I haven't quit blogging...really...

It's just that I've found other ways to keep the very small number of people who care what I do on a daily basis updated. Those ways are facebook and twitter. Also it seems like I never have time to sit down and write what is really on my mind. I have a ton of half written posts that will probably never make it to the blog because they are old news now.

Things are going great for us. We are staying busy but it's with good stuff. We had our Disciple Now weekend at church this past week. It was an incredible weekend. Our youth group and entire church never cease to amaze me. Our guest speaker for the weekend was awesome. It's someone I first heard about seven years ago and at that time it was clear he was blessed by God with the ability to speak. He still has that incredible gift today. It was great for the kids to hear him speak and great for me to just sit back and take it all in. It was great.

Things are starting to get busy at work but that's a good thing right? Job security? I'm doing things at work now that I love doing and that makes it fun. I also love the people and the place I work at. I told a friend the other night I have never had a job that I didn't like. Somehow whever I work I always manage to have a good time. I think there's a way to have fun and get the work done. I like to think I'm a master of that balance but what do I know.

P90x isn't going as well as planned but it is going. Last week during one of the videos I honestly felt like I tore an ab muscle. I'm sure it's nothing more than a strain but up until today it has really hurt. It's better today so I'm hoping to get back on the bandwagon tomorrow. It would also help if Malachi would sleep through the night. He's off the bottle which is a nice but now he likes to wake up about three o'clock in the morning and he does NOT have the ability to put himself back to sleep. Leah was so good at that and we have been so spoiled.

Now that DNow is over it's time to complete the college application to go back next year....I took a practice GMAT test, the test required to get into graduate school and didn't get as high as I would have liked so I'm going to study just a little for that.

Supposedly Dr. Nietzel is getting ready to make a major announcement about the future of Missouri State University. There are small rumblings it could be a law school...I really hope not...if that were true I honestly think I would quit my job and go to law school...law school has always been my dream but I love Springfield too much to move away...am I crazy...

Twitter and more...

I've resisted twitter for some time but last night gave in and signed up for a twitter account. Basically a twitter account is a way of instant messaging limited to 140 characters. It's become quite popular over the past few months and is a tremendous way to stay in touch with a lot of poeple without much effort. Many popular celebrities and politicians have their own twitter accounts and their "followers" can get live tweets delivered to their computer or even straight to their cell phone if they have text messaging. I've thought a lot the past few days about how we stay in touch with people. A year ago I barely sent a text message a week, now there are days I send upwards of 100 texts a DAY. It's an amazing concept and so strange at the same time. I may have a conversation with a person with 20 texts each way for a total of 40 texts over the course of 20 minutes that could have been had in 2 minutes if I would have just dialed the phone. Working with the youth at church I've found out it's the easiest and most efficient way to get ahold of people. Then in a senior staff meeting this past week the senior staff was debating texting. One of our oldest senior staff members said he had professional contacts that only would communicate via texting. It's so weird how communication has changed the past few years. Email is almost out of date now. Who would have thought it??? If anyone so desires to follow me on twitter you can reach me at www.twitter.com/achorton14 I'm trying to get as many followers as possible, yes it's a competition with me and others, everything is a competition for me...

Then for all you business people out there is texting legal documentation? How does that work? Can you send a text to an electronic content management system?

Lots going on...

Lot's going on with use but nothing too spectacular. Monday Leah had another MRSA spot come up. Just when we get comfortable and think we've got things under control healthwise something comes up. Malachi seems to have all his issues cleared up and we finally think we are on the road to healthy living. Hopefully this is just a bump on the road.

Anyone tried P90X? If you don't know it's a 90 day work out plan that has received quite good reviews. I fully believe it's like any other program where if you buy it and do it you get results but if you buy it and it sits on the shelf you probably aren't going to get any results. I've decided to give it a try. My weight loss isn't going well at all and I need something to get me started. I found a cheap version on craigslist so I'm supposed to pick it up and start it on Monday morning. Hold me accountable if you see me! As far as the H20 only goes I've mixed results. I'm 100% off of diet coke but still drinking a lot of tea and some crystal light. Overall I'm happy with the change. I still need to ditch the crystal light and some of the tea but hopefully over time.

I've mulled around going back for my MBA and I think I'm going to finally pull the trigger and head back in January. It's a huge amount of time to dedicate as I'll be in class two nights a week for three hours. We have our life plan together of what we want to do and to get this done I need to get it over with sooner rather than later.

Ordered our Missouri State basketball tickets on Friday. Can't wait until basketball season. It will be here before I know it.

I guess I should post something...

I've had lots of ideas for posts the past week but everytime I sit down to write them something distracts me. I've got some "interesting" posts, or at least I think so, that I hope to most in the next few weeks.

