Church Hunting
It's an awful phrase isn't it? But unless you are still attending the church you grew up in, most (church going) people will have experienced this at least once, depending on how many times you have relocated. It's not a very fun process. We have been in the midst of the hunt for many months, trying to muster up the motivation and the courage to attend another church where nobody knows our names. This is especially hard coming from a church that we have attended most of our lives, where just about everyone not only knew our names but knew our families and what schools we have attended and what current jobs we hold. They just knew us. There is much comfort and security in that. But we were called to move on, so the search ensued and thankfully, we believe, is now over. God has led us to a wonderful church called First Baptist where we actually know a handful of people and are getting to know more and more every week. It's location downtown is nice and close to us, and also great for minisry opportunitues there. We are excited to see how God will use us within the church and also within the surrounding communuity. So, we can finally say that the hunt is over. Praise God!
My brother the ROCK STAR
My brother's band had a show last night at a (not so) nearby park, and he again blew me away with his "cool kid" looks and his outrageous talent. He's the one jamming on the left.
Ok, so I know that I desperately need to pay attention to the photography lessons on on the blogs of Pioneer Woman and Mck Mama. It was dusk so it would turn out like this with my regular flash and with the "night" setting it would be lighter but blurry. What needs to change? The aperture? See..I don't even know where to start. Back to topic. I love watching my brother on stage. He's so talented and confidant, and he plays it off like he doesn't care if we are there or not, but I know that he loves it when we come to cheer him on. Shaun...you rock! I love you little man. Here ends the Shaun commercial.
Side note: Does anyone know how to post a link without the word being underlined?
Nerd it up!
Today, I figured I would take some time and proclaim to the world ….okay more like the half a dozen people that read our blog….. that I am a huge nerd. Jessica, being married to me, understands the depth that encompasses my nerdom. I’m warning you right now, this is going to be a strange journey into the mind of Dave, and this post could be lengthy….
Let me just list a few ways I celebrate my nerdiness.
1. I love doing crossword puzzles. It keeps the mind fresh! Some may say it’s just a passing fad for me, but I like to picture it as a lifetime hobby. I love the feeling of sitting down with a blank crossword puzzle and a pen (blue ink only! or maybe red, but certainly never black). As I start the puzzle I wonder, how long is this going to take me to finish?? Am I going to finish? What are the answers for the long ones going to be? I always get the Star Tribune paper because it has two crossword puzzles, and within the paper I ALWAYS start with the star trib one first and if I’m not doing so hot, or I finish it (Rarely, maybe once or twice, a week, if I’m lucky), I move on to the New York Times puzzle. I never use the internet to look up answers. Asking friends, family members, and co-workers totally allowed. I occasionally will check my spelling with an old dictionary I have on our bookshelf. I can often be seen pondering my answers when I’m working, or riding home on the bus.
2. I rather enjoy playing video games. In moments of my spare time I can found hacking away on one of my wii games or playing as the hulk throwing tanks and letting small bullets bounce off my bright green muscles. I only play the Hulk game wearing cut off jean shorts and every 10 minutes I have to yell “HULK SMASH”. Okay, I’m just joking about the jean shorts. I don’t own jean shorts. They are Umbros. So I don’t take video games that seriously, but one of my favorites is Super Mario Bros. 3 for old Nintendo pictured above.
3. Playing pinball will always be in my top 5 favorite activities. I love it. Hearing the bells and whistles of your score being racked up and hearing the strong **KNOCK** come from the pinball machine letting you and everyone within 20 feet of you know that you have earned yourself a free game because you are awesome. My brother and I are actually working our way to purchasing our very own Lord of the Rings pinball machine. Right now we own a few machines that are being fixed up and flipped so we will someday have enough money to purchase a newer fancier pinball. This weekend Asher, my nephew, played pinball with my brother and I, and he figured out how to shoot the ball and actually use the flippers to hit the ball. He’s only 18 months old! Immediately I started to hear The Who sing “the kid plays a mean Pin-Ball…”
4. I love reading comics! I recently got into comics in a huge way! The comic series that brought me to my love of comics is called Bone by Jeff Smith. It’s a 9 Volume epic adventure that is clean, funny, and adventurous. Go buy this series. Yes it’s true there are some comics that have a little too much brown on the apple, but when you find one that is just good clean fun, it’s great. This Bone series is an example of comic greatness.
