Past Weekend

This past week has been a whirl wind...let me share with you our family schedule:
Friday, usually my day off but I have worked the last 5 in a row. This Friday I had a wedding rehearsal to lead. One of my former teens, turned former youth sponsor, and our pastors daughter was getting married. I really love the stuff leading up to a wedding, but I must admit I get a little nervous doing the wedding. SO finished up the wedding rehearsal and went out to Pastor Steve's for the rehearsal dinner/cookout. That was a fun night...busy, but fun.

I wake up on Saturday after sleeping in a little and jumped on the mower. Here is your last weeks mowing report: mowed the entire yard. I had skipped some in the back because of the wetness on the back 40. Got that done and did a little cleaning/rearranging in the garage in order to get the Buick out in order to get the porch swing out which I find that we are not putting up this year. Went in, got cleaned up and ready for the wedding. What a great thing it is to be asked to be involved in a wedding. To me it's a big honor. Suzie was beautiful...Josh very handsome and what a great couple they are. Finished the wedding, yes I did cry a little and got made fun of afterwards. Just to let you know, it's a big deal to marry off one of your teen girls. Special. Anyway finished the wedding and on to the reception at IWU. One little story...Suzie was tossing her bouquet and it landed in one of the IWU banquet room lights...very funny. I had a friend toss a dirty diaper into one of those lights before but that's a different story. He got in trouble for it, Suzie didn't.

So Saturday comes to an end and here comes Sunday...I have a Sunday School class to lead then I preach at the morning service. That goes ok and right after that off to the church picnic. We had our picnic this year down at a local park. It was well attended and many church folks came and hung out.

Monday...went shopping for garden stuff. Guess what...all the garden stores were closed. I knew they would be but we ended up at Lowes and Walmart for our veggies. Those are in the ground and we are now waiting for produce. Jaye and I took the kids to see Indiana Jones that afternoon and had to sit in the second row. Not the best seats in the house but we did enjoy the movie. It was a little of a let down, but worth going to see.

Tuesday back to work....Wednesday getting ready for youth group. Anna is out of school for the summer today. The big kids finish up tomorrow. YEA! This year went by much like the weekend. Here and gone. I'm looking forward to the summer with the kiddos.
There ya go, you are up to speed on the Hollands.

Mowing Buddies

I believe we have missed several mowing reports! Luckily it's just the reports that are missing...our yard is still being mowed!! Brian is usually able to mow the front without Joseph on his lap. But that's as long as Joseph can hold out...for the back they are always mowing together.

The Mowing Buddies

Anna's Bedroom Make-Over

When Anna left for school her room looked like this...

When she came home she was surprised with a new look to her bedroom...

The Pop Star Makeover!

We had painted her room (couldn't really keep that a secret from her). What she didn't know was that we had been working on all the "details" for weeks. We added all the accessories while she was at school...curtains, new bedding, pillows, wall decorations, disco ball and even a bean bag!

It was fun to see the look of surprise on her face!! She is very proud of her new room and
it's STILL CLEAN!!

A long time ago my son was really into Pokemon. One of the guys from Pokemon was named Brock. I think he looks likes David Archuleta. What do you think?

Frequency @ IWU

This past week I spent Thursday/Friday and part of Saturday at IWU attending a youth pastor conference called Frequency. I went with very little expectations. I had talked my good friend Jon Crandall into going with me. I was looking forward to hanging out with him all weekend. However, once the conference started I was really IMPRESSED. It was amazing. I can see myself going back every year. The two main speakers were Darren Whitehead from Willow Creek, IL and Shaun Blakeney from Palm Beach, FL formally from Saddle Back. I really thought these guys would be totally different than they were. Both were down to earth, humble and really gave the impression they cared about us "little" guys with "little" youth ministries. They spoke from the heart, were very intelligent and seemed wise. Each night I drove home with tons of ideas and was just so excited to get back the next day. There is an image that many have about some of those in leadership in IWU's youth department. That for me really started to change after this conference. I saw a different side of people that I didn't know was there. It was good. The worship band "Paradigm" was really good. The speakers were great and the entire event was amazing. I am going to work on getting my other youth pastor buddies to go next year. Well worth the time. I'll be there next year, no question!

