved a roadway system with a rake all through the back yard so they had a blast running around the track over and over. My brother-in-law John brought over his camper and set up a little campground right off the driveway. We have had a little campfire the last couple of nights and made some smores. Emily is now an RVer as she pottied and slept in a camper yesterday with her cousin Allison. We have also set up a disc golf course here on the property we have named 'Twin Creeks" that we are anxious to go try out later today. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and may God richly bless you today!

A Step Towards Manhood

Well, it finally happened. Joshua actually received a legitimate haircut. He has had two 'hair cuts' that were feeble attempts to tame the wild toe-headed mane resting upon his melon. But yesterday Whitney caught her breath and with fear and trepidation entered into Cartoon Cuts and took the plunge. He is not only looking a little more manly but he is also about 7 pounds lighter.

Exhibit number 2 above is a wonderful brainchild from my wonderfully creative wife that I have called the 'whine list'. As you can see each child has their own chart which is prominently displayed on our refrigerator. As you can probably imagine an exhorbitant amount of whining has prompted this extreme measure to ward off this painfully annoying behavior from our children. The top half of the chart is where a 'whine' is recorded with a vertical line. A whine is considered a whine if it is a resistant remark to a parental request with that wonderfully twangy tone of voice that just drives you mad. If they make it through the day with less than 5 whines than they receive 2 stars and if they make it through the day with less than 10 whines they receive 1 star. 5 stars equals a goody. You can earn extra credit stars if you display a noteworthy moment of good manners like a non-induced 'thank you' or 'please', etc. This picture was recorded with a dead-even match with Emily and 4 whines and Josh at 4 whines.

Some Things I'm Thinking about lately

I thought I would take a moment to unpack a few things that have been on my mind lately. One thing is just the power of art and music. In the last few weeks I've just been particularly thankful for artists and musicians who write and produce songs that impact me and help me see truth and experience God in new ways. Here's a few songs that have stood out to me lately: The Motions by Matthew West, By Your Side by Tenth Avenue North, and What do I know of holy by Addison Road. God just does something with truth in melody that goes beyond just reading some lyrics.

I've also been thinking alot lately about the two dimensions to our worship. On the one hand we worship a God who says, 'Come to me'...a God who is close to the broken hearted and dwells the with the lowly....a God who tells us to call Him Abba or 'Daddy'....and then on the other hand we worship a God who is awesome and terrible and fearful and majestic and His wisdom is indescribable as Creator and Envisioner of all we see...He is holy and dwells in unapproachable light....He is the God that even his messenger angels would cause humans to fall down in complete fear...The God who made Isaiah, a pretty righteous guy, say that he was 'undone' and 'ruined' in His presence....so I am striving to approach God for all that He is....the approachable God and the awesome and mighty God.

I still think about the poor alot and the needy. I mean when you strive to read through the Bible...let's face it...it's just everywhere you look. I've been researching more some of the issues like social justice and even how our consumer dollars might just be supporting child slavery in some country halfway around the world. So I'm to the point where I want to start putting into practice what God is screaming to us. Like simple things like striving to buy fair trade products like coffee. Like reading more about these issues. I just bought a book by Wes Stafford, the founder of Compassion International, called 'Too Small To Ignore' which really takes a look at the global crisis that is facing young children (orphaned, stricken with Aids, unclean water, etc). If you haven't adopted a Compassion child then you should. Go to their webpage and make it happen. Whitney and I have had two compassion children and I am a firm believer in this ministry and long-term impact it can have.

Lastly, as we get close to 'Black Friday' and 'Cyber Monday' I have to give my two cents worth about Christmas. I can no longer ignore my heart when it comes to this consumer crazy holiday. Americans spend 450 Billion dollars on Christmas presents every year. The fact is for about 10 billion dollars we could solve the world's unclean water problem...hmmm...so we are doing some things different this year. We are going to spend less money on presents (do some creative homemade stuff) and then take the money we wouldn't spent and give it to people so that this Christmas a little kid living in poverty and despair may be surprised by grace this year and forever changed by the presence of Christ. There's a great web page called Advent Conspiracy which advocates looking at Christmas a little different. I would encourage you to check it out.

Words from the Crip

Well it all began last Monday night as I headed out for the usual late night church softball experience. I left my poor wife who wasn't feeling well at home with the kids (yeah probably should've stayed home). So the first game went good. Had our hour break in between. Come the second game we were playing the other StoneBridge team so it's always a little competetive. Last inning and we're making a 2 out rally comeback. I get a base hit and then the batter behind me hits the ball and I'm running for second and I realize 'oh no it's going to be close.' In that moment I experience two conflicting voices in my head. The first voice is the voice of competition that appears in any person's head in the thick of the battle 'go for it...slide!' and then the second voice is the voice that many of us married men hear and it was saying 'remember don't slide tonight and don't hurt yourself'. So as these two voices had a head on collission within the inner recesses of my brain I do the worst thing possible. I decide to 'half-slide' into second base. So in half-sliding I manage to land on my ankel really funky and then I hear the dreaded 'pop' noise and realize that that wasn't a good thing. So yeah I messed up my ankle pretty good. So for the last week I've been hobbling along on crutches and icing it and learning how to wrap a splint like a champ. So it's been a long week adjusting to my new handicapped way of life. Another fun thing to add to the week happened on Friday night. I was helping to cook some sweet potatoes and they had been boiling and it was time to drain all the boiling water off. So instead of getting a collander and pouring all the potatoes into the collander I thought 'eh, I'll just save the collander and drain the water by tipping over the pot in the sink. So I start tipping the pot over the sink and naturally the potatoes start trying to jump out to. I react by jerking the pot back up to salvage these precious yams and the pot slips out of my hand and falls into the sink and out splashes boiling hot water that lands on my neck and chest and so I yell out a blood curling scream which completely freaks my poor wife out. So I've been rubbing aloe on myself for the last few days too. So with that said here's a few things I've learned:

1. If I ever meet a poor soul who is on crutches or obviously injured themselves I will determine to not ask them what happened.
2. I have an amazing wife....who has risen to the occassion and served me and helped me and shown unbelievable grace to me when I absolutely didn't deserve it.
3. Sometimes it's good to slow down a little bit. This injury has humbled me and put me in a better position to hear from God. I have had to sit more than normal and be still. Today I have really heard Him speaking to me. I am reminded that He is better than life. He is sweeter than the best food on earth. He is more fulfilling than anything this world has to offer. He is the one who holds eternal life in His hand. He is the One who is worth following and leaving our earthly pursuits behind.

Future Entrepreneurs?

So recently I moved offices and my new office was formerly the counseling room at the church. One of the little treasures that my children discovered was some left over toys in there from the 'play therapy' that our counseling ministry used. In their little creative minds they envisioned from this heap of toys and buckets a perfect opportunity and market for starting their own store based right out of Daddy's office. So basically they come in and take all the buckets out and then set them on the floor and divide all the toys out evenly among the buckets to showcase their merchandise. They then switch off being vender and customer. They accept two forms of payment: 'pretend money' or a 'check card'. If you pay with the check card they will swipe it and you will have to sign the receipt and give it back to them. The great thing about their store is that whether you use 'pretend money' or a 'check card' the money appears to be inexhaustible in their economic system. This video shows you a typical business transaction where Emily is the vender and Josh is the customer. As you'll see Josh adds a little excitement about halfway through the transaction.

A Full Halloween Experience

Well the halloween experience was pretty full. It really began on Thursday at Emily's preschool as Mother Goose came and visited all the kids. Emily got to test drive her Cinderella costume as all the kids dressed up and got to be a part of a parade through the halls. Even Joshua got to hang out at Preschool for a while which he thought was pretty cool. He was completely mesmorized with Mother Goose or 'Mother Ghose' as he pronounced it. That night we dressed the kids up in their Cinderella and Tigger costume and went and visited Debby and Terry Shields and Debby and Joe Ferringo (some friends of ours). I did have the thought that there was probably a car or two that drove by us thinking that we were out of touch with reality as we were with our kids trick or treating on October 30, oh well. Halloween arrived and the triad (our cord of three strands in our neighborhood, the Dunns, Huckabys and Barretts) decided we would host our own Halloween carnival from 5:30-7:00 that night. So we had like 50 something goody bags, bean bag toss, baby pools with fishing games, ping pong games, bowling, pin the tail on the pumpkin, wheel barrow 'chariot' rides, Whitney baked 53 large pumpkin cookies, I grilled hot dogs, we made Kool-Aid and lemonade, etc. I mean we went all out....we went crazy. So around 5:30 rolls around and we're all standing out there and no one is showing up. Well the thought did enter my mind earlier that MAYBE we should have actually advertised this neighborhood carnival. In our minds it started at 5:30 but we really didn't tell other people that besides a couple of phone calls. But we had fun even if it wasn't massively successful. We did have probably 150-200 trick or treaters come by our houses. A few people did eat some hotdogs. They scarfed down all the cookies, all the goody bags and all the candy. They definitely were loving the Kool-Aid (which miraculously never ran out). So over all it was still fun. Emily did two rounds of walking around the neighborhood. Round 1 was with Mommy and Shelly and Kyra and Lisa and her daughters next door. Joshua, aka 'Tigger' (he made it very clear everytime we referred to him as Joshua that he was not Joshua that he was 'Tigger') started off on the Round 1 walk but shortly into it indicated that he was getting a little tired (yes even Tiggers get tired). So Whitney began holding him and naturally he started getting a little heavy so then Lisa started holding him and quickly little Tigger was lights out. Tigger then was retired to his make-shift bed, aka "a plastic red wagon with a blanket in it" out in our driveway for the rest of the night. He fell asleep about 7:30 or so and yes remained asleep all night. Emily went on a Round 2 walk with Daddy, Mr Ted and Kyra, Lisa and her daughters and her darn Cinderella slippers kept slipping off. I was beginning to wonder if she really was the 'real' cinderella or not. But when we were walking in the dark the little light up feature helped light our way down the street. So it was quite an exhausting day but definitely a halloween to remember.