We got out of town this morning without much of a hitch on our way to Jackson. We went through a little bit of rain then ate lunch at Fazolli’s. It used to be a fave of mine…now it’s blah. Things change, huh? After lunch we made our way down to Lynch street and to Lizzie’s center. She talked with us and then wanted to show us a house she’d mentioned to me.

It was supposed to need some work done on the porch and Lizzie had wondered if we’d be able to do a little work on it. We got over to and and realized that it was in bad need of repair. I think it’s more than we can even hope to tackle. The roof is bad, the porch is way bad, but the roof is leaning on the porch, yard over grown…just plain bad. I think it needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt. We may try to do a little work on it, but it’s like putting a bandaid and a little makeup on cancer.

We went back to her center, bagged food, and then took it to some elderly shutins, then the day ended a little early for us. We checked into the hotel, not to shabby, but way nice, and just sat around before going to Moe’s to eat. We skimmed the mall, went to Krispy Kreme, then got some supplies at Wal-Mart.

We’re going to mow, paint, and clean up tomorrow morning before lunch. Then the afternoon will be with the kids. We’ll see how it goes.

This year I have internet access in the hotel room. So I should be able to be a little more “real time” in my updates. We’ll see. We’ve got a good group of kids who are wanting to see some stuff done down here. Most have been here either on our summer or spring break trips, but there are a few brand new ones.

Be sure to click on the images above. They will popup with larger versions.

John Carnes had a brilliant story to tell about his conversation with his daughter about God.

Take the time to read it. It’s worth it.

Back to Lizzie Cooper this week. It’s our youth trip to inner city Jackson. We’re visiting a pretty ghettolicious part of the city. A city that was recently named as one of the five most dangerous cities in the nation….IN THE NATION. I pray the Lord’s protection over us.

But we’re going down for some cleaning, some painting, some mowing, some porch building, and playing with the children from down there. They need love so much. I’m seeing rain in the forecast, but hopefully it won’t be too bad. She would like us to carry a load of kids back to Rapids on the Resivoir like we did last year. But I don’t think we’ll do that again. Last year was one of those “we made it through it and let’s never do it again”. We had about 13 of our teenage kids being responsible for about 50 small inner city children who never get out of the ‘Hood. They were wild, and we were thinking someone would drown before long.

But I think our hotel rooms are supposed to have high speed internet access, so maybe we’ll have some updates from down there.

The Wife was sure Detroit would win Game 3 of the Finals. To “stretch it out”. So I asked her about tonights game. L.A. of course. She’s of the mind that the NBA knows that the more games they play, the more $$$ they make, so the league will try to stretch it out as long as they can.

Well, Dear, Detroit didn’t get the memo tonight. I really don’t like either team. But for some odd reason I was pulling for the Lakers. I sorta like Kobe even though he’s been in a heap of trouble lately. Never been a shack fan, but I respect him. But I think I was for the Lakers after they beat the Spurs…never been a Spurs fan.

So the question now is, will the NBA let L.A. win the next one so they can play at least one game in The Staples Center?

I like Jerry Seinfeld. Great show. Funny comedy (isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?) But I’ve not seen him do a whole lot of stand up before. I’ve almost rented his DVD a few times. I will before way long. But I decided to see where he was going to be on tour.

Holy Smokes!! He’s going to be just a couple of hours up the road from me in Memphis next Friday night at the Orpheum. How about that. Wait. Wonder what ticket prices are going to be.

Holy Smokes!!!!!! They’re $95 to sit in the balcony and $145 for floor seats. Multiply that by two because The Wife would come along. Don’t forget to add the tax and ticket handling fees and all that junk. Then you gotta figure in dinner somewhere, plus gas to get up there and around. Then we’d have to stop by Target because we were so close to one, of course. So you’re looking anywhere from $300-$450 for that trip.

I’ll go rent the DVD for $4 and eat some Mac & Cheese some night instead.

When we got married, we decided to go on our honeymoon to Seaside, Florida. We’d had friends who’d told us of how great it was. We absolutely loved it. But at Seaside, there wasn’t a lot to do. That was part of the charm of it though, to be honets. It had a few shops, a few places to eat, a small but pretty cool little market/grocery store (with big prices). But if you really wanted to go to a bigger restaurant or grocery shop or whatever, you had to drive down the road either east or west. If you went east, you went to Panama City, which is very touristy. No thanks. But to the west was the Destin area.

