Where did November go?

Well...its been almost a month since I last made a post and I can not believe that much time has gone by! I feel like it was just yesterday that we were trick-or-treating and now all the stores are fully decorated with Christmas trees and lights. I even found myself getting out some Christmas music to get into the spirit. From age 5 until 25 I started hearing Amy Grant Christmas songs immediately after Thanksgiving - just would not feel like December with out that music. So... lets see what all has happened since I last posted...

With me quiting my job to pursue full time ministry in Costa Rica the kids wanted to do their part to pitch in financially as much as possible. They have been working around the clock to get the big project out the door, but I think when its finally done it will be great. Actually, Christy's Nana and Papa bought the kids little faux laptop computers that are to be used to help them learn how to spell, add, sing, etc. Elizabeth already knows how to turn hers on and make it play music. Sammy quickly learned how to chew the mouse and throw the computer. Thats my boy.

The week before Thanksgiving I went with my dad and my middle brother to go deer sight seeing which was cold (9 layers of clothing cold) but fun. While I was sitting outside enjoying the 30 degree weather, 25 mile an hour winds and occasional snow, I snapped a couple pictures of the property we were on (the old family farm that my grandpa owns). The picture on the left is cool because many of the apples are still on the trees in the old orchard even though the leaves are long gone. I guess they have not had a hard enough freeze to make everything fall yet. Add a little snow and I thought it made a nice picture. The picture on the right is the looking out over the backside of the property. If you were to walk left from here there is an old beaver pond and on the right is a small swamp.

The next week our whole family spent time in Spring Lake, Michigan with my parents and my middle brother and sister-in-law for Thanksgiving. One day we were able to sneak across Michigan to Detroit and spend some time with my dad's dad, Grandpa Meyer. He recently had his 95th birthday, and still manages to get around the retirement home pretty well. The kids enjoyed being smothered with attention by him (see to the left) and also getting rides on his walker as we tooled around the building (see right). Even at 95 my grandpa's memory is still far superior to mine. I enjoyed learning more little nuggets about his life like the stories from when he grew up on the farm as a boy, his time in the service during World War II, how he became a follower of Christ as a boy (he remembers the month,day,year,place and preacher who led him to Jesus - I can not even remember what I did yesterday!) and many other things. I know that he misses my grandma who recently passed away - they were married for 63 years but knew each other their whole lives. He is so looking forward to seeing her in Glory, but I suggested that God wanted him here for a while longer. He is really a ray of light for the retirement home he is in. He befriends everyone that he meets (this place has a huge staff and everyone knows him and was so excited to see the great grand kids that he talks about all the time) and lovingly and consistently shares his faith. I pray that I can be as effective at building relationships and witnessing as he has been and still is.

After Thanksgiving we drove back to Wheaton where we plan on being until Christmas day. My brother-in-law John recently changed jobs and had some time off work so we decided to do something fun with all of our kids. My parents always deprived me of the fun/joy/germs that are chuck-e-cheese so we loaded up the car to give our kids a flavor of what we never had. It was basically everything I expected. The pizza was terrible (even the workers warned us not to buy any - but we did not listen) and the kids play area smelled like finely aged throw-up. However, those two things aside, it was great. They had a reasonably good salad bar to offset the pizza, and plenty of little kid rides that everyone enjoyed. By far the kid favorite was the small carousel ride. It had three horses which was the perfect number for us. After three hours there, John and I realized that next time we need to find a babysitter for the kids so that he and I can go back and play video games for a couple hours. If we tried to play a game for more than 30 seconds, I would look up and realize Sammy was climbing up a skee-ball machine, Lizzy was in the back of the building and Luke was walking towards the front door. Needless to say, not a great atmosphere for us focusing on video games.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are looking forward to some time with family for Christmas. Until next time...

Purple Puppy

We had a very fun time trick-or-treating with cousin Luke on Halloween. Luke was his favorite animal in the world - a cow. Sammy dressed up as a farmer with overalls, a flannel and a red bandanna. And Elizabeth was a very proud purple puppy. For those of you that do not know - her favorite buddy in the world besides 'Hammy' is her pink puppy - shown in the picture. Christy sewed the ears and tail in the afternoon - I think they looked great. I snapped two pictures of Elizabeth but did not have my camera to get some pictures of Sammy - I think Luke's Grandma may have gotten some of all of us so I'll see if I can post those sometime. We walked around downtown Wheaton in the block just north of Memorial Park. The number of people was amazing - and so was how much some people do up their houses. I'm not talking the occasional pumpkin or spider webbing - but full electronic moving ghosts and goblins, light shows, creating miniature haunted houses enclosed in porches - the works. Some things looked so overboard that we decided not even to take our kids there. I would think (or should I say hope) people are a little embarrassed when my three year old daughter dressed as a puppy comes to the door and they answer with their full Freddy outfit, fake blood, etc. The other funny thing I noticed was that 10% of all the dads trick or treating with their family had either 1) an ipod in their ear 2) their blackberry out responding to an email or 3) their blue tooth in their ear so they could talk on the phone. Pretty sad. My brother in law was yapping on the phone as well, but to be fair, he was talking to his sister (or so he claims...)

Our remaining weeks here in the US seem to be filling up pretty quickly. We will be spending time up in Michigan to visit my family during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. In January, I have a tentative trip planned to Phoenix early in the month - then I will be in St Louis for a week of seminary residency and our whole family will be in Denver the next week after that. Lastly, I think we are planning a trip back to Richmond in mid February to visit West End Presbyterian Church and our other friends before we fly to Miami and Costa Rica in March. Someone asked me this week if I was still planning on trying to get a part time job but given that I'm gone for one full month of the remaining four and a half it seems a little silly.

Here is an article about a town running out of water that I thought was interesting. At least this was a relatively small town...but...for those of you that are not aware - the the entire metro Atlanta area has been hovering at about a 90 day supply of water as well. Their large reserve is drying up quickly. Water shortages have always been a problem in the west and its a growing threat to the southeast that many people do not talk about - but I think could be a great investment play in the future. Its slightly less urgent than the fossil fuel shortage because we already know how to solve the water 'crisis' - simply build more treatment centers, reserves or desalination plants. So, you just need to be in on the companies that do these sorts of activities. You could guess at that, or just do an ETF that tracks these sorts of companies like PHO.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm having fun listening to lectures and reading books for my Apologetics and Outreach course and I'll share about that next time - that is of course assuming no more amusing notes are posted in the condo building that require my attention...