Today I went for my first jury duty summons. I honestly didn't think much of it. So much that I had three meetings scheduled for work that I had to wind up postponing once I realized late Saturday evening that I would possibly not be there. I had to call in Friday afternoon to see if I actually had to go and was informed "the case" was still on. At that point it peaked my curiousity and sounded like maybe something important. Showed up at 8:15 today and found 2 people from my church were in the jury pool. After about an hour we were escorted to the court room and were told we were there for a MURDER TRIAL! I had absolutely no idea. I was number 54 so I understood my chances of being selected weren't good so I wasn't too disapointed when I was let go at around 2:15. One member from my church is on the jury and the other one was let go with me. I had mixed feelings about being on it. It was going to last all week and I have a lot going on at work but on the other hand I've always wanted to be on a jury and then a murder trial on top of that. Both of the attorneys did tell us this would truly be a CSI type case with lots of forensic evidence. Sounded cool but I'm not totally upset I didn't get on it. Lots of people encouraged me to try and get out of it and that was a bit dissapointing to me. It's hard to give up time but hey it's our civic duty. I sure hope if I was ever on trial people would show up for my jury. The funniest moment was when the prosecutor asked if anyone had a violent crime committed against them or a family member. A lady responded that someone tried to kill her TREE, yes her tree. They shot at it twice. The entire courtroom tried to hide their laughter but it was obvious everyone was laughing.

I started my weight loss goal last week to lose 32 lbs by Christmas. I'm down 2 so far so I'm happy with that. 30 more to go!

Until later...

Miscellaneous Ramblings...

Lots of stuff has gone on since my last post so I'll recap with some miscellaneous ramblings.

We opened our new santuary at church today. It's pretty awesome. We had close to 300 people at church today and we filled up the place. Pretty soon the youth get to move into the old santuary and we are super pumped about that. It will be such a blessing to have a bigger spot for Wednesday nights.

Malachi went to a bunch of doctors last week. 3 appointments in two days. Nothing new, more tests. This morning though he had the worst diaper I have ever experienced. It stunk up the whole house, was all over the crib and himself, and I am such a good dad I was the one who cleaned up the mess. Literally I almost threw up.

Put the contacts back in this morning. Way sooner than the doctor ordered but I'm young and healthy right? I'm sure the infection is gone, right? So far no redness. Tomorrow morning will be the test. Pray that they keep white and not red. I HATE wearing glasses.

Yes, I watched Michael Jackson's funeral on Tuesday. Actually watched part at work and then watched the rest taped that night at home. I have mixed views on the whole situation as far as making that big of deal out of someone and all the other stuff in the news. Bottom line, Michael Jackson was an extremely talented muscian, that can't be denied.

The all H20 is having mixed results. The one thing I am totally proud of though in the last three weeks I've had one diet coke and can proudly say I've broken the diet coke addiction. Drinking a lot of H20, lot of ice tea, and a few other low calories drinks, mainly Crystal Light.

Tomorrow I'm faithfully starting a new eating plan. I have a goal weight that I want to be at by December 31st. Probably around 30 lbs to lose, I'll do a weigh in tomorrow. I think I can do it and losing it that slowly is probably the best way to do it vs all real quick. I am running a 1/2 marathon again in October and plan to faithfully train for that so hopefully that helps as well. Still playing basketball on Monday nights and softball on Tuesday nights and that helps a lot. I really dreaded being 30, fat and bald. When I turned thirty I was overweight and balding. I can come to grips with being 30, going bald is not the end of the world, but I really want to lose some weight.

Leah talks to everyone. Today at church while waiting to get our food she pointed to an older gentleman and said "Your bald". I wanted to vanish. Then the other day at a resturant she pointed to a girl in a cowboy hat and said "Cowboy? Cowboy?" I'm sure she'll provide plenty of those moments.

Malachi is starting to get the hang of taking steps. He's not walking yet but has taken a step or two. I think in a week we'll be there.

Leah is ALMOST potty trained. Just one accident the past few days. I'll be glad when this stage is done.

I've gone back and forth on Sarah Palin. I've come to the conclusion that I can respect her decision and I think she might be a player on the national stage in 2012. I still think she's too polarizing to be the nominee but she will have a voice in the party. I almost think I would vote for her if I had to chose now.

Lots of rambling, maybe I'll be a more faithful blogger in the future, maybe not...

What's up Sarah Palin?

What is up with Sarah Palin announcing not only that she won't run for a second term as governor of Alaska, but also announcing that she is stepping down in three weeks? I've gone back and forth on Sarah Palin since she was announced as John McCain's running mate ten months agao. I remember watching her speech at the Republican National Convention and thinking, wow, we've got a winner here. The speech was truly awesome. Things went downhill after that for her. I blame most of that on McCain's campaign team, which at times appears it wanted to lose, constantly mismanage her and put her in situations she didn't need to be put in. After the election I wondered if she might have what it takes to run in 2012. At the time I really wanted her to run again but thought she probably was too far to the right to get the nomination. The past few months have been odd to say the least. She has become a polarizing face in politics, but isn't anyone who is anyone in politics now polarizing? People love her or hate her. That is clearly shown by her approval rating now being at 45% in Alaska which before she was announced as a vice presidential candidate was at 73%. Has she really changed her politics that much or do people just now see her differently after the election? She's been the focus of 15 ethics violations since the election. Most of the time I lean on the side of where there's smoke there's fire but since all 15 have been cleared I'm beginning to think it's just a witch hunt. She stated in her "resignation" speech that her and her husband had $500,000 in legal fees as a result of all the investigations. That would be hard to pay off with her salary of either $125,000 or $160,000 depending on who you believe. Either way it's hard to pay off that amount. I would also imagine after her and her family being smeared by the media during the election and since then maybe she just wants away from it all. Some sources report she's out of politics for good. If that's the case I respect her decision but at the same time am sad because even though I'm not sure she would have been my pick for the Republican nomination in 2012 she would have added a lot to the debate. If she does want to run in 2012 I'm curious as to her roadmap from here. My pick, by pick I mean I who I think will be on the ticket not necessarily my choice, for 2012 is Rommney if we are still in an economic crisis and if we're not still in the crisis Eric Cantor is my pick. I'm probably way off, but we'll start hearing about it before too long:)

Random Pictures

When it rains it pours...

