she's always been extraordinary

A was home from school last Wed-Fri with double pneumonia. i know. i wouldn't have even guessed single pneumonia, but the radiologist that read her chest x-ray said it was really bad...like an old person's pneumonia! i didn't even take her to the dr. til friday, and that was only bc the weekend was coming and her fever was still up high. she really wasn't coughing that badly. that is, until we got to the drs. office, then she sounded like she was hacking up a lung. anyway, they loaded her up on shots and other drugs and she's doing fine now. that's all i wanted to say.

Castro for President

I have some friends, who I will not publicly name, who don't like Jason Castro. I might just be trying to draw them out onto the comment portion of the blog by writing this, but really I'm just dumbfounded. Seriously. Let's name his lovable qualities:
*believer in our Lord, Jesus Christ
*Fightin' Texas Aggie
*Hometown: Rockwall, TX
*Gig 'em
*LakePointe Church (where Wes Hamilton is on staff) member and worship team participant
*pleasant voice
*excellent musical skills, especially for one with no formal training, unlike the rest of those other people
*has said and/or done no offensive thing on the show
*funny...did you see him mimic Ryan Seacrest last week by mouthing along with him after pregnant pause, "American Idol"
*did I mention he's an Aggie?

I don't want to give the wrong impression or anything...it's not like I want to marry the guy. I'd just like the haters to come out with something substantial, or jump on my wagon.

p.s. this is so sad, really. and i blame it all on the absence of Kiefer Sutherland from my life.

Complicated: American Airlines & The Emergent Church

i s'pose you've heard about all the american airlines flights that have been canceled this week? We were heading up to Chicago Tues. night with some students, a couple of student workers, and our brand new middle school minister (yay!) when we got word that our flight had been canceled. Our new ms guy had already checked his luggage (he was taking a different flight)when he got word that his flight had been canceled, too. long story short, it was a real pain in the posterior. Especially for ms guy (hereafter referred to as db) who had to stand in line for hours w/ many other disgruntled passengers waiting to talk to more disgruntled employees who even resorted to cursing..."you'll get your *^$&**@!! luggage when you get to Chicago."

So we got booked on a United flight Wed. early morning and spent the night in a hotel up by the aeropuerta. When we got there to check in that morning, we met more disgruntled employees, this time working for United. They were ticked off that AA wasn't handling the problem well at all and wasn't easy to work with. They had to call them to get some kind of number to find our boarding passes. idk, but i'm very thankful for the one woman who was patient and persistent enough to get us checked in.

We've had a nice time here at the conference, except none of us are quite sure how all this "Emergent Church" stuff has come to the forefront of seemingly every "talk." it's definitely a buzz word and sometimes i think that people (who all seem to wear square, black glasses and a goatee)are trying way too hard to seem intellectual and relevant. Jesus' ministry strategy sure seems more simple than any of these people want to believe.

BUT there have been a lot of good things we've heard, too. And, as always, Chicago is a fun place to go. I am ready, though, to sleep in my own bed tonight...539 more flights canceled so far today...hope we can get home!

(Un)Pimp My Ride

The van was pretty much on its last legs, so we traded it in. We'd dealt for longer than we wanted with the dumb power door that has not worked correctly (even though "fixed") when I ran it into a covered-parking-pole in Midland. But that's another story altogether. These days, the green machine was needing a brand new engine. So we opted for a newer vehicle instead. After a long and hard Internet search (i heart the world wide web), we located a 2007 black Hyundai Santa Fe that we really liked. But the previous owner apparently had a bit more flare than we do. From the pictures, it looked like the wheels were spinners. When we went to drive it, we saw that, though not spinners, they were, indeed, post-manufacturer wheels that had been added. They were called "Spike", and looked very much like something Maxwell Smart would have on his car in order to slice the tires of bad guys in a car chase...while talking on his rotary-dial shoe phone. Needless to say, the wheels had to go. We got new ones, the regular variety, and hope to sell the 4 "Spike" wheels on ebay or craigs list or something. Also, we had them cover the cloth seats in leather. Did you know you could do that? It's almost like a brand new car, except for 18,000 miles, but much less expensive!