Rain out. The Kid doesn’t like swimming in the rain. And they were cancelled anyway.

We weren’t actually there though. We’ve been (and still are) in Jackson for the weekend. Helping out with the church’s Confirmation Retreat. I feel like I’ve eaten more the last 24 hours than I ever have. Not looking good for the beach time next week. I need to run-run-run next week to get in beach shape!

The Kid has another swim lesson today. The Wife’s mother is supposed to take her. Hopefully Wife’s Mom will be able to drop her off and leave so she won’t distract The Kid from doing right in the lesson.

We’ll be back later this afternoon for the full update. Right now everyone’s being lazy in the hotel.

Today is the first day of The Kid’s swimming lessons. I’m about to go home for lunch and see how they went. I’ve no idea what to expect. She loves the water. Loves the pool. But likes to be in a life jacket (because she can’t breath underwater.)

The lady teaching her is pretty hardcore. We’ll see…

Yesterday was our last day of Vacation Bible School out in the woods. One of my guys needed to drive back into town to get his guitar. But one of the girls went to get it for him. A little while later, I’m standing over by the volleyball court and see people scrambling around jumping in the back of a truck and barrelling down the road. I couldn’t tell if they were excited about something or frantic about it or what.

Turns out the girl had a wreck. She was stuck in there. But another girl that was with her crawled out and ran up the road for help. Me and two other guys jogged down the road (much farther than we thought it would be. We’d seen another girl run up barefooted and thought it couldn’t be that far since she was w/o shoes. Turns out she’d just ran from a truck a few yards away!). We saw the 4Runner flipped over in a ditch. Paramedics and firemen and police and all were already there. I was impressed.

They got her out slowly because she’d been whipped around pretty good and thought her neck was sore. But they checked her out at the hostipal and everything is okay. She had only had her liscense about 2 months and was in another guy’s car, not her own.

When asked if they had their seatbelts on, they said that they’d had them on til they got to the gravel road…they took them off then.

The last two days have been busy with Vacation Bible School. The past two years we’ve had a theme of Market Place AD where there are different tents/booths/areas set up around our church’s back yard and parking lot. It was fun for the kids and hopefully meaningful.

This year we moved it to a place called Wrenwoode. It’s about 5 miles out of town out in the boonies. But it’s an old camp with a great layout, old buildings, and plenty of trees. Trees provide shade. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure that having everything out there was a great idea to begin with. But we’re off the hot concrete of the parking lot, baking for three hours each morning.

Tomorrow’s the last day. The Kid is officially too young to participate, but The Wife and I are both helping out, so she’s w/ us by default. She’s had a great time with it too.

But I was wondering today how much the kids really learn from it, and how much they just like the crafts, games, songs, and snacks. Hopefully if nothing else it’s building some sort of positive foundation that can be built upon over the years.

I had a really good evening. I went to an Aunt/Uncle’s house I’ve not been to in a handful of years and visited with family and a cousin (who’s a Navy SEAL) who was in town. It’d been 10 years since I’d seen him. He had three of his SEAL buddies w/ him too. Interesting.

But I’ll have to give details tomorrow. I got about 2 hours of sleep last night. So I won’t tempt sleep deprivation again. I’m heading to the pillow.

Why the heck am I awake right now. I was fighting sleep at one point earlier in the night. Now I can’t find it…..

Today we had eight seniors don their caps and gowns to participate in our church’s Graduation Service. You know, the one where they get to stand in front of the church so their mom’s can cry a little and everyone can smile. We handed out some slick new Bibles and then had a lunch.

I remember this entire group as 7th graders. Now they’re all grown up and ready for the world (they think). They’ve made lots of changes, experienced lots of things, some good – some not so good. But I just hope they realize that the world can eat you up and spit you out if you don’t maneuver smartly.

My heart’s hope is that they lean on God for all of their understanding through this journey called Life.

I wasn’t necessarily opposed to us going over to Iraq. I’m not saying I was gun-ho about it either. But I could understand some of the reasonings. But what the heck are we doing now? Are we trying to set up a govt. there that can bear the pressure of the surrounding areas? Maybe that’s noble. Maybe that’s selfserving (has anyone seen gas prices?). But what the heck is going on over in the prisons and prison camps?