Several weeks ago our study on Wednesday night youth class was on the book of Job. The lesson focused on just a few verses but after reading those verses I found myself almost reading the entire book. It's good stuff, Satan went after Job over and over and over again and through it all Job kept his faith in God and never gave in. I found it amazing the faith that Job kept and going through all that with his wife and friends turning on him I wonder if I was put in that same situation how I would react. That was the day before the Aviator gave us fits. While I am in no way comparing our situation to the one of Job's, he went through way worse stuff than we did, we have definitely had our share of troubles at times these past few weeks. During those times when I want to say, "Why God, why us?", I find myself thinking back to Job and his faith and it gives me much encouragement. Some might think of our problems as trivial but even the trivial things mount. First we had the Aviator issue which I've blogged on numerous times, then Malachi continues to have health issues which we now to go to a specialist in Kansas City this week to see, then the drama with our air conditioner on our vacation which led to a 15.5 hour marathon driving session with 3 adults and 2 kids, then I found out today I have a bad viral eye infection which I'll tell you more about in a bit, finally today when I was leaving the eye doctor the car wouldn't start! All it needed was a new battery but still one thing after another and believe me the $$'s are starting to add up for all of this. We now have the next three days with nothing to do except for church on Sunday so we are locking ourselves up at home and going to try to avoid any more trouble!

About the eye infection, I was/am an abuser of my contacts. Even after going to the doctor every year and getting the same lecture after lecture about how I would pay for this some day I continued to ignore the eye doctor. She would say over and over that if you abuse your eyes they will abuse you. I abused my eyes, the contacts I wore were for 30 day usage, meaning I could wear them 30 days straight without taking them out and after 30 days I put in a new pair. I would literally go months without taking them out. Last year I only got a sixth month refill and I still have some left. Today though was the day of reckoning for my eyes and I hope they don't win. About three weeks ago I started noticing redness in one eye. Whenever I would take out my contact and put in eye drops the redness went away and everything appeared ok. Then about two weeks ago I started getting red in both eyes and the redness would go from eye to eye and sometimes both and sometimes it would go away. It got much worse while we were on vacation so I decided I would go in for my annual exam and also get the infection taken care of. I woke up this morning at 8:40, after getting home around 1:30, and immediately called. They said if I was there by 9:20 they would see me. I made it and got in quickly. Got my regular exam taken care of then I got the low down on my infection. I have a viral infection of the cornea. The cornea is the clear dome over the colored part of your eye. There are not antibodies in the cornea so if you get an infection there it's very hard to fight on your own. On top of that when you have a viral infection medicine can't treat it so it makes it even worse. The antibodies on the white part of the eye move over to the cornea on a temporary basis to fight the infection. When you wear contacts those antibodies get very angry and swell up on the white part trying to get to the cornea. That's what causes the redness and also what casues the redness to go away when a person takes out their contacts. If you push this infection long enough the antibodies get all messed up, forget where they live, and you can also cause permanent scarring on the cornea, which basically means you have permanet scratches on your line of vision. She does not think that mine is to that point but mine is bad enough that we have to be extremely careful. She forbid me to put contacts in for 2 weeks and suggested longer. If you put the contact on and the infection isn't gone you have to go back to square one, which would mean another extended time without contacts. I am going to schedule follow ups every two weeks until I am cleared to put in contacts again. It's possible, not highly likely, but not highly unlikely either, that I have become a carrier of the virus which would make wearing contacts again very hard. I pray that this is not the case and that in two weeks I'm cleared up. Until then I'll be wearing glasses. Warning to all of you contact wearers though, I thought I was too tough to have any problems with not following the doctors orders but I was wrong. Take care of your eyes.

Sold and Heading Home Soon

The Aviator is sold! To the dear friend who helped with it and reads this blog, thank you. Words can't say how much I appreciate your help. There are few people in life who you know will help you out whenever they can. This person is one of those people. This person would be willing to help no question asked and I would return the favor with no questions asked. The Aviator experience has taught us a lot of lessons, the primary one realizing how much bondage there is in debt. We are ready to stop being in debt and God willing we will never have a car payment again. We are almost done paying off the red SUV and after that we are going to try and pay cash for all purchases. At my conference today we had a very interesting speaker on the state of the economy. The basic point from all speakers was times are changing and spending patterns are going to have to change. My generation is used to what we want when we want it. If our parents have it we think we should have it, no matter how long or hard our parents worked. I look back at all my ridiculous purchases with a pay later attitude and realize how foolish those purchases were. Why I'm still paying for those choices, literally, I hope that going forward I do a better job of where I spend my money. Easy credit isn't going to be available. The speaker even said that going forward people are going to, gasp, have to have 20% for a down payment, or a least a reasonable amount. Having 20% for a down payment is unheard of for my generation.

