My Angels

Monday, May 21st was awards ceremony day for Amanda's grade. We went to see her receive her three reading awards. During the ceremony, 2nd grade "angels" are also recognized. I have not found the exact criteria for being nominated an "angel", but I know the honor goes out to 3 people each year who are nominated by a committee as having made a huge impact on the students, 2nd grade in particular. A person can only be nominated as an "angel" one time. Brooke was nominated this year, and this is what was read as her name was announced. Needless to say, Amanda and I are busting-at-the-seams-proud!

Dean P. Corey Angel Award Nomination

Brooke Hurt

Brooke is a dedicated parent, children’s director and PTA member. To know Brooke is to love her. She spends countless hours working on things for Corey.

She shows a tremendous support to teachers. She has a teacher supply room located at her church for supplies that teacher’s would have to spend out of pocket. She is a member of Mom’s in Touch. In supporting teacher’s she in turn is supporting the students.

She has been a dedicated Room Mother. She does not only what is asked of her but goes the extra mile. She volunteers in teachers’ rooms to read with children. She has been on field trips and helped some very neurotic people (well- that would be me) with things for class room parties.

As a children’s director she is constantly reaching out into the community to help families. She even has gone to Nicaragua on a mission trip to help the Children of the Dump.

Field days last year she signed up for one slot and ended up working non- stop for four days. She takes flack for things that are not her doing but instead of complaining, she keeps smiling. She has taken on the huge task of Treasurer for two years. She also was a major advocate for the book room. Her philosophy is “If somebody needs something and we can help them – then it is our obligation to do so.” She doesn’t care about the politics but just in making sure the right thing gets done.

Brooke is fun, energetic, loving and child centered. Everything she does is for the benefit of children. I would love to see this angel get recognition for all she does. Thank you in advance for considering her!

Sincerely,

Michelle Willis-Estupinan

And then here are some pictures of my "other angel" on her special awards day.

Amanda's class receiving their awards

Amanda and a friend in a very serious moment


Amanda with her teacher from this year...a GREAT teacher we are very thankful for

Amanda and another friend

Both my angels together

Vacation Is Over

Well, vacation is now officially over, but the day was a good one. We got up and had a great breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash browns. We had some time to chill out after breakfast because, surprise, it rained!

Thankfully it rained a while but began to clear up as we cleaned up inside the trailer. When we were ready to hook up the camper and head out, it was all blue skies. We were able to get home, get the camper unpacked and cleaned out before it rained again.

I guess the one word that would best summarize this year's family vacation is...RAIN. But we are thankful to have had the camper. We did not get to be outside as much as we would have liked, but we were able to take a much-needed break and to spend some great time together as a family. We all have "If had not rained so much I would like to have..." stories, but we all agree it was a really good five days.

And so, in this last installment of vacation stories, I will post a few pictures we didn't want Stan to see (it was Stan and Caye's camper we borrowed). But since Stan reads my blog, all I can say is "We tried to keep the dogs off the furniture as much as possible, but they were just so dern cute! Plus, if it helps, I vacuumed everything thoroughly this afternoon."

Now who could look at that picture and now go "awww"?

I don't know what catches the attention more...the length of the tongue or the timing of the picture!

More doggie torture by Amanda.

The dogs are resting peacefully...I'm not sure what the child is doing.

Stomachs Feeling Better, Now It's Just Rain and Chiggers

Ah yes, the joy of chiggers. We've all got them, but Amanda has them the worst. They are not fun.

And yes, it rained again today. I already shared my "fun" experience first thing taking the dogs for a walk. After Amanda and I got back from the lake, I was wondering if we should call my parents back and have them come on out here after all since it was not raining. Good thing we never made that call...just as we were getting ready to load up the truck to head over to their house, another DOWNPOUR came. I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty sick of rain.

So we went over to my parents and carried all of the food we were supposed to cook here. We grilled out and ate "outside" on their covered porch. Hamburgers, corn on the cob, chips and Smores. Doesn't get much better than that, although the Smores did not have quite the same feeling being cooked over the stove burner instead of a campfire.

