Merry Christmas 2006

Everyone home in time to attend the Christmas Eve service at Fellowship. All is well. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

planes, trains and automobiles

z was supposed to fly home from Denver last night but...the airport has been shut down for a couple of days due to a blizzard. since so many flights were cancelled, the best the airline can do is get him home late Christmas day. he's decided to go with plan B: catch a ride with a friend to indianapolis, then fly from indy to atlanta. now, if i make him take marta (atlanta's light rail service) from the airport up to our side of town, he will have completed the trinity of travel - planes, trains and automobiles. at least he doesn't have an unwanted travel buddy ("those aren't pillows!"). here's a pic of a car in his driveway early yesterday morning.

Sudden Mustache Day '06 (smd06)

Yes, although it doesn't have quite the momentum of national talk like a pirate day (september 19), sudden mustache day (dec 1) still exists. Here's a pic from this year. Go back to posts in late 2004 (oct thru dec) to see what this is all about...

I'm still here

Whoops. Accidentally didn't post for a year. Well, Cindy and I are now empty-nesters, although Zak and Lauren and our friends the Danielssons from Florida will be here for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving. The transition into empty-nesters has had some sadness, but it's had the tradeoff of the reward of spending more time with and focus on Cindy. A couple of things I've learned: 1) As a married couple, be sure you invest lots of time in each other while the kids are at home. So many couples lives revolve completely around their kids, but the kids go away... 2) Make sure you develop relationships with others while your kids are at home. When they leave, those relationships will become even more meaningul and will help fill some of the void you'll feel when the kids move away. Deep thoughts...


So, just cuz I like to post pictures, here's a pic of me and Crowder taken last summer at a Third Day/Crowder concert up in Chattanooga. Gotta love this guy. Some people have called his beard style a "crowder" and there's even a website called
growyourcrowder.com. My beard in this pic is kind of a jr. crowder. Incidentally, have I mentioned that Sudden Mustache Day 07 is just around the corner?

SPLOG or BLAM

had to REALLY tighten up the comments area of this blog cuz apparently the spammers out there decided to start posting their solicitations on blogs. too bad. so is blog spam called splog or blam?

speaking of full houses...have some guests (6)from poland staying with us. they're attending a missions conference here in town. on top of that, lauren had 3 of her girlfriends stay last night. i like having a house full of people.

full house empty house

since sunday is a "work day", i TRY to take some time off on fridays. it works about half of the time... but today i'm home enjoying a house full of people. z is home for the first time since he left for college and our friend tami and her son jesse drove up for the weekend from florida.

yesterday we "kidnapped" lauren from school so we could have a family lunch together (welcome to moe's!). for any of you with kids still at home, don't take those all-family dinners for granted because they'll be scarce before you know it.

so anyhoo, we've got this house full of people but...everyone's gone. z is with his girlfriend sheryl, lauren is at school then work then a haunted house, cindy tami and jesse went to ikea. i'm home with the dog. think i'll get another cup of coffee and practice piano. not bad.

dust and 802.11g

sanding down the spackling in my dining room - a lot of dust in there. needed to get a little fresh air so i'm sitting on my back deck catching my breath. the weather is cool, humidity is low and my 802.11g wireless network is rocking!

tonight is lauren's homecoming. amazing how much more goes into these things than when i was in school. kind of like an early prom. i'm sure she'll have a great time.

home improvement

finally - some rain in atlanta. we went quite a while without it. that's the good news. the bad news it that i've been driving the old mustang convertible around today - the one that needs a new top - the one that leaks so much that it's raining almost as much inside as outside. oh well, could be worse.

spent some time today spackling the walls in our dining room. we decided to take off the old wallpaper. how hard could that be??? worst home improvement project of my life. but now we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. should be able to start painting this weekend.

decided to NOT go to a couple of events i normally attend - catalyst and the fbc men's retreat. too many good things can be a bad thing. need to keep a little margin in my life.

lucky

this is a recent picture of z in his backyard.


so here it is october already. and i've received a bit of grief about not updating this blog enough. it's time to break down the walls of blogdom - who says you have to update it all the time. maybe sometimes you just don't feel like talking... :-)

end of an era

listed our minivan on autotrader.com today. this was our second minivan - purchased for the days of carpool, music lessons, sports and family vacations. sounds sentimental, but i never was a big minivan fan...so if you want to buy it - search autotrader in the 30022 zip code. i'll make you a great deal!


heard from z today. said that yesterday (saturday) he went to a beach volleyball tournament that had olympic players, did a long run in the mountains, then hung out at rocky mountain national park last night. lucky.

emotions

i haven't posted in quite a while because since i returned from europe, it seems as if i've constantly had something going on. culminating in this past week when i experienced pretty much every emotion you can feel.

