Speaking of vacation...

On Friday, my son, Robert, and I leave for vacation. We are flying to Seattle and going to go explore the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and Olympic National Park in Washington. My wife and daughter, Carolyn, will fly out the following Friday and then we will all spend a week in Whistler, British Columbia. Our plan is to post each day with highlights and photos so that all y'all can follow our adventures. I guess I should experiment a little with uploading photos to see how well that works. So, here's a before an after of our recently remodeled backyard:

Before...

After...

23 Hours of Ordinary Moments

To celebrate Kim's completion of the LSAT (even though we still don't know the score yet) and 21 years of marriage (a few days late), I surprised her this past weekend and took her to The Westin La Paloma here in Tucson. We had a nice dinner, took a walk, sat in the jacuzzi, slept in the Westin Heavenly Bed (ahhhh), read, had cold slushy drinks by the pool, slept some more, read some more, ate some more - it was a great 23 hours of simply being together with nothing pressing to do. Plus, it was a nice precursor to our upcoming vacation beginning on Friday. More about that later...

A Big Day

Yesterday was a very big day for my wife, Kim. She took the LSAT as part of her pursuit to begin law school in fall of '08. Now the wait begins for her to receive her score - hopefully no more than 3 weeks from now. After the test, I met her and some of her Kaplan compadres for drinks and laughter at Frog n Firkin. Regardless of the score, at least she is done for now and we could celebrate the end of that chapter of life! Now, if we only knew her score...

Enjoying each moment along the way

Our current Sunday morning series in my church is called Dream Makers. We have been discussing the essence of dreams, of God's whispering in our lives. This morning, Kevin said something which really struck me. He talked about how enduring simply means getting through something, like a trip to the dentist. Persevering, on the other hand, means not missing the moments along the way:

"The whole process of a dream being pursued, even the obstacles to overcome or the discouragements to get through, every piece of this moment to our dream being fully grown is a beautiful moment. And persevering means enjoying each moment along the way for what it is, celebrating each moment in each step, knowing that this is part of the dream. The pathway there is part of the dream."

Are there things in my life that I am merely enduring instead of persevering? Are these things getting in the way of my dreams?

Project complete...almost

My body is very mad at me. My irrigation project is mostly complete, but only because of two things: the power of Ibuprofen and the friendship of Cliff. I've known Cliff for 21 years - he hired me for my first real job. When the company moved us to Tucson, we ended up on the same street together, along with many other friends and co-workers! He retired about five years ago, but stays very active helping neighbors with projects like mine. He saw me working Friday morning and decided to join me for about four hours on Friday and 6 hours today! I wouldn't be anywhere near finished had it not been for Cliff's selfless act of service. His wife, Linda, even went to the local farmer's market and got us each a BBQ pulled-pork sandwich (...cue heavenly music...). Sitting on the ground in the shade, eating a pork sandwich at 9:30am, and talking and laughing with Cliff was my special ordinary moment today. I'm going to go nap now...

A "Big" moment

Today marks 21 years of wonderful marriage for Kim and I. Just so you don't think I'm a forgetful goof, she was at class while I dug trenches and buried drip lines...but she's going to like the cards I got her.

A beginning

I've often wondered what I would post if I had my own blog. Would I post frequently? Would it be cheesy? Would anyone else read it? Well, these are questions that will be answered in time, I suppose. For now, I'm not going to worry about any of those questions and just take it as it comes. Fair enough?

Here was my ordinary moment today. Our drip irrigation system in the front yard is 13 years old and essentially, dead. I killed it, because it was leaking badly in multiple spots. I will be on vacation for two weeks later this month, so I thought I should try to fix it so we'd still have living plants when we return home. This may not have been the best idea. I now have 600mg of Ibuprofen in my system, and I hope it works by tomorrow morning. Pain alerts us that something is wrong, right? Well, something is wrong. But tomorrow will be a new day with more dirt, rocks, drippers, and water spraying me.