Sunday

We wrapped up the series called "The Good Life" today and I have to say that things went pretty well over the past six weeks.

This series was designed to show what God really wants for your life. This morning we saw that God wants all of us to enter heaven.

Here's the cool part of the service...we had four people respond to my dad's invitation to receive Christ!

If you didn't hear this series check it out here. If you would like to order the entire series just let me know. It's only 10 bucks.

Anyway, that makes today an incredible day.

Lazy Saturday

Here are some thoughts on my lazy Saturday:

*Got up early this morning and went to the Y to work out. Ran into Fashizzle from my Fantasy league while I was there and I think I talked more football than actually worked out.

*Today was Mommy/daughter day. So I made it Daddy/son day too. We had fun going to the toy store together and the library. One thing we did today that I won't do again with him is go to the Halloween store. I wanted to look at costumes for him but he was really scared from all the other stuff in there.

*It was really good to see Oklahoma lose today.

*The US is doing really well in the President's Cup.

*Crystal isn't feeling well today. She's taking a nap right now while the kids are downstairs watching a movie. Hope she gets better.

*I'm leaving for Atlanta on Tuesday. Going to the Catalyst conference with Chris. Should be pretty fun. Although it will be a really fast trip. We leave Tuesday night and come home Friday night.

*I hope the Cowboys can beat the Rams tomorrow. It sure would be great to be 4-0.

*My son had his final doctor's appointment on Thursday for all the problems he had a few months back. I really feel that God has healed him completely. He hasn't had any problems since everyone prayed for him. That's awesome!

*As I finish this little post I'm getting text messages from Dale back in North Carolina. Seems that he shot an 82 today. Nice.

*And one more thing...I found the alternate versions of the Batman toy we've been looking for. They made an all black costume one, a blue and black costume one and a black and gray costume figure. Anyway, I found them today at the toy store. But we're still looking for Aquaman. (Wow, I guess I am obsessed)

Parent/Teacher Conference

Well I have just made it through our first Parent/Teacher conference for the year. Now I know what you're thinking...what could your daughter have possibly done to have a parent conference this early in the year?

Well it's a standard conference that everyone in the school has to have and second it was so she could tell us how great our little girl is doing in school.

I have to say that I'm really proud of her right now. She's doing a great job in school.

Just like her dad.

Update

Don't worry, Crystal has found another one. And here it is:



Now we've found the Flash, we're just missing Aquaman.

Now who is the one obsessed?

My New Obsession

Crystal says I have a new obsession. The last one was the Legion of Super Heroes from McDonald's Happy Meals. I found the complete set on Ebay and bought them for my son.

Now she says I'm doing it again. Here is what I'm looking for now:



These are the new DC Super Friends toys. They're great little toys. I have found Superman, Green Lantern, Lex Luthor and Batman. I'm still missing Flash and Aquaman. I've been looking all over Wichita trying to find these last two.

So am I obsessed? I just think I'm trying to find some cool birthday/Christmas gifts for my son.

I could stop anytime.

And by the way, let me know if you find either of these at your local Target, Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.

Sprinkler

Yesterday I get home from work to find that one of our sprinkler heads in the backyard was broken. Broken I ask? How could this be? Well, come to find out my son was outside playing in the sprinklers while they were running and didn't like that one of them kept spraying him. (Not sure why he was playing in the sprinkler then.)

Anyway, since he didn't like one of them spraying him he walked over to it and gave it a good kick. Now he's only three but looks like he five so I guess his kick was pretty powerful because he broke the head all the way down to the pipe.

So I get home and take a look and decide its not something I want to try and fix. So I have our maintenance team come and take a look at it this morning. I'm really thinking that it's a quick little fix.

So I get a call from the guy that is going over to the house so I call Crystal to let her know that he's on the way. About 15 minutes later I get a call from Crystal telling me the bad news.

She says they need to dig up all around the sprinkler head to find where it's cracked and it will cost over 200 bucks! I'm just silent for a minute. I wasn't prepared for this. 200 bucks is eating into my iphone/big screen tv fund.

And then she laughs at me in the phone and says something like, "gotcha!" It really took 5 minutes to fix. I get the next few minutes of her laughing and laughing. Thinking how great the prank was and that she really got me going.

I'm just relieved that my iphone/big screen tv fund is still intact.

As my wife continues to laugh in my ear on the phone I realize that after 10 years of marriage she really is becoming like me.

And that's a scary thought.

