spring training here i come

so i head out on thursday for a long weekend at spring training. this is a christmas present from L and i'm incredibly excited. here is the first tidbit that i wrote and brian and i will be writing more over the weekend while we're there. feel free to keep up with our adventures ;-)

one more year until...

tee ball :-) look at that form and concentration!!

we had a great weekend visiting with family and friends and jake had a big time at his party playing with his friends on the train table and eating cake. the house is empty now and has already been straightened back up in prep for wednesday night's small group.

tmrw starts a new week at work, but it's only for 3.5 days for me as i fly to florida around noon on thursday. i'm so excited for spring training!!

happy birthday jake!

i love you son. enjoy the awesome train table. i know we'll have hours of fun mixing and matching the pieces. we're having a party for you tomorrow and a lot of your family and friends are coming into town just for you! thanks for being such a good kid and for opening my eyes to the imagination of a child and the wonderful creativity of our Lord.

ash wednesday

ash wednesday was yesterday and we just happened to move our lifegroup (church small group) to wednesday nights starting this week. as you probably know, i'm drawn to the more liturgical / episcopal / catholic style of worship even though i've never really attended that kind of church (with the exception of senior year in college when i went to the episcopal 8am service, the baptist church for sunday school with the college group, and the nazarene church for worship service. yeah, i was a weirdo, but i really enjoyed it).

anywho, i prayed most of the day and consulted a couple of confidantes about how to handle our lifegroup time - go all out with a full ash wednesday service, just explain the significance of the day, or somewhere in between. our backgrounds are varied and i didn't know how the response would be. in the end, i decided to ask them to indulge me in a full service. i made my own ashes, but then i added too much oil and it turned to sludge (the how-to also said to add the oil right before and i added it way too early) so we didn't end up using it. the whole thing turned out really well and everyone responded well to the readings and our prayers. i'm thankful for their encouragement and i'm glad i followed the leading of the Spirit to go through with it. this writing really helped me to make the final decision to go through with the service. thanks to my online acquaintance kyle.

spring training

this was a little more poignant when i typed this up on monday with snow still on the ground. now it's in the 50's and i think winter may actually be pretty much over. wild! here goes:

"spring is near. not because the groundhog told me that spring would come sooner rather than later. not because I stepped out into single digit temperatures this morning. no, it's because spring training has begun. pitchers and catchers are working together. position players are rolling into town. the manager and coaches have begun barking orders. yes, spring is near.

as the new manager of the washington nationals, manny acta begins spring training with the enthusiasm and vigor that makes him so likeable. acta also begins spring training with a morass of over 70 players. the players will work out and attempt to gain his favor as the organization whittles the number down to the opening day 25. you know that saying from the first day of engineering (or law or graduate) school: "look at the person on your left and the person on your right - only one of you three will be graduating with an engineering degree in 4 years." well, the same could be said to all those invited to spring training."

and yes, i'm going back to spring training this year, but for an entire long weekend with only that on the agenda. 8 days til florida. viera here i come!

cock-a-doodle-doo

can you tell the semester started? two weeks of no posts. oh well. i'm not feeling terribly overloaded at this point, but i do feel like i'm running out of hours in the day. thus the decision to hop out of bed right at 5am (instead of hitting snooze from 5:15a to 6:00a), get ready quick (instead of piddling), and get out the door early today. i got to work at 6:10a - beating my previous record by more than 30 minutes. however, since i have class today, if i work til 5:00p, that will only be 8 hours put in. alas.

congrats again to new parents stacey and kevin!!

february - a month for movies?

so i was flipping through the tivo guide last night and i noticed m*a*s*h was starting in one minute. now, i wasn't particularly enthused to watch it, having never really given the sit-com a chance, but it is on the afi top 100 list and catching it on tv eliminates having to wait to get it from netflix. (speaking of, i love netflix, but they need to shave a day off their turnaround for me. i wouldn't be surprised if they told me it really is my local post office's fault, but i had it good in woodbridge)

ok, so i start scrolling through fmc (fox movie classics), tcm (turner classic movies), and amc (well, that used to be a classic movie station, but they've severely lowered their standards) and i notice a ton of classic movies coming up. i set 4 to tivo in the next week that are all on the afi list! then i found out it's all related to a run up to the oscars. fine by me!

go peyton!

woohoo!! as i was saying last night, i think that was the first time a team i was rooting for with somewhat of a vested interest actually won the superbowl. how satistfying. i started rooting for the bills, bulls, and braves in 1991 (right at the beginning of all of their runs, so not too much of a bandwagon status) and the bills continually disappointed, the bulls continually won, and the braves continually fell short (except for 1995!). here's to the 2010 washington nationals ;-)

we had a fun superbowl party last night with most of our lifegroup and another couple of friends. we now have way too much food in the fridge :-) leftover party food all week!

gotta do that fafsa tonight and tmrw is the first day of (on-campus) class. gotta write up a bio for my online classes tonight as well.

weekend

that's supposed to refer to the last weekend of january, but it's already the weekend again. i don't understand the whole spurting nature of the majority of bloggers, myself especially included. it's like you get inspired with creativity or post ideas for a few weeks and then you get writer's block. or maybe that latter part is just the dull normality of life. however, i figure i prefer dull normality as opposed to a series of crises.

anywho, last weekend we had a couple of friends over on saturday night to eat lindsay's mom's vegetable "beef" (we used turkey and beef) soup/stew. it's so yummy. it made a huge stock pot's worth and i took it for lunch 3 times this week i think.

in monday night small group (well, we call it lifegroup at our church), we have finished foster's the celebration of discipline so we're spending a few weeks just hanging out and playing cards after dinner. we're getting together to watch the superbowl tmrw and then we may start something new the next week. to me, the community aspect is just as important as what we dig into. people need each other and we're building friendships and trust as we spend time together and share meals.

we got snow this week - 2-3 inches by the time it was done on friday. it's around 11 degrees this morning so the stuff isn't melting away soon.

i watched 'sunset blvd' this week and it was pretty wild. made in 1950, i was surprised that it didn't win more academy awards. interestingly, it lost out in a few categories to 'all about eve' and that just came in the mail yesterday.

oh, and jake turns 3 in three weeks. hard to believe. on a similar note, kg will be a dad in less than two weeks. congrats kevin and stacey!!