This and Dat

It's been over a week since my last post. Time flies, responsability reigns, and blogging become the lesser of the things to do. In the spirit of a day off blog I'll throw out the higlights of whats been keeping me away from the blogosphere. As an aside; when you go several days you feed reader can become overwhelming. This calls for an even higher lever of skimming and culling to get at whats important.

• Two and a half days of hunting = BUPKIS! Saw very few deer and got no shots at anything bigger that a medium sized puppy. Still lots of days between shotgun, muzzle loader, and bonus shotgun. Just have to find the time to get out there.
• my laptop took a dump -- thus way less access to write and read blogs, grrrrr technology
• There are pros and cons to being the hosts on Thanksgiving. The biggest pros are that you don;t have to go anywhere and you can be relaxed. The con is that you need the relaxation after getting everything ready for guests to your wife's satisfaction!
• read a good book on small groups -- post coming soon
• looking forward to a great day with family.
• going to to be a little tough as it will be the first family get together since my dad passed away -- the dog will miss all the handouts I know!!

Here's hoping that you and yours have a great Thanksgiving!!!

Day Off Blog

Trying to keep my disciplines up has been rough the past month or so. I am determined to do so as much possible. My day off/ sabbath/ what ever you might want to call it is one of those things.
With my schedule, Sunday is not the best of days to have "off" usually. Due to some illness at work it has been what works out for the past couple of weeks. Yesterday was my day off (actually going through until 11 tonight). Here's how I spent it:

• SS/ Worship
• lunch with my family at Cici's. A family from church was there as well and joined us.
• watched parts of the Colts game, the NASCAR race, and other football between snoozes of a nap.
• read for a while
• watched the Bears game -- I fell asleep in the 3rd quarter(I didn't miss much)
• working at the church
• this afternoon I will be seeing what I need to do to get the basketball pole in our driveway functional. Whoever put it in has the pole set where the rim will actually be at 11 feet.
• I'll also try and knock out some more reading this evening as well.

Nothing fancy; just trying to keep myself on a routine of down time (at least somewhat)

What to do with noisy neighbors

How do you handle noisy neighbors? When I left for work last night the houses on both sides of our were having outside parties. Not a big deal. At 11:30 my wife calls and says they're still going strong and she can;t go to bed. I tell her to give it until midnight and then call me back. At 1:30 she calls and says the one house has taken it inside but the other now has a huge bonfire and people screaming and yelling in addition to the music. I'm at work and can't go talk to them so I tell my wife to go ahead (it's now 1:50) and call the police.
They arrive and proceed to go the door of the house that went inside (they weren't the problem). Then they left. My wife has to call back to ask them to return to the noisy house. They do but when she calls me back she says they're still pretty loud. I didn't hear any more but when I pull in the driveway in the morning I discover that my mailbox has been smashed, presumably in retailiation. So part of me wants to go over and wake them up and read them the riot act, but I realize that won't solve anything. I decided to wait until the afternoon when I have gotten some sleep. As I prepared to go over I got the overwhelming sense that I should wait until later on. What? Why?
My problem is with just how big of a deal to make it. It has not been a regular thing but at the same time my wife and kids have a right to feel safe in their home and get some sleep. Praying for wisdom...

Anniversaries, Fairs, dogs, fires, camps and the like

Its been a few days since my last post; time flies while life keeps chugging along. Here are a few things that have been going on and some random thoughts that surround them.

• Friday was our anniversary. 16 years ago Micki and I said "I do". I can remember the time that I thought that that was an eternity. I can't honestly think that it has been that long. Time sure moves. It has been great and I can't wait to celebrate the next 16. Next time I hope the steak dinner I buy her isn't at the 4H fair though :)
• Speaking of the fair; Friday and Saturday were the agility and obedience judgings for Caleb and Chili. The dog had been doing quite well in practices leading up the fair. This is the first year of "off leash" portions of judging. In both competitions it started well and came to a crashing halt about halfway through when Chili decided that he was done and wouldn't listen. Disappointing for sure. Thankfully Caleb still has showmanship. I think that he can do quite well on that one!
• We got to walk around a bit Saturday at the fair. We took in a few of the harness races, saw the Star Family Circus (pretty good show), and saw an acapella group called Tonic Solfa. They were good and did an interesting rendition of "The Lion Sleeps" using the voices of The Muppets. Micki and Bethany took in a clogging show and we ate (I'll be adding a post about fair food soon)and checked out the commercial exhibits before calling it a day.
• The church across the street from ours burned down Friday night. It is sad for a couple of reasons. It is always tough to see a congregation of believers struggle through this type of loss. It is also the building that our church met in before moving across the street. 130 years of history gone in a couple of hours. Thankfully the CHURCH is not a building but the people.
• As we race on through this week we have a "camp" theme. With fair activities tied around them we have a cheer camp, a picnic at a camp ground, and the beginning of Family Camp. Looking forward to being with people at all of these events.
• Looking forward to the Tractor Pulls on Thursday (time to be a little redneck!)
• Only 5 weeks until the first ND game.
• If you are a CRMCer, make sure you are checking in at CRMC Campfire
• Hope you have a great day/ week

