Pregnancy Update

I’m sure that everything that I’m going to be saying here is pretty much exactly what everyone else has said in the past. But I’m sure that someone wants to hear about it anyways.

Right now we’re discovering all of the wonders of the first months of pregnancy. We’ve gone out and bought some maternity clothes. We got a pair of pants and she’s much more comfortable in them. We’ll be sure to post a picture of her in her new clothes. She’s very excited about them.

She’s finding it difficult to sleep at night because she wakes up hungry so often. During the day she’s able to nibble, but at night it gets to the point where its so bad she’ll wake up. Last night she made sure that she ate something with a little protein so it would last longer. She’s going to try to eat more high carb stuff before she goes to sleep.

The heat has been absolutely oppressive. We moved the mattress into the living room where there is AC. I can’t wait until we get the electric bill. We’ll be gone for a week and a half at camps, so that should help. The heat has been so bad here because its been humid too. People left and right are losing power, but thankfully we haven’t had to do that yet. I don’t want to be around when that happens.

We’re scheduled to have another ultrasound on Monday, so we’ll be sure to have an update after that.

Here’s a picture of the progress so far. You ca…

Here’s a picture of the progress so far. You can see that she’s showing just a little. More updates to come…

Randomness….

When you’re in a waiting room and there are two of you together, does it drive you crazy when people who are there by themselves are sitting in the chairs that have two or three together, instead of the seats that are by themselves? So you and the person you are there with are forced to not sit next to each other so that mrs. allbyherself can sit in the middle of three seats by herself.

Just a thought, but I think that recycling should mean more to the Christian. Its an incredibly easy way to show you care about the world that God gave you. You don’t have to stop driving your tank to work, you don’t have to stop using AC or aerosol. Just get a bin to throw recycling in and you’re good. they will even pay you to recycle in California. .04 cents a bottle or can.

Is it sad for the Beach Boys when the crowd cheers more for a guy who was in a sitcom 15 years ago than they do for you?

I noticed that a lot more places have the ‘No shirt, No shoes, No service’ in NH than they do in California. Any reasons for that?

Jen still has not come and visited us.

Another sign that I’m living in the real ‘New Mexico’, I called the bus company to make reservations for a camp and the lady that answered the phone answered in Spanish. I paused and thought, what number did I just dial? I said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really speak English.” and she just started speaking in English like nothing happened. It reminds me of when I was in college and I called ‘Papa Johns’ and the guy answered ‘Papa Juan’s’.

So we’re playing volleyball at church on Tuesday night and Leah and I were on opposite teams. On a serve the ball happened to go to Leah. It wasn’t a hard serve, it was a nice lob. Well, she just stares at it coming down, and at the last second decides not to attempt to hit it, but to try to avoid it instead, thinking its dodgeball. Well, she turns and the ball hits her and suddenly I’m the bad guy. How does that work? it wasn’t like I spiked it at her. It wasn’t like we weren’t playing volleyball and you eventually you have to hit it. Thankfully, she got hit with two hard spikes by other guys so no one remembered when the ball that I served hit her.

Why don’t people get upset at ‘Mother Nature’ when the weather strikes and blame God, but don’t say God brought good weather instead of Mother Nature?

While I was in NH I bought a car taxi like video game and Leah and I had been playing it. I came home from work one day to find that the playstation was on. I thought I had left it on, and asked Leah if she had played it. she admitted that she was playing video games to relax. That’s right folks, I married a gamer.

Is it normal for the husband of a pregnant wife to also experience some minor morning sickness? That’s right. Leah’s pregnant.

Summer Jubilee

On Saturday Leah and I had a ‘lazy’ day, recovering of a long week of pretty much 14 hour work days. CORE Week went amazingly well by the way. So in the evening Leah and I decided to walk down to main stream Alhambra to get something to eat. We chose to check out a Diner that someone had said was good and across the street they were setting up for a summer jubilee night. In the summer our town has Summer jubilee nights on Saturday nights and invite some band to go with a theme, whether its 70’s, 80’s or whatever. Last year Earth Wind and Fire were here. Well, we decided to check if anyone notable was playing and it said “8:30: BEACH BOYS”. Then we looked down the street and there were thousands of people in grandstands and filling the blocked off street. All of this was going on within a mile of our home and we had no idea.

