For just over a year, Mandy and I have been working with Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services and Alabama’s Department of Human Resources to get this little guy into our house. After a year of paperwork being misplaced, details being lost, and two caseworkers working through the courts, we brought him home today.
Adoption has always been something we’ve wanted to do and today we are in the first real stage of the process. Thanks to all the people who have been praying for us and we ask that you continue to do so! Shawn is a happy, friendly kid who always has a smile on his face and looks like he’ll transition quickly and smoothly. Thankfully, he had amazing foster parents who loved and spoiled him just like we will.
Here’s a few pictures from us arriving at my parents’ house.
You ever go through a stage where you just want everything in your life to be clean? I’m certainly in one of those stages in my life right now and not just physical cleanliness like the cleanliness of a room; I’m also cleaning up the way I organize my computer files at work, tossing out the clothes I don’t wear often and even thinking about the the cleanliness of the food I’m putting into my body.
Recently, our church participated in a 21 day fast and over the course of it I learned how refreshing it was just to eat natural, healthy, wholesome foods. After three weeks of no grease, fats, or sweets, you’d be surprised how sensitive your mouth becomes to all the garbage that’s in just about all the foods we eat. I watched a documentary that added fuel to the fire and that I’d recommend everybody to watch. Here’s the trailer below.
This cleanse has all the typical makings that new year’s resolutions bring that usually fade quickly. Hopefully I can break the trend of previous attempts of removing the clutter in all the areas of my life.
A look from a man who’s already a legend in his profession. A man who some say betrayed his legacy for one last shot at a championship. A man who defied the odds and at 40 years old had one of the best seasons of his career. A man who led his team all the way to its conference championship game only to make a mistake that would cost his team their season.
Those who have shedding dogs will feel the pain in this post. Today we got fed up with the little pieces and patches of Hatch’s dog hair we have in our house, on our clothes, in our car, and just about any place we associate ourselves with! We went to the car and vacuumed every nook and cranny. We wiped down inside the cup holders, in the side pockets, all around the dashboard and still there’s some of those little tiny strands of annoyance that just won’t seem to budge.
You’d think that a short haired dog would be better than the alternative when it comes to dog hair but I beg the differ. At least with a long haired dog the hair is thin and will pick up easily. Hatch’s hair literally clings to anything cloth that it touches. Just a lint roller or a quick vacuum won’t do the job. You’ve got to spend hours picking the last pieces of it up by tweezers if you want all of it out.
The sickening part is, even when you’ve got it all clean, it’s just going to get bad again by next week. His hair goes from him, to our clothes, to whatever else we’re around… which brings me to what I think is the solution of this problem:
Daily Brushing
I know…. seems obvious, but the problem is simple. If one brushes his dog daily and controls the hair that needs to shed, then there is no more hair to shed onto things you don’t want hair on. This problem began to be solved today. I present to you day one of fixing Hatch’s hair problem.
A year ago today, the wife, the dog and I packed up a Ryder truck full of our stuff and moved to Birmingham. I’d completed my college classes and had an internship at Student Life which is located in Hoover. The first three months of 2009, I spent four to five days a week traveling across the country on Student Life’s Live Love Conference Tour. This was especially tough on Mandy since we were in a new place where she didn’t know a soul and me sometimes 800 miles away!
The entire time I was on the road with SL, I was looking for my first full time job. At the last two weeks of my internship, I was applying for jobs that I didn’t even care about! After many job applications put in and zero callbacks or job interviews, I was thinking I may have to pack up all our stuff again and move back to Savannah. On our last tour stop in Oklahoma, I found a job at a church in Birmingham for a video editor position. We had visited many different churches while in Birmingham but hadn’t yet heard of Church of the Highlands. To quickly sum it up, I got the job, we love the church and it all couldn’t have worked out much better.
A whole lot has happened since we’ve been in Birmingham and we’ve missed some big things in Savannah. Here’s a small list of things in our lives since the big move.
Moving Day
Shooting in Nashville
Zoo Visit
Live Love Tour
Car Died… Bought New Car
House We Signed On… (We didn’t end up buying it)
4th of July Visitors
2nd Anniversary Trip to Atlanta
First Visit to See Shawn
Hoover Scarecrow Festival
Jack-O-Lantern Carving
Moving Again
Second Visit to See Shawn
Camping Trip
Christmas in Birmingham
Christmas Vacation
Looking back on this year, I really couldn’t have asked for a better one. I love my family, my job, my church and my friends.