Random...

• I am excited to continue our SS series on Haggai. so much for us to learn in two chapters.
• the baseball portion of my little league coaching season is officially over. some things were good as always; in some ways it was a rough season. On the upside my daughter is an all star in softball and has a couple more weeks and I get to help coach.
• Amazing that the Cubs have won 7 in a row. Could there still be playoff baseball in Chicago this year? Is the streak and the Barrett trade's timing just a coincidence?
• Almost time to start getting excited about the upcoming ND football season. 2 months until the first kickoff
• new dads like Perry Noble do a great job of reminding me about how the father/ child relationship is a great model of God/ us.
• there are SO MANY things that I want/ need to get done in the next month and a half that I feel like I don't even know where to begin -- need to remember the illustration about how to eat an elephant!
• our church softball team still has a perfect record... you guess which way
• excited about the upcoming General Conference in Portland, OR. never been anywhere near that far west before.
• recently found this list of discipleship quotes that will be a great resource for a long time to come.
• spent the day fishing with a friend on Wednesday; need to make more time for that!
• July will fly by: General Conference, 4H Fair, our 16th anniversary, Camp
• i need to update my reading list on the sidebar
• need to make time this week to set off some fireworks
• thankful for a great wife, kids, family, church family

Is it really Sunday already?

Man the week can get away from you in a hurry. I just looked and couldn;t believe it had been that long since I had last posted. It's not like I've been sleeping the time away, that's for sure. Here are the highlights (that's probably too big a term) from my last several days:

• Taxes: I finished our state taxes . Never waited this long before, never again. Also got my parents' done for them on Thursday. Scratch one off the to do list...
• After a vacation week working 6 days at my "real job" seems to be taking it's toll
• Home repair: I am no good at drywall stuff and my patch projects are not coming along as well as I had hoped
• A promised 30-45 minute meeting at the Little League on Thursday evening turned into almost 2 hours... promises, promises.
• I got to eat dinner with my wife and two of our kids here Friday evening. This does not happen enough. And I get the awful feeling that it is only going to become more rare. I already ranted this week about my boys growing up too fast.
• Can I just say Walmart is carzy busy on a Friday evening.
• We got to practice as a baseball team for the first time in two weeks. Looks like almost alle the other teams called off because it was barely 40 degrees. I'm glad we did it. Small progress was made. 11 of 12 kids showed up. I don;t know yet how many games we will win this year but at least my guys seem to love the game.
• We had a funeral/ memorial service for my uncle Saturday afternoon. (more on this in a later post) Good to see family.
• Perry Noble made 2 killer posts this week. Read them here and here
• I am excited about where we are going at CRMC in the area of dicipleship; plenty more to come on this in coming days/ weeks
• A friend has just recently started blogging. You should check it out.
• I am excited about church in the morning. I hope we are ready to listen to what God is trying to tell us right now.
• Nascar is at Texas this week. Three words: GO JIMMIE GO
• my fantasy baseball team is finally starting to hit the ball. Hope I'm not too far behind already.

Now back to your regular programming...

In the news...

I found both of these artices thanks to the great blog work done over at Bag of Nothing . The first one deals with the last WWI combat vet passing away. It is the passing of another era in history. I can vaguely remember when I was younger hearing about the passing of the last of those who had been involved in the Civil War. It makes you wonder/ hope that someone took the time to listen to their stories so that they can be passed along for others to learn from.

The second article is about the completion of Tolkien's last book by his son. From the article it would seem that at least some think the main motivation was movie right and more money. I sure hope not. I am excited to see what comes of it.