Golf

I really am not much of an outdoor kind of guy. I was never into camping or hiking or stuff like that. But one thing I do like to do outside is play sports. I think I played every sport growing up and my kids are already starting on their teams. But as I get older I really like to play golf. That's one thing I could spend 4 hours outside doing. Don't make me hike up a mountain or work in the yard. Let me get out on the course and play.

So it's great when my dad tells me we have a tee time and we're heading out to play. Since I've been here in Wichita I've played more than I did in 5 years in North Carolina. That's kind of scary.

Yep, we played today. I didn't do so great but we played from the blue tees. We played individual stroke play and on top of that we played a simple skins game.

I must admit that I won 10 skins and also won the stroke play.

It was a good day.

I'm Learning

The "Are We Losers" post from a couple days ago brings up a huge point that I'm learning these days. (And no the point is not that I'm a loser....and thanks for all the comments on Facebook)

Guys can sit on a couch, not look at each other and have meaningful conversation. And sometimes it may be through the computer! We don't have to look each other in the eyes to know we're talking.

But I've learned that doesn't work with my wife. She likes to have face to face conversations. She likes to look me in the eyes. In her world, if I'm not looking at her I'm not listening. And that's something that is somewhat foreign to me as a guy.

So I'm learning to help fill a need my wife has that I may not have. I'm learning that it is important for me to take time each day for face to face conversations with her. Taking time to focus just on what she is saying and nothing else.

I have to admit, I'm not the best at this yet....but I'm learning.

Good Day

Well it was a good day today.

*We had a great day at Evangel as we continued the "Good Life" series. My dad talked about how we need to emulate Christ in our life. It was a good morning.

*Geoff was here visiting this weekend and I have to say again that it was great to see him. My kids were going crazy with him all weekend. Hopefully he'll be able to make it out here again soon.

*We had our small group tonight and I realized that our small group is greatness. Even though I'm not the best on the grill and frozen hot dogs are hard to deal with, tonight went really well. It's exciting to see what God is going to do in our group.

*I have to say that I'm excited the Cowboys got their second win today. Starting the season 2-0 is pretty cool. Their offense looked pretty sick in the first half but they picked it up and dominated in the second half.

*Hopefully I'll hang on and win my fantasy game. It's coming down to the Monday night game....we'll wait and see. Going 2-0 in that league would be great too, but I'm not really confident right now.

*And what's up with the temperature change? We were in the low 70s on Saturday and today it was close to 90! Do we want fall to show up or not? I heard that we're going to be hot all week long.

Well, it's time for bed.

Are we losers?

So what do you do on a Saturday night?

What if you sit around on the couch with your MacBook Pro open just surfing the net? And what if your friend was sitting next to you with their MacBook open surfing the net? Not so bad? Well what if we're sitting on Facebook using the Superpoke application on each other? Does that make us losers?

Maybe we should go watch football. I hear there's a good game on.

Cool Weekend

It's good to have one of my good friends Geoff here visiting us this weekend. He was my first intern in North Carolina and is now a 5th year senior at Evangel University.

Wow, 5th year...I was going crazy in college after just four.

He's already been surprised at how big Wichita actually is.

Should be fun this weekend.

Where have you been?

That's the question that you may be asking. I've been around, it's just been kind of a lazy week. But here are a few things that are running through my brain this morning:

*I sure hope the Cowboys can keep the offense moving this weekend. You can't give up 35 points every game and expect to win. And no, I don't think they can score 45 every game either.

*I really like playing fantasy football. My teams did pretty good last weekend but I also understand that things change pretty quickly.

*Geoff is coming to visit this weekend. If you don't know Geoff was my very first intern out in North Carolina. Since we're so close to Springfield now he can drive over to see us for the weekend. Should be fun.

*I'm amazed at the unconditional love that Hosea showed to his adulterous wife. I've been teaching a class called Love and Respect and also studying the book of Hosea. That's an amazing example of how husbands are to unconditionally love their wives...apart from their performance.

*My daughter really loves going to school each day. Yeah I know, she'll probably outgrow that someday! And on top of that, she loves to ride the bus!

*Today I'm going to buy a book at Borders. And I have a 25% off coupon! What a crazy life I lead.

That's it for right now.

And here it is....

Well the title of the new Indiana Jones movie was announced last night. So here it is:



I have to admit, can't wait for this one.

Sunday Ticket

It's week one in the NFL season! And I have the Sunday Ticket on Directv.

Can life get any better?

Family Time

What happens when you have some family creative time? Last night each of us got different color pieces to create our own masterpiece and when we were all finished we put them together to form a great work of art!

Here is what we came up with.



We had it standing up and it was called a Giraffasaurus.