flew out to boulder with z on tuesday morning. although i knew that i'd miss him, for most of the time leading up to him leaving for college i was just excited for him to have the opportunity to move to such a beautiful place and study. that was until monday night when i saw the suitcases packed and his closet empty. suddenly the sadness hit me big time. then when i said goodbye to him in the parking lot outside his dorm on wednesday...it was an emotional drive back to the airport. on the postive side, here's a pic we took at a spot about a 10 to 15 minute drive from his dorm room. lucky.


so i've got 3 takeaways from the experience of dropping off a kid at college for anyone who has pre-college kids. 1) save your money. not just for tuition, books (a racket), room and board, but all those other miscellaneous expenses that creep up on you. even if you just sock away a little at a time, you'll be glad you did. 2) it's a lot more emotional than you think it will be. 'nuff said. 3) when you drop off your kid at college, there are NO BOUNDARIES and they can do whatever they want. don't let that be a major change for them. loosen up their boundaries as they grow older in high school - maybe even let them make some mistakes while they're at home - so that the college transition to total freedom isn't that much different.

flew back into town wednesday night and headed straight to a rehearsal for an event we held at the church - 80s night. we'll occasionally do entertainment-oriented events at church where the only goal is to provide an environment where our members can bring friends who may not want to visit church, but will come to a night of entertainment. our only goal is for them to feel welcomed and walk away thinking that church people aren't so bad after all. i get occasional pushback from people about why we would do this. why we would do songs like "money for nothing," "thriller," and "whip it" in a church. i could get into a long discussion about this here, let's just say "all things to all men." whatever we can do to win some, without compromising our integrity, that's what we'll do. anyhoo, here i am in my devo outfit.



speaking of more emotions, got a v-mail from my friend wayne schroder while i was in boulder telling me that his wife ida had gone to be with the LORD. ida had been battling cancer for 3 years. ida served with our worship team and always had a smile on her face. she was an encourager and a woman of prayer. the worship team led in worship at her memorial service last saturday and i had the honor of officiating. ida - you lived a life that demonstrated the love of Christ and kept the faith until the end. i look forward to seeing you in glory someday in the future.

july

it's been an incredibly busy july. z and i returned this morning from a 2-week trip to europe. we were part of a team that performed outreach concerts and taught at an arts camp in poland. on the way home, z and i had a 2day "layover" in paris. more info on the team trip at durand robertson's site - gemcwtheworks.blogspot.com.

music stuff

here's a pic of the family (including cindy's mom) after the concert at spivey hall (south of atlanta) last week. check out z in a tux - with tails even!


many late nights this week. recorded a live worship cd at church. today i'm going to play outside in the dirt to refresh myself and my yard.

stuff and gardening part 5

lots going on this summer. taught at fbc last weekend on the presence of God. you can check it out online at www.fbconline.org. went with some worship team members up to the billy graham training center (the cove) in asheville for a few days this week. darlene zschech from hillsongs church in australia led a worship seminar. she has some great insights and it was refreshing to have some extended worship times with participants from over 300 churches around the country.

today z is playing in a recital down at spivey hall. he's playing the 1st movement of mozart's d minor piano concerto with the metropolitan youth symphony orchestra. should be cool.

meanwhile, in the garden...here's a picture of the front perennial garden in june:


and here's a shot from the back garden. the red stuff is bee balm (native plant, can be invasive if you don't watch it) contrasting with the blue hydrangeas. nice.

here comes the...

man, haven't seen that bright thing in the sky for almost a week! nice to finally get things dried out. would post more pictures from my garden (woo-hoo!), but i need a new battery for my camera.

the graduate

it's been a busy couple of weeks. saw z graduate from high school. a lot of different emotions going on with this - never been here before. had friends up for memorial day weekend, planned to take some days off to work in the gardens, but it's been raining for days! oh well.

21 years ago today

21 years ago today, this beautiful woman for some strange reason married me. i became the most blessed guy on the planet.


21 years ago yesterday, my mom bought me some new underwear for my honeymoon.

sabbath

another busy sunday. church this morning, straight to cindy's students' recital, straight to z's baccalaureate service. well, the sabbath really is on saturday anyway...

this was my first baccalaureate and it was pretty good. chip ingram gave the main message all about the dangers of materialism and relativism. jere wood, the mayor of roswell, was pretty unimpressive following chip. basically said something to the effect of "go out there and party." thanks jere. who voted you in?

btw, the baccalaureate service derives from the medieval European custom of presenting the candidates for the degree of bachelor (bacca) with laurels (lauri) of sermonic oration. (definition from www.bates.edu)

gardening part 4

i'm sorry...but just have to post a picture of my first rose bloom of the year. was at lowes a couple of months back when someone got on the intercom to announce all roses 90% off. well, i'm not really into the hassle of growing roses in this part of the country, but being the sucker for a good deal. i mean, $1 for a rose plant? i'd be a fool not to get...a few. well, i planted one in a pot on my back deck and here's my first bloom.


and speaking of accordions (???), my buddy bill plunk and his wife are coming over tonight. bill took accordion lessons as a kid (it was a real babe magnet), and is bringing his accordion over to show me how to use all those left hand buttons. going to grill some sausage, make it a real bavarian evening.

