Whirlwind Month

It is crazy to me that it is the 28th of September already. Where had this month gone. It seams like only yesterday that it was the beginning of the month. It seams like Katie and Ben and I have had something to do every week and weekend and work has been more than crazy.

Benjamin started Mothers Day Out this month and it is awesome. He loves it. He goes there on Tuesday and Thursday from 9 - 2:30. It is amazing to see how many things he is learning both from the teachers and from the other kids. He is getting so good at talking. He is consistently speaking in full sentences and is enunciation is improving in leaps and bounds. We had a little period where he had some trouble adjusting from being with Mommy all day every day to being at MDO two days a week. He is essentially spending 18 hours a week up at the Church between Sunday, Monday MOMs, MDO, and Wed night. Needless to say it took him a little while to adjust to that. He was very much missing his mommy time for a while.

Katie is really enjoying school. At first it was very overwhelming but now she is settling into the routine and doing very well. She has always been a excellent student and now is no different. She works very hard and will continue to do well. It's taking a lot more time than she was expecting to be in there full time so next semester she is considering backing off to part time but either way I'm very proud of her and excited that she is working on finishing.

Work has been crazy. Every week there is a big deadline and a big project that we've been working on. I have one long term project that has been taking up an enormous amount of time along with other shorter term things here and there. It has been a crazy month and will probably keep up at this pace through the end of the year. It's a very exciting time at the office as lots of things are falling into place to lead to us growing and really starting to get moving ahead like we've been working on for a while now.

A Proud Day

Today was Benjamin's first day of Mother's Day Out. It's not really his first day of school but in a lot of ways it felt that way. We headed out the door this morning book bag and lunch box in tow. Walked him up to his classroom and headed off. He had a great day. He's going Tues and Thurs from 9 AM to 2:30 PM. It's a great time for him . He's going to be learning stuff, playing with friends, and most importantly spending time with other kids and learning to interact and share. It also gives Katie several hours of time to take classes and study.

Benjamin never ceases to amaze me and Katie and I are very proud of him.

Weekends are too short

This weekend was a lot of fun. As usual it flew by. Friday night we went out for Pizza and Beer with some friends. We had a really good time. Ben got to laugh and play with one of his friends and Katie and I got to spend some time with a really great couple that we are trying to hang out with more often.

Saturday morning my sister was in town for my uncle Joe's wedding so we went over to parents house for donuts and pastry and to visit. It was a really good visit and lots of fun. Benjamin had a blast and it was good to get to visit with my sister.

Saturday night it was off to Tres Suenos Winery outside of Luther, OK for my Uncle Joe's wedding. It was a good wedding but boy was it hot and it was an outside wedding. Thankfully they had us inside prior to the ceremony since it started almost 45 min late. Then we were outside for 35 min for the ceremony. It was very beautiful. They were having a problem with the sound equipment so unfortunately we couldn't hear any of it, but it was really nice. Plus we got to restock the wine rack with some really good wine so that was a plus.

This morning we headed to Sunday School and Church. After that I had a middle school parent lunch that I went to so I could meet some of the parents of my eighth graders. Met just a few of them but spent most of the time corralling the students while the parents learning about the MSM (Middle School Ministry)

This evening we went to a joint Sunday School back to school pool party at a neighborhood aquatic center. It was a blast. They have a water slide and a walk in "beach" front pool. Ben had a blast. He loved being able to walk into the water and play. He thought people coming down the water slide was great too.

Now I'm doing the Sunday night routine of looking at what's involved in the week and getting things ready.

I'm a tech geek

So I finally broke down and agreed to get Katie and iPod. I had resisted before and the last time she wanted an MP3 play gotten her another kind. It worked but just didn't have all of the bells and wistles. I thought it would be a good going back to school thing so she is now the proud owner of a pink nano.

The nano showed up today and I think I was every bit as excited to load it as she was to use it. I've been working on importing all of her CDs and setting it up. I hope that it proves useful and enjoyable.

I love Sundays

Sunday's are great. Typical Sunday means getting up and going to Sunday School and Church. Afterward going out to lunch with Katie and Benjamin. Home to nap, mow the lawn, etc. before community group starts.

