With work super busy this week and my lazy self taking it easy in the evenings, you have been dealt the shaft. I am truly sorry. It pains me to neglect including you in all the cool things I get to be a part of. Lets run down the stuff I have pictures of, and then perhaps one day I will get to all the rants stored up in my head.

Saturday morning, my awesome roomie made biscuits and gravy for the worship team who will be blessing us with their leadership this weekend at a singles retreat.


Saturday night, Nancy (right) wanted to see the old and new "extended" fam together while Kristi's man (couple on left) was in town. I liked Clay better when he wasn't so confident around Kristi's Illinois fam, cuz now I can't tease him nearly enough :-) Glad to spend some time with him again.

EE started up again. Yes, I got sucked into it again for a short time. The three stooges signed up this semester as well.

Here's my team of brave evangelists. Mike (left) and Matthew (right). Mike used to be on my usher team, and Matt is a long time honorary Career Impacter. I missed the spiked hair and gray sweater memo last week.

Why do kids always give me the "we don't believe a word of it" look? I'm being serious!! The Huerta cuties, yuckin' it up as usual.


Might go silent on you this weekend with the singles retreat. Hope not.

Cuteness!!

I totally need to find a puppy and feed it cereal. Honestly, does it get much cuter than this?

http://jenniferandjimmy.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-friends.html

I'm sorry I missed the bronchitis scare until now Jennifer! Promise to invite myself over for dinner before the end of winter!

Welcome To The Randomness

Time to catch up because I have lots to say about today, and it can't be said until last week is finished!

So, you're gonna think that this blog is goin' down the tubes because of the low quality pictures to go along with the stuff I get to do. But hear me out, I've got great excuses.
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Thursday - back to Bible study. We are continuing with our study of I Corinthians with John and Sarah. Sarah was sportin' the sweeto slippers of which I got a terrible picture. After taking pictures of everything for blogging for almost a year, you (or maybe it's just me) start to get worried that people are tired of being in my pictures all the time. So unless something unique happens, I'm not going to take pictures of the same people every time I see them, with the exception of Josh, SarahKz, and a few others apparently.

Take Friday for instance. I wanted to get our care group together from Sunday School and Pete was already wanting to host another movie night at his place. Well honestly, how many times can you see Pete's living room on the blog before it gets old? Pete's bathroom however...THAT'S new and exciting. What you see here is Peter being fully prepared for my visit by hiding his toothbrushes out of site and away from my obnoxious pranks. Good thinking dude. Yes, I said toothbrushes, plural. I don't know either.

More Week, More Kids

Uno mas post for the work week. Joel allowed me to one-up Kendra for the week in blogging. Honestly, you couldn't post a picture about the finger fam? :-) Love ya Shows!

When the time is open, I try to eat lunch with the 4th graders at school, specifically, Caleb's table. The teachers must hate me because it makes things a little rowdy at times. I'm on a temporary sub-committee with Caleb's Dad at church. The other day, he wore this awesome pink t-shirt.

I have no idea what that sign is for. I asked him to do something macho. Is there hidden meaning there that I'm not hip to?

More On The Week

School continues to be an exciting place. I love having a job where every day is different, except my one hour workout hauling trash bags and tearing down the lunch room.

Finally caught that pesky squirrel off-guard. Bring it ya fur ball!

Thursday was a mess of jobs. Every five minutes was either someone calling about an IT problem, or my boss calling about a maintenance job. I like getting to prioritize and run to the next job, as long as the day ends at a decent time. My maintenance boss likes to talk on the phone alot, even when we're just at opposite ends of the school, and it's a blessing to continue to grow closer in friendship and professional trust. I'm always learning.

Again - there's always food at school, but Thursday, the school could have fed all the starving children in Uganda. The Mother's fellowship group at school, who's goal is to make mother's feel welcomed and encouraged by reaching out of their comfort zone (brilliant) also reached out to the faculty by making six crock pots of soups and stews. I tried. I tried SO hard, but I just couldn't try them all. Please forgive me.

The whole week was actually pretty crazy, mainly because of the 4th grade patriotic program Thursday. I didn't see the whole thing, but for the most part, each kid is given a character from US history about which to give a four or five sentence speech during the program.

Caleb's teacher had to act quickly to prevent a sure wardrobe malfunction in the making.

Show time! I see two kids here who go to my church. That's the other fun thing. I'm still finding more and more kids who's family I already know. Just found three more today!

Josh was JFK. His dad, my boss, was hoping to bring in a BB gun during the program in order to reenact the assassination. Too soon?

Caleb was Teddy Roosevelt. Josh, are you picking your nose???

Piece Of Junk!

Quick breeze through Sunday. Checked out the little Pakistani/Indian place on Knoxville for lunch. Great place, little spicy.


My buddy Jeremy found out that I was making a run to the junk yard this week and offered up a rusty old water heater to add to the pile. Stopping by to pick it up Monday night I thought his wife, Erica, asked "do you want to sit down for dinner?" I said "no thanks, I'm good". Turns out what she said was "sit down, we have dinner for you" and I was escorted to my seat. Not only does Erica feed you well, but she'll have a halfway decent idea and girl picked for a future triple date on the spot. Thank you Erica! A better planner/encourager I've yet to find.
Several weeks ago, I got a healthy kick in the jaw when I saw the squalor a guy I know was living in. He saves everything and collects anything he can find that he might be able to use later to make money. His rental unit would take a month to organize and clean even working most of the day on it. No joke. So when I got home, I promised to rid the house of all the junk I'm holding on to. There's actually alot, and it started with the big stuff - scrap metal.

