On the road again...

Once upon a time, there was a husband and wife who were on Spring Break.  They decided they were tired of sitting around their apartment and needed some more adventure in their lives, so they packed up their car and headed into the wild blue yonder.  And they lived happily ever after.

I'd like to end my post there, but after the week Haley and I had, there needs to be some clarification:

• We left from school last Friday headed north.  The route we took through Texas, you might have thought we were headed to Choctaw Casino, but we were merely passing through.  We were making our way to Fayetteville, AR to visit Haley's best friend who just recently moved there.  Our drive was rather uneventful, we arrived safely, and we proceeded to spend the next couple of days sightseeing, hiking in the Devil's Den, and playing Settlers of Catan (our favorite board game).  On Monday, we refueled the car and headed off south.  We weren't headed home though.
• Haley got me a brand new tent for my wedding present and we'd been looking for a reason to test it out.  We decided to go camping on the way home from Arkansas and had made reservations at Caddo Lake State Park in Northeast Texas.  Our plan was to stay there for two nights and depart on Wednesday, but little did we know the disaster that awaited.  We went to bed Monday night with a slight chill in the air...we awoke at three in the morning to an arctic chill unlike any we'd ever seen.  We froze our tails off (as in shivering and huddling for warmth) until daybreak when we cooked a hasty breakfast, packed up camp, and headed to Haley's parent's house a day early.
• We arrived to a surprised (but ecstatic) mother-in-law.  We spent the next two days on a whirlwind tour of Tyler and Henderson, TX's furniture stores.  Oddly enough, furniture prices are much more reasonable in small town east Texas compared to Dallas.  We outfitted our entire house (that we close on at the end of the month) for less than I thought we'd spend on a couch.  

Thursday we returned home to the same apartment we'd left less than a week earlier, but we were changed people.  I realize this doesn't seem this odd to you as it does to me, but it was a Spring Break we'll never forget (for good and bad reasons).

A Grief Observed

Ok, so I stole a C.S. Lewis book title. His inspirational (I think I read part of it at Focus) book, however, is not what this post is about.

I ran across a great post today on Molly Piper's blog about walking with others through grief. In the last few years, I've walked with grieving friends and experienced personal grief - some handled well, and some not so much. But I love the way Molly challenges us to imagine one another's grief, "real love does not divert its eyes."

Read the post here.

Thank you insomnia...

Today I made the big jump and ordered an iPad 2.  I have somewhat coveted the iPad since it's initial release last year, but I kept telling myself I need to wait before I buy one.  In hindsight, I'm glad I got the second generation because it seems to have fixed a lot of the (minor) issues that the first release had.

I had a track meet last night, which tends to destroy my energy levels, so I humored the idea of waiting until my off period to order my iPad...I had to hope they didn't sell out of their initial order.  I ended up not being able to sleep very well last night, so around 3 am cst I made my order for an iPad 2 and a gray smart cover for it.  When I ordered it last night, Apple told me that it would ship in 5-8 days...as I type this right now it would ship in 2-3 weeks, so thank you insomnia.

If you were to ask me why I'm ordering an iPad I could give you only a partial answer:

• I ordered the wireless (without 3G) model to function like a laptop
• I think they're an awesome piece of technology
• I see some uses for it in my classroom next year possibly

None of those reasons really seems like a good reason to spend $500 on an iPad.  In reality though I spent a little over $100 on it because I recycled 2 old computers of mine through Apple's recycling program.  I'm also expecting to find new uses for the technology once I get it in my hands.  Hopefully, I'll be posting a number of ways I use my iPad when it comes in later next week.

Home is where...

Home ownership.  It seems like an easy thing.  In you head it's an easy thing: you get together some money for a down payment, you pick out the home of your dreams, and you buy it using money a bank loans you.  In reality the process is much more of an emotional roller coaster than we like to believe.  

We originally went looking at houses without much direction.  We knew the areas of town we would ideally like to be in, but not much else.  The houses we saw at first were wonderful houses, we could easily see ourselves living in any of them.  As we continued our search, we saw what was available in our price range and what we wanted our home to be for years to come.  We sat down and evaluated the pros and cons of each house and decided what were our top few houses.  Did we find the house of our dreams?  Not at this time.  We were stuck with two different houses at the top of our lists...so we went back to the drawing board.

At this point, I was convinced that we were making a huge mistake not jumping on one of the two properties, but I was willing to look one more time.  We went out again looking at different houses in the same area and we found it.  The house was everything I wanted and everything Haley wanted.  We weren't sure if we'd get it or not, but we knew it was the one we wanted.  It's still not officially "ours" yet, we still have a few weeks before closing and "anything can happen", but it feels like ours.

Looking back on the process, there were a number of times we were both convinced we needed to settle on a house and a number of times we both were convinced that we weren't going to get the house, but it all worked out for us (so far).  I just wasn't prepared from the outset for the ups and downs of home buying.

FCA Weekend of Champions

This last weekend, Tyler and I had the opportunity to travel with 2 other couples and 75 7th & 8th graders to Sky Ranch in Van, Texas for Fellowship of Christian Athlete's Weekend of Champions. It was an AWESOME weekend!

Here are the highlights:

• Getting to pray with and for our students and have spiritual conversations out of a school setting
• Clear gospel presentations and students giving their lives to the Lord
  
• A great speaker (who held their attention and really spoke TRUTH to middle school students WELL -- this can be a challenge at times!)
• a FABULOUS job of organization and ministry by FCA Dallas staff
• sweet, intentional ministry & encouragement to coaches by FCA staff
  
• fun with friends, old and new, and lots of fun with our kids!

We'll have a bit of a "Say-So" on Sunday and give our students a chance to share with each other and their families about the weekend! Praying for the gospel to be evident at this event!