memorial day weekend

for memorial day weekend, we had a lot planned. saturday was my dad's 50th birthday and tuesday is lindsay's 26th birthday. we wanted to be in nashville at the beginning of the weekend and knoxville at the end of the weekend. we decided at the last minute to forgo our friends peter and jackie's wedding in lexington on saturday afternoon because we wouldn't have gotten to dad's until 6 or 7pm. we got up early saturday and drove down to nashville - that's a tad longer than i remembered. maybe because we stopped more frequently and let jake go to the bathroom. it was worth it because he kept his pullup dry the entire day. we're getting there.

when we got to dad's new place, we went out to lunch at the newly re-opened texana. it wasn't as good as before, but i didn't get ribs or anything. dad had a lot of friends over that evening for his birthday and we had a lot of good h'ors d'oeuvres and fun.

sunday morning we loaded up and went to mt. juliet to meet mom and charlie for breakfast at cracker barrel before they went to church. it was yummy and lindsay actually drove us on to cookeville. we hadn't been back to our college town in a long while and it was cool to see the few changes around town. we knew we wanted to eat at toot's (probably our favorite restaurant, we've eaten at all 5 of them now), but we also wanted to eat at spankie's. the bread, spinach dip, and burger would've been good, but we were still full from breakfast! we settled for fried dill pickle chips and wings at toot's.

we trucked it on up to knoxville and after a rest, we went out to the chop house for lindsay's birthday dinner. i wasn't totally hungry, but that filet was worth it. we came back to the house and i watched my final sermon from preaching class and the movie bobby with my mother-in-law and cory. we enjoy watching movies together.

we had a wonderfully lounging memorial day monday and had grilled out summer food for lunch. i'm sitting here full and content and reflecting on a good weekend. a lot of driving (with a drive back to lexington ahead) and a lot of eating, but great times with family.

happy memorial day! back to work tomorrow!

two movies in two days

huh? how abnormal for me. well, i simply took the opportunity to go see spiderman 3 on thursday night. there's no way i'll be able see all these movies this summer that i'd actually like to see in the theater unless i just make up my mind and go. i went with my pastor (who had already seen it) and it was a good time. good summer action movie. i like how a lot of the shots and camera angles looked like comic book frames. i'm not sure if they made a 3d version of the movie, but i can see how that would work too. i didn't like how it seemed that almost everything was computer generated but i guess that's just the way it is these days. c'est la vie.

on friday night, we went, as planned, to go see shrek 3 as a family. jake was good and sat still the entire time. the movie was pretty good, but something about it seemed thrown together after the first two plotlines were so good. afterwards we went to moe's southwest grill and were less than impressed. it's a distant third behind chipotle and qdoba.

after we got home, i finally got out to mow the lawn. i had been busy every single night the past week, but we were leaving for the weekend and it had to be done. the current weather report was for rain right after we get back. the beginning was fine, but the second half of the mowing was basically in the dark. i hurried and did the darker areas first and then was able to use porch lights to do the rest. it actually looked decent saturday morning.

nats @ reds

woo hoo! i finally got to see my second regular season nats game. the drive up to cinci is only about an hour and a half from my work and it was well worth it to see the game. kasey met me at my office and we found parking real easily, walked up and bought $10 bleacher seats in left field (they had backs), and wound our way up the ramp, and got a 'red smokey' hot dog on the way to our seats. we were right in the sun for the first hour, but the other two hours were really nice. hey the whole experience of getting to see an mlb game in person is great, i can't complain.

oh yeah, about the game. it was a great back and forth battle with some good play all around. it was tied 4-4 in the eighth and one of our guys hit a grand slam. 8-4 win for the nats! earlier in the game, a red hit a home run right at us and it landed in the hands of a guy a couple rows in front of us.