This Sunday started a little differently because Ben decided that he'd wake up a little early. 5 AM early. So he and I were watching 101 Dalmations this morning. Well he was watching it and I was trying to get a little more sleep between requests for Milk, books and etc.

Once it got to be a normal hour everyone got ready and we headed to Church. Sunday school was really good and Church was excellent. After that we headed to Qdoba to grab some food. Ben had peed on his shoes while in the nursery so between him not having shoes and being up super early we decided to grab the food and take it home. We ate lunch and Katie and Ben load down for a nap. I ran to Sears to grab some weed eater cord and then headed back home to mow the yard.

After the yard I hopped through the shower and then finished getting ready for group. Group tonight was awesome. The people in our group are some our closest friends and we always have a good time. Tonight was no exception. We had a blast. We had a new couple that we had invited and they fit in really well.

Sunday ends with me relaxing and thinking about the week ahead. It's a good time to go through my to-do list at work set priorities for the week, check schedule, etc.

On that note.... I should probably get after it.

Oh yeah... just remembered.... this Sunday is exciting because I finally broke down and got Katie and iPod and it left the FedEx tactility in Memphis this afternoon which means it will probably be here tomorrow but definitely by Tues.

Fun Days

Friday was a great day at work. I got a ton accomplished and it was fast paced. Friday evening I went with some friends to play golf. It was my second time in two weeks. I also went last Friday which makes this the most I have played in more than a year. I had a great time and hope to keep playing about once a month. They guys I'm going with are a blast. I'm hoping to start playing about once a month to get back into practice and have some fun guy time. Yesterday I shot a 53 for nine holes which is averaging double bogey on each hole. I was very happy with that.

This morning I was at the Church for community group leader training. It was very good. They brought in the pastor who's in charge of community groups at Willow Creek. He has some excellent ideas and I enjoyed it very much.

After the training I picked up Ben from my parents and we came home and played and tidied up the house because we were having company over for dinner. My roommate from my freshmen year at OSU was joining us for dinner. He is a very good friend of mine and I just recently found out that he was living in OKC and he isn't living here much longer. He and I have gone to lunch a couple of times over the past few weeks and caught back up. He was interested to meet Katie and she him so we had him over for dinner tonight. It was a great time. Great food, conversation, all in all a wonderful evening.

Katie had non traditional student orientation day today at UCO. She enjoyed it and got a lot of good info. She's out at a fun before start of school event tonight. They were going to have laser tag, rock wall, and all kind of events tonight. She was going with a friend she met this morning and I'm glad she's going and getting involved.

Well..... I had better work on finishing the bible study for tomorrow nights group.

Crazy from the start

Today was one of those crazy days. This morning was great. Basketball was a lot of fun. I managed to get out of bed close to when the alarm went off and was there at 5:30 in time to play in the first game rather than being there about 6 when they've already started like I normally do.

At work we were doing a turn up for a client who was having to transfer from SBC to AT &T. That took up most of the morning while I tried to work in all the other things that I needed to do the rest of the day. It was a great day but very hectic. I didn't get out until about 6:02 and ran right into the house and loaded up to head to a friends house for his birthday.

Katie and I had a great time at our friends party. It wasn't really a party but, just some friends getting together for cake and ice cream. It was a blast.

I am looking forward to tomorrow because it's Friday and should be a good day. Going to lunch with some really good friends and just going to enjoy the day.

Catch Up....What's been going on

It has been a busy and eventful month.

First of all it's July / August in OK so it's HOT. My men's softball league has wrapped up for the year until next spring. I have joined Katie's co-ed team because they lost a couple of players which is great. I am very much enjoying playing with he again. I enjoy playing with the guys but it's a lot more laid back and fun with Katie and her team.

Things at work are going great. Since I joined the company (2 years ago 7/24) we have been working on getting things shored up and ready for growth. We are at that point. For the first time we're actively seeking out new clients. Previously we've always been working off of referral only but want to move on past that. It's very exciting to me.