We head back from Destin tomorrow. The air conditioning in our van has really caused problems. It's altered our plans every day and unfortunately they are not able to fix it. Supposedly the part is in Minn. and will take several days to get here. I do NOT understand that. Have they ever heard of Fed Ex? I offered, well I offered on behalf of my company, to basically pay any amount to get it here by tomorrow morning but they refused. To be honest driving home 13 hours with no air conditioning in the dead of summer sucks. There's no other word for it. Part of me wants to blame someone or find someone who did something wrong, but it's truly a freak accident. They say a rock flew up and put three little holes in the condensor. Even though I don't understand that, two independent mechanics have said that is what happened so I believe them. But, as I said to someone earlier today if all I have to worry about is driving 13 hours with no a/c I've got it pretty good. There are much bigger fish to worry about. We are leaving here around 10:00 tomorrow morning and are going to TRY and drive straight through with a few quick stops built in. Hopefully we'll be home around midnight or one and can sleep in our nice a/c at our house. Pray for us that we make it!

Destination: Destin

We made it to Destin today around 5:00. Not without some bumps along the way though. Well just one actually. We decided to drive since the whole family was going and at the end my sister decided to join us so it worked out best that we decided to drive. My work provides company vehicles for driving and they are usually nice. We had a 2009 Chrysler Town and Country that is very well equipped. All was fine until about 30 minutes the other side of Jonesboro, Arkansas when we noticed the air conditioning wasn't working. It soon started blowing hot air! We made it to Jackson, Mississippi that night, roughly 4 and 1/2 hours in the heat. It was hot! We got to Jackson around midnight because we spent some time trying to see what was wrong, I even changed the fuse just hoping it was that. We left Jackson around 10:00 this morning. Passed through Hattiesburg (sp?) around 11:30 and thought we would see if a car repair place, specifically Firestone, was open. I needed to know Firestone's hours earlier this week so I knew they were open on Sunday. We found one and they were nice enough to check it out and found out we had a hole in the condensor. They could fix it, but, after market parts aren't available yet on this model and you can only get that through a Chrysler dealership, which isn't open on Sundays so we were without airconditioning. Three and a 1/2 hours later we made it to Destin. To be honest it was nasty. Driving 30 minutes or an hour without air conditioning isn't the end of the world, a 13 hour trip though is a completely different thing. The thermometer read 104 degrees much of today. We were dripping wet and the seats have sweat stains and all in all it was just nasty. We really hope to get it fixed before we head back. To be simple about it heading back sounds absolutely miserable if we can't fix it. Pray we fix it!

The kids did great though considering the cirumstances. With air the trip would have actually been just fine. Oh well we are looking forward to having a great vacation. We have an ocean side room with a separate kids room so it is nice. I'll try and blog and finish out the month strong...

What have we been up to...

First off we had a great weekend. It was the first time that I can remember in a long time that Sarah wasn't working or we didn't have anything planned. It was truly a day for us to do what we wanted. We kept busy running errands and doing stuff around the house. Saturday evening we had some new friends come over. It was a couple that we know them from our work places. I work with the husband and the couple both get their hair done at Sarah's salon. They came over and we had dinner and talked until 12:30 that night. It was hard to get up to go to church. We also found out that three doors down is a co worker who I work with and am actually working on a big project with. What a small world.

Sunday was a great Fathers day. We went to church, ate Mexican (my choice) and then took a four hour nap. The kids slept most of that and Sarah let me sleep until it was time to go to church. It was wonderful. That was our weekend.

This week is crazy busy as next week I am going to a work conference in Destin Florida and the family is tagging along. We are leaving Saturday early afternoon and hopefully get eight to nine hours in that day. Then heading to Destin Sunday morning and staying in Destin until Wednesday afternoon. We'll drive back Wednesday/Thursday unless we just see something we have to do and then we'll take an extra day. We are looking forward to some relaxing time at the beach.

In the mean time though it's hard to get away from work and the house for a week. I've got a ton going on at work which makes it even harder to get away and we have a lot going on at church that we need to get ironed out this week before we head out. The weekend we get back is our last service in our current santuary at church and the next weekend we move into our new sanctuary. Exciting times!

My H20 only challenge is slowly making progress. I'm down to no more than 2 diet cokes a day which is a huge improvement. I've also picked up my exercising. In the last 24 hours I have played full court basketball for 1.5 hours, ran three miles, and played a softball game. Not bad if I don't say so myself. Tonight was my debut as short stop and probably my last time as well. I was 3-3 tonight with 2 RBI's, made a couple of plays in the field, no errors in the field, and all in all played a decent game in a 7-3 win.

Later!

