Nor is it a "happy holidays." This is an all out in your face "Merry Christmas!" All the best from my family to yours!

I felt like I was being herded like cattle today at the Panama City mall. I don't like big crowds all around me. Today I saw...

A guy in an Escalade holler out to a lady in the parking lot to get some manners...
A bunch of nasty people who should have been wearing more clothes...
Saw a car load of dumb people who wouldn't get out of the way of an ambulance...
A lady slap her baby boy in the face outside of the mall...
Other stuff I can't quite remember but at the time I thought it was worth remembering...
And Friends.

and I'm sitting down here at the church with 4 students, my wife and our 9 month old son. Just sitting in the dark with a video camera. Why you ask? Because the highschool girls Sunday School class is gone on a shopping trip and we saran wrapped all their vehicles together.

News Anchor Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, NPR Reporter Cokie Roberts and a U.S. Marine were hiking through the desert one day when they were captured by Iraqis. They were tied up, led to the village and brought before the leader.

The leader said, "I am familiar with your western custom of granting the condemned a last wish. Before we kill you, do you have any last requests?"

Dan Rather said, "Well, I'm a Texan; so I'd like one last bowl full of hot, spicy chili." The leader nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili. Rather ate it all and said, "Now I can die content."

Peter Jennings said "I am Canadian; so I'd like to hear the English National Anthem one last time." The leader nodded to a terrorist who studied in the United States and knew the music was the same as to 'God Bless America'. He returned with some rag-tag musicians and played the music. Jennings sighed and declared he could now die peacefully.

Cokie Roberts said, "I'm a reporter to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here and what's about to happen. Maybe some day someone will hear it and know that I was on the job till the end."

The leader directed an aide to hand over the tape recorder and Roberts dictated some comments. She then said, "Now I can die happy."

The leader turned and said, "And now, Mr. U.S. Marine, what is your final wish?"

"Kick me hard in the butt," said the Marine. "What?" asked the leader. "No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the behind," insisted the Marine! So the leader shoved him into the open, and kicked him in the hindparts. The Marine went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled a 9mm pistol from inside his cammies, and shot the leader dead. In the resulting confusion, he leapt to his knapsack, pulled out his M4 carbine, and sprayed the Iraqis with gunfire. In a flash, the Iraqis were dead or fleeing for their lives.

As the Marine was untying Rather, Jennings and Roberts, they asked him, "Why didn't you just shoot them? Why did you ask them to kick you?"!


"What!?" said the Marine, "And have you three pricks call ME the aggressor?"

me - HeyAudra look at this, I just rubbed my eye and 3 eyelashes came out!

Audra - Oooh, don't try to pull them out, they never grow back!

No way! Where did you hear that?

I had a science teacher that told us that. He barely had any eyelashes!

That's scary!

Yeah, it sure freaked me out in 8th grade too.

Not really, but it must be great for a kid to live near a ski mountain. When the kids get out for snow days, they get discounted lift tickets! They also have buses that carry them straight from school to the mountain! How cool would it be if your school bus had a ski rack and that was your after-school program?!

"I'm sooooo tired!" This is the response I get about 35% of the time when I ask someone how they are doing. The other 65% the response is "Good!", regardless of wether they really are. Ever had someone walking past you very quickly and they throw it out there and don't give you the time for a response to how you're really doing? I realized long ago that they don't really have the time/interest to know how you're doing, they just wanted to acknowledge your presence, which is fine, but why not just say "Hi"?

I guess that saying got started in the Navy but I'm not sure. Have you ever felt like you needed to tell something to someone but you were afraid to because you didn't have full trust that the person would keep their mouth shut? Probably not, because if you didn't completely trust that person, you wouldn't feel like you had to tell them. Unfortunately however, I am in that situation and have to deal with this on a surprisingly common basis with one of my leaders. It's complicated. I'm not talking about a situation where someone is being abused and you are required by law to report it, nothing on that scale.

So here is what I want to get out to the world.
#1 - Be wise with the information you recieve.
#2 - Know when to keep your mouth shut.

JonMichael just learned how to feed me fruit loops, this is the stuff dreams are made of.

If you haven't seen Tom Hanks in The Terminal, you should. Good clean movie.