"Indoor Smores"

We finished our game of dominoes from Saturday night, hung out and talked for a while and then came back to the camper. It is not raining (right now) and it is nice a cool outside. We will be able to open the windows tonight and enjoy a nice cool evening. Since most everybody left the park today, it will be nice and quiet, too.

Two lousy points! But I want you to know, I AM NOT BITTER ABOUT NOT WINNING!

We are praying for no rain in the morning. We'd like to pack up and then take Amanda, Brooke and the dogs down to the beach while I hook up the camper and dump all of the storage tanks.

We are thankful everybody's tummies feel better tonight. We'll just scratch a few chiggers and enjoy the cool evening.

A Blur of Misery

Yesterday was NOT a fun day and it was NOT what vacation is supposed to be like! I don't know if Brooke and I got what Amanda had or what, but we were miserable. Mine started out in the morning. My stomach was upset and I got a fever. I finally just laid in bed because I felt so miserable. Brooke was nauseous and finally came down with a fever, too I think.

In the afternoon, I took some Tylenol which helped reduce my fever, so we all went down to the lake for Amanda to swim. When we got back, my stomach was feeling better so I ate. Shouldn't have done that. Never got sick like Amanda did, but my stomach was upset all night long. We laid around the rest of the evening while Amanda read and watched movies. My back hurt from laying around so much, so Amanda and I took the dogs for a walk right before she went to bed. Once we got to the far end of our loop, we realized we had come out WAY TOO FAR. We were both exhausted when we got back and I felt terrible again.

Amanda at the beach. She didn't feel it necessary to wear her swimsuit, but she ended up going swimming anyway!

We all went to bed by 9:00pm and had a fitful night of sleep (Brooke and I slept fitfully...Amanda was fine). Sometime during the night, my stomach finally settled down and my fever broke. I still slept fitfully, but I felt better when I got up this morning. Brooke is still trying to recover fully.

TODAY, MONDAY
I got up this morning at 7:30am since my back was hurting from being in bed so much. I took the dogs for a walk to do their morning potty break. Sully is so afraid of everything that he won't go potty until we literally walk it out of him! So my day began with a 20 minute walk in the rain. When I came back, I was soaked along with both dogs.

Amanda wanted to go swimming today, so after the rain stopped, I took her down to the lake for an hour and a half. Brooke stayed with the dogs trying to get better. My parents were supposed to come this afternoon for dinner, but we decided to go to their house instead. We don't know if it will be raining when it is time to grill out, and we'd like to take a break from all the mud.

So yesterday was just a blur...lots of rain and feeling cruddy. Today is a little better, but it's still gonna rain again. We can't go geocaching because the trails are closed due to all the rain. I'm trying to remember if we've had this many consecutive days of rain all year. It's good to be away, but all the rain and being sick put a real damper on our day yesterday.

A Day Without My Watch

I've been trying something on my (Friday) day off and on Saturday if we do not have someplace we have to be...I don't wear my watch. It's not like I don't see a clock all day, but it is an effort to relax and not be so driven by the work things I have to get done.

So today, being vacation and all, I did not wear my watch. I don't think it is because of not wearing a watch, but today was the first day I really relaxed. We slept in to about 8am, had cereal for breakfast, got another COLD! shower, and did some reading (Rob & Brooke) and some movie watching (Amanda) before lunch while it was continuing to rain on and off.

I'm eating breakfast while Amanda finishes up a painting from her vacation workbook

Amanda watching DVDs in her "luxury hotel" (her words)

After lunch, Brooke relaxed by taking a nap while Amanda and I biked down to lake, played in the lake (Amanda did), biked to Penn Farm and took a tour of what farm life was like in the late 1800-early 1900's. We both found that very interesting.

The original house on the Penn Farm property...well, sorta. They kept telling us how "authentic" the house was, but the more questions that were asked, the more our guide kept saying, "That may have changed during some of the renovations."

A lizard we saw on our Penn Farm tour. We are relatively certain he was not one of the "original" animals on the farm in the late 1800s.

A not-so-exciting "original" watering trough...with a pretty model posing for us!

If you look closely, you can see a windmill in this picture.

This tractor was not actually used on the Penn Farm, but it was from that era which was sometime between the late 1800s to mid-1900's.

