The Free Ticket Fairy Strikes Again!

We've lived in the Twin Cities for 2 years and 10 months now and in that time, the Free Ticket Fairy has been very kind to us. We've been to 2 Twins games, 1 Timberwolves game (when they still were good), 3 Wild hockey games, 1 play, and now one concert at the Xcel Center... all free of charge. Our great friends Dan and Angie invited us to accompany them to the Chris Tomlin concert last night. Dan had been given the tickets by the local Christian radio station as a token of thanks for agreeing to direct a mass choir for a Michael W. Smith concert this fall. KTIS was very kind to Dan because our seats were incredible! Right in the second row, just feet from the stage.


Israel Houghton and New Breed opened for Tomlin and they were fantastic. I would have been happy with just them. Tomlin's concert was great of course, and we were pleasantly surprised to notice that Christy Nockels had joined up with him for this concert.

We met up early for dinner at the infamous Mickey's Diner.

Notice I'm standing on my tiptoes so as not to look so short. Real effective, huh?

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated Allie's 5th birthday and Mom G.'s ?? belated birthday on Friday night. We (humans only) enjoyed a delicious meal of crab legs thanks to Cub's $4.99/lb this past week. We've probably been waiting close to a year for crab to get that cheap again. We ended up buying about 10 pounds to keep in the freezer. What can I say, we love crab... especially when it's not $12 a pound. We had an ice cream dessert and let Allie enjoy a scoop of vanilla since it was her birthday.

Ready for spring!

This past week we've been graced with a number of spring-like days. It's been absolutely marvelous! Unfortunately it's days like these that make me desperate to go outside and start working the land. I love gardening. I don't know why; I think I get it from my dad. The problem is that I live in Minnesota and gardening now would only be in vain. We're bound to have a number of below freezing days and liable to have another snow before all is said and done. (Maybe if I plan on it, it won't happen!) So yesterday I figured out a way to satisfy my craving for gardening without it being a complete waste. I've turned our sun room into a greenhouse and started seedlings. There's an area in the back part of our back yard that (according to the neighbors) formerly housed a vegetable garden. It's since been overcome with weeds and a few wildflowers. The plan is to reclaim that little plot at the edge of our property and restore it to the vegetable garden I'm sure it would rather be. David and I have only ever planted a "salsa" garden before, so we're going to branch out and take a crack at a few other veggies. Assuming all the seeds I started succeed, the Gafford Garden 2009 will include.... corn, watermelon, big boy tomatoes, roma tomatoes, sweet 100 grape tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, cilantro, and basil. I'm so excited, I can almost taste it!

School

We've been working through a unit on coral reefs at school. We made this cute little fish project earlier in the week. Each student needed 2 CDs in order to make their project so I sent out a letter about a week ago requesting garbage CDs to be sent in. Apparently someone took that as an invitation to clean out their John Cougar Mellencamp collection. I must have had 5 or 6 come in. It made me laugh outloud. Once they were made I had the fun job of hanging everything up from the ceiling. This is easier said than done for a teacher who is only 5'2" on a tall day. I could only find one table in the room that was tall enough for me to stretch to my limits and reach the ceiling. So I pushed that table all around the room until the job was done. The finished project looks great; I only hope the novelty of going to school "under the sea" wears off next week. Kids were holding their breath (because they were under water, apparently) and mesmerized by the fish swimming over head. Silly first graders...

Update

I haven't posted anything in a while... So sorry.

