Lindsey, PE

I know Lindsey will likely write more later, but last night we found out wonderful news, she passed her PE exam and is now (save completing some paperwork) a professional engineer.  We are both so very thankful to God for His blessing in this and that this was all in His hands.  I am so very proud of her for all the hard work she has put in to get to this point, and that she has stayed faithful to where God has placed her.  Very exciting.
Short and sweet post, but wanted to get the news out on the blog.

Exercise

Today was the first day I braved the cooler morning temps to start riding my bike back into work.  I did pretty good, although I didn't push myself.  Thankful that no one tried to run me over with their car today.  I have been working out a bunch lately.  Any of the readers who have seen me recently might have noticed, as most people have lately, I probably have lost close to 25 lbs.  Still not in the shape I want to be in, now the weight isn't really an issue, but just where it is located.  Now I am more focused on building muscles and trimming fat, so really more redistribution of the weight I have.  Been pretty happy with the results so far.  Our upcoming vacation is definitely a great motivation as I want to be ready to be on the beach and feel comfortable, which I think I will now.  But yeah life is still pretty busy lots to do at work and at home and the many other volunteer things we do with church and KLife.  I will try to take photos as Sunday will be the last small group for the semester with my sixth grade guys.  I am making pancakes in honor of the IHOP men we are trying to be, men of integrity, honor, obedience and perseverance.  Other than that not too much exciting has been going on, but there will be more posts to come I am sure.

Cheesecake cupcakes, birthday and hair do's

This weekend was very fun! It started Friday night with Chick-fil-a at Klife, including a bounce house for the kids, so that was fun. I love Chick-fil-a, and Brian and I hadn't had any CFA in a while, so I was happy.

Then I went home and made cheesecake cupcakes for Anna's birthday! She said she liked chocolate cheesecake, so I kind of made up a recipe. I made 6 chocolate, 6-8 regular, 2 swirled, and 2 chocolate chip cheesecake cupcakes.

Brian and I woke up Saturday and cleaned up around the house and did some much needed laundry.

Then around noon I styled hair for a friend from church's sister for prom. She wanted a low, side bun that was kind of messy. It was fun to do hair again. I'll put a picture up on facebook or on our picture page with my other hair pictures.

When I got home, I wanted to play with my hair, so I gave myself a fun little side bun too, buta little neater with a braid.

We celebrated Anna's b-day on Saturday night and the cheesecake cupcakes were a hit and we had a great time with friends.

We'll have to post again later with our Mother's day events. :)

Secret Confession

Once, in Mexico, I sang in the worship band for the student ministry El Pozo (through Globalscope), thanks to my friend Whitney's encouragement. Not only was it singing in front of people, but it was singing in Spanish. At the time, I knew almost no Spanish. But it was so much fun! I don't have a rock star voice, but that's my secret confession: I wish I did have an amazing set of pipes and could sing

I don't want to be a famous singer or anything, I just want to belt out great songs and it sound awesome. Actually, if I'm in the car by myself, I'll still belt out the awesome songs, but I don't really know that it sounds awesome.

just wanted to share...

Do you have a secret confession?

Brian's Birthday

I have the best wife in the world.  No you can't argue with me over it, she simply takes the cake, yes intended since it was my Birthday weekend. Lindsey just was super sweet to me and I had one of the best birthdays I can remember.  A beautiful relaxing Saturday with my family. Me and Dad, yep beards are totally in now.

It started with some Wii with the family, while waiting for some of the others to be done with work/studying etc. This is me after playing probably the strangest game on Wii Fit Plus, that involves being a flying chicken and flapping your arms...  I was the only one who played it, and it was for everyone else to laugh apparently.  I still had fun, cause it was funny.

We also played Carcassone. This was the beginning:

I think they let me win, although I won because I luckily got the very last tile and it played perfectly for me. This is the board after we finished.

It was loads of fun.  We also played some Sorry Sliders, a few of us went for a walk to enjoy outside.
Once everyone got to the house, we were ready to go to dinner, to Ted's Montana Grill we went. This is the whole family, yes several them aren't technically related but they are family to us. :)

Dad and Eldest Daughter, aka Super Nurse:

Lil Sis aka Artist Extraordinare and Lil Sis' boyfriend/ our roommate

Having some fun with the complimentary reading glasses they brought to Dad before the food gets there:

This is me and my Kitchen Sink.  Oh so good.  I mean how can you go wrong with grilled mushrooms and onions, bacon, ham, cheese, fried egg all atop a B E A utiful bison patty. yummy.  Oh and you can see I had the broccoli instead of the fries, gotta be a little healthy. :)

A little healthy because I knew what was coming next.  Free Cookie and Ice cream dessert!  Pictured here is a snickerdoodle with vanilla ice cream

Then we went home and had real dessert.  My awesome wife, remember me telling about her?  She made from scratch a totally delicious Oreo Cheesecake for my BDay.  Here it is in the oven:

About to cut into the goodness.

After that we still had some daylight so we played a little KanJam, which you should all know about now.

Lindsey planned all of it and took such good care of me.  She really made it such a wonderful day and I totally enjoyed it.  She is awesome and has mad cheesecake making skills.

Easter in the Park

So this is a week late, well more by now, but wanted to share and actually show pictures of our Easter. We had a busy weekend for Easter, because Saturday we volunteered at Hop in the Park, which was Atlantic Station's Easter event.  There were all kinds of things going on, lots for kiddos to do.
They could make bunny masks:

Side walk chalk!

The ever popular bounce castle thing:

Ballons!

All sorts of games, complete with sugary prizes.  Parents I know you appreciated us hopping them up on sugar. (Pun intended)

Popcorn!

Bubbles! Bubbles and more Bubbles!

How many jelly beans are in here?  

(also our invites for our outdoor Easter service the next day)

We also for the first time in our 3 year partnership with Atlantic Station were able to both wear our church logo and actually talk to people about our church and what we are there for.

This is Karen and Connie. Connie is our director of mobilization and did a great job organizing everything for our event.

So you may be asking yourself, well what did you two do?
Lu was a face painter for approximately 4 hours.  Here she is hard at work.

I was sweating and working hard. Working hard? as a volunteer?  Yep.  This was me for the first hour or so.
Ready for my close up with and kiddos or puppies that wanted their picture made.  This was the humane society's booth and thankfully I only had to help out for a little while. :)  It was pretty fun though cause I was making crazy faces and you couldn't even tell.


All in all it was a lot of fun.  We had a blast and we sure were blessed the next day to see the fruits of our labor as we had around 370 people show up (kids included) to our Easter service outside in the park. It was a great day of celebration and the word was preached, several hearing for the first time.  My favorite thing about our outdoor service is that some people unexpectedly end up at church as they are just walking by and decide to stick around.  God is so good and our Easter was really great.


Wanted to share a little with you guys to get a taste of our service.  We opened with Revelation Song mixed with a Spoken Word piece by Celita Lewis.  Hope you guys enjoy.