hilton head

i've heard it said that - similar to fantasy football teams - no one likes to hear about someone else's vacation.

well, here's a quick itinerary of our relaxing week on hilton head island, sc during the 3rd week of september.

friday:
left work a bit early, got on the road, got to knoxville around dinner time.
Lindsay went out looking for some particular flip flops (yellow box?) she wanted from belk

saturday:
got on the road by 6am, had brunch at cracker barrel near columbia, sc
arrived around 2:30pm and watched part of the ut-uf game while playing in the pool, beach, pool

sunday:
got up early, went to st. luke's episcopal (loved it!!!), came back and made breakfast. went out trinket shopping, looking around, found Harbour Town. rested in the afternoon and then went out to eat at the old oyster factory for dinner.

monday:
visited harbour town, went to the top of the lighthouse, ate lunch at crazy crab. made steaks for dinner, watched tv.

tuesday:
went to savannah, ga. ate at paula deen's restaurant, swung by tanger (finally got some new tennis shoes - first time in 3+ years, i'm such a cheapskate), rested and then went to take sunset photos with father-in-law bob. watched new tv and ate dinner.

wednesday:
went to beach and flew kite, helped jake collect seashells. in the afternoon, we took jake fishing and "he" caught 9 fish (3 more the next day). for dinner we ate at steamers and got some delicious custard.

thursday:
helped make omelets for breakfast, took a ~1.5 mile morning walk, watched a movie with Lindsay, went to blockbuster to rent a couple more, ate lunch at one hot mama's, watched leatherheads, helped prepare a big seafood dinner (YUM!)

friday:
had a bunch of pictures made on the beach, relaxed and then went out on a date with lindsay - japanese food & some more custard. watched the first presidential debate.

saturday:
drove all morning to get back to knoxville.

a great trip!

the end of the road

two years of hosting and leading a small group has ended for us.

even without school, life is still very busy these days, but it was more about my waning energy and drive to host and lead the group. i think small groups are very important (or some kind of smaller "real" community) in the lives of christians. sometimes you can find it in sunday school classes, but too often those end up being more lecture style based. that serves a purpose, but doesn't do much for relationship building - unless the class intentionally sets time aside for relational matters, but dialogue on the material helps a ton too.

anywho, here is what i sent out last week:
Friends,
I was talking to Jay last week about getting back into a Bible Study and I realized I just don't have the energy to do it.

The new position at work seems like it will continue to be very busy. In addition, with Jake's soccer season and the possibility of preaching more this fall, our time is pretty stretched.

For these reasons, we will no longer be hosting the small group. This decision does not come lightly and we hope that we can get together on the weekend every once in a while. We encourage the rest of you to consider remaining a small group (perhaps meeting in Lexington?) in some fashion if you see fit to do so.

Grace and Peace and all the Love in the world,
Scott & Lindsay & Jake.

10 years

ten years ago, on this very day, i asked Lindsay to be my girlfriend. 10 uninterrupted years later, we celebrated.

i surprised her good around 4pm by revealing that i had reservations for dinner somewhere special. we met at the house at 6pm and drove into lexington. about 5 minutes away, i had her blindfold herself since we were getting close to the 'restaurant'. we pulled into the parking lot and pulled out my ipod (newly fixed by an ipod refurbishing place!!) and i started 'marry me' by ed cash (a great song from the college years). i told her she could pull the blindfold off and we were sitting at jared's jewelry :-D lindsay has really wanted this diamond anniversary band for a long time and i've always told her that she'd have to wait until our 10 year wedding anniversary. however, tonight was the night and the surprise drew tears! :-)

we killed some time while they re-sized the ring and went over to whole foods. i forgot how the whole store is filled with really good ingredients. it didn't help that we hadn't made it to dinner yet! we picked up some goodies and then got back to the jewelry store to pick up the ring. afterwards, we finally made it to dinner at the second suprise: the melting pot. there's a new one in lexington and we went to the one in knoxville the night we got engaged. dinner took 2 hours for our 4 course, was delicious, and had us bending over in pain on the way home. so much good food!

i love you sweetheart.

poke, poke

so, umm, schooling is done, but now work has gotten super busy.

i moved to a new position (still a contractor, yargh) and we've been working hard under the end of product cycle crunch. the overtime is nice though. an extra hour or two per day may not seem like much, but with over an hour in commuting as well, i just haven't kept up with this or even watching movies this past month. lindsay was like, can you watch one of _your_ movies so we can go get something we'd all like to watch. i hadn't even realized how long it had been.

i'd love to watch some today, but i've got to finish up two sermons for tomorrow - oh yeah, i'm preaching the next two weeks down at mt. vernon (ky) church of the nazarene. we just found out we need to lead worship too! should be a fun adventure :-)

oh, but before i get to that today, we have to go to jake's second soccer game. yes, practices for that started this past month too. they don't keep score, but jake's team won 6-2 last night ;-) he really enjoys it!