I’ve been thinking about my college spanish professor a lot, and how much she might enjoy this story.

There are a lot of people I come into contact with who speak little to no English. I think it’s awesome, ’cause it gives me a chance to butcher Spanish, and try to communicate with them. We also have a ton of little kids come into our store, and that always brightens my day.

The perfect mix of course, is a spanish speaking 4 year old.

She walked right up to me and smiled so big, with her big brown eyes, and I smiled and said, “Hi! Se habla espanol?” Which, I don’t even know if that’s right.(@fezriel, is that right? Can I do twitters in a blog post? Did I just cause a hole in the space time continuum?)

Anyway, I said se habla espanol.

And she looked right up at me and grinned and said, “Yeah.”

Me gusta.

So here’s what I’ve read so far in 2008:

The Starbucks Experience
In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I Became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-shirt
From Good to Great
White Oleander
This 8 part series that is embarrassingly hokey, but it was a fun read.
God’s Blogs
The 5 dysfunctions of a team
Death by Meeting
Simple Church
Post Secret
Well Intentioned Dragons
It
The Shack
Pretense
The Wonder Spot
A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Bamboo&Lace
Communicating for a Change
Wild Goose Chase
Lost and Found
The 5 Love Languages
Up Next: The Art of Possibility, Tribes

That makes the new count: 33 books out of 45 weeks.

I am 12 books behind, and we are approaching the Christmas season at a frightening pace. Can I make it to 52 books? Who cares. I’m having fun trying.

I’m going to keep on keeping on. We shall see!

Tonight:

I saw the “other side” of trick-or-treating for the first time in my life. It was so fun. Watching those kids was incredible

I made some sort of cheese/salsa/hamburger dip, monster toes, monster mouths, snickers mix, pizza rolls, cupcakes, puppy chow….

We had 7 kids in our house: One body builder, one shark, two super heros, 3 cupcakes

The weather was perfection

The punch was terrible, but I made a hand out of ice and that was kind of cool

Puma was in her witch costume

We had our first trick-or-treaters

It was pretty much the best Halloween ever.

I am on my way today to the Catalyst Conference in Georgia.

I am excited to worship with my peeps from work. Usually, we are all working and we don’t get to worship together.

I am excited about the free stuff.

I am nervous about getting called out. I am nervous about the conviction that I will inevitably experience.  I am sad to leave Mike and Puma.

The excitement is definitely winning out though.

Some of the speakers I’m excited to see are:

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, a book we read together this year. Amazing stuff.

Seth Godin, author of The Dip, Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars. He’s a marketing genius.

Billy Graham, via video

Tim Sanders, former chief solutions officer at Yahoo!

Plus Craig Groeschel, I’m reading his book IT right now and he is a hilarious author.

So yeah, I’m in Georgia, again, until Friday. Go over and say hi to Mike while I’m gone…let him know you’re thinkin’ about him I know I will be.

That’s one of my favorite movie quotes from Empire Records, one of my all time favorite movies. My best friend and I watched it countless times together in high school…she introduced me to it and it stuck. If you know me, you know this is kind of a big deal ’cause I don’t really like movies all that much.

Anyway, I really loved the sound track from it. I still listen to that sound track almost 10 years later, and I often find myself humming the songs randomly. Especially the Gin Blossoms, ‘Til I Hear it From You.

Do you guys have any movie sound tracks that impacted you? Or maybe a song from a movie?

Hi there.

I am back from my bloggy hiatus (just in time for my favorite month!), and I have to say it was fun not having all that pressure for a while. The death threats were not as fun though. Some of you really like this blog, and I am glad.

A lot has happened sinces the ides of September.

• We took a vacation (I popped in to blog about that one)
• We did a cool set design at church. I never followed up with a creative chaos post, but I will later this week
• We laid wood floors in our bedroom–Pictures to come
• We had some neat meetings at RPC to determine where we’ve been so we can see where we’re going…kind of like a row boat
• I had my second evaluation as an employee of this guy
• We filmed some funny and poignant videos to use in church
• I put out fall decorations in my house, and began prepping for Halloween
• We had a baby dedication
• I began a journey through 1 Corinthians that is shaping me significantly
• I got to help with an old friend’s wedding
• We started planning for Christmas at RPC…86 days until it’s here

This is my absolute favorite time of year. I’ve been taking long walks with Puma every day just to get out and enjoy the weather, and watch our neighbors decorate their houses for Halloween (2 have so far!). I can’t believe it’s already October, but I plan to enjoy every minute of it.

Today is June 30th, and it marks day 182 of 2008, the exact half way point to the year.

That makes my head spin. So far, I have:

• tried to read 1 book a week, and failed
• tried to do my quiet time every day. i failed at that too, but i’ve read more than i ever have, so that’s something.
• joined a new family group
• made some really great new friends
• bought a house
• contemplated foreign adoption
• gone through a depression and come out of it
• watched my husband become a better person
• lost some really great friends
• gotten closer to my family
• potty trained my dog
• cried tears of joy over doing laundry in my house
• fixed a toilet, all by myself

That’s just some of the fun stuff that I can remember. What about you? It’s half way through 2008, what’s your list?

it started like this

i made some progress

It got a lot better after I took out all of these

And now it’s down to this

Hooray.

but this, man this got me.

how cute is she?!

Feels like I’ve been gone for ages. I have been busy. Let me show you what I have been doing…

Me and my homies came up here and rigged (and I do mean rigged) this God cam up. It’s meant to show things from God’s perspective…to see if we are “In the Zone,” pictured below.

We did this for the cost of a shower curtain. YES I AM NOT KIDDING.

Things I learned through this process:

• insulation is very itchy
• running chords through ceiling tiles is not as easy as i thought
• switchers are kind of weird
• paint on shower curtains is sticky
• bald guys walking on painted shower curtains sound just like little kids walking in diapers
• sand will fix that
• i have a fun job
• i have the best volunteers (Thanks Gabe, James, Travis, Pam, and even Timm for helping with this)