Mini Update

Wow. We have been very blog neglectful. Sorry.
Here is a brief update.

• We are back from vacation. You'll get a full run down of that. We spent a week in Louisville, KY. Jessica and I went to Gurus, a church tech conference.
• We went to Eastview Wesleyan Church for our last vacation Sunday. It was great to see all our old church family.
  
• After finishing up vacation we jumped right into VBS. Jessica and Jaye are group leaders and I am leading the recreation portion of VBS. Wow, those kids are really wearing me down.
• Our friends the Quicks leave for Hong Kong tomorrow....It's going to be hard on the red head to see them go. Well, to be honest it's going to be hard on all of us. We've enjoyed having them stay in Granny's empty house for the last couple weeks. That's been an extra blessing for us! :)
  
• Family camp starts next week, should be a hoot. We are looking forward to that.
• Pastor Steve starts his sabbatical Aug 1st so I get to preach every Sunday and be the "real" pastor for a month.
• I was voted in this month as District Youth President. I'm very honored to have been elected. I'm excited to be working with some of the best youth pastors in the Wesleyan church.
• Jaye was voted on to the District Board of Administration. She's excited and a little nervous about that!
  

That's the run down....We'll try to get back into the swing after we rest up from VBS. That might take a month...lot's of little kids.

Vacation 09-Day 3 & 4

Well yesterday wasn't as exciting as most would like to see on a vacation day....but I did get to do some things that I don't often get to do. I started with one of my favorite things to do, I mowed. The yard is pretty dry and we could use some rain. After getting the yard mowed I started to clean up the yard. We had a spot behind the garage that has been looking pretty "hillbilly" for a long time. Weeds had grown up and I had a big stack of old lumber from when we started on Granny's house. We got the wood clean up and the weeds pulled. I must say it looks pretty nice. After that I started on cleaning the garage...which carried over to day 4.

Today was sleep in day. Nice :) So after a little extra time in the sack I headed to Lowes and picked up a new outside water spicket. Then back to Lowes to get a longer one. I installed that, no leaks. My next project was Joseph's jeep. You've seen the pictures on here before. It is over 12 years old and the red paint has faded a little over time to the point where some have called it pink. It happened again the other day so I decided to paint it. Jaye, Joseph and myself taped it off and gave it fresh coat of RED paint. It looks pretty sweet. After that, more cleaning in the garage. Not a lot of wild crazy fun but it was nice to get the opportunity to do it.

Taping the Jeep

Joseph and his RED jeep

Vacation 09-Day 2

Great day! We started off with a visit to Gas City Park/Zoo. Today was "cradle school". Jaye, Joseph and myself decorated a paper turtle with markers/pipe cleaners/buttons. Then a quick snack and the highlight of the trip....feeding food pellets to hungry, headbutting goats. We also had the opportunity to feed some deer which was pretty cool.


After that we swung by Eastview to say hi to their new pastor...but he was in a meeting. Home for
lunch then a quick trip back to Gas City for the big canoe trip.

Wesley and I put in at Gas City Park and floated down stream to Marion. I have done the Mississinewa River from Upland to Gas City many times but this was my first trip to Marion. I think people would be really surprised at how pretty the river is from Gas City to Marion. It took us about 3.5 hours. It was a long trip. My friend Pete should have been with us...maybe next time. Wes said it was fun but really long, he thought it would be a much quicker trip.

I'd like you to meet Daisy. This dog started following us about 5 minutes into the trip. She stayed with us the entire way...3.5 hours! She swam, ran along the bank and stayed right along side of us. Wes and I tried to ditch her but with no luck. When we ended our trip she swam up to shore about two minutes after us. We called her owner (she had tags) and he drove over from Jonesboro to pick her up.

Vacation 09-Day 1

I started the first day of vacation with a trip to Gas City to pick up this bad boy....then from there it was up on the roof to help my friend tear some shingles off. It was hot, but we did get one side off. After dinner, to the garage for some cleaning.





My friend Dave decided to let us have his old lawn tractor. It's an old Allis-Chalmers. I used to have one like it a long time ago. It is my new project. I hope to have it running soon. As you can see the Joe has put his claim to it. He heard me telling Jaye that it's not getting any spark...so he said we need to go to store and get some spark.

The First Harvest

The garden is producing!!! Yeah!! :) This was my first harvest a week or so ago. It made for an excellent salad with grilled chicken breast and homemade croutons (thanks to Bekah!) Since then we've had a cucumber, 1 cherry tomato and several bunches of broccoli!! It's nice when all the hard work starts to pay off! :) When it's in full swing I could be sending some your way!

Committed....or need to be?!?!

A stinkin' hot 92 degrees out...and these guys are off to play paintball!

...and they returned with barely any paint on them!