Annoying People At Wal Mart

Anyone have those people at Wal Mart that just really annoy them? Like the people who use the electric shopping carts for "health" reasons and they act like they own the aisles? Part of me wants to ram my cart into their electric cart and the other part wants to scream at them that if they would walk the grocery store they wouldn't have these "health" issues and wouldn't need a cart. Or the people that insist on using the express lane when they clearly are above and beyond the limit? I'm not extremely picky here, if you have 15 of one item and 15 of another you can clearly use the express but you can't have 50 different items. If I'm in an extremely foul mood at that time I like to pretend I'm counting them as they are being rang up. It's quite funny when they "catch" me doing that. They try and apologize and tell me how much of a hurry they are in. I like to reply back I've got all day and that it was by pure accident I found myself in the express lane. The lady today at Wal Mart was the worse incident I have ever scene though. The lady had a HUGE cart which was almost completely rang up when I got to to the register. She did have to repeatedly ask the lady to give her her total, never mind the fact that it keeps track of it on that handy credit card payment device. She kept saying she was glad she wasn't going over her limit. Then she gets to to the end and pays for her groceries with food stamps. I have no problem up to this point. Then she finds out that $1.47 of her total is not covered by food stamps. She turns to her oldest daughter, which was holding the cart full of bags and says can you go to the car and get the wallet. One might assume the daughter would hustle and get out the door fast and just leave the cart, but NO she takes the cart full of bags, lolly gags her way out the door, then loads the bags in the car, then comes back in with her moms wallet like 10 minutes later. Part of me wanted to just give the lady the $1.47 and had she been nicer I might have. If she had even remotely apologized to me for putting me out 10 minutes I would have said oh do you just owe $1.47, let me cover that. But that lady refused to apologize to anyone, she must have all the time in the world. Oh well, my anger is over, almost...

Eat This, Not That

Just a note, I'm not doing good at all on my post a day in June but I am trying and it is better than once a month as I was doing. Thanks to everyone for their emails on my quest to drink only H20. Your encouragement and helpful hints were all appreciated. Part of me fears that I took on too big of a challenge, but I'm going to give it a good attempt. If nothing else I will be off of all diet sodas by August 1st. Those are really what is dragging me down right now.


I ordered a couple of interesting books off of Amazon and they came in today. They are part of the Eat This, Not That plan designed by Mens Health. It basically looks at every meal you eat, every resturant you would visit, and every type of menu you would face and advises you on what types of food to eat. As with every new diet fad there are great testimonies of people out there who have lost a lot of weight and look great and feel great. I am curious though if there is something there. This plan doesn't call for you to go out and buy a bunch of food or diet pills or anything it just gives you guidance on which foods make better choices than others. It's quite amazing. One example is at McDonalds they actually reccomend a quarter pounder over the deluxe grilled chicken sandwich. That sounds crazy at first but if you look at the nutritional facts it pans out. To clarify it does NOT encourage you to eat quarter pounds but just says if you must eat at McDonalds what the better choice is. By the way the average Subway customer consumes 350 MORE calories than a customer to McDonalds. The book calls this the Healthy Halo syndrome. People think they are eating healthier so they eat more. Interesting concept.

I'm not committing to this plan at this point in time but we are looking through the books. I say this as we at Dominos pizza tonight. Malachi ate FIVE pieces of thin crust pizza. More than Leah! I will start the H20 only plan after vacation which is the week after next. Maybe if it still sounds like a good idea we'll start the Eat This, Not That plan. Anyone tried it yet? You can visit the website here.

H2O Only

I've decided to try and wean myself from all beverages except water. I know this will be EXTRMELY hard. I've been of the mindset the past three years after reading the South Beach diet book that you should try and eat foods as close to the original state as possible. Switch to whole grain breads, fruits in their original states with skin when applicable, no processed sugars, etc. In looking at beverages I guess water is the only thing close to the original state. I have no idea how I will go about doing this but I'm giving myself until August 1st to complete this task. I have huge headaches if I don't have aspertame in the mornings. I can drink either Diet Coke or Crystal Light and be fine either way. It's not so much caffine as it is the aspertame I've decided. Anyway I have no idea how successful I will be but hold me accountable. I will have some major headaches to overcome the next few weeks...

So I missed two days...

I'm not doing real great on my posting but I'll try and get back on track. Lots going on in our lives. Malachi (Big Mac) had his birthday and birthday party on Saturday. It's hard to believe he's already a year old. Part of that is we've only had him home for four months but it's amazing how fast he is growing up. We had a lot of family and a few close friends over for the celebration. We go back and forth on celebrations. We love to have people over so that's probably the main reason we do it. It's not to get toys for the kids and we've even talked about in the future requesting no gifts but we had to let him get gifts for the first birthday. And we know grandmas and grandpas will always buy presents for the little ones. They are spoiling them rotten.



Yesterday was recovery from the mission trip. We spent most of the afternoon sleeping. It was nice. It's nice to have the mission trip completed and off my plate. Next big church project is our Disciple Now weekend coming up in August. I'm really excited about it and it's been a LONG time in the making so I know God has big plans in store.



Pray for our car situation. The Aviator went up for bid twice last week and we didn't quite get what we hoped so they didn't sell it. We got enough bid on it that we will be fine but we're going to take another run at it. I feel weird asking for it but please pray it goes and it goes high! It's a nice car and we need the money. Hopefully it will be resolved by next week.



In two weeks we go on a family vacation to Florida. I'm going to a conference for work so we are staying three nights in Desin Florida at the Hilton. It's an awesome beach side resort. We are going to spend the night on the way down and the way back so it will be a five night vacation. we are really looking forward to it and am thankful that my work gives me the opportunity to go on such a neat trip.



Our new building is opening up at church on July 12th. While both of us have been involved I'm only responsible for paying bills but Sarah is in charge of decorating all the new childrens rooms. It's been a huge task and we have baby/toddler stuff in our garage and storage rooms and tons on the way to be delivered. Hopefully we'll get it all finished purchasing this week and next week they decorate. Sarah and I will both be glad when it is over. Sarah's been involved in the new building literally for years now. Many a Wednesday night was spent at the church going over every detail. God is good though and the building is awesome. Can't wait until it is done. Check out the progress here if you are interested.