JonMichael has an ear infection which is bad for everyone, and Audra is sick too.

Wolf Laurel has had some snow, which is good since we don't want to be skiing on mud. Hopefully they will get a lot more cold weather soon. I think we'll head further north next year.

I'm getting closer to making the decision to go thru Liberty to do my masters work. I'm feeling better and better about it and am excited to get started within the next few months. Audra wants to get her masters one day too, and is excited about the possiblity of studying thru Liberty as well.

Last night Audra and I stayed up a little late, just talking and hanging out. The tv was on and we watched Wife Swap. What caught my attention were the descriptions of the families at the beginning of the show - a Baptist-Christian family and a heavy metal family. Audra and I both groaned thinking they were going to play the Christians up as legalistic "neo-cons." After seeing just a couple of minutes of the show, it became obvious that ABC didn't have to play them up, they were already that way. The "Christians" were so mean and rude to the other family, it was really shameful. The rockers however were some of the kindest people I've ever seen and I would love to get to hang out with them. They had an incredible family life, as opposed to the oppressive life the other kids lived under their whip crackin' parents. I must have heard the term "devil worshippers" 15 times as the lady described how they looked, acted, etc... The rockers had a big cookout one evening and low and behold, the dad asked his friend if he would bless the food and the room stood still as this guy prayed the sweetest prayer over their meal, you could tell they were used to talking with God. A shocker for the lady, a time of celebration for Audra and me.

...buy it. Ken Gire is perhaps the most insightful author I've ever read, rivaling even Lucado. I've had it for quite a few years and it never ceases to grab a hold of me. For the next 4 Wednesday nights my Bible studies will come from this book...meaning I'm just going to sit there and read straight from the book.

Sunglasses with a built in digital music player, all for a cool $395-$495 a piece. Target customers for the Thump are active, athletic people who make at least $60,000 a year, says Oakley. Click the pic to go to the website. If I'll look as cool as the guys in the Oakley pictures, then I think I'll stay with my Walmart specials.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Forget about it: It's simply the best holiday special ever. Not only do we get the great music and Snoopy's penguin impersonation, there's also the crazy dance sequence, the tragic little tree and Linus lisping his way into our hearts with his take on the true meaning of Christmas. What's not to love?

It was time to freshen things up a little around here. Ditched the hit map, slowed things down too much. Added and deleted some links. Added the new "bad church sign of the moment" section, sure to be one of my favorite things. Thankfully I won't be able to get material for that section from my own church.

Have you been playing yet?

There are some days when it really gets to me just how much I love my son. Today has been one of those days. He didn't really do anything in particular, perhaps I'm just having a moment.

Perhaps Micah was right, maybe I am a redneck. Audra's 2 brothers were coming to see us yesterday and saw a huge boar dead on the side of I-10. They stopped to look at it and discovered it was still warm and bleeding, meaning it had just been hit. They threw the thing in the truck and we strung it up in the neighbor's front yard and cleaned it out, yeilding a cooler full of good meat! Who's coming for supper tonight?

31st Annual People's Choice Awards

My parents would talk about Santa, allthough they never dresssed up or anything like that. I never really believed in Santa and I don't think I missed out(wait, if I missed out, would I know it? Maybe I did miss out!). We're not doing Santa with our son, not because we're afraid of him and we're not going to boycott all things Santa, but it's just not our focus. We do things slightly different, we give a gold gift, frankensence(sp?) gift, and myrhh gift. Turns out pretty neat.

So I'm not for Santa, not against Santa, I'm just not interested and want to do things differently.


I wrote this reply to a thread posted on the Youth Specialties forums today.

1 pound coco powder
1 pound evaporated milk
1 pound coffee creamer
1 pound powdered sugar

Mix well(it makes a LOT so you'll be drinking it all winter). Add 1/2 cup of mix to your water and enjoy the best hot chocolate you've ever had!

mr. mom

Have you heard this song by Lonestar? It's country so many of you have not, but you should! Here's the chorus...

Well
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the fifteenth time
Breakfast, six naps at nine
There's bubble gum in the baby's hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long and it's only Monday
Mr. Mom

The last words in the song are, "Honey, you're my hero!"