Mother's Day '08

Sorry for the lack of posting on the "female" side of the Holland House! I have been crazy busy and really haven't made the time to do this...but I'm back.

Mother's Day was a great day for me. It actually was a whole weekend of activities. I woke up early Saturday to head South with my brother, Jim, and sis-n-law, Tammy. We were actually heading to a small town in southern Indiana called Deputy. We did have a few stops along the way to watch a nephew play ball and to check out another nephews Symphony in Color picture hanging at the Indiana Museum of Art.

Way to go, Heisman!

Around 4 pm we arrived in Charlestown, Indiana. This is the where my G-pa and G-ma Armstrong lived and died. It holds a lot of fun memories for me. It was bittersweet to see the way things have changed. There are times I wish I could go back to the way it was then...but time marches on! Happy childhood memories are a wonderful thing! :)

Heading back north we finally arrived at our destination. We were celebrating my cousin, Christopher Armstrong graduating from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Along with the celebration it was great to see the Armstrong side of the family. We have to take advantage of the "happy" celebrations when we can for we all know the sad ones will come!

Sunday my celebrating weekend continued with Mothers Day!! It was a homemade Mothers Day for us as we are sticking with our "Financial Peace" practices! Wesley wrote me a lovely thank you note which of course made me cry. He would kill me if I shared it with you! Anna wrote me a poem and made me some cute "coffee filter" butterflies. Joseph along with some help from Jess made me a cute picture card. Jess burned me a couple cd's of my favorite songs!! The gifts were all thoughtful and came from the heart...that means the world to me!

Joseph's "card" to me

Too many people were "staring" at Joseph
while we were getting this picture taken.

Marriage and Youth Ministry Podcast

Check out this Pod Cast from Doug and Cindy Fields about Marriage and Youth Ministry. Good stuff.

Updates

Mowing Day #3

I learned yesterday that I can only get three mowing's on a tank of gas. I had skipped my mowing last week due to the Never Too Young Jr High event at IWU. I stayed up late, rushed home on Saturday and Wesley and I went out to do our other mowing jobs. Good news on that front we may have picked up a third house. So here's the commercial: if you are needing your yard mowed, flowers planted, flowerbed weeded and maintained, please call 3 Hollands Mowing and Landscape for a quote.
So my yard needed a trim. I knocked that out yesterday afternoon before class. It is as if I haven't mowed yet this year, so cool to see nature in action. I cut it down, God grows it up. It's a cool system.



Election Day
Jaye is working at the polls today. She had to wake up really early to be on the job by 5:00 am. Joseph must have sensed a disturbance in the force. Mom was not in bed sleeping so he needed to be awake today at 4:00 am too. So we were downstairs enjoying election day bright and early. As you can see the excitement wore off quickly and about 7:30 he went back to sleep, kinda. Tip for those of you on the run all the time, sleep with your feet on the floor and when you wake up you'll be ready to bolt at a moments notice.

Financial Peace University
We haven't reported our progress in learning financial peace since day one. Let's review, step one is to save up $1000 for an emergency fund. As far as it goes most of us in the class feel like that $1000 will be hard to come up with, thousand---million it all looks out of reach.
That's all we gave you in our first report so here is step two, prepare a budget on paper and spend every cent on that budget before you earn it. The lesson is to see where all your money goes. This is an on going step. We keep finding things we forgot to budget like, ah, Mothers Day is this month, kids lunches that kinda stuff. So we have had to bring the budget committee (Jaye and I) back together and rework the budget several times. Dave Ramsey said it will take 3-4 months to get good at this budget step. Step three start a debt snowball. The idea is to start paying off your bills starting with a bill attack, we need to attack the debt! So that means you all will be invited to a Holland yard sale in a week or two. It will be our "Get out of Debt Clearance Sale." EVERYTHING MUST GO! Including the two go-carts I bought last year, the mini bike I built in Jay County, my project Jeep CJ5 and most everything else. I like Dave's thoughts on this point, he said sell it all now to get out of debt. Once you are out of debt you can start investing, make tons of money and then buy new stuff. I'm ok with that.

That's it you are up to date. It is going to be a beautiful day today so tell your boss I said you should take the day off work to enjoy the sun.