We enjoyed it then. It had a really nice outlet mall (decent prices, but great selection) and nice looking area. Plenty of stuff to do and see, but not to “cheap” looking, if you know what I mean. Well, this is where we decided to go on our vacation. It was sweet. We did have to endure a two and a half hour sales pitch from Fairfield Resorts (how many different ways can you say “no”?) but we got two nights at a hotel, $30 off of dinner, and $100 off another stay at a hotel down there…all for $99. So it was worth it.

We took lots of pics of The Kid in the pool. We’d had a handful of swimming lessons so far, but they weren’t all smooth. So we spent a lot of time in the pool kicking, spashing, jumping, and holding our breath. But it paid off. She got better, and it showed when she returned to swimming lessons here back home.

We spend our third and fourth night in Fort Walton Beach. It’s just over the bridge from Destin and it’s all with in a few minutes driving. The waves were bigger in FWB to me, but The Kid still liked the beach as long as I held her. We got plenty of son. I got pretty red, but it’s faded to brown, but it’s itchy, so that means I’ll peal before way long.

Would we go back…oh yes. We will!

USA Today Article

I expect this to draw lots of attention over the next few days. Look for it to catch him a lot of flack. But Larry always seemed to be one who spoke his mind.

Excerpts

· You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league. I think it’s good for a fan base because as we all know the majority of the fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a black man’s game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.”

· Bird also says that when he was playing he “really got irritated” when a white player guarded him. “I still don’t understand why,” he says. “I didn’t care who guarded me — red, yellow, black. I just didn’t want a white guy guarding me, because it’s disrespect to my game.”

I’d hoped to get internet access while we were on vacation. We didn’t have it at our first hotel but did at the second. But it wasn’t working just right. So I didn’t get it finally working until the last afternoon there, just as we were going out to eat for the night. So I really didn’t do anything except get to check some baseball scores before we had to leave. But I guess spending oodles of time on the internet isn’t what you go on vacation for anyway.

We had a great time down on the Emerald Coast. Got tanned plus a little. Ate plenty. And The Kid had loads of fun on the beach and in the pool. I was hoping to be giving a day-by-day updates…but didn’t get it. I’ll try to carve out some time and give some highlights and thoughts from the time down there.

Vacation was good.

We got the report from The Wife’s mom that day two of swimming lessons wasn’t a good one. I don’t know if it was because there was a day off inbetween Day 1 and Day 2 or if it wasn’t The Wife or me taking her. But she cried a good bit.

We took her yesterday. Before we ever got there, she was telling us that “I don’t really want to go to swimming lessons.” They in the car she told me that she wasn’t feeling very well. But we went and she ended up crying just about the whole time. She was crying for me. “Daddy! I want my Daddy!” “Daddy, don’t leave!” We’d talked before hand. I told her I’d stay if she didn’t cry. So of course I had to leave. The whole time I was walking away from the pool she was crying, “NO Daddy. Don’t leave me, Daddy!”

There were a lot of other parents around. The lady who teaches the lessons teaches about 4 at a time, and parents are usually there for the lesson too. So I got a lot of grins and “It’s hard isn’t it?” I had a few tell me that their kid was like that last summer. So there are a lot of repeat clients.

I watched from inside the house in the sunroom off the kitchen. It got a little better. She’d kick and swim w/ her arms when it was her turn. But she was usually looking and crying for me when it wasn’t her turn.

The Wife took her today. I stayed home. She told me it was better. A little bit of crying, but not near where it was yesterday. I think she’s building some trust up in the teacher and also knowing that she’s not going to get out of going. But she hates getting water in her eyes. That’s one of the biggest things with her too.

We’ve got one more lesson until we go to the beach. We’ll get our time in at the pool, I’m sure. Hopefully we can build upon it so when we come back and finish up, there’ll be no regression.

The good thing is that she didn’t hold it against me for leaving her. I was expecting her to tell me that I left her over and over after we got home yesterday.

Good movie. Kids like it, but lots of jokes pass over their heads. To be honest, I thought it was a little more family friendly than the first one. But the first one was probably over the kids heads a lot..the parts that were blatent innuendos.

Lots of people have said they liked it better than the first one. I’m not so sure. But it’s worth seeing, none the less.