And I'm the one who got stuck with the left over pieces. I had the orange, blue and purple.

But these are the family times I'll remember.

Football

Ok, I must admit that I am a huge football fan. I'm really excited that the season starts tonight. I play fantasy football, have Sunday Ticket and even watch some of the pre-season games.

Speaking of the pre-season, I was watching several of the games and noticed something different on the back of the QB helmet. They each had a little green dot. I first noticed it while watching the Cowboys play but began seeing it more and more as the pre-season continued.

At the time I wondered what was going on with the helmets. I haven't thought about it much since, but if you had the same question here's the answer a I found today.

According to Paul Lukas the uni-watch guy on Page 2 of ESPN.com he states:

"The dot is being applied to helmets equipped with radio receivers, only one of which for each team is allowed on the field at any given moment."

Wow, I'm glad we cleared all of that up. I can sleep better tonight.

If you would like to read more about Paul's take on uniforms click here.

Here it is

Pretty cool huh?

Excited

I'm a little excited about the new iPod news released today. It seems that Apple keeps making a good thing better.

If you don't know what I'm talking about just click here.

And some more good news I read from today: they're dropping the price on the iphone.

Maybe, just maybe.

Kansas City

It was a fun Labor Day in Kansas City. As I told you before we headed over to the Legends shopping area so we could eat at T-Rex.



If you don't know what T-Rex is, it's a restaurant a lot like Rain Forest Cafe. Lots of moving dinos and lots of fun.

But we had a problem when we first arrived. It seemed that my son was scared of the dinosaurs. He wouldn't look at them and didn't want to let go of me or Crystal. So we headed into the store to the Build-a-dino shop. If you don't know what that is, it's the same as Build-a-bear. So the kids really had fun doing that.



So on to lunch. After carrying my son around trying to get him to stop crying we met the man who takes care of all the robots in the restaurant. He stopped and talked with Caden to let him know that everything was ok and the dinosaurs weren't going to hurt him. They weren't real. We even got to touch them to make sure!



One of the cool things in the place was that every 30 minutes they had a "meteor shower" in the restaurant. The lights would dim and the dinosaurs would make more noise than usual. It was pretty neat to see.



One last thing that I have to mention about the place. The dessert. We had what is called the "Chocolate Extinction" and it was incredible. We had six people eating it and we couldn't finish it. It has four pieces of brownie cake, four things of ice cream and whip cream plus chocolate and candy bar pieces all over it. But the cool thing is the glass of dry ice in the middle. It came out on this huge platter smoking all over the place. People from tables near us came for a better view. Here is a picture of it already eaten.



Wow, what a good time. After we ate all the food we spent time walking around and shopping. I even bought some cool Chucks. But that's an entirely different story.

Labor Day Weekend

It's nice to have some time off. Since we didn't have anything at the church last night, we piled in the van and are in Kansas City right now. The kids have had fun in the pool here at the hotel and we had a great dinner last night at Joe's Crab Shack. We noticed something interesting about that place, it had a lot of young families coming in and teenagers eating there. Maybe it's a little bit of the food and some cool atmosphere but they were reaching those groups of people. Giving me ideas and hope for our church....but I'm on a mini-vacation. So on with the story.

Joe's had all you can eat popcorn shrimp and I think I had all I could eat. But the kids had a cool dessert that would be great to try. It's a design a sundae with ice cream sandwiches. They cut the ice cream sandwich into four little pieces and placed it on a plate that looks like a painter's palate. In the little holes of the plate were chocolate sauce, sprinkles, and smashed up candy bar pieces. Then the kids could dip their ice cream sandwich into whatever they wanted. I thought that was a pretty cool idea.

Here are some pics:





And we've got a full schedule today. We're heading to Legends Mall and eating at T-Rex.

Should be fun. I'll let you know.

Evangel Weekend

We had a great day yesterday at Evangel. My dad is still in his series called "The Good Life." He's talking about finding the life God wants for you. The first week we talked about having an encounter with Him, last week the topic was being empowered by the Spirit and yesterday he talked about being employed in the kingdom.

I thought the message was great. You can check out the audio here if you want.

Anyway my dad challenged everyone that God didn't empower you with His Spirit to put you on a shelf. It's your job to use the gifts and talents for His glory.

He also gave everyone a practical way to put this in practice. We had volunteer opportunities listed on a card that people filled out during the end of the service adn then handed to an usher on the way out. The ushers handed me a stack of cards before I left. Cool! God was really moving in the service.

Now it's up to the Pastoral staff to follow up this week! Get ready Evangel, we're going to do something great!