Later,



Adam

Done

I'm sure any of you who read this regularly are sick of mission trip updates so this is the last one. We finished up early today during pouring down rain. It was a good week though and so awesome to see so many kids pay money to come work for the Lord. It was a huge blessing! Tomorrow is Big Mac's birthday and I am so excited to get home!!
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Almost Done

Well I am bad because I didn't post yesterday. I'll try and do an extra post next week when I'm back home as I'm sure all my faithful readers are just waiting a new post. Actually last night I felt horrible and went to bed as soon as I could and just didn't feel like posting. Our project is almost a miracle project. All the head construction guys basically said we couldn't get done this week but guess what, we are done!! We actually got mostly done today and tomorrow we are doing extra painting that we didn't plan on. Our crew is totally amazing. I'm the crew encourager which basically means I'm in charge of keeping them going and motivating them. I'm sure the reason we are done early is due to my motivating them to work hard:). I have really done a lot of manual labor which is different than usual for me but I have really enjoyed it. While I have enjoyed it I am really ready to get home though. Miss the family and my house. I am planning on a nice long hot shower Saturday afternoon then Malachi's party then maybe fill up the jaccuzzi tub and relax Saturday night!!
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Day 4

Day four is coming to a close and things are flying by. We still have so much work to get done. Each World Changer location has a "project", a project that just turns out to be way more work than imagined and I'm lucky enough to be on that project this year. I look at it like a challenge though. We will get it done. On a side note the kids have figured out my OCD. They sensed that I don't like having my stuff misplaced and find joy in "hiding" my stuff.
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Day Three

I am way more exhausted than I ever have been on day one of a mission trip. We busted it today. We actually did an hour and a half of over time on day one! I do like the change of pace but for an old guy like me it wears me out!! Our job turned out to be way more than we thought so pray we get it done. Signing off now and going to bed...
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Day Two

Day two on our mission trip is coming to a close. Today mainly involved getting set up on the worksite and meeting our homeowner. I am excited to be on a roofing crew. While I don't think roofing is my career calling it is a nice refreshing break for a week from the office. We have a LOT of work to get done so our crew will be very busy. The weather is cool here with hi temps around seventy. Much nicer than other mission trips. Think Mississippi in the dead of summer!! The team I am leading from Selmore is doing great. Hopefully they are ready to work tomorrow! Keep us in your prayers this week. While we are working for God and it will be a refreshing week spiritually it will be a long week physically.
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Made It!!

We made it to Sioux City. Trip was very uneventful. I did get lots of rest on the way up here so that was good. Honestly I slept four hours or more!! Nice!! This post won't be long because this is a test post because I've not posted through email on this blog. Talk to you tomorrow.
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In less than 12 hours...

I will be on my way to Sioux City, Iowa. My mood about the trip has turned around completely the past 48 hours and I can say now that I am genuinely excited about going. As I've talked about each trip is different and I'm excited to see what God has in store for this trip. It's amazing the work he does in the inviduals, including myself, each trip. I'm almost totally packed. For those of you wondering I did just purchase another copy of the missing book. I kept the receipt though because I'm going to look again tonight. It has to be here.

This post is short but I'm finishing up getting ready. Not sure how the posts will be for the next week. I am going to try very hard to keep up my posting every day in June but just not sure how long the post will be. Pray for us as we head out at 6:00 tomorrow morning.

Am I obsessive compulsive?

Am I obsessive compulsive? I've been told at different times in my life I am and tonight I'm having a bit of a crisis. I had been planning to take a certain book on the mission trip to read on the way up there, at night, and on the way home. Truth be told I'll get a chapter read on the way up there and never pick it up again but that is beside the point. I KNOW that I own this book and I KNOW that it is in my house but I can NOT find it. I am NOT a person who loses stuff. Whenever I can't find something I have momentary falling apart but almost always find what I am looking for eventually. There are three things that come to mind that I have spent HOURS looking for throughout my life only to never fine. 1. High school class ring. I have NO idea where this went. It went on my black and white striped comforter when I was in high school after a basketball game only to never be found again. We were so desperate we called a 900 psychic line. Yes, you read that correctly. After hours of endless searching we never found it. It was only a $50 deductible to get another one but it did not feel the same after that. It's hard to replace the original. 2. A blue lead pencil at BKD a few years ago. A few readers might remember this episode but it was on a deadline day when everything was finished that I realized that I had misplaced a blue lead pencil. Realize while it was an "expensive" lead pencil it was less than $10. I basically made the entire tax department spend a couple of hours looking for it only to come up short. I bet the time report people loved that unassigned time. 3. Wow Worship Red CD Volume 1. This REALLY bothers me. I probably spent a total of 20 hours searching my house high and low looking for this CD. I accused Sarah of taking it but she denied it, I'm still not conviced she wasn't involved in it being misplaced. I never did find that CD but I did wind up buying another copy but now I have two volume twos. Who needs that. All of those three things really eat at me that I could never find them. This book may join those ranks. I will continue to look. I'm going to run errands tomorrow and will just buy another copy if I can't find it but it has to be here somewhere. This is the type of thing that will keep me awake at night.

