America's Pastime...

Friday evening, Ross and I drove to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington to see the Rangers take on the Minnesota Twins. We had some tickets that were from a rainout, and parking is only $5 on Fridays. You can't beat that!

The stadium was pretty packed once we got there. We chose to sit at the very top of section 334, which is in the upper deck behind the first base dugout. Sitting at the very top = being as far away from the drunk idiots as possible. It was never really that hot, and we had a nice little breeze going on the whole night.

The Rangers lost, and Ross was sad. But we got to see an awesome fireworks show after the game!!

Even though I am not nearly as big of a fan of baseball as Ross is, I still enjoy spending an evening at the ballpark, especially if I get to see fireworks too!!

Day 2...Noah

I'm about two days ahead of posting these notes online, so I can't really say that I just finished studying this stuff, but I just finished studying about Noah. Interesting stuff in the Bible. A lot of it gets overlooked in kids' sunday school classes (see the first vineyard).

Coolest newly learned thing: Shem's descendants vs. Ham's descendants

In The Beginning

This title has twofold significance to Lizzy and I right now and neither is anything to shrug at for us.

We're beginning what might be one of the most significant journeys in our life and we're not even putting gas in the Liberty to do so.

The words of this title are the first words of the Bible. That's significance number one.

Significance number two is the fact that starting a couple of days ago Lizzy and I began a Bible study that takes us through the entire Bible as it happened chronologically. We're not doing a cover-to-cover reading of the Bible like both of us have tried numerous times in the past. This time we're trying to read it and experience it in the order that things happened. For example, instead of reading a crap load of history and then reading about a prophet who lived sometime during that crap load of history, we're going to read the history, pause to read the prophet's work when he comes up in history, and then resume the history until we get the opportunity to do the same thing again.

There have been a few things in our life lately that have funneled us into this situation. One of them was when we were studying with people our age through the book of Galatians and we had to keep flipping back and forth between Galatians and Acts to see the historical context of Paul's writings. We thought, how cool would it be to read all this stuff as it happened.

Another instance that led us to this journey was a conversation we had with a good friend of ours over lunch one day. He wasn't raised in the church and didn't have the stock Bible background that most of us former church-kids have. He read the Bible for himself and came to know and love Jesus through scriptures. It was a humbling conversation to have, but very encouraging at the same time.

Lizzy and I have never read the whole Bible. This is a problem. We say we base our entire lives around the truth in this book, yet we've not given of ourselves enough to read every word of it? It just seems so backwards to not expose ourselves to the entirety of God's word when we have easy access to it whenever we want.

So, on the 14th of July we began a journey that is supposed to take a year, but who knows how long it will really take? Maybe less than a year, maybe more.

We're both taking notes in steno books (my favorite note receptacle), but we're not putting any rules on the note-taking, other than that we both need to take notes because we'll learn more that way. My goal is to post my scanned notes on this blog to share them with anyone who'll read them (and who can read them) and to more or less hold myself accountable to see this through to the finish line.

We're excited to see what God does in us through this study.

Round 1

When it rains...

...our bathroom floods.

This post is necessarily almost a week overdue as Lizzy and I have been recovering from all things last week. We're also celebrating the dramatic end to my softball team's historic 14-game losing streak last night. I digress...triumphantly.

The fourth of July weekend was spent at my folks in-law down in Houston, marking our second trip to the wild humid yonder. Don't get me wrong. There are few places on earth I'd rather escape to than their place down in Tarkington . The real reason for our trip was to attend one of Lizzy's childhood (Lizzy just corrected me as she's reading over my shoulder. It's actually a teenhood friend) friend's wedding. Friend with political aspirations = fourth of July wedding.

I was bummed that I wouldn't get to spend fourth of July watching a fireworks show as I had done every fourth of July in recent memory. That bummed feeling went out the window (literally) as we were driving home on a dark, straight, narrow (Biblical reference) highway on our return trip home. It was beautiful! We passed a handful of small shows going on on either side of the highway and got a really big kick out of it.

All this to say we went to Tarkington for a wedding. We got home on Sunday night and were spending time with friends when Lizzy received the call that her grandfather had passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's.

Lizzy's birthday the next day was tempered with the knowledge that we'd be driving back to Tarkington on Tuesday for the viewing and subsequent memorial service on Wednesday.

I was never able to meet her grandfather, but after hearing the speakers at his memorial service and seeing the love for him that filled the room I wish I had. He must've been a remarkable servant of the Lord. I heard more than once that he'd most likely be hearing "Well done, good and faithful servant."

There were no fireworks shows on the way home Wednesday...just rain.

Like I said: when it rains...

The apartment was dark when we got home because we don't want to pay for lights that we don't use. It was also hot by the same logic.

I had to go number one.

I did not get to go number one.

There was about an inch of standing water in our bathroom and if there's a way to take care of something like that without burdening your wife with that knowledge, I have no idea.

The maintenance guy came and told us our water heater had busted. Hooray!

He was super-cool, though. After he swam to the washroom, the source of the problem, he set up a hose to allow the water heater to drain in a less floody kind of way.

Blah blah blah, all the water went away along with half of the carpet padding in our bedroom.

Here's what our living room looked like at about 10:00 the night we got back.

The End.

Our trip to Tarkington

We drove down to Tarkington this past weekend for the fourth of July to spend some quality time with the family and go to a friends wedding. Here are some of the pictures that we took while we were there.

This is our dog Lady. She is nothing short of awesomeness. She has one blue eye and one brown eye.

Ross took the next two...he wanted to be artsy with the camera.

This is my Pa Pa's garden. We always get lots of good veggies to take home with us :)

Shopping with mom, fried eggplant, getting to spend the fourth with the family, and getting to see my friend Erica walk down the isle...it was a great trip!