Snow

 
It snowed close somewhere between 6-9 inches here the other day. It was awesome, the kids got out of school for two days and we played in the snow. It was great....it only would have been better if it happened on Christmas! 

Passwords

Okay I'm a total idiot! I've probably lost all my readership by now anyway, not that I've ever had more than 4 people visit my blog anyway, but since I haven't published anything since September 8th, I can understand my poor audience! Well one of the reasons is a forgot my username and password! Has that ever happened to you? You put some clever usernamer and password in and then you have your computer remember you and then you forget it! It works great until you computer virus program erases all your cookies and stuff and then you are stuck trying to remember your clever ideas! Well I finally figured them out and wrote them down somewhere so I wouldn't forget them this time! So hopefully I will do better but probably not, since the story of my life is the constant struggle of trying to be disciplined. But that is another blog!

Sunset

I just like this picture....don't have much it just encourages me for some reason.

This is camp

  

This pretty much gives you an idea of what my life is like with Younglife. I love these guys, even when they pie me and call me a loser! You only make fun of people you like...isn't that right! Well that is what I keep telling myself.

Tubing in the rain

 
This is Kacey tubing while it's raining outside. One of our favorite persons, David Lacy, invited us to spend a day at a lakehouse with his family. Our kids had a blast the day before tubing, so much that the morning we were leaving they wanted to tube again. The problem was it was raining, but David said hey they are going to get wet anyway, so he put on his raincoat and pulled them through the rain. David gave me some great advice years ago, he told me that when it came to parenting you should say "Yes, as often as possible". David thanks once again for modeling for me what it means to be a great DAD! 

Did you know?

I usually hate those words especially when they come from a parent. Because usually I'm about to hear about something that either I should have know about or something I wish I didn't know about. I just got one of those phone calls about something that "happened" at camp last year. Well I had no clue what they were talking about and it was the first time I had ever heard of it. Well that just gives loads of confidence to parents that the "so called leader" had no clue what the kids were really doing! Wow unchurched kids doing something that was bad, who would have thought that would happen! Well pray for us this next week, we are taking some of those same bad kids back to camp with us this year! Hopefully they won't be smoking pot again this year, or if they do maybe we will get the chance to catch them and have a teachable moment! Well have fun...we will!

55 an no more

Yesterday I did Norman conquest! It's a bicycle ride in Norman that is 63 miles long. They promote the ride by saying conquer the hills and the heat. Well it is true to it's name, one of the hilliest rides I've ever ridden in 100 degree heat is not neccasarily the best way to spend a saturday morning. I was riding with two other guys and got to mile 55 and just died. I had to wait for the sag wagon to come along and pick me up. I failed to do the most importantly thing when riding endurance races....eat and hydrate. So at about mile 45 I was done, but I thought I could finish, well at 55 I was totally spent! It's humilating having to stop but you have to do what you have to do. Our next long ride is Hotter than Hell down in Witchita Falls where we are trying to ride 100 miles. So we will see if I finish it or not, I know one thing for sure, I will be eating and drinking plenty this ride!

Superhero

Ever wanted to be a superhero? I was watching TV the other day and they have a new reality show out called "the Next Superhero". From what I saw it looks like people are coming on and showing what there superpower is or what they wish it were. Now I'm a huge superhero fan, have been since I was a little kid, but even I think this has taken the whole reality thing just a bit too far! Maybe it just be, but that seems like some executives got drunk in a room and said, "hey what can we do that nobody will watch"..... Watch it will probably be the next huge hit, and then I will fill like a doofball. No then I will totally know that our country is gone insane. Well have a good day and if you could be a superhero who would you be? Me I would be Spiderman.....I always identified with the tortured good guy, who didn't quite believe in himself, but still ended up saving the day!

Bikes & More

I've ridden twice this week so far about 50 miles between the two rides. Tomorrow I'm going out for 3-4 hours in the morning with my buddy. We are getting ready for Hotter than Hell in Witchita Falls in August so we have to get our bodies ready to stay on the bike for 5 hours or more. I'm not sure a fanny was meant to stay on a little seat for that long but you do what you have to. The good thing is that I feel good when I'm done, so there is something to be said for that.