So, I went back to work a couple of weeks ago. That's been an adjustment for me; I got kind of used to staying up late/sleeping in, and having lots of time on my hands! In spite of being a lot more tired, it feels good working again. The first few days were a little rough. I'm teaching first grade right now and the kids had gotten a little out of shape management-wise before I arrived. In addition to being very pregnant, their teacher was quite sick with a sinus infection for the last few weeks so they'd had several subs in and out and a teacher that just plain didn't feel well so probably wasn't as strict as she would have been otherwise... After a few days of "Go back to your desks; we'll have to try lining up again. This time do it without talking," they finally figured out what I expected and this was a much better week! I'm also growing a little more familiar with my surroundings which is helping. I started out wasting a lot of my prep time looking for something that I needed, not even really knowing what I was looking for. It's a lot easier when you know exactly what you have in your own classroom and exactly where to find it. So anyway, I'm enjoying my time there and have been encouraged. I know that I did not lose my job at New Life Academy for anything that I did wrong or didn't do right, but regardless of the circumstances losing your job for any reason does affect your self esteem and confidence in your ability to do that job well. Getting this job has encouraged me and assured me that teaching is where I'm supposed to be and it's something that I'm good at. I needed that.

Other than that, David's been wonderful speaking my love language of "Acts of Service," helping ease the load as I transition back to working full time. Last Monday on his day off he planned the week's menu and did the grocery shopping all by himself. And then he went on to cook dinner for me... more than once this week! What a great guy!

Pepper is back!

She made it through surgery and the "doctor" actually used the phrase, "I've never seen that before" when he was showing us and explaining the problem. I wouldn't call it a cheap fix but compared to what we originally thought the problem was, this was a whole lot cheaper.

Car update

Pepper is in "surgery" today getting a radiator transplant. We're awaiting a call from the car "doctor" to let us know if she pulled through her surgery. We'll let you know...

Car trouble

My little black Neon, affectionately known as "Pepper" since college, has been a bit ill lately. We've yet to determine if she's going to pull through or not. I noticed her acting weird as I pulled into the school parking lot for my first day on Friday. Fortunately, I was able to coast safely into a parking spot and ended up forgetting about her morning hiccup during the day, as I was trying to digest all of my new information. It wasn't until I got into the car to leave school around 4:00 that I realized that it was more than just a hiccup and I was actually very fortunate to have made it into the parking lot that morning. I had to floor the gas pedal to even get her to move a short distance. I called David to tell him I was having problems with the car and was glad that we skipped our pleasantries and day review in order to discuss the car right away because I no sooner told him my problem and his phone died. So I sat in the parking lot trusting that he would come to my rescue, hoping that he actually knew which elementary school I'd earned my new job in. Within 15 minutes my knight in blue Expedition arrived, having only stopped at one wrong school along the way. We ended up having to leave the car there and drove home to call our mechanic. He loosely diagnosed our problem with the dreaded T word (transmission), which he doesn't do, and we made calls around to get other opinions. We returned to the school parking lot yesterday to check the transmission fluid, only to find it empty. So today we picked up some more fluid and refilled it and were thrilled when the car was actually able to drive away from the parking spot. Unfortunately as David pulled away it looked like we'd just sacrificed a small animal because there was a pool of red transmission fluid on the ground below where the car had sat. We had to leave the car in the parking lot (AGAIN!) and now we're going to have it towed to a garage where they can hopefully repair whatever seems to be leaking profusely. I must admit, we've enjoyed these past 6 years without car payments, but I'm pretty sure that time is coming to an end very soon. It may be time to retire Pepper. She's served us well these past 10 years, but I'm not so sure how much longer she's going to make it.

The interview

Thanks for praying everyone. I feel good about my interview today. Whether I get the job or not, I'm just relieved that I at least left feeling good about it. It's a lot worse when you leave full of regrets; I've been there before. They're doing reference checks tomorrow and should have a decision made by the end of the week. I'll update when I know!

UPDATE: I got called today, exactly 24 hours after my interview and they offered me the job! Yeah!

Read on... new posts ahead!

Read ahead to hear (and see) all about our most recent vacation.

Also, please pray for my interview on Tuesday at 1:10 (central)! I am interviewing for a long term sub job teaching 1st grade for a maternity leave. It would be great if I could get my feet in the door of this school district. I'll post more when I know more! Thanks!