Ben is doing awesome. He is growing daily both physically and mentally. His vocabulary is increasing daily. I haven't spent a lot of time with 2.5 - 3 year olds, and I'm sure every parent thinks but he's really impressive. He has a couple of books that he likes to read and if you want him to he'll recite the entire thing to you. You can read the first 3 or 4 words of a paragraph and he'll say the rest. I can't even do that.... granted Katie has read him the book way more times than I have read it. Things like this that probably aren't overall spectacular, seem that way to me. It's a new cool thing daily.

The summer has flown by. With Katie going back to school and Ben starting mothers day out it really feels like summer for the first time. Growing up it was easy to distinguish summer because it started and ended. Now it's not as easy because work is constant and the heat isn't consistent enough to gauge. But since Katie has been preparing for school there is a designated end.

I am so excited, and so is she, about Katie going to back to school. She has wanted this for a long time and we've just never been in a place where she could. She either didn't have enough time, or more likely I didn't have enough, or there was no good school. Thankfully all of the things that have to have fallen into place and she starts on Tuesday. She was at UCO today to finalize some things and Saturday she has a non-traditional student orientation day which will be good.

We started back to weekly small group Sunday which will be nice. Over the summer we met twice a month and it was hard to have a consistent lesson or make it part of the routine. We have started a brand new study on Acts that Katie and I are both very excited about.

I'm off to bed so I can get some sleep and be awake at basketball in the morning.

My Week Away

I was out of the office last week all week. For those of you that know me that doesn't happen very often. Yes it should happen more often and I want it to happen more but right now that just isn't easy. That however, is a topic for another day, I'd rather focus on how great my week was.

From Saturday through Wednesday I was at Student Life Camp with the seventh and eighth graders from my church. This was the first time that I went to camp with the kids and it was awesome. I will definitely be going back next year. We left on Saturday morning and travelled by bus to Roach, MO to a beautiful resort center there on lake of the Ozarks. The bus trip was a blast. We had to pull out at 6 AM so the kids were a little sleepy. We arrived there that afternoon, checked in, unpacked, and got started. From there it was 3 days of celebration, worship, and fun. We had boats for two days and did lots of tubing. The third day we did a ropes course which was a blast. The worship band and speaker that was there were fabulous.

The only downside, well maybe another upside, of the camp was that I had absolutely no cell phone coverage. T-Mobile was just not present there. People with Sprint, AT&T, no issues. MO is apparently not a big T-Mobile state. Thankfully the facility did have wireless in the locations so anytime I was in one of those places I could get my email and check voicemail. But it was good for me to be disconnected.

Wednesday morning at 10:00 AM we loaded up the buses and headed back. It was amazing to watch those kids get so involved and have such a great time.

I took Thursday off as well and Friday was a holiday so it finished off the week. Thursday was a fun day spent with the family. Friday we went swimming then went over to some friends to shoot some fireworks before heading to UCO to watch the fireworks there. Ben wasn't a big fan of the fireworks we were shooting off after one popped pretty close to him. He did however love the big display later in the night. Saturday and Sunday were awesome. Lots of time with Katie and Ben. Sunday we got to see one of our really good friends preach at Church because they are trying to let some of the junior pastors preach on occasion and it was his turn. He did great. Sunday night we had group. One couple had a prior commitment and another wasn't feeling well so it was a very small group but it was still lots of fun.

Today was a long day getting settled back into work but it's nice to know that I was missed both at work and at home. I look forward to my next vacation.

Great Friends

It's nice in life to know that you have some truly great friends. Mine aren't necessarily the people that I've known the longest in my life. Some of them are people I see often now some of them are not. The ones I am thinking of tonight are the ones that I don't see very often any more. This week I have talked to two friends that I don't talk to or see very often. But that doesn't matter to them. Even though we haven't spoken in months we just pick up where we left off. There isn't any hurt feelings because neither has called or written, there is just friendship. One of the guys is coming through town on a road trip and sent me an email checking to make sure it was okay to crash here on the way back through. The other I'm going to grab some lunch with tomorrow before he leaves OKC again.

I just hope that I continue to make more friends like these in life.

Play Time

Today was a great day. Ben stayed with Nana and PawPaw last night because I was out with the boys and it let Katie have a night to herself which she rarely gets. We took the dogs to the vet this morning for their yearly checkup. Other than the fact that their 10 lbs over weight, need a good teeth cleaning, and Memphis has a mild infection in his left ear they are in great health. They did really well. For those of you that don't know the dogs they are beyond shy and don't like people. Needless to say going to the vet is usually a little traumatic.

