I may start blogging again.

Don't let satan ruin a good time

I have recently (as of January 1st.) taken over the task of doing the dishes every evening after dinner. I got this from a dear friend from a church I was a member at 5 years ago. He often told the story of how his wife had a dish washer, his two hands. I admired this man's marriage and felt if it was good for him I would like to honor my wife the same way he did his.

I have enjoyed my duties. I enlist two children to dry while I wash. We have enjoyed the time we spend while doing this. This evening we were listening to an FFH cd(it is mandatory that we listen to only Christian music while performing this task). I was singing along and thinking just how awesome our God is, and what a great time I was spending with my kids. All of the sudden my two helpers were arguing about something. I blew up and ordered them not to talk to one another for the remainder of the event. I was upset because I was really enjoying the time. I soon realized this was another attack by satan to sabotage my good time.

This reminded me that we must keep our guards up at all times. The moment we let them down or when we think everything is going just great he will attack. Be strong; ask God for His assistance in this never ending battle.

Steelers Season Over.

Well it is a sad as my Steelers fell to Jacksonville last night. My terrible towel will be put in storage until August. They had an ok season in my opinion. It started well and they kind of stumbled through the later part of the season. Many injuries to several key players made it hard to stay consistant. They gave a solid effort but came up a bit short. Once my boys are out of it I kind of just watch with little interest. Oh well as they say there is always next year. If your team is still playing enjoy the rest of the playoffs.

Sports Talk

In an attempt to gain more readers to my blog, I have decided to put some sports related material on my posts from time to time.

So to start things off I will lead with the NFL. Who is the favorite to win the Super Bowl. The obvious pick is New England. 16-0 is very impressive, first team since the 72 Dolphins to end the regular season undefeated. In my opinion the Patriots will win or even make it to the Super Bowl. I know that sounds insane but I just feel that they will overlook someone and stumble. I think several teams can beat them. San Diego, Jacksonville, Indy, and even my beloved Steelers(although that could be the homer in me) all match up pretty well against them. If they do get to the Super Bowl, Green Bay on what could be Favres farewell could beat New England in what would be a very high scoring game.

My heart tells me to go with my Steelers. So my Super Bowl prediction is Steelers over Dallas 28-14. Hey its my blog I can make a crazy prediction if I want to.

Please let me know your predictions.

Happy New Year

Well here we are. It is New Years Eve. I will be spending the evening with my wonderful family. My parents are in for a couple of days so they can join in with us in bringing in the new year. May all of you feel the presence of the Lord in 2008. As I look back on 2007 I am thankful of how the Lord has been a part of my life. What a beautiful Lord and Savior we have.
Happy New Year.

the reason for the season

Well here we are! It is Christmas Eve and it is also the first day of my vacation. I am very much looking forward to a week of no work and lots of play. I pray that all of you have a wonderful Christmas and encourage you to focus on the reason for the season. Our Awesome God gave us His only Son to be our Savior. To be born on this earth and to be a sacrifice for our sins. What a gift! What a wonderful gift! Merry Christmas.

Another Year coming to an end already?

Well here we are nearing the end of another year. It does not seem possible that we have lived another year on this earth. When I graduated from high school I had an uncle that told me that now each year of my life would go by faster than the last. It sure seems like that is true. It was just last year that Mac was in kindergarten. Now he is a junior, and will turn 17 in April. Autumn just turned 15 last month. Why just a few weeks ago she was learning how to walk and talk. Collin, now 13, (yes we have 3 teenagers living under one roof, please pray for Tracy and I.) was just tall enough to reach a pie on the counter when Mom wasn't looking. Abigail was just born last year, and low and behold she is 9. To top it all off, Tracy and I just got back from our honeymoon 18 1/2 years ago. Yes Uncle John was right time goes by faster as you get older. I have to say though it sure has been a wonderful time. As I have indicated on my blog before, I am very proud of what the Lord has granted me: A beautiful, loving wife who has given me 4 wonderful children and one child which was taken directly to heaven. I am truely blessed by ourAwesome God.

No longer a coach but now a referee?