California/Arizona Vacation '09

We've just returned from a wonderfully relaxing and beautiful vacation out west to visit our good friends Wayne and Bev Whitney who are smart and move to southern California every winter. We had a fantastic time beginning and ending each day with a mountain-view dip in the hot tub. On Wednesday, they took us to The Living Desert. It was very cool and it would have been nice to spend a little more time there if we weren't all starving for the Rubios fish tacos we'd all promised ourselves. It was great to have time to play (cards, dominoes, golf) and just sit around and talk. The weather was a little cooler than we'd hoped (mid 60's), but sunny and beautiful all week (aside from Monday, our travel day.) Thank you again, Wayne and Bev for having us! We had a wonderful time!



2009-02-15 15:07

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

On Thursday, we drove to Palm Springs to ride the Aerial Tramway. It was a 10 minute, 2 1/2 mile trip up Mount San Jacinto in a rotating tram car. Pretty spectacular views! There's a restaurant at the top but we were concerned that it might be on the pricey side so we decided to pack a "picnic" lunch. We knew that it would be cold and snowy up there, but we didn't realize that we wouldn't be able to "picnic" indoors. So we found a picnic table that wasn't buried in snow and had our picnic lunch.... in 27 degrees. Needless to say, we ate pretty quickly! Here are some pictures of our trip (unfortunately I think they're in there backwards...).

Joshua Tree National Park

We decided to stop at the Joshua Tree National Park on our way from Indio to Phoenix. We'd heard of the Joshua tree and finally had one identified for us while we were at the Living Desert. We had to drive a couple of miles into the park before we found our first Joshua tree and even then they were quite small. By the time we got to the actual welcome center we were able to locate some larger ones. Since admission was $15 and we really wanted to get back on the road to get to Phoenix before rush hour, we turned around and left. We'd seen our Joshua trees and taken a few pictures. We were guessing the rest was probably just more of the same. We were glad that we stopped for that brief detour. It wasn't long before we came upon a pretty bad accident scene involving a semi. Had we not stopped, who knows...

Ok, so I just looked up the Joshua Tree on Wikipedia, and it looks like the "Joshua Trees" we thought we'd found are not actually Joshua Trees. Apparently in the 2 1/2 days that passed between our trip to the Living Desert and the Joshua Tree National Park, we forgot what a Joshua Tree actually looked like. Apparently we should have paid the $15 and driven a little further!

Fun being Uncle David and Aunt Melissa

Living so far from all of our nieces and nephew, we don't often get the opportunity to be the fun aunt and uncle we wish we could be. We were thrilled that Mike and the kids were able to come meet up with us while we were in Phoenix. (We missed you, Jen! Hope you had fun at the wedding!) We had a blast going bowling followed by a few hours at Chuck E Cheese. Does it get any better than that? I don't have any bowling pictures because the lights were too dark, but here are a few pics from Chuck E Cheese's.

Fun weekend #2 (Superbowl)

Small groupies reunited two days later to enjoy the Superbowl together and eat more food! Jillayne, Amie, and I made a 3-D glasses run to Cub during the 2nd quarter so we could all enjoy the 3-D commercials together. (We also need them to watch "Chuck" tomorrow night).

Jimmy and Amie

Bryan and Emily

David and Becca

Ryan and Jen

Jillayne and Trina

David and Melissa

Scott and Kerri

Jason and Trina

Fun weekend #1

You may have heard us joke about having the best small group ever, but it really is true. In our last post you read about us feeding starving children. This weekend was more about just feeding ourselves and having fun enjoying each other's company. On Friday night we all gathered at our place for our post-holiday holiday dinner. The food was delicious and we had a lot of fun afterward watching stupid Youtube videos on the Apple TV and playing Moods and Catchphrase. We have such a great time when we're together.

Feeding Starving Children

We fed starving children in Tajikistan tonight with our small group!

First, we took one level scoop of vitamin packed, vegetarian chicken seasoning,

and one heaping spoon of dehydrated veggies,

add one level cup of soy (for protein),

and one cup of rice,

put them all in a bag like this...

weighed the bag like this (to make sure it weighs between 380-400 grams),

sealed it up like this...

counted the bags of food up until we had 18 piles of 2 (otherwise known as 36), and boxed them up!