So we ran across the street to the Diner and got a bite to eat and went and watched the Beach Boys. So they came out on stage and there were of course only two original members left and there was this goofy looking young guy. I remember thinking, wow, that guys a dork. He was running out on the stage and I thought he must be a Alhambra staff guy. I figured he was out there to get the crowd going for the old guys. Then the voice that was introducing the band said, “Welcome… The Beach Boys! And John Stamos!” So not only did we see the Beach Boys, but we saw John Stamos. For those of you who don’t know, he played ‘Uncle Jesse’ on Full House and has had multiple roles since. He has played with the Beach Boys quite a bit, and he was in the “Bermuda, Bahama” music video playing the drums.

Well, he decides to try to play with them, and just kept looking off stage and to others, making it obvious he didn’t know what he was doing. Then, on the song ‘Summertime Blues’ and they were going to let him sing the talking parts in it, except when the time came, he forgot the words. He was pretty embarrassed and finally remembered ‘I’d like to help you son but your too young to vote.” He played a couple songs on the drums and then came back on guitar.

Another thing we noticed, for all the Beach Boys songs that we knew, they had a lot of songs that I had never heard, and neither had most of the crowd. You could tell when they’d play a song people knew because people would sing along and cheer, but then they played a bunch no one knew. I assume they couldn’t sing a lot of Brian Wilson’s songs.

Here are some pics from the evening:

FaceDown: Unplugged

For those of you who are interested, we have a new FaceDown CD released yesterday. It is a little unplugged cd with 6 tracks. The songs are all songs written by our very own Paul Hoover.

1. Your Name Be Praised
2. Now That I’ve Found You
3. You Chose Me
4. Break Me Down
5. Grace Abounds
6. Shall I Attempt to Speak

Some may seem familiar to you, but most will be new to most of you. These were all produced completely in house, and when i say in house, I mean in my office. It sounds great, as Paul would not have made it if it didn’t.

If anyone in the NH area would like to purchase the new CD, you can let my mom know and I will mail out a package for the number she requested.

CORE Week 2006: Flatline

Well, sorry for not posting but having visited home followed by jumping into Core week here, things have been a little hectic. But I take these few short moments to let everyone know how things are going here. Here are a couple pics of the deco:

This year we just decorated the stage area. We did it like an emergency room to go with the theme. We also did a hilarious intro video to introduce the staff for the week. We did a mock of the ER intro where everyone is doing things in the hospital and stops and stares into the camera and their name flashes underneath them. We got the music from ER and even got some images that they use in the intro and it came out great. I hope to have those on our youth website soon.

The passage I’m teaching through is Ephesians 2:1-10 and it has gone well so far. The first two nights were on the first three verses laying out the position of the person without Christ and the desperate situation we found ourselves in. I managed to completely offend one kid the first night. He said he came from a Unitarian church but hasn’t been in awhile. He’s now ‘searching’. Well, apparently he didn’t like the idea of me telling him he was dead and Christ was the only way. I actually said the second night, before I learned of this reaction, that if someone is offended by something I’m saying, than that is ok, but it isn’t my idea or opinion on the matter. If someone is offended, that’s natural because the gospel is offensive to those who don’t understand it. It was something that was somewhat refreshing, because I know he understood what I was saying. That doesn’t mean I should try to be offensive, but it does mean that he understands the Gospel and he rejects it. You can pray that he keeps thinking it over.

We’ve probably had around 100 or so kids come out, which is good. Numbers are down a little, but this group is very, very young. Well, I gotta get back to work and prepare for tonight. Oh, and I’d like to thank Jen for stopping by and seeing our church and ministry. Oh wait…. she didn’t…. first the Glines come all the way out to California and don’t see me, now Jen… I can feel the love…