Jonny loaned out the Heavy Half and contributed some of his own junk to the cause. The major players here are two water heaters and a bath tub. Several years ago, my parents took a water heater to Behr Scrap yards in Peoria and got somewhere between $50-$70 for it I think (kinda guessing). Today's rate is now $70 per ton. This load weighed 540lbs. and brought in a whopping $18. The scrap yard is like a huge man playground though. Definitely can't wait to go back (forgot to take my old garage door opener...sweet!!).



You enter though the front gate, stopping to weigh in your vehicle (full). Then they send you through the maze of sorted scrap piles stretching over a several square mile property. At the end of the maze, you'll find an unsorted dumping ground where you then get to finally answer that burning question...how far can you throw a water heater?




This was supposed to be prep for taking care of the school's oldest boiler which was replaced last week. My boss had no desire to take it apart (that changed today) so he said if I can scrap it, I can keep it. Well, we went at it today and found that it's a blast to dismantle, but even the huge tank sections separated weight between 200-300lbs, and neither of us is looking forward to loading even one of them into a truck. So we're looking into other options.

Forgot It Was Valentines Day

When 50% of the people you know try to remind the other 50% how single they are all the time, it's hard to believe you could miss this holiday. But, with the expectation of a full day doing the same kind of stuff I would normally do, I pretty much forgot it was valentines day from Saturday until today, when I gave my boss a really hard time about it.

Stuart Scott, who had just gotten done speaking at over a dozen session over the week in Lafayette, conducted a short marriage seminar at church Saturday morning. During the seminar, the predictable help was needed for childcare. I still get called for those, go figure. I was with the two year olds, which included having a great time with Tyler. Near the end, however, I got selfish and broke Treyven out of his pen and let him roam our room. After getting bullied a little bit, Trey finally showed me that he can do something other than smile. So sad, but this seasoned Trey fan knows exactly what to do. Trey can't not turn a frown upside down for a photo shoot.


Next, the hospitality of Brooke (right). Our Thursday night Bible study group was invited to her place for a small get together.


We had food (of course). Thank you Joanne for saving me from myself!


Euchre (of course)


Fuzzy Scrabble (of course). Valiant effort Kels.


Settlers (of course)



Joanne distracted (of course)


Aaaaaaand Sarah causing trouble (of course!)

NOAH!!!

SAD

Had almost a trifecta of hang-outs this weekend. That's where you hang out with most of the same people three days in a row. It's tough to do, but some see it as a worthy sport. I'm starting to feel like this blog makes me look like a shallow college frat dude (without the booze) since I just post about hanging out all the time.

Friday was SAD night - Single Awareness Day (at night...) I've thought of at least three really entertaining alternate acronym definitions for SAD, but I don't want to be in deep trouble with the ladies for another year.

Alyssa invited the entire Sunday school class over for dinner, a movie and tons of ice cream. Movie choice almost became hotly debated, but after tossing out "Pink Panther" (at which I was sad) We ended up watching "The Incredibles", which made me feel better. The room was completely dark at this point. Made alot of friends with my camera's flash.
After Ice cream, guess what we did. Ya, you can't leave Alyssa's without playing some guitar hero or rock band.



Josh was on cowbell. Josh thought I didn't get a good picture. Josh was wrong.
MORE COWBELL!!!

Miss Me?

Guess it's time to rap up the conference week posts. That's more than I did for the New York trip (ummmmm sorry about that).

On Thursday, I started hearing rumors that a dude from Peoria popped up working in the church book store. We checked it out and shore 'nuf, Caleb had run oft to Purdue and I never even knew it. He used to spend alot of time with hoodies like Albertson down the street, and has now found a home base at Faith while attending school. Great to catch up with him and put him to use finding a book.
The chairman of the NANC board, Randy Patton, has a case study video shown in track one where he demonstrates a couple of counseling sessions with a couple having trouble with their marriage. The key points to take away from track one weren't so much formal steps to take you closer to being a counselor, but an understanding of the goals and driving factors in Biblical counseling, being, among other things, giving counselees hope through God's word and a heart transformed. This came through clearly in Randy's session with the troubled couple. I came into the session late and didn't hear the clip get setup, so I thought it was a real counseling session where the (now happy) couple had given permission for it to be used. I found later that the husband and wife pair were actually on staff with the church, and were simply portraying a couple who really had been in for counseling. I still laughed at the embarrassing or awkward moments before knowing it was fake.
As you saw from the previous post, the group from Bethany (BBC and BCC) went out to dinner together at a Chinese buffet. This was Austin's idea of a well rounded meal. Pudding, a pastry and one piece of asparagus. Daddy went back with the healthy child later for a redo.

We've got pictures of everyone in the previous post, but I noticed at the time that Kent was cut off on the right side. This aughta make up for it. I don't get to talk to Kent much, and have never really talked to Janell, his wife. The trip was a bit of an opportunity to catch up and be reminded why Kent is on staff (he's really cool, that's why).

Thursday evening rap up session was given by Paul Trip, a well known speaker and brother to the dude who runs the "Shepherding a Child's Heart" conferences, Tedd Tripp.

Mike got me all excited about dashing to the front of the auditorium Friday after Pastor Viars last session so that we could each get a picture with the man. Poor guy thought we were going to pummel him with questions. Well, what Mike really wanted was a pic for me for the blog. Thanks man!

Steve and Carol are a couple new to me who attend our sister church in Washington. It was awesome getting to know them, and posting the picture they asked me to take of them :-). One of these days I'll get around to emailing it to them.

Took forever to get that picture of the Faith sign on the previous post. Everyone (except us) was getting a group picture before heading off.

We owe alot of thanks to Joey for being our dedicated bus driver the entire week as the only guy with a license appropriate for the vehicle. It also made going out to dinner pretty fun with only four people touring the town in a 26 passenger bus.

Roxanne wanted to be sure about Josh so she EEed him on the way home.