I was reading something today about this guy who decided to take a picture a day for the whole year and record his thoughts about the picture, so starting September maybe that's what I will do with my blog....who knows but it was intriguing to me...we will see what happens. Let me know if you think it's a good idea!

Christmas card

Hey I thought I would give you a preview of our Christmas card this year. Since we have such a hard time sending out cards, you might be the only people who actually ever see it. Aren't we such a pretty family!

Summer staff photo

Our steller Trail West Summer Staff crew!

Life & Times

I'm been back in Okc for around 4 days after spending a month in Colorado working. It has been hard for me to rengage with life here in OKC. Not because I don't enjoy it here, just becasue after you have been working somewhere for 7 days a week for 4 weeks it sorta gets in your blood. I keep thinking I have to do something at Trail West and that I'm suppossed to be there instead of here, it's wierd.

On a personal level we past a huge milestone this last week! 15 years of marriage! It's hard to believe that we have been married 15 years. When I look back at pictures I see these two young, wide eyed kids that had no idea what they were doing or getting into. Thankfully marriage just keeps getting better and better for us. It has always been good, but it just keeps improving so I'm extremely thankful for a soulmate that makes it so fun to life live with. So for all of you who are thinking about marriage....I recommend it for sure, just make sure it's someone you have fun with and that you can see yourself growing old with!

Hope you have fun shooting off fireworks this week....tip don't hold the firecrackers too long....they hurt when they explode in your hand....believe me I know!!!!!!

A month is gone

Well we just got back from spending a month in Colorado on assignment at Trail West (younglife's family camp). When people hear that we get to spend a month in Colorado as part of my job they think lucky dog. I would agree but it's not all a cake walk by any means. While on assignment you spend 7 days a week working with people from 7:00 in the morning until 12:00 midnight. I wouldn't change it for the world but assignments are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually draining. It really is better to give than recieve, but all of us need times of refreshment, so after a month of giving out totally I'm ready for a few days of nothing. That is why we came to Odessa, to take a few days before I get back in the race of hanging out with kids, trying to get more kids to our camp at the end of July, raising money for our area, recruiting new leaders and staying in touch with all the kids, leaders and donars that are already in our circles. I love what I do that is for sure, just need to recharge sometimes. Well just wanted to let you know why I haven't written in a month. Hope your summer is going well and say a prayer for us and our kids if you get a chance. By the way my own kids and Kristen had a blast at Trail West, someone always to play with, someone else to cook and clean for you, life was good for the family, they are having withdrawals! Talk with you soon.

Leaks

I just realized I haven't said anything in awhile. I've been fairly busy the last few weeks, getting ready for summer assignments, heading to work week, end of school crap and trying to encourage Kristen through her job search. Let me tell you what happened on thursday. I had just gotten back from Colorado (driven all night because my household was imploding and needed daddy around) fixed the crisis with the family because that's what we dad's do! Well the next day the girls are in the back yard playing in the water and had the hose running and I was in the kitchen, they had been playing for about 50 or so minutes with the water running the whole time. I go back to our bedroom and am heading to the bathroom and step into the bathroom and I step into a puddle of water. I'm not sure where it's coming from so I follow the trail and it leads to our walk in closet and our closet is flooded with water. The spicket from the outdoor faucet had a leak inside the wall and the whole time the girls had been playing water had been pouring into our walls down into our closet and bedroom. Well we got the water turned off and then came the clean up. I spent Thursday night vacuuming up water and ripping up carpet and pads and trying to dry out our room. In fact we still have one of those carpet blowers in our room drying it out. The good thing is that we got our closet cleaned out, the bad news is we have a 1,000 deductible on our homeowners insurance, so this is probably all out of pocket for us. I wish I could wax eloquenlenty about some spiritual lesson but I got nothing. I could probably come up with one, something about hidden sin and it finally bursting all over your life, but that probably hits a little too close to home, so I will steer clear of that line of thinking. I could also talk about how sometime you never know the influence you are having on people until one day something pours out and you never saw it coming. Lots of cool ideas but really it was just a broken pipe and a lot of water all over my floor! If you get a chance pray for kristen she is a little down with this whole job search thing. Thinking no one wants her and that she is not good at anything anymore, I know how she feels because I was there about 2 years ago, but it's hard to see someone else go through it.
Well those are some thoughts and hopefully I will have some more soon, but no promises, just check back often and email me if you want me to actually talk about something worthwhile!
Peace OuT!!!!!!