I’m about to buy a movie ticket for $13.25. You read that right… thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents. Can you believe that? Yes, it is for the most anticipated movie of the year that’s supposed to change the movie industry… Yes, it is in Real-D… Yes, it is James Cameron’s first feature film since Titanic… however… I’m just appalled at that price.
I’m only doing it for the social aspect. It’s a nice event for what looks to be a cool movie. It’s just hard to swallow when earlier this month I paid $1.00 for a movie ticket, only that time it was at the notorious dollar theater, just a mile from our house. Don’t wear your nice clothes here. You might get your shirt stuck to the chair or leave with a permanent stain from the soiled seats. Make sure you wear shoes that you don’t mind getting residue stuck on from cokes that spilled most likely from a few days before.
We were warned before our trip to the dollar theater of all these problems we might face, so we came prepared. The question is on what side of these two ends of the spectrum best? The overpriced glitze and glamor of seeing a movie at the Rave in Real-D or taking the cheap route and getting no surround sound and a possible case of fungus spreading on your clothes? I’ll take option 2 in most cases. I think a buck is a good enough deal to rough it most of the time. The other option is frankly just too expensive to do on a consistent basis… but on special occasions, such as the midnight showing of Avatar on opening night, I’ll suck up the thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents.
While watching football yesterday, I probably saw Taco Bell’s Black Jack taco commercial at least half a dozen times. The advertising boys did their jobs well, because today, I had a massive craving for the new three cheese, black pepperjack taco from America’s favorite mexican fast food joint.
The taco was just okay… nothing special about it. For 89 cents, it’s hard to criticize, but I’d rather go with a burrito or a soft shell. This is going to be a one timer for me. At the end of the day… good marketing Taco Bell. I still love you.
I’m not used to all this rain that we get here in Birmingham. Since the first week we were here, Mandy and I have noticed that it’s like Seattle, but in Alabama! For a stretch last month, it rained twelve days in a row… twelve straight days! That’s over a quarter of the days it took to flood the whole Earth!
This rain has really gotten in the way of my quest to become a decent recreational tennis player. It’s hard to get good when you only have a day or so a week to be able to get out to the courts and hit some balls.
Anyways… I’m not a fan of you rain. Please go away for a while.
Since getting my first full time job, I’ve gotten into a peculiar habit I’ve grown to love: The Dinner Nap.
After a long day at work and eating a large meal, nothing feels better than curling up in the bed and taking a few hours to shed off the stress and pressures of the day. Taking naps are nothing new to the world, but what makes the Dinner Nap strange is the timing of it.
In my house, dinner takes place around seven in the evening. This puts us finishing up around 7:30. Here’s where the Dinner Nap slot should be. Go to bed half past seven… wake up around 9:15. It’s the perfect timing, for the perfect nap. You’ll wake up refreshed, rejuvenated and ready for a whole new part of the day you didn’t know existed.
When taking a Dinner Nap, one can stay up to once thought unheard of hours of the night. When I take my Dinner Nap, it’s not unusual for me to hit the sack around three in the morning then wake back up at 8am and feel great! The special timing of the nap allows your body to recharge just enough to keep you going longer to get more done.
Think about it… after dinner, many people spend the rest of their night just winding down the rest of the day, getting ready for bed. When taking a Dinner Nap, you can use that time re-energizing your body and mind, you’ll wake up to finish whatever else you desire for the day, whether it be cleaning the house, finishing a work project, putting together a puzzle or even read your Bible if you haven’t yet.
I won’t lie… if not done correctly, the Dinner Nap can really ruin your day. If you don’t wake up before two hours of sleeping, you’ve pretty much slept too long to wake up and go on with your day like normal and entirely too short for a full night’s sleep. If your body won’t wake up on its own, just set an alarm to wake you.
You’re probably thinking this idea is absurd. ”It’s weird to go straight to the bed after dinner for sleep time! Why would anybody want to take one of these things?!” My answer is this:
I know… I know it’s weird. I’m just suggesting that you try it. I can genuinely say that the Dinner Nap can add so much to your day.
“At the Movies” is one of those series that you can really have fun with and try out some things that you might not usually get to play around with as with the more traditional series. This idea came from a tutorial I watched a long time ago on how to make it look like you were in the Ironman helmet. I thought this could be a cool way to promote “At the Movies”. Luckily, I was able to convince my boss Kellen of the thought enough for him to let me spend a little bit of time on it.
ps.. there’s a spelling error at the end of this (yes, it was fixed before we played it today)