sometimes i'm just random part 2

ok, i've lived in the south for over 25 years and have never been to a wedding quite like this...

although i have to admit that i was surprised to see statues and memorials to "our confederate soldiers" when i moved here from indiana back in the 70s. a whole different perspective in the south about the "war of northern agression." sweet, little old ladies in savannah are still ticked off about sherman camping out in their city after he trashed atlanta.

gardening part 3

here's a picture of some blooms in my front perennial garden. check out the difference from just over a week ago posted previously. from front to back you'll see morning primrose (pink), homestead verbena (purple) and irises (purple and white). i use a lot of this color combination cuz it's cindy's favorite.

and yes, this is a second gnome that lives in my backyard garden currently hanging out among the snapdragons.

this is why they call them snapdragons. if you pull them apart, it looks like a dragon's mouth...kind of. i guess this is changing from a blog to a glog (garden log)!

you can do anything...

...at zombocom. worth a post of it's own - zombo.com.

university of colorado

z finally made a decision to attend the university of colorado at boulder this fall. although his first choices were in california, the numbers just didn't add up. the folks at colorado have been extremely helpful and generous and seem to really want him to go out there. not a bad place to live for a few years...

we almost moved to colorado about 10 years ago. my company was relocating their headquarters to boulder and wanted me to move out there. cindy and i checked it out and decided it would be nice. even had a house picked out - the backyard backed up to a golf course that backed up to the mountains. was ready to pull the trigger when my boss said "well, we just bought another company in chicago, so i think i want you to move up there." uh...nice city, but i fled the great white north a long time ago - nothing against it, i just like the warmer climate. and once you've added "ya'll" to your vocabulary, it's hard to move north of the mason-dixon line.

gardening part 2

spring in georgia is a wonderful thing. this year has been especially cool, slowing a lot of the plant growth, but prolonging some of our early spring flowering. here are a couple of my azaleas:

and here are some plants in my woodland shade garden in the backyard. clockwise from top - astilbe, jacobs ladder, bearded iris (barely get enough sun here to bloom), snapdragons (they were on clearance at lowes - got a bunch for about .60 - i'm a sucker for a good deal), gerber daisys (special at publix - got'em cheaper than at a nursery), in the center is an easter lily i threw in the ground after easter last year. and check out that gnome - one of 2 in my backyard. if you're really quiet and leave them a little food, they move in:

and here's the early growth in my front perennial garden. i'll have stuff about 8 feet tall in here by the end of the summer:

is my life exciting, or what???

spring break

managed to get out of town for a few days for an all-american vacation in florida. drove down to tampa and spent a day at busch gardens, then over to orlando to stay with our friends tami, per and jessie danielsson. here i am chillin' with the flamingos at busch gardens.

here are the 3 kids at mgm.

i guess a sign of age is when you go to places like these and find yourself more interested in the plants and landscaping than in the rides. oh well.

gardening

this is a florida shield fern, aka dryopteris ludoviciana. it's a native to the southeast and is one of only a few ferns that can take full sun. i'm going to put it in a sunny, slightly moist spot next to my driveway in front of one of my perennial planting areas.

i took last monday off to rest up from the busy easter activities. i ended up ordering a few plants online - first time i'd done that. so - i've got a bunch of new plants ready to go, but it's been raining like crazy and probably will tomorrow again... so i've gotta wait.

i find gardening very relaxing. i can spend hours working in my yard and end up feeling refreshed. i think tending a garden might be in my genes.

Easter 2005

had a great easter weekend. 2 good friday services, 3 easter services. after the services on sunday, we had our small group families over. it was raining pretty hard, so had an easter egg hunt inside. someone thought it would be funny to put a pickle and some olives in a couple of the eggs. the kids didn't think it was that funny.

and of course, what easter celebration would be complete without some accordion (aka party-in-a-box) music. it really got the ladies dancing.


my buddy bill plunk (accordionist extraordinaire) wants to start a christian emo worship accordion band called "suspected spam." how could you go wrong?

happy st. patricks day

I take for my sureties: The power of God to guide me, The might of God to uphold me, The wisdom of God to teach me, The eye of God to watch over me, The ear of God to hear me, The word of God to give me speech, The hand of God to protect me, The way of God to go before me, The shield of God to shelter me....

Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. -St. Patrick

and i'll still pinch you if you're not wearing green today...

fiddlin'

sunday - a day of rest...sorta. i slept in an hour later cuz i wasn't leading worship today (got up at 6am rather than 5am). sat in 1st service, did a new member interview 2nd service, taught the college classs 3rd service - outside on the deck - nice, came home to accompany a bunch of cindy's students on their fiddle recital. it was pretty fun.

cleaned up after the recital, went out to our friends the whitaker's house for dinner. just got home around 10pm. well, really Saturday is the sabbath anyway.

sometimes i'm just random

this picture has nothing to do with anything going on in my life. i just thought it was slightly disturbing.

this is the kind of post i make when i haven't slept well for a few days...