Okay well that’s enough for today and my adventures of nerdiness. I didn’t even touch on the Muppets. I’m pretty sure that’s a blog post all by itself.
Let me just list a few ways I celebrate my nerdiness.
1. I love doing crossword puzzles. It keeps the mind fresh! Some may say it’s just a passing fad for me, but I like to picture it as a lifetime hobby. I love the feeling of sitting down with a blank crossword puzzle and a pen (blue ink only! or maybe red, but certainly never black). As I start the puzzle I wonder, how long is this going to take me to finish?? Am I going to finish? What are the answers for the long ones going to be? I always get the Star Tribune paper because it has two crossword puzzles, and within the paper I ALWAYS start with the star trib one first and if I’m not doing so hot, or I finish it (Rarely, maybe once or twice, a week, if I’m lucky), I move on to the New York Times puzzle. I never use the internet to look up answers. Asking friends, family members, and co-workers totally allowed. I occasionally will check my spelling with an old dictionary I have on our bookshelf. I can often be seen pondering my answers when I’m working, or riding home on the bus.
2. I rather enjoy playing video games. In moments of my spare time I can found hacking away on one of my wii games or playing as the hulk throwing tanks and letting small bullets bounce off my bright green muscles. I only play the Hulk game wearing cut off jean shorts and every 10 minutes I have to yell “HULK SMASH”. Okay, I’m just joking about the jean shorts. I don’t own jean shorts. They are Umbros. So I don’t take video games that seriously, but one of my favorites is Super Mario Bros. 3 for old Nintendo pictured above.
3. Playing pinball will always be in my top 5 favorite activities. I love it. Hearing the bells and whistles of your score being racked up and hearing the strong **KNOCK** come from the pinball machine letting you and everyone within 20 feet of you know that you have earned yourself a free game because you are awesome. My brother and I are actually working our way to purchasing our very own Lord of the Rings pinball machine. Right now we own a few machines that are being fixed up and flipped so we will someday have enough money to purchase a newer fancier pinball. This weekend Asher, my nephew, played pinball with my brother and I, and he figured out how to shoot the ball and actually use the flippers to hit the ball. He’s only 18 months old! Immediately I started to hear The Who sing “the kid plays a mean Pin-Ball…”
4. I love reading comics! I recently got into comics in a huge way! The comic series that brought me to my love of comics is called Bone by Jeff Smith. It’s a 9 Volume epic adventure that is clean, funny, and adventurous. Go buy this series. Yes it’s true there are some comics that have a little too much brown on the apple, but when you find one that is just good clean fun, it’s great. This Bone series is an example of comic greatness.
Okay well that’s enough for today and my adventures of nerdiness. I didn’t even touch on the Muppets. I’m pretty sure that’s a blog post all by itself.
Country Roads
My sister Kellie and I took a mini road trip up to Brainerd this weekend to visit my dear friend Rachel. And boy oh boy did she show us how to have fun small town style! We got up there Friday night and got down to business almost immediately by hitting up the local karaoke bar. The only thing (not sure if it was good or bad) was that we were the ONLY ones in the bar. Not the only ones doing karaoke, no the ONLY ones in the bar! Of course this made it easy to get into it and not feel like we were making fools of ourselves. Saturday afternoon we did some shopping and eating in Nisswa and then on to the Little Falls Dam Festival, where we saw this:
And this:
And then we saw this:
And just when we thought things couldn't get any better, Kellie and Rachel signed up to compete in their American Idol type contest. I know these aren't the greatest pictures, but they had it set up so the contestants were facing the judges and not the audience so I had to climb over a few people just to get these.
And lo and behold the out of towner took 3rd place in the competition. Way to go Kell!
Thanks for the small town hospitality Rachel. We had a great time! YEEHAW!
Project for Grandma H.
My Grandma Hilden recently asked if I could transfer a bunch of her old records onto CDs for her, because she has been having trouble reaching the record player, and her CD player is much more accessible to her. Last night was the first night that I started on this project and it turned out to be a pretty fun time. I only had time to get one record done, because it took me a while to figure everything out but now it should run much more smoothly. Justin had a great idea that I should blog about which records we are doing because we listen to the records as they are being recorded. So here goes....
Grandma has a series of 11 records called Mood Music for Listening and Relaxation. It is an older record collection and I think it was put out by Reader's Digest a while ago. Well, I just searched google and I could not find the release date for that set, if anybody can, feel free to comment!