Wondering

I just erased all my great thoughts. It was a good pondering, deep blog but you don't ever get to see it. I guess when you call your blog shallow thoughts that it has this hidden feature that won't let me be deep. If you really want to know what I wrote just call me and I will wax eloquently to you about my deep longing about talking to kids about Christ and if what we say really matters! It was really fairly good, or so I think. Well if anyone is out there anymore let me know........bueller......bueller........bueller......
If that doesn't make sense to you than your too young. I'll write later!

OKC Half-Marathon

Here is me running the Half I actually have a smile on my face, may be too small to see but I do. It was really a fun race. I wasn't the fastest by a long shot but I finished the race with a time of 2:17 which beat my other half marathon by 12 minutes, so I'm getting better. Who knows I still may complete that goal of doing a whole marathon yet!

Goldfish Night

We had Goldfish club monday night and one of our leaders caught some small bass in a nearby pond, so we put them into the pool also and they were are bonus fish. It was quite a site seeing kids and leaders swimming around in a pool trying to catch goldfish and bass. As you can see Heath her came up with the small bass. Unforturnally most of the 420 goldfish suffered a early demise due to the chorline! Expect for the 20 or so that one of our club girls rescued. She is a member of PETA! Take care 

The kids

Hey here is a little picture of the girls at a recent easter egg hunt. They keep growing no matter what we feed them it's amazing!

I got nothing

I feel like I should write something just because I want to keep being somewhat consistent with updating this thing. But I'm not sure I have much to report. I just got back from Trail West which is YL's family camp up in Buena Vista, CO. I was up there for a training about the summer. The whole family is going to be spending the month of June at this camp. I'm going to be the summer staff coordinator for the month of June. Basically I'm in charge of shepharding and encouraging the college kids that come and volunteer a month of their summer to help us run some of the program at this camp. Two folks from McKinney are coming up, so that will be fun to have some familiar faces from the past along with us for the summer. But other than that news I don't have much. I run this half marathon in a little over a week and I'm totally not ready for it, so please pray for endurance and pain free running. Well gotta go!

My Butt hurts!

I thought I would stick with the same kid of theme! On Saturday I rode in my first bike race and rode 33 miles through the winding hills of Oklahoma in 40 degree cold windy weather. It was a lot of fun let me tell you! About mile 23 I kept asking myself what in the world I was doing out there. But thankfully I finished and will more than likely keep biking and do other races. Every time I have sat down since Saturday my butt keeps reminding me to never get on a bicycle seat again, but I kinda dumb. I have no idea how those Tour de France guys do it day in and day out! They are studs with a capital S.

On another note Kacey, Kally and I ran a 5k race that was associated with this bike race and had a lot of fun. Ab0ut at 1k Kacey is not doing to well and is having a little bit of a hard time, being the good father I am I try to encourage her. I say hey you can do this remember when you were 6 and we did the dino dash and it was a 5K! Well without missing a beat she looks up at me and say, "Yea dad but I'm not as young as I use to be". Mind you she is 8 now but I guess that is over the hill in her book. I just cracked up as well as all the other people around me, the good news is we finished the race and all that matters is that she got over the finish line before me. I guess she doesn't count the part of the race that I carried her on my shoulders. If I thought about it long enough I could probably come up with some sort of spiritual illustration to go with it, huh!!!!!

my leg's hurt

I'm training for another half-marathon here in OKC at the end of April and my leg's hurt. That's pretty normal I guess, but it makes me feel old! Especially when I'm walking around at night and my knees sound like they are fireworks going off with all the poping! Well I guess it happens to everyone. The good thing is that the runs are getting a little bit easier to complete, they are still hard, but I can tell my stamina is increasing, so I'm thankful for that. So hopefully this is motivation for all you slackers to get off your butts and do some exercise, because most everyone that reads this blog is younger than me. So take it from the old man, get moving. Congrats to Sarah Soule for Completing the LA Marathon, way to go girl. Maybe someday that will be me.......probably not!