We biked back home in time for Brooke and Amanda to take a HOT! shower and then rest a little before my parents came to visit. They arrived in Dad's new Dodge pickup which we quickly unloaded (they brought food) and we fired up the grill. Dinner consisted of grilled chicken (between Brooke's marinade and my humble-yet-expert grilling, it was delicious!!), green bean salad, fruit salad and Smores cooked over the campfire for dessert. Sully growled and barked the whole time we were outside and I smushed my Smore together too hard squshing some hot marshmallow onto my foot, but other than that, sitting outside enjoying the lack of rain (and abudance of mud!) was very nice.

So my folks have left, Amadna is in bed, Brooke is reading and I am blogging. The clock on my computer says it is now 9:35pm. I'm going to shut down the computer, read until I want to go to bed and sleep until I want to get up. That is what a day without my watch is supposed to be like.

Thank the Lord We Were Not Trying to Tent Camp

Rain...that's what most of the day consisted of. Actually, I'm not sure it was raining when we first woke up this morning. But then again, I don't usually remember much when I wake up at 2:30am! Amanda came into our room telling us her stomach was hurting. No gassy tummy and nothing Tums was helping. We have no thermomether, but it felt like she had a fever, too. We were up for an hour, then she went to lay down with Brooke in our bed while I laid on the couch (more like a couchette...it is short!). Come 5:30am I was awakened to a shaking camper and Brooke rushing Amanda to the restroom. After that, her stomach felt fine (you figured out she puked, right?) and she was ready to get in her own bed. We all slept until 8:30am or so. When we got up, Amanda took the dogs out to go potty and got sick once more. After that, she has been fine all day. She feels a little warm tonight, so we'll see what happens.

So I cooked some bacon and eggs for breakfast, Brooke and I read, Amanda watched some TV shows of DVD, we took cold showers in the bath house and the we went to Wal-Mart to buy the rest of the groceries we need for the week. We drove around for a bit and then came home for lunch. Amanda had Jello and one piece of turkey to make sure her tummy would be OK. After lunch, I took a nap while Brooke, Amanda and the dogs went for a walk in between rain showers. They came back and told me about the dead rattlesnake they found on the way to the playground!

We were going to go watch a movie tonight, but since we've already seen Shrek the Third and Spiderman 3, we went to Joe's Crab Shack to eat dinner instead. And since the reptile show here at the park got rained out (Amanda was very disappointed), we came back to the camper, played some Sorry and Domino's, wresteled on the bed (shaking the whole camper) and got Amanda to be for the evening. She feels a little warm, but we prayed she'd make it through the night and her tummy would be OK. I'm about to join Brooke reading then we may watch a movie before heading to bed.

Lots of rain today...pretty much all day. Thank the Lord we were not trying to tent camp!

Playing Sorry in the rain...or actually, in the camper while it was raining outside

A Great Start on Vacation

Our day began 12 hours ago when we rolled over and hit the snooze alarm for the first time. Tomorrow is technically the last day of school for Amanda, but we started our vacation today. My good friend Stan owns a nice 5th wheel camper and has been kind enough to let us borrow it, so we are spending our Memorial Day weekend (Thursday night-Tuesday lunch) at Cedar Hill State Park. School got out at 1:45pm today, so we picked up Amanda, finished packing up the camper and headed out.

I have pulled trailers before, but never a 5th wheel and never something quite this big (approx. 30 feet). I have a CDL to drive the church bus and I have driven school busses before, so I was a bit surprised how different it was driving with the camper. Stan took me out before we left today and gave me some driving instructions and let me practice backing up and parking.

As we left, it started sprinkling but then it quit by the time we got to the State Park (about 25 minutes from our house). I'm glad we camp to the Park today because there was only one other person checking in when we got here. We checked in, drove to our spot, I backed in (that is I backed in, pulled up, backed in, pulled up, backed in, pulled up and finally got it right), got the camper leveled and had just hooked up the water and electricity when it began to rain. I finished up just in the nick of time. It is wonderful to "camp" with AC and no worries about rain!

