TobyMac in Concert

What an awsome concert! It was an evening filled with great music and good friends.

Some were fortunate enough to meet Toby in person and get an autograph. They shared their good fortune with us by getting an autograph for their friends as well. Thank you Pursleys.There were some other members of the band roaming among us.

Here you see Toddie Funk(bass), who stood there staring at Ethan for quite some time. Being the reserved guy that he is, Ethan didn't give him the time of day. Ethan wouldn't just start up a conversation with a random stranger. . .

. . . Unlike the girls!

The show started with "House of Heroes" Followed by Brandon Heath,

" give me your eyes for just a second . . . " And finally, TobyMac! Ending with Toby and Brandon singing together, great! I'm still dancing and singing!

Among Kings & Knights

Countless hours are spent battling in the Lego world. There is no end to the dreams and imagination.

The Missing Shot

As Nolan works on his English project, chronicling many aspects and stages of his life, he asks for a picture of him skiing. Part of the project is to illustrate his writings while also preserving memories by addind photographs. Since I am the one who mainly wears the hat of phothgrapher in this house, the only pictures I had of him, were at the bottom of the slopes, where I'm the most comfortable. It would be hard enough (I should say nearly impossible) for me to follow him down the double blacks, let alone take pictures of him. I'm neither that brave or coordinated. He was lucky that his dad was a bit more abiding, and although maybe he was hoping for something like these amazing pictures, we got a pretty good shot. It will be a fine keepsake for his book.

Illness has taken over our lives for the past week or so. Our youngest one even got diagnosed with pneumonia. We had others with stomach flu, which seemed to have attacked me now. I'm happy to report though, that the afflicted ones are all recovering well. Soon I shall be back to regular blogging.

Being home bound for a such a period of time gives one the opportunity to improve your card playing skills. There is always a silver lining!

Mystery Solved

The latest advise to keep your mind sharp and delay the onset of "forgetfulness disease" is to give your brain a work out. I must not have been doing it enough. When it was time to fill the boys' stockings a few weeks ago, I could not, for the life of me, locate a few certain gifts. I knew I must have placed them in some hiding spot, but I also knew I must have done it while doing a dozen others thing with a dozen different thoughts in my mind. No wonder I could not find it. I searched in many unusual places to no avail. It finally occurred to me that maybe the items never made to the house at all. Sure enough, as Shawn stopped at the store yesterday, he checked at the costumer service desk. My absentmindedness (leaving the back in the cart) was entered in their dandy little log and the items back in their original shelves. I have to say that I'm not alone, not only did the store have to create a log for such things, but it's also quite thick. The good news is that my money was refunded. Maybe I should use the funds to join the "Brain Booster" class that our local hospital is offering!!

Words to Live By

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your interests, but also to the interest of other."

Philippians 2:3-4

When you have a book full of wisdom and truth, you can't only pick a sentence or two to take to heart. So to say we have a theme verse for this year would not be exactly correct; we want to read and study the whole Bible. We are however ,as a family, going to hold each other accountable to these words, living it out and guarding them in our hearts. If you think the verse was chosen due to "sibling relationships", think again, mom and dad need it just as bad.This is not something that comes naturally to any of us, which only shows our dependence on God.

Feliz Ano Novo

We welcomed the New Year by celebrating with dear friends. Our countdown was a few minutes late since we did not want to interrupt a game we were all playing.

Today we had to check on Ethan, who was still sleeping at 10:30 this morning. It isn't surprising given the "late" bed time, but it just never happened before. We started our breakfast of home made bran waffles without him, but it did not take long for the nice aroma to awake him.

The rest of the day was spent taking down and storing all the Christmas decorations. The same way I enjoy seeing our home all decked up for the season, I enjoy having it back to it's original state again.