Oh by the way, I got a new computer...hopefully this one won't walk away with someone else!

Glo Nite is tonight! It should be fun...have a happy day and don't eat too many bugs!

They won by the way

I forgot to update the news but they won state and it was awesome. The YL guys played great and every game was a nail biter. The state game came down to the last shot, the other team had a chance to win and one of the BMCHS guys blocked his shots it was great. The fights after the game weren't so cool, but the game was great. I took Kally with me and she loved it, she was a little scared at the end, but hopefully nothing that will scar her for the rest of her life.

On a sadder note the baseball coach at BMCHS died on friday during a game. He was coaching on the 3rd base line and fell over and had a heart attack and died right on the field. As you can imagine it has been pretty tramatic for the players and the school. He had been at the school for 30 years. So please pray for them if you remember it.

Semifinals

McGuinness is in the Semifinals in basketball, only one game away from going to State. A couple of guys on the team are YL guys, so it has been fun getting to know the other guys on the team and cheering for them. It's funny to see this 36 year old sitting in the student section cheering with a bunch of teenagers. People probably look at me like I'm a little crazy and they would probably be right. But I love it! I'll let you know how they do!

Gone with the Wind

Well yesterday pretty much sucked! My laptop got stolen out of my Kristen's van while it was parked in front of the elementary school. Who goes to elementary schools to steal stuff, what a loser. It was in a backpack, so someone probably thought, cool I can steal someone's books and make them cry, what a doofish! Well computers are great but when your whole life is on them it kinda sucks and when everything has been bookmarked it's hard to remember how to get places and what your login stuff in, it's just stinks. We have to cancel all our cards, change bank accounts, etc, because all of that stuff was on the computer. Not to mention all my work for the last year, I know your saying didn't you back up! Yes I did on a couple of those little USB thingys, but guess where they where? Yep, in the front of the backpack, so I don't have all that stuff either, so today I'm forced to use my brain again, I thought I was through with that stage of my life! So if you see anyone running around with a Toshiba notebook with Younglife stickers on it, steal it back for me! Hope your doing well..

You would think!

You would think me being 36 years old would mean that I could control myself and be a mature adult around teenagers. Well as was illustrated last night that is not the case. We were having a Chuck Norris theme night last night and were doing this game where the kids were doing push ups and then they had to do a push up and pick up a candy heart that is stuck in whip cream. Sounds great except when they saw us coming with the whip cream pie pans they got up because they thought we were going to pie them. Well everything was going fine, but I had both two pie pans filled with whipped cream in my hands and a kid standing right in front of me not paying attention! It was just too good to resist, so I just creamed this kid and then the chaos broke out and there was whipped cream flying all over the place. Now normally this would be just good fun but we do our clubs in peoples homes! So we are trashing this families play room and I was the one who started it. Well we finally get them calmed down and cleaned up a little and play our next game and end up breaking their ceiling fan glass cover.... And it just kept going downhill from there. The horrible thing is that before our meeting when I was meeting with our leaders I said we need to be careful tonight or this stuff with the whipped cream is going to turn into a big mess, so let's make sure that doesn't happen. Then what do I do, start the whole freaking whipped cream fight, what an idiot. You would think after 16 years of youth ministry I would have an ounce of control, but you would be wrong! Well we finally got the room cleaned up and I talked with the parents and they were more or less okay with the whole thing, but it was a great lesson for our leaders about how not to lead a club! It's bad when your main leader is the worst trouble maker! I need help!

