hodge podge

We finished watching America's Funniest Videos a little while ago. We all love to laugh and that show keeps us in stitches. After it was over, John was flipping channels and the Simpsons was on FOX. I was doing something with Will, but I heard Abbey say, "Cheese-sticks...it's the Cheese-sticks!" After a couple of minutes had passed I burst out laughing. I buy string cheese for the kids all the time, and the Simpsons characters are on the packaging of a particular brand. When she saw the Simpsons on tv, she immediately associated them with string cheese and kept asking to go back to the Cheesesticks show. Hilarious. It was also funny during the Sonic commercial when she told us she wanted a bubble gum "flushie". I think she meant a "slushie". Hope so anyway.

John shared a fantastic message this morning. I'm pretty sure it was recorded, but I don't think it will be available from our church website for a week or so because the guy who does that is out of town until next week. I'll try to alert you via this blog if and when it is available for your listening pleasure. smile. It is always a little hard for me when he preaches. Mostly because I know that he is really enjoying himself and is living out his calling. Seriously, so many people come up to us both after he preaches and tell us things like...he has a gift, his words are annointed, and wow...that was beautiful. And that creates tension in me because I have really enjoyed this break from pastoral ministry for almost two years. Our last church experience was very, very hard for me. Selfish, yeah. Honest, you bet. I'm not exactly sure what to do with all that either. I guess I wish that he could just keep doing things the way he's doing them now...work full-time in publishing and preach a little on the side. I like not feeling the "pressure of the position" and I know he likes that too. But when he's in that role, like he was this morning, I know that preaching is not completely written out of our future. So we both contine to pray about that and keep all options open.

I just have to give you a little weather report because our July weather has been so bizarre. It has continued raining all day today and we haven't seen the sun since Friday. Our lawn is loving this rain, and so is our checking account. Water here is so expensive because there isn't enough of it. We have watering restrictions and are only allowed to water three times/week. We've had significant rainfall every day this month. It's creating problems all around us too...roads washing out, flooding, rockslides (the front page of today's Denver Post showed a car parked along a highway smashed flat by a boulder that fell!), and standing water everywhere. So unusual for a state that has had drought-like conditions for the three years we've lived here. The rain has brought very cool temps though. I don't think we've hit 80 degrees since the end of June. We went to the park after church for a party for a friend and it was FREEZING! The bank temp sign read 55 degrees at 2:30 this afternoon. So, not only are we saving money by not having to water...we're not having to run our air conditioner either. Nice.

Oh yeah...John's meeting with Eugene Peterson on Friday was cool. He went to a large assemby meeting at NavPress where Mr. Peterson spoke, then he went with a group of 10 to lunch with him. It was nice, and John said he was pretty much as he expected him to be. It was a neat opportunity and John was grateful for it!

Every so often I think of something that I really miss about living in the South. Last week, I remembered how much I miss swimming pools. You just rarely see them around here (water is scarce--seriously!). But in the south...wow...they're everywhere. I get such a kick out of flying into DFW airport from here. As you're landing, you look out the window of the plane and all you see is a blur of turquoise from all the pools. We do have a few pools around here, but most of them are indoors. They get more use out of them that way because when it's 68-70 degrees in July, it's not really warm enough to swim. When we lived in Arkadelphia, we had lots of friends with pools as well as a great aquatic park. I would take Will and Sarah swimming almost every day (before Abbey came along!). It is great fun and a great way to get your kids to sleep at night...exhaustion works wonders. We've been swimming once since we've lived here...isn't that SAD? My next door neighbor took us to the pool at her parent's high-rise condo in downtown Denver last summer. It was fun, but kinda weird too. The pool was on the third floor. Still fun though. So yeah...I really miss swimming and having a pool to swim in.