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...