Then it was time to clean...

If you're lucky you may walk away with a hairnet mark on your forehead.

There were a total of 71 volunteers working tonight. 16 were from our small group. Together we filled 101 boxes, each holding 36 bags of food, each bag providing 6-1 cup meals, giving us a total of 21,816 meals, feeding 59 children for an entire year.

Here's 1/3 of our accomplishment, ready to be shipped.

Tonight was a couple of hours very well spent! We made a big difference in 59 kid's lives and had a lot of fun in the process.

Phone calls

Today is January 14, right? It's not May 1st; my birthday. I kind of wondered because the only day of the year that I ever get so many of these nice calls all on the same day, it's usually my birthday.

Today, for no reason at all, both of my brothers and my cousin Kristen called me. Well, actually my younger brother Matt had a reason. Matt and Brianne found out today that they're having a boy. I hope he looks like Matt when he was a baby (see picture below). He sure was a roley-poley little guy; we tease him now that all his baby pictures look like Chris Farley. I told Matt today that I always giggle a little when I see his baby pictures. He didn't think that was a really great compliment. I don't know why:-)

Anyway, it's always a pleasant surprise to hear from any of the three of them. We don't talk nearly enough. But for all three to call me on the same day, when it's not even close to my birthday... that made me feel pretty special. So thanks, Mike, Matt, and Kristen for brightening my day a little and giving me a warm fuzzy in this frozen tundra.

Leadership Community

On the second Saturday of every other month we do something called Leadership Community at church. This is an opportunity to bring all of the people who lead in our church together to celebrate what they're doing, encourage them, and continue to train and equip them in their various areas of volunteering. It's always a very fun and exciting atmosphere and gives the band an opportunity to play some music that they don't usually get to play. For instance, this month Leadership Community opened with the band playing "Eye of the Tiger" while our youth pastor Tim announced all of the new leaders in a way only a youth pastor can do. (Except for that time that Pastor Henry filled in for him. That was definitely a close second). So, Leadership Community always starts with a pump-up-the-crowd, get everyone excited kind of instrumental song like that. We've also started a tradition of rewriting an existing song to create kind of a new leader/volunteer parody song. This has been fun to do, but I will admit after you do it a few times, people grow to expect and anticipate what you'll come up with next. There's a little pressure there! You can read the lyrics to this month's new leader song, "Viva la Volunteer" on Pastor Henry's blog here.

If after reading the lyrics to "Viva la Volunteer" you have an idea for another song we can parody, post a comment. Sometimes coming up with the perfect song is half the battle. Once I've got the song picked out, I usually only need a couple of hours, the original lyrics, and my rhyming dictionary to get the job done. The next Leadership Community is not for 2 more months, so there's time. Share your ideas!

New Year Reflections

I remember as though it was yesterday, sitting in Grandma Liddick's dining room on December 31, 1996, commenting to my cousin Kristen about how sad I was to say goodbye to 1996. 1996 had been a good year for me. It had been my senior year in high school, I'd had the lead in the school musical, I graduated and went off to college (which I loved). 1996 had brought me a lot of joy and I worried that 1997 would not be so kind.

I do not share those same feelings as I bid farewell to 2008. I'm relieved to finally be done with this year and hopeful that 2009 will maybe make up for the year before. You wouldn't know it by only reading our blog, but 2008 has brought us a lot of disappointment and heartache. Most of these things have been very personal and private and therefore have not been shared in this venue. Just know that it's been a tough year.

2008 has been one tough cookie. And she wouldn't go out silently; she had to have the last word. Here on the very last day of 2008, as I type this, my husband and father-in-law are out in -5 degrees (actual temperature- I just looked it up on weather.com) trying to change the tire that just blew out on the truck. This is typical 2008 fashion.

Lord, have mercy on us in 2009 and give me a little dose of that joy I remember from 1996. I've had plenty of joy since '96, but that was a year that seemed to ooze with joy. I want the kind of joy that oozes.