Well here we are on the brink of another NFL season. High School and college have already began and the local youth league starts this weekend. I have coached for the past 4 years and for the first time will be very limited in my involvement with Collins team. I did not sign up to coach at all when we registered him this year. The coach asked me to help out with the defensive backs so I have done a little with them and helped out with the kickoff return team. But I will no longer be roaming the sidelines screaming at kids for not doing what they should be on every play. I instead have traded in my coaches whistle for a referees whistle. Yes it is true I am now a zebra. I am now on the side of those striped guys that I have been frustrated with all these years and have wondered if they even knew what was going on out on the field. Why did I cross over to the dark side you ask? Well I figured they needed all the help they could get. Truth is two years ago I was really frustrated with the officiating at the high school and youth levels of football. It seemed that there was no consistency to the officiating. I decided to look into becoming a certified official. I did just that got the books studied and took and passed the test. I was even able to do one youth game at the end of the season. I literally hung up my coaches whistle on a Tuesday evening after we lost our playoff game and refereed a game on Thursday. When I steeped onto the field with my stripes on it just felt different. I must say I was nervous what if I make a mistake? How will the crowd react to my call's? Rick the gentleman that asked me to help him must have sense my nervousness told me not to worry about a thing. He told me simply that when you throw that yellow flag one side of the Field will be happy with your call and the other side will not plain and simple. That is true with out a doubt. The game went fine to my knowledge I did not make any bad calls.

The following year I decided not to be a head coach and just focus on refereeing. When I signed Collin up I put on the form that I would be willing to be an assistant if needed... Mistake. as it turned out I was needed and after some bad circumstances they kicked the head coach out of the league and guess who got to step in as the head coach? Me! I did ref most of the games that our team was not in. On many saturdays last season I would ref a game at 9:00Am, coach our game at 10:30AM and ref another game at noon. It was stressful mainly due to the fact that I was a head coach for one team and would then ref a game consisting of teams I had coached against the week before. After a few games though the other coaches realized that I woul call a fair game.

This season I will be refing only. I will not be on the sidelines of Collins games as a coach. I may however need to ref a game that he is playing in. The league will try not to put me in that situaion but we have a limited number of officials and I may be asked to do it.

After being on both sides of the equation I believe I like refing better than coaching. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed coaching but reffing is just different. I love the game of football and to be a major part of a game is great mabey not as great as playing but I enjoy it none the less. As I said earlier I have seen so much incosistancy in officiating over the years I decided to do something about it. Am I perfect? No way I have made a few mistakes but all in all I think I have done ok. I hope to move up and eventually do high school games.

Happy Anniversary

Today Tracy and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. It has been a true joy spending the last 18 years married to my best friend. It was nice celebrating our blessed day on the Lord's Day. I roughly calculate that Tracy and I have been in church together on Sunday morning 932 times in our 18 years of marriage. If you do the math it comes out to 936 and I can only think of a few times we missed Sunday morning service. If you were to factor Sunday evening and Wednesday service the number would be in the 1400 range. I feel blessed to share my life with Tracy and even more blessed that I know my heavenly Father takes delight in our happiness. We had a nice dinner in the evening at one of the top 10 steak houses in the USA. We enjoyed a Filet Mignon that melted in our mouths. We stopped at a Ruby Tuesday's on the way home and had dessert. It was not anything real fancy but it was a great way to celebrate our special day. The time has flown by. It does not seem like it has been that long, but on the other hand I can't remember what life was like before we were married. The Lord sure has been good to Tracy and I, giving us a wonderful family to share our lives with. Thank you Lord, for your grace.

Rain! A Two-fold Blessing; God is Good to Us.

While I was at work yesterday, Abigail, my 8 year old daughter called me and asked if we could go on our date Saturday afternoon. Let me explain, every year at Christmas we give each of our kids a coupon book. The coupons include things like a get out of jail free card (this will cancel out punishments, although some restrictions apply), a stay up as late as you want, a day off of school(Tracy home schools the kids), and a date out with Mom or Dad. Abigail chose Saturday to use her date coupon. She wanted to go out for lunch at a French restaurant, and then go roller skating. I did not hesitate, and said yes right away, and that we could go. I really was planning on completing several tasks during the day. The yard is in need of a good mowing, as we have finally had some rain and it has started to look green again. I also had plans to look into a problem that Trace has been experiencing with her van. The garden needs some work, and the flowers need to be weeded. I also had planned on finishing up an outside project at our church. All in all I had a very busy day planned. I really did not have time to do the date thing, but I figured we could go, and I could do the work before and after our date.

As I awoke and headed out for my morning run I could see that it had rained quite a bit over night. The ground was completely saturated. While running I often pray. I find it a great time to spend with the Lord. It began to rain shortly after I started my run. I was thanking the Lord for the much needed rain as it has been very dry in our area,and we are many inches below the normal rainfall level. Then it dawned on me that this rain was a double blessing. You may have noticed that all of the projects were outside (we have no garage, so the van will be done in the driveway). So, with the rain from last night, mowing was out, as was the gardening. I couldn't weed the flowers as it was much to wet to do them. The rain seemed to be here to stay a while, and I immediately thanked the Lord for the rain. Not only for the ground, which we did really need it, but also for the projects that I would not be able to do even with no date scheduled. I would have enjoyed my date with Abigail even if I worked before and after, but I would have been rushing and thinking about the work I would not get done, and had to decide which projects would get bumped to a later time. God is so good to us. When we can be so focused on things to do, and a simple day of rain makes us realize that there are things far more important, it is a blessing. I was so happy to spend the date with Abigail, and I never thought about a single thing that needed to be done at home. If it were a sunny day I would have had those things on my mind.