back in town

a great wedding and weekend, albeit a short one. same goes for next weekend when we'll be traveling across tennessee. it's great to see friends and family, but i'm looking forward to staying around the home and tending to the lawn and garden. it's been very nice outside as of late. i'm sure it'll get hotter as the summer goes along, but it's looking like a nice evening tonight for when I cut the grass. i worked in the garden last night after driving straight from knoxville to our annual church meeting and it was fun to get my hands dirty.

d-o-n-e

ahhh that feels nice. i wrapped up that last little book reflection paper and then watched the season finales of the office (awesome!), the real world: denver (from tivo), and er (interesting, i really like the new er chief). talk about wrapping some things up! we have 3+ hours of grey's anatomy remaining, sunday's desperate housewives finale, 3 hours of brothers & sisters, and the last 3 sopranos ever. we didn't keep up with 7th heaven this year after it moved to sunday and got (remained?) stupid with only half the cast. but we have the series finale (second straight year!) saved to watch sometime.

back to school - this past year has been interesting. i had three courses in each semester because i tacked the mentored ministry pair on top of my regular two classes per term. it wasn't too bad, but i don't really want to go back to three regular courses in a semester.

ahead now: 22 credit hours in 12 months. i'm looking at 6 in the summer (exegesis of exodus (my last online course) and preaching: storytelling), 6 in the fall (christian leadership and christian discipleship, 3 in january (hospitality or spiritual formation), and 7 (exegesis of philippians, doctrine of john wesley, and a one-hour christian ed. seminar) in the spring. almost there!

this afternoon i head down with jake to knoxville for our friends wedding. lindsay is already there and is doing girlie stuff like getting a massage, nails done, etc. hair is tmrw before the wedding. i'm meeting her tonight to go to the rehearsal dinner. oh, and i have hp & the hbp for the rest of the weekend.

almost done!

only one more assignment! had a take home final last night, a wrap up session this morning, and i faxed my final signed mentored ministry reports this afternoon after lunch with my pastor.

we're heading to knoxville this weekend for caroline & jamie's wedding. they are two of our closest knoxville friends and they've been dating for quite a while. i need to mow before the end of the week and it's supposed to rain some this week and we have small group tmrw night.

i hope everyone is enjoying pretty weather - it was beautiful this past weekend!

swingset

finally got a pic up (click to enlarge)!
it's been a good week! school's almost over!
(there is one more regular swing on the far left and a rock climbing wall on the back side of the little house)

big weekend

saturday morning, the big swingset was delivered for jake. he was incredibly excited and we played on it for over an hour until it was lunch time. L's family was in town for the big event and we ordered chinese for lunch from wah mei. yum!

after lunch, my father-in-law and i went to lowe's to make purchases for the big garden. all the details about setting up the garden can be found at my garden blog where i'll be journaling everything i do for the garden in order to look back on it next spring when i'm planning for next year.

sunday after church (and just after lunch), we got a call from our friends in the neighborhood that they were having a cookout. we were kind of full, but we wanted to hang out with them and to let the kids play together (they have a 3 y.o. boy and a 1 y.o. girl) so we went on over. the kids had a big time together on a water slide and then playing in a rock bed and we got a little more stuffed. it served as dinner though.

when we got home, we took care of a few around the house (and garden) things and then settled in on the couch to watch a netflix - the recent movie 'the queen'. it was pretty good and an interesting portrayal of the interplay between the british government and the royals and some strategic maneuvering therein.

the best part of the weekend was spending so much time outside, not worrying about the clocks (or even the depressing nats losses!) or assignments. just good time spent with family.

(pictures as soon as possible!)

heck week

let's see. one large team research paper in pastoral care class. one large final sermon in preaching class. 4-5 hours of sleep every night. yes, that was one rough week. however, when i woke up saturday morning it was (blessedly) behind me. the previous weekend was spent taking care of an under the weather family so most of the school work fell to the weeknights which are crammed as it is. just a few more assignments lay ahead of me and i look forward to knocking them out soon.