Just a side note I feel better. Still not 100% but much improvement. Hopefully I'll feel great at 4:00 am tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off and I head to church to load up for the mission trip.

2 Days and Counting...

Until our annual church mission trip. This will be the sixth year in a row I have had the opportunity to lead our church mission trip. Most years my job is purely administrative. Get the people where they need to be, make sure they are fed, have sleeping arrangements, and have the tools to do God's work. This year is slightly different than the past as we are participating in the Southern Baptist World Changers Program. 14 members from our church, youth and adults will travel up to Sioux City, IA on Saturday morning at 6:00 am and spend Monday-Friday doing construction work for low income and elderly residents.

Each mission trip is totally different. I have taken a group of 12 before on a World Changers trip and I've taken 40 church members to Denver Colorado and every place in between with every size group. Part of me is really looking forward to the trip this year. We are taking our 26 passenger van which I do not have a license to drive so thankfully our van driver is going on the trip and he will make the drive. Since we are doing World Changers I'm not in charge of sleeping arrangements, food, or any other aspect except to make sure our kids and adults behave. We have a great group going and I have no worries about any of that. It should be a refreshing time for me. I always feel like I get way more out of mission trips than I put in. I never understood that until I went on one. For some reason though this year to be honest I'm strugggling. I can't pinpoint it but something just isn't right with me. I'm almost scared putting this out there since many of the participants read this blog. It's nothing with the trip itself it's just all I've got going on. For starters I've got some physical ailment, nothing major just a yucky feeling the past couple of weeks with a fever at times and other cold symptoms. It could purely be a cold, who knows. I am CONSIDERING going to the doctor tomorrow just to get it checked out. It could possibly be stress related from the car drama but that should have passed. Aviator is on its way to be sold and that will hopefully happen in the next couple of weeks. Work is really busy right now too with a lot of projects going on. I'm sure it will all get done on time but it still stresses me to leave it unfinished. I also hate to leave Sarah and the kids behind for a week without me. They will survive I know but it will be rough at times I'm sure. Just an FYI on the kids I've decided on a nickname of Big Mac for Malachi. He's big, name is Malachi, and he eats cheeseburgers now, works for me. Anway I just ask for your prayers for our trip and for me that I get it in gear. I always go through the anxiety at some point and come up with a million reasons why I need to stay behind and once the bus pulls out it all goes away. I'm sure that will happen this time, I just need to make it until then. Who knows, maybe I'll sleep part of the way there?

Crisis Avoided...

Had a mini crisis inside Walgreens this evening before our softball game. Just in case you are wondering we lost and it was pretty ugly. I'm ok with it. If it's a blow out either way I chill, those close games, they get me. I do feel sorry for our intern who slid about 10 feet away from home plate and then I yelled at her to get up and crawl across home because the catcher missed it. She scored and all is well. Anyway, back to the crisis. Some of you who know me well might know that I am a germaphobe. That may or may not be the right spelling but hey, it's my blog, like it or leave it, literally. I hate germs of all kind. I have lots of hand sanitizer and am very careful about food I eat and where I drink from. I will still not drink from my own tap after living here a year and a half, I dread church dinners just because I have to try and figure out who brought what, I will only eat from kitchens I trust, and I am VERY particular about my toothbrush. So much so that when I got on long trips, specifically mission trips or our trip to Ethiopia that I always buy a pack of disposable toothbrushes. I use them ONCE, with BOTTLED water and then proceed to throw them out. The very thought of using a sink I don't know about to wash my toothbrush completely grosses me out. Well before Ethiopia I bought a lot of disposable toothbrushes at Walgreens noticing they were on clearance. We used them all up in Ethiopia, but I should have put two and two together with them being on clearance. They DON'T CARRY THEM ANYMORE. I also can no longer find brushups so I was very concerned about what to do and spent about five minutes pacing the toothrush/toothpast aisle at Wal Greens with the staff watching me. Finally I saw a pack of 6 toothbrushes with toothpaste for $5. I figured I will take those and use them the first six mornings and the last morning I will just use lots of gum. I was VERY concerned for a few minutes. I came close to spending $20 on a toothbrush sanitizer:) In my defense though, using a sink with 125 junior high and high school boys is pretty nasty by day two or three. Some people MIGHT remember the infamous Wal Mart run but I won't go into detail!

Until tomorrow...

Adam

Money Matters

For most of our married life Sarah and I haven't always made the smartest money decisions. In fact we've bought some pretty questionable things. One thing that I have always struggled with wanting new is vehichles. I have several vehicles and several nice vehicles. Two years ago I bought the first car I've owned which I can truly say has everything I could want and more and I really like. It was our 2004 Lincoln Aviator. A couple of weeks ago I took it in to Ricks Autmotive to get it looked at on a couple of issues. Mainly brakes and rotors and the transmission was shifting hard at times. They reccomended about $5,000 worth of work which included a new transmission. That's the second time I've taken a transmission issue there and have them try and sell me a new transmission. They did do a transmission flush and it's working completely fine now so I'm convinced maybe I didn't need that. Anway when we were trying to figure out what to do with the car, whether to sink money into or ditch it and buy a new car or ditch it and buy a used car some fleet vehicles came up for auction at my work. At the end of it we were able to buy a newer model, high mileage, extremely well maintained mini van and pay cash for it. We are hoping to sell the Aviator for what we owe on it and eliminate a car payment! (Getting it sold is a God send and the person helping us with it is truly a friend, one who you know will help you when you need it, those are hard to come by!) It's amazing though how we went from thinking we had to find $5,000 fast and get it fixed to deciding to trade "down" and elminate a car payment, even though I'm more and more convinced it only needed new brakes and rotors but that's another story. All in all the whole thing has taught us a lot about what is important in life. It seems like our society has become extremely spoiled with wanting the latest and greatest and that includes me at times. I've learned a lot through this, even though the canker sores from worrying are about to take me down.