I saw some of the photos and the like of the prison beatings and torture. They’re beyond distasteful and sickening. The burning Q right now is whether this was the work and thought processes of a few prison guards, or was it commanded from higher up? Hmmm..

But today someone sent me a link to the video of Berg the civilian being beheaded. It was Berg saying who he was and who his fam was followed by nearly 5 minutes of Arab language saying who knows what. But then the push him to the ground and saw his head off with a long knife. I’d thought up until last night that it was a quick, swift hack with a sword. But no, it was long with screams.

There’s a few groups of people saying it might be a fake, but either way it left a way empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Now what all does this mean for the “war efforts” and “rebuilding efforts” and what else might happen?

All I know is that we, the U.S. have gotten mixed up in some bad crap and we seem to be in over our heads. I think we can recover with quality people being put in leadership over there. But we’ll see.

I’ve been waiting on saying anything about it until I could get a pic or two ready to put on here w/ it, but I figure I better go ahead and say something about it.

We got up like normal on a Saturday morning…hoping to sleep in, but not as late as we’d like since we have a 2 year old. My wife went and found her Happy Anniversary card that I’d hand made. It was plain white with black ink on it. How’s that for creative? But it was from the heart, and that’s what counts, right? I didn’t have her any big, fantastic gift though. We’d decided not to get each other “stuff” because we’re going to the beach in a few weeks and that will cost some money and plus we can probably see stuff there we’ll want to get.

We were supposed to go to The Wife’s aunt’s wedding at two in the afternoon. So we’re almost there and I realize that I’ve yet to eat lunch and will be really uncomfortable about it after the wedding. So we attempt to swing through the Wendy’s drive through quickly. But it’s not moving.Twenty minutes later we get to where the wedding is, and we’re there by 10 til….but it’s not there. Turns out the wedding it across town. So we get there late and wait outside for everyone to come out.

Turns out the wedding is in the Elvis Presley Chapel, and it was right next to the house where Elvis was born and grew up in. And to think that I’ve lived here all my life and never had seen it. Anyway, wedding over, reception over..then off to the Gum Tree Arts Festival. It wasn’t as good this year. But there was some cool stuff. There was some absolute crap too. A big splatter painting being sold for $1500. I know cars that are not worth that much but they get the job done.

Then the The Wife and I take The Kid to her (The Wife’s) parents while the two of us go to Lifeway to look at books, then we try to decide on where to eat supper. I’m not hungry at all. Not even remotely, but it’s out anniversary so I’ll eat a salad. Plus being in the sun w/o my sunglasses I’ve lost has given me a headache. But we drive by a few restaurants with hour long waits..but after almost going home, decide to go by Vanelli’s. A really good restaurant we both like but haven’t been to in forever.

While waiting for a table the owner takes our pic and The Wife tells him it’s our anniversary. I’m thinking “Free Meal”. Turns out he was thinking, “Free Picture”. But after our meal we get to go to his office to wait on the printer to spit it out. There’s a big italian looking guy from Miami in there. Turns out it’s Comedy Night and he’s the comedien. So he says, “Yo! Yous staying for da show?” So we stay for a bit, he’s funny, but a touch raw, but the 2nd hand smoke was killing us, and I had to get my pregnant wife outta there.

That’s my anniversary, w/o the pics. I’ll have a few for you soon. And we got home to a big surprise from our dog too, but more on that later.

I’m trying to set up a blog for a friend. He’s currently over in Jordon (yes, the country) on a long term mission trip, but he’s recently engaged and she’s back here in Mississippi. I’ve always wondered about what all he’s doing over there so I thought a blog would be a fantastic way for him to keep all of us over here up to date on things.

So after some encouraging, he’s going to start blogging some. I’d installed MoveableType for him, but before he got going, I scrapped it to give WordPress a try. I just got it installed last night and am going to try to tweak it some today and get it rolling for him.

I’ll show it to you on the launch.