Brooke cooked us macaroni and cheese and BBQ hotdogs for dinner (sounds like a good camping meal, doesn't it!). We then made a quick run down the road to Racetrac to get some ice and a large Diet Coke. Amanda is coloring, Brooke is reading, I'm blogging (well, keeping a record to post to my blog when I get back), the dogs are resting peacefully and the rain is pitter-pattering on the camper. Nothing to do but read and chill out (and maybe watch a DVD movie later). A great start on vacation!

I'm (getting to be) A Little Bit Country

This post has more to do with my wife than it does Marie Osmond. You see, Brooke listens to country music and so I hear it every time I get in the car if she is driving or if I get in after she has been driving ('cause she leaves the country radio station on when she turns off the car). There are still a lot of country songs I do not like because of the "country" content (chasing women, leaving your wife, getting drunk, etc). However, I found found a number of songs that have GREAT messages and I'm starting to get a little hooked. The one that got me listening more closely was Rodney Atkins' Watching You.

The other day I went online to buy this song to give to my Pastor to listen because I thought it would be a great song to play/have someone sing on Father's Day. I ended up finding some other good songs on the CD and bought the whole thing. Here's the lyrics to another song on the CD that I'm really liking right now, Cleaning This Gun (Come on In Boy):

The Declaration of Independence
Think I could tell you that first sentence
But then I’m lost

I can't begin to count the theories
I've had pounded in my head
That I forgot

I don't remember all that Spanish
Or the Gettysburg address
But there is one speech from high school
I'll never forget

(Chorus)
Come on in boy sit on down
And tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter do you now?
Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl
Her momma's world
She deserves respect
That’s what she'll get
Ain’t it son?
Hey y'all run along and have some fun
I'll see you when you get back
Bet I’ll be up all night
Still cleanin' this gun

Well now that I’m a father
I’m scared to death one day my daughter
Is gonna find
That teenage boy I used to be
That seems to have just one thing on his mind

She’s growin' up so fast
It won't be long before
I’ll have to put the fear of god into
Some kid at the door

(Chorus)
Come on in boy sit on down
And tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter do you now?
Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl
Her momma's world
She deserves respect
That’s what she'll get
Now ain't it son?
Y’all go out and have some fun
I'll see you when you get back
Probably be up all night
Still cleanin' this gun

Now it's all for show
Ain’t nobody gonna get hurt
It’s just a daddy thing
And hey, believe me, it works

(Chorus)
Come on in boy sit on down
And tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter do you now?
Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl
Her momma's world
She deserves respect
That’s what she'll get
Now ain't it son?
Y’all run along and have a little fun
I'll see you when you get back
Probably be up all night
Still cleanin' this gun

Son, now y'all buckle up and have her back by te- let's say about nine...thirty.
Drive safe.

Amazingly Simple Home Remedies

A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you will be afraid to cough.

Clumsy? Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.

Avoid arguments with the Mrs. about lifting the toilet seat by simply using the sink.

For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.

Sometimes, we just need to remember what the rules of life really are: You only need two tools: WD-40 and Duct Tape.

• If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40.
• If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape

Thanks to my friend Stan for forwarding these to me

I Find Myself Dependent and Unhappy

Let me clarify for those of you who love me and are now concerned...I find myself dependent upon and unhappy with Microsoft! I have been having a number of issues recently, and as I look for alternatives, I find that Microsoft has me right where they want me...DEPENDENT.

It started with Microsoft Office. I have been using Microsoft Office for as long as I have been computing. I never had the money to buy Microsoft Office, I just had friends who gave me a copy, that they got from somebody else, and so on. I can't say that my conscience was really bothering me, but I knew I "should" use something that was legal, so I started looking for alternatives. That's when I found Open Office. I can't say enough about this free, open-source office suite. The most recent thing I found that I LOVE about it is that I can keep it and run it from my USB thumb drive...I don't even have to have it on my computer. I was ready to jump the ship and switch to Open Office, but then I found out that the mail merge feature was not nearly as developed as Microsoft Office, and so I found myself DEPENDENT. I use a lot of fairly complicated mail merge stuff at church, and so I needed it. The church ended up buying a Microsoft Office business license, so we all have legal copies now. But my newest pet peeve with MS Office is their refusing to adopt the same open source document format as almost every other office suite or word processor out there. Of course, Microsoft had to create their own "open source" format which is not compatible with anybody else. Even older versions of Microsoft Word cannot open the new format of Word 2007. They keep coming out with "better" software, but purposely write it to make what you have obsolete. Oh yeah, I spent 2 hours this week trying to figure out how to convert a Word 2000 mail merge to Word 2003. Never got it figured out, just had to redo it. Seems the learning curve between versions of some Office products is greater than that of learning the software from scratch!