Tonight I cleaned out the Aviator and took it to the car wash and vacumed and washed it all myself. Part of me was tempted to take it to Auto Magic but besides saving the money there was some satisfaction in doing it myself. (This is sounding so very strange even to me...) Sarah's agreed to drive the mini van but is struggling a little bit with becoming a mini van girl. I think she'll like it after a while and I really think we'll like it on long road trips. Don't tease her too much about it.

This was the first post of the 30 posts in June I talked about earlier. I'm hoping to spend some time on the blog this month and get it redesigned.

Until tomorrow...

Pictures

All of you have wanted to see pictures so here you go. 30 posts in 30 days starts tomorrow...

Fun weekend but ready to get back to it...

We had a great weekend away. It was relaxing for the most part. Sarah and I snuck away and caught a movie and had lunch and did a little birthday shopping on Sunday. It was nice to eat without having a kid clinging to us begging for food. Don't get me wrong I love my kids but everyone needs a break once in a while.

Even though the weekend was nice I'm always ready to get back into a routine. I like a routine in SOME areas of my life and where I sleep and eat is one I like. It's nice to be home with a clean house and everything unpacked and put away.

Nothing too exciting up on the agenda this week. Mission trip for church is in two weeks. We are going to Sioux City Iowa this year. This will be my 7th trip to be in charge of. It's usually a good time and I'm excited to see what God has in store for us this year.

Hope everyone has a GREAT WEEK!!

Turning 30

Well I officially have 7 more days left in my twenties and then I turn 30. People have asked me how it makes me feel and to be honest I don't feel any different really. The thing I have noticed in the past few years is how I look at other people that are older than me. When I hear someone is 50 or 60 I'm like there is no way they are that old but then if you were to ask me if they were 20 or 30 years older than me I would easily say yes. I guess it's all in perspective.

I think I've done well for myself my first thirty years. I'm not a millionaire yet, far from it and with the real estate price decrease and the recent completed adoption maybe my net worth is negative, who knows. I have a wonderful family, a great church, a job where I don't fear being laid off, a nice house, cars that run, and a wonderful group of friends and family. If my next thirty years are as productive as my last 30 years I'll be doing well.

I plan to celebrate my birthday with our annual trek to my parents house up by Kansas City. The best thing about going up there is for three days we will do absolutely nothing. My parents have a pool and we basically lounge around the whole weekend. The house is kept as cool as a meat locker which I love and we sleep as late as the kids will let us, take naps when the kids take naps, and watch tv and veg out. My mom always cooks whatever I want for my birthday meal or we go out wherever I want. How good is that:) I haven't decided on the birthday meal yet but I'm thinking lasagna with whole grain noodles and red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. If your reading this mom I reseve the right to change my mind the next few days.

One thing that I've tried to work on as I turn 30 is being more physically active. I ran the 1/2 marathon a month ago, every Monday night I play full court basketball for 2 hours and then tomorrow we have our first work softball game. I've played a total of like 5 slow pitch softball games so tomorow should be interesting to say the least.

I'm going to do a post a day in the month of June. Hopefully that will build up the readers to our blog. Who knows if anyone will find it interesting but it will get us in the habit of blogging regularly. It will be really hard though becuase we have our church mission trip June 6th -13th so all my blogging will be done via email. I hope you enjoy the 30 posts in 30 days in June.

Welcome to Our New Blog

Welcome everyone to our new blog. We closed down our old blog since the primary reason for that blog ended. If you didn’t read our old blog feel free to check us out at http://www.7999miles.blogspot.com/. It talks about our adoption of our son, Malachi Natineal Schaper Horton, from Ethiopia. We came home on February 13th and have been a happy family of four since then.


In case you don’t know who we are we”ll take a brief minute to introduce ourselves. We are Adam, Sarah, Leah, and Malachi. Adam is an accountant for an electric company, Sarah is a hairdresser, Leah is a stubborn 2 1/2 year old, and Malachi is our gigantic 10 month old son. We are very involved in our church Selmore Baptist Church.


We plan for this blog to serve many purposes. The primary purpose is to keep family and friends updated on what is going on with our family. The second reason is to give Adam a place where he can vent and say what’s on his mind. Warning, he leansright politically, ok, some might say he’s just all the way to the right. In speaking of left/right we refer to liberal/conservative, NOT democrat/republican. They’re all the same aren’t they? The family also has a desire to get healthy so we’re going to use this blog to hold us accountable to being healthy. Adam needs to lose around 40lbs. He’s turning 30 in less than a month and he has a huge fear of being 30, fat, and bald. Sarah doesn’t need to lose weight but just wants to be in better shape.


We hope you enjoy our blog. Feel free to comment or just read.