After the vet we headed for my parents house for brunch. Linda was in town for the weekend so we were meeting over there to visit for a while. We talked, ate some food, had a good time.

The best part of the day though was playing with Benjamin. He and I just played and rough housed for the longest time. It's was great. He's oldest enough to actually rough house and it's so much fun. He was jumping on me, playing with liter bottles, all kinds of stuff. I loved it.

About 1:30 we headed back the house and all piled down for nap time. After nap we ate the delicious roast that Katie had prepared, cleaned the house a little, and played some more.

I gave Ben a bath and we put him down for bed.

Fun with the boys

I went out with the boys from Sunday school last night and it was a great time. We went to a new place in Bricktown. I say new, I think it's probably been there for about 6 months. The place is called the Red Pin Lounge. It's a 10 lane bowling alley / lounge. It's a different twist on the typical bowling experience. When you get there they show you to your lane and then the waitress comes and gets your shoe size, drink and food orders. Since it was a Sunday school function we were of course just drinking cokes, tea, and water. There were eight of us on two lanes and all of us had a blast. We bowled for 2 hours. The environment was a lot of fun.

After bowling we sat outside by the canal. It was a beautiful night and there were lots of people walking by and passing by in boats. We sat around and talked until a little past 1:00 Am. It was a great night.

I love my family

I love my family very much. Today was a long day. If something weird
or odd could happen it did. Clients servers stop working, some of
ours in non-tech terms lost their mind, it was crazy.
We finally got the problem figured out at 5:40. The family was
planning on going to the zoo and the gates close at 6. So at 5 till 6
I ran into the zoo just in time. Changed my close and now we're
walking around enjoying the animals. I am having such a great time.
This is just what I needed.

--
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Another day comes to a close

Today was a good day. It had almost all the elements for a great day. I got up early this morning to head into work to get some stuff out of the way before everyone got in. Got a lot done at the office, good over all productive day. Came home and mowed the lawn which really needed it. With all the rain lately, which I'm very grateful for, it had really sprouted. After mowing the yard played with Ben and got him down to bed. Relaxed and watched a good movie.

I'm sad that there's no basketball in the morning but happy to lose the gym for a good cause. From listening to Katie it sounds like VBS has good this year and their having more fun in the gym than us guys would.

Swimming with Ben

Last night we took Benjamin to the neighborhood pool for the first time. We had gotten him a tube swim trainer at the end of last summer and were eager to try it out. We got him in it and he and I got into the pool. Unfortunately the tube just kept trying to flip him upside down every time he leaned forward so it wasn't working as it was supposed to. Between the pool being a little cold and him being spooked about almost being flipped over he was ready to get out very soon. He was very content to sit on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water with Katie and throw the dive sticks in the water for me to retrieve. It was a lot of fun.

Fun at the Lake

I went to the lake on Saturday with the middle school kids and it was a blast. It was really windy so only one of the boats was in the water which forced us to improvise. We played water football, marco polo, and other various water games. We also used the other tube for different things. We wrestled, flipped, surfed, just about every other thing you can do on a tube. It was a lot of fun. I went out with a group for a pass at the lake and got to take a few rides on the tube which was a blast. It was really rough and it make it lots of fun. Boy was I sore the day after that.

We had a good scare when we were trying to load out. We were headed into the cove where the ramp was and got in rhythm with the waves and ended up with the bow under the water. The girl who was driving (it was her dad's boat) got spooked and hit the throttle which put it further under. By the time her dad grabbed it and kicked it into reverse the water was above the seats. On the 4th pass he was able to get it alongside the dock and everyone hopped out to get the trailer. I spun the boat around the cove until the trailer was in the water and then put it up on the trailer. After the boat was pulled out we pulled the drain plug and it ran water full for the better part of 20 minutes.

About 1:30 we decided that it was time to call it a day and packed up. It was really nice to be home by 2:30 and not have a 2 hour drive. Originally we were supposed to go to lake Murry but ended up at Arcadia.

Everyone had fun and made it home safe so the day was a success.