And then there was my recent issues with Microsoft Outlook (while we're talking about Office). I have been using Outlook since Outlook 97 and I am heavily DEPENDENT on it, even more so since I switched from a Palm PDA to a Pocket PC. I'm now running Outlook 2003 and ever since the Daylight Savings patch came out, Outlook has not worked right for me. This post would be too long to detail all of my issues, but I ain't happy. I spent a good part of last week searching for an alternative. I found one that would work well (EssentialPIM), but it just would not sync closely enough with my PocketPC.

And now I'm having issues with Windows Media Player. I let Windows XP automatically update me to version 11 of Media Player when it first came out, but I had issues, so I rolled back to version 10. For however many months that has been, I've been saying "no" when asked by WMP if I wanted to upgrade. Finally I bought a song a WalMart.com, and it would not play without upgrading WMP. Tonight I tried to let it scan my computer for media. It took more than 2 hours and finally locked up my computer. I'm going to check out some alternatives, but again I am DEPENDENT because I've ripped all of my music into .wma format and I sync my music with my Dell DJ, so I have to look for an alternative program that can do all that. I'm downloading WinAmp right now. I may not have to be DEPENDENT here.

If it were not for my DEPENDENCE on Outlook, my PocketPC and the Windows-only software I use to maintain three church-related web sites, I would be giving very serious consideration to making the switch to an Ubuntu, Linux system.

To my Mac friends (you know who you are Jason, Brad and others!), the three items mentioned in the previous paragraph would also hinder a wholesale switch to Mac. Dual boot? OK, that might work. If you pay for the laptop, I'll use it!

A Rollercoaster of Emotions

Well, as you may have noticed, it's been a while since I've blogged. I've been busy! My best friend and roommate from college, Craig, came to visit week before last (picture above). I took 3 days off while he was here and I'm still trying to catch up. We had a GREAT time playing ping pong, racquetball, consuming more-than-healthy amounts of Krispy Kreme donuts, making our own Coach marathons recorded from USA Network and visiting the Stockyards in Ft. Worth. I really hope it is not another 4 years before we can get together again.

When Craig left, I had a number of projects to work on at church. And now I am preaching Sunday (the 20th). Somewhere along the way, I got into a "funk". I've been tired, not sleeping well, no racquetball, no blogging, stressed and grumpy a lot. No, it has not been a good thing. I think part of it is from getting behind from time off combined with being tired. I have also noticed when I am preparing to teach/preach, there is a spiritual attack. And like this past week, I don't always handle it like I should. So today, I've been asking the Lord to help me correct my poor/wrong attitudes and to persevere through Sunday. I am thankful to have the opportunity to teach and I LOVE it. There is something about creating an "Aha!" moment for people when they see something they did not see before. I love the process of the Lord dropping something in my heart, of studying the passage and sharing what I've found with people, but there is always a price to be paid. It often amazes me that God would use me in this process when I mishandle the opportunity so often, but I guess God would be hard-pressed if He had to find perfect people to do everything! That was a joke. I am thankful for God's more-than-abundant grace in my life. I am trying to learn from these experiences and learn how to pass along this grace to others. Again, it's a good thing God is patient and loving!

So please pray for me as I prepare for this Sunday. I'll post a link to the teaching after Sunday. The depth of wisdom in God's Word never ceases to amaze me.

One more hodgepodge item: I had finished a couple good books and was contemplating what to read next last month. Well, I ended up reading Three by Ted Dekker. Ok, I'm hooked! It was a great suspense novel. I will be taking Black with me on vacation to read after I finish my current book, The Azusa Street Revival, by Roberts Liardon.

Here's a few more pictures to catch you up from my blogging absence.

Brooke and Amanda all dressed up for the Mother/Daughter banquet at church.

My Mom, Brooke and Amanda

Amanda and friend Kodee

Amanda on the runway with friend Abigail