I'm official

I'm officially hip now, but saying I'm hip probably shows how out of touch I really am. Well I bought and Ipod shuffle off of ebay the other day. Before that I was a virgin to ebay and to the shuffle world. But now I've entered into the ebay and ipod world. I know the shuffle is not as cool as a nano or a new video ipod, but I just wanted something that I could listen to while I run or ride my bike and I wanted something cheaper, so the shuffle is a good first start for me. So all of you can now be impressed by me, I know that you were before, but now you can be doubly pressed! I'm not sure that is a real saying or not, but it sounded good when I thought it!

Anyone can post and dizzy bats

Okay thanks to tiffany, I think, I've changed it so that anyone can post. So you don't have to have your on blog site anymore, sorry about that I didn't know it was set up that way. I'm still fairly new to this whole thing and I still don't' know how to use everything. I'm still trying to figure out how you link other people's blog to your own but no luck. So if someone wants to educate me you are more than welcome. Thanks for letting me know you read this, it makes me want to think of more stupid things to think about. You have created a monster!!!!!!!

I went to my first OKC Hornet's basketball game last night against the spurs and I got picked to do the dizzy bat spin on the count in the fourth quarter. I just want you to know that I made all youth workers proud, I make a complete fool of myself and the place was laughing their heads off it felt good. Oh by the way I won, after a few good falls!

You ever feel like this?

Sometimes it feels like no matter where you turn people are just stepping all over you. I don't really feel like this right now and I'm thankful for that, but I have in the past. The photo just reminded me to be thankful for where I'm at in my life right now. So I hope you aren't getting stepped on, but if you are know that the race does end and then someone comes along and picks you up and throws you in the trash. Hah... that's a nice thought isn't it.

I'll do better....yeh right

Well I've been pretty terrible of late keeping this thing up to date. Not that anyone besides Kevin actually reads it, but I'll try and be a little bit more consistant. We start club again tonight for the spring semester, so hope that all goes well. We are doing a theme this semester on "signs", a loose take off from the movie, actually very loosely. Tonight is tinfoil night so that should be fun and next week is greek night. Well have a great day and think too hard about any one thing!

Going to NFL!

Well it's time for the Longhorn nation to mourn. The reason for the national championship is heading the the NFL. Can't blame him, because you never know with just one hit taking all it away. It's hard to be mad at him, since he is the reason they won the first National title in 35 years, but it is sad. I will miss seeing him run pass, by, and through people in a texas uniform. Oklahoma fans are thanking the football gods for this one, now they have a chance again. I feel sorry for the quaterback that now has to start. Following Young will be no easy task. Well it was great while it lasted and I will enjoy seeing him in the NFL. I think I will pick him for my fanasty team! I had Vick this year and he did pretty well for me...I won the super bowl, and I think young is much better than Vick! Well the parties over, but life will go on. Good luck Vince!

Right Brained

I took a test today and it said I was 20% left brained and 80% right Brain! So basically I'm supposed to be this creative, flexible, go with the flow kinda person. That is so not me. I'm organized, predictable, like routines, my desk and office are always in tip top shape. I can tell you what I had for breakfast 4 years ago today, because I write everything down. I always follow directions and I never rock the boat. I am the most stable, well balanced person I know! Well I can always lie to myself, it is my blog and they say you can be anything you want on the internet right! If my wife reads this she might just tell me these pain drugs that I'm on are really affecting me than they should. I don't think I would like to be a drug addict, I don't really like the way drugs make me feel, in some ways I do, but I don't like the whole loopy, spacey way I'm seeing things these last few days. Oh well, I guess it's good that I don't want to be a drug addict, it kinda but a damper on being in ministry and being hooked on drugs or so I've heard! Well take care everyone and have a great weekend!

Go TEXAS!

Just showing a little state pride here. Hopefully I will be glad I put this up tomorrow. Some of you might recognize one of the guys in this picture!

Fires

What a way to start a new year! Yesterday fires were all over the Oklahoma City area. We had fires south of us, fires north of us, fires 2 miles away, all over the city little grass fires erupted and then turned into huge fires like the one you see here. Many people lost their homes and tons of ranches lost much of their grass that feeds their cattle. We are thankful for the safety of our home and friends but saddened for the many who have lost so much. Pray for those weary firefighters and for those who will be putting their lives back together this year.