Tracy even said the same thing to me as she was glad of the rain so I would not be thinking of what would not get done during the date.

As for the date, we had a blast. We had our French restaurant lunch at noon. After lunch, we headed down the street to an old fashioned ice cream shop and sat on a nearby park bench swing and enjoyed our dessert together. Then, we headed to the roller rink. I was never a good skater as a kid and that has not changed since I've become an adult. As we headed out on the floor, I began to lose my balance and Abigail grabbed my hand and said, "I will keep you from falling Daddy." Truth is, she did help me keep my balance and it very much touched me. We skated for over 2 hours. I did fall twice, times both of which she did not have hold of my hand. We had a good time. After we left we headed to a local park and spent a few minutes swinging. Then we headed home. As we pulled up the driveway with the wipers on, Abigail said, " I sure am glad we did our date today." With a tear in my eye I said, "Me too, Honey."

God is so good to us.

Tagged Answers

Here are the long awaited results of my tagged post.

1) I have a piece of turf and concrete from Three Rivers Stadium.

True, a salesman that called on my store gave it to me.

2) I am an ordained deacon within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

True, I was ordained in Dayton, Ohio

3) I have worked for NBC during the NFL playoffs.

True, I had a friend that worked for NBC and he arranged for me to work several Steeler games. It was great. I got paid to watch the game from the NBC press box.

4) I have been a member at 6 different churches all of which were Presbyterian.

True they were not all the same but they were all Presbyterian.

5) I had a part in a local production of The Sound of Music and served as the stage manager.

True my children were in the show and they were desperate for adult male roles.

6) I led a semi-pro football team in interceptions one season.

True, I played for 3 seasons after highschool

7) I have run a triathlon

False, I have always wanted to but never have.

8) I curently run 6 days a week, and at one time I ran over 250 days consecutively without skipping a day.

True, I have actually done the 250+ thing a couple of times. Each time I did I got injured. I gave up running on Sundays about 6 years ago and have not been injured due to running since.

9) I drove over 80,000 miles per year over the last 4 years.

True, I am in sales and cover several states.

The winner is Tina. I guess I should have said competed in a trialathon instead of ran one. Truth be told the swimming would be my downfall. Thanks to all who played along.

Boy Scout Camp

I will be at scout camp with the boys for a few days. I will return to blog activity sometime on Wednesday. Where the camp is located has no service of any kind.

Weekly Debate 2

Well my first debate went well. Thanks to all who participated. I do not have a lot of readers at this time. I hope to gain more as I go along. I plan to post the topic/question on Sunday afternoon or evening. I can not always promise that I will be able to chime in consistently during the day as my work keeps on the go and I do not always have access to the net. The topic of this week's debate is music. As a Christian, what type of music should we listen to and what should we not listen to? Let the debating begin!

Reaping what we have sown

I am excited to share with you that we have eaten from our garden several times this week. We have had plenty of zucchini meals (the variety of meals can be found on my wife's blog). The girls froze 4 quarts of beans yesterday. We will be having cucumbers soon (they are sitting on the counter), and I sliced up a banana pepper and ate it on my pizza after church on Sunday. I expect we will be having spaghetti squash soon, as well as peppers and if they ever ripen, tomatoes.

As we continue to have a drought, the garden seems to be holding up quite well. I have been watering it regularly. We did get a little rain this past week. The yard on the other hand is not fairing so well as it is quite brown. I spent some time weeding the flower garden yesterday. My son Mac had a friend over last night and his mom instructed him to tell us the flowers looked pretty. I was pleased to hear the compliment.

It really is nice to benefit from hard work. I liken it to our work for the Lord, as it is not always easy to live a Christian life, but the rewards of serving our Father are so worth the labor. How often do we really think about the benefits we receive from our Lord? While visiting another blog a few days ago, I was reminded of how we must be thankful of our daily bread that our heavenly Father gives us. All too often we take for granted what we have. We complain about things we don't have. Fact is, we have what we need, our God gives us just what we need to survive. The final reward is the everlasting life we will receive in our Father's heaven. Now that is a reaping that is worth the sowing.

Weekly Debate

I would like to add a new feature to my blog. The weekly debate. I plan on posting a question each week and want to hear from everyone. Please give your honest opinion and then I encourage each of you to debate it back and forth.