Last night I did number 9 in the series "Listening and Relaxing in 3/4 Time". It was basically 6 different waltzes. It turned out to be pretty fun putting all the songs together and at the end of the night hearing one of Grandma's records on my iPod. This morning I was listening to the album while getting ready for work, and it seemed to make everything I did much more graceful. Opening the fridge, eating Grandma's cinnamon bread, drinking juice, putting my polo shirt on backwards.....okay that wasn't graceful but everything else felt that way. I'm really pumped for the next album I'm going to do in the series "Hawaiian Paradise". I'm pretty sure the first track on the album is called "Pagan Love Song" Could be interesting.
Girls just wanna have fun
Girl's night! While David took a recent weekend trip to Camp Nathaniel with his brother Matt, I had a girls night with Kellie and Becky. We enjoyed a few hours spent at a local rooftop restaurant followed by talking, laughing, movie watching, sleeping in, coffee drinking and lots more talking and laughing. I love my girls! Here's another picture of us. I know the picture quality isn't that great, but I wanted you to see the sky line. Can anyone guess where we are??
I'll give you a hint: they have mouthwatering Gorgonzola bread with bleu cheese butter that I have been craving since I first put that heavenly slice of fat loaded carbs in my mouth. Yum!
Chuck E. Cheese meets Kung Fu Panda
Hi All.
This week has been crazy, busy, and pretty fun. I think Tuesday night tops it. A bunch of family members all went to Chuck E. Cheese for Travis' 27th birthday. It was pretty awesome. My favorite games were, the Rollercoaster Tycoon pinball machine, Jambo Safari, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, and Dunk the Alien Skee ball. That stupid alien! A bunch of us tried and we all couldn't dunk him! Even Grandpa. Here's a picture of us with Mr. Cheese.
Then after Chuck E. Cheese, we went and saw Kung Fu Panda. The movie was incredible! The animation = fantastic. It was super funny, and it worked just like a real Kung Fu movie. The fight scenes were pretty intense and funny at the same time.
On Wednesday night, my friend Dave and I went and saw the band Iron and Wine. He put on a fantastic show, but his music is super laid back, and we ended up leaving because we were tired of standing. It would have been a great sit down show. If you haven't heard him before go look up Iron and Wine. My favorite song is probably Trapeze Swinger.
Saturday night is Walking with Dinosaurs!
This week has been crazy, busy, and pretty fun. I think Tuesday night tops it. A bunch of family members all went to Chuck E. Cheese for Travis' 27th birthday. It was pretty awesome. My favorite games were, the Rollercoaster Tycoon pinball machine, Jambo Safari, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, and Dunk the Alien Skee ball. That stupid alien! A bunch of us tried and we all couldn't dunk him! Even Grandpa. Here's a picture of us with Mr. Cheese.
Then after Chuck E. Cheese, we went and saw Kung Fu Panda. The movie was incredible! The animation = fantastic. It was super funny, and it worked just like a real Kung Fu movie. The fight scenes were pretty intense and funny at the same time.
On Wednesday night, my friend Dave and I went and saw the band Iron and Wine. He put on a fantastic show, but his music is super laid back, and we ended up leaving because we were tired of standing. It would have been a great sit down show. If you haven't heard him before go look up Iron and Wine. My favorite song is probably Trapeze Swinger.
Saturday night is Walking with Dinosaurs!
to run or not to run
I consider myself a runner. Not as avid of one as I should be, but a runner all the same. Except, I have been on a hiatus or sorts since....last October. I participated in the Chicago marathon at that time and it was shut down halfway through due to exceptionally hot weather. Since then, I have planned a wedding, got married and have been "too busy" to get back into my running habits. This morning changed all that. Well, last night to be exact. Dave and I went out for a run through the neighborhood, but this morning it was downright magical. There's nothing like an early morning run. There's just something about it. The sun is bright, but not yet hot. The air is crisp and cool. And apart from the soft chorus of birds chirping, the world is still and silent. The feeling was indescribable. It was like being reunited with an old friend. Let's hope the feeling of this reunion will be enough motivation to get my lazy bones out of bed in the morning. Or maybe it will be the reward of a steaming cup of Cherry Bean coffee that will get me going. Mmm...tasty.
All dolled up
I love weddings. David's cousin Nathan got married last night and it was a beautiful ceremony and reception. Anyone notice Dave's new beard length? Yep..it's summer.