This week's question is....Can a Christian, in good conscience, purchase and use a radar detector? I feel that it is not something that a professing Christian should do. While it says no where in Scripture that speeding is a sin, we are called to obey the law of the land. I, for one, could benefit by having one. I drive all day long and it would be helpful to go faster and get home sooner. But I have always felt that it was wrong to have a radar detector. Please let me know what you think. I would love to hear every one's thoughts on this issue.

Tagged

Well I have been tagged by my daughter Autumn. So I guess I have to list 9 things about myself one of which is not true. I will give it a about a month to post the answer, as I do not have to many readers yet on my blog .

1) I have a piece of turf and concrete from three rivers stadium.

2) I am an ordained Deacon within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

3) I have worked for NBC during the NFL playoffs.

4) I have been a member at 6 different churches all of which were Presbyterian.

5) I had a part in a local production of The Sound of Music and served as the stage manager.

6) I led a semi-pro football team in interceptions one season.

7) I have ran a triathlon

8) I curently run 6 days a week, and at one time I ran over 250 days consecutively without skipping a day.

9) I drove over 80,000 miles per year over the last 4 years.

Much needed rain

On Sunday our pastor prayed for rain, as we have a family that has a farm and many families that have gardens, all of which could use the rain for the dry soil. We have had a nice rain the past two days and what a blessing. What a joy it was to hear Abigail say during the rain storm on Monday that the rain was an answer to our pastor's prayer. After this evening's rain we were able to find 5 zucchini that were suitable to be picked. We are eagerly ready to eat them. The Lord sure is good to us. I just love harvesting and then providing food on our table for our hard work.

Father's Day

Well once again I have experienced a great day thanks to my family. My loving wife made 2 delicious coffee cakes for breakfast; one blueberry and one cherry. They were both great. We had another wonderful church service and headed home for barbecued pork chops, noodles and carrots. Once again yum! My daughter baked Pig Out Cake for dessert. After dinner, I was presented two gifts.From Tracy, I received a Jerome Bettis jersey, and the kids got me a snow cone maker and four flavors. Mac gave me sour grape, Autumn gave me rootbeer, Collin gave me fruit punch, and Abigail got me cherry. It was a very hot day outside so we enjoyed refreshing cones together. We lounged around, played a little badminton, watched some Nascar and golf on the tube. We had a light supper of crab dip spread and topped it off with some ice cream. All in all it was a very relaxing Father's Day. I am truly blessed to be a father and thankful the Lord has placed me where he did.



I hope all of you dads out there had a great day as well Happy Father's Day!

Garden update

Well despite all the dry weather(no rain for over two weeks) that we have been having the garden is doing quite well. I have been watering it nightly and to my delight everything is growing . I have peppers and tomatoes on the vine as well as zucchini, watermelon, and cantaloupe. The beans, cabbage, and brussel sprouts are progressing quite nicely. After an intense battle with the potato bugs(one in which I defeated those pesky critters) the potatoes are growing extremely well. I am very pleased with the progress of the garden so far. The only thing that has not done well was the beets. Most of them were washed out soon after they were planted (we could sure use some of that rain now) .

Back Home

As I promised, I will try to post at least once a week. (I was a few days off) The last 2 days of vacation included a wonderful Friday in which we flew kites at Jockey's Ridge Park which is a natural sand dune. It was beautiful. There is no way a machine could have created this awesome display that God's hands carved and placed the sand. We flew kites for over an hour. It was great! All you had to do was let go of the kite and away it went. No running full speed for a mile to get the kite up. We then went to the Lost Colony village on Roanoke Island. We walked around and went into another lighthouse. We spent Saturday morning in the pool and went to the ocean for the last time in the afternoon. It was cold as a storm was moving in. We had great weather the entire week. We left at the right time as it rained Saturday evening and for a good 5-6 hours of our drive on Sunday.

We made it back home safely after a 14 our drive last Sunday. We had a wonderful time. The time off from work was much needed. I felt refreshed, although I was not ready to go back to work. I could have used a few more days off. I was however, ready to come home. The outer banks were great and I hope to go back and spend another week there. But there is something about home that I'm always ready to return to. Even though our whole family was together I was eager to pull in our driveway and walk through our doors and sleep in our bed. The key word in the last sentence being our. Something about that which the Lord has given my family, our home. God has entrusted us and blessed us with a beautiful home. We can go and stay in a bigger, more expensive home for a week, and while it was nice, it was not ours. I have felt this way about all 5 houses Tracy and I have lived in. We often take for granted what the Lord provides us with wanting more than we need or deserve. God is so good to us and we need to be thankful for our homes and all that He blesses us with. We are part of His master plan of life and He places us where we need to be to carry out His will.

By the way, as I predicted there were a lot of weeds waiting to be pulled. Collin and I have gotten most of them taken care of. He (Collin) has been a big help in the garden this year.