Nice Weekend

OK all you blog peeping toms...my last post was up for a mere 5 days and even though I had 10 unique visitors every day, I only received 1 comment! Thanks Laura! You win a famous "Kirkburger", which you can redeem in September when you and Marco visit!

I had a spontaneous change of plans last week. After the 4th night of lonely bachelorhood, and a VERY stressful week at work, I decided Thursday morning to take off Friday and drive to Wichita Falls Thursday night to join up with my family (whom I missed terribly!) and have a nice 3-day weekend. Of course, the market has arrived at a very crucial technial point, which means we've been adjusting all of our portfolios like crazy, so I had to stay at work until 7:30 Thursday night getting everything figured out and ready for Friday. I probably should have stayed to oversee our moves on Friday. I guess it didn't matter though, since I ended up logging in from Jenn's parents' house and working until 12:30pm on my day off! UGH!

On my way to Wichita Falls Thursday night, my A/C ran out of freon!! Luckily it was at night and not too hot. I rolled in to WF at 9:45pm and met up with Jenn at On the Border where she was having dinner with Kelly and Alicia. I crashed their party!! Jenn and I went home to her parents' house and caught up for awhile, and then around midnight I went up to Chris Deges' work and hung out with him pretty late. He's a nuclear pharmacist and was mixing solutions for various tests like gall bladder tests that allows the machines to see all of the radioactive activity in the patient's body from the solution (if there's no activity in the gall bladder then it's full of stones and needs to come out)...anyway, Sorry Chris for probably not doing your job justice with my weak explanation. It was a great visit and very interesting to see what he does. Friday after I finished working on my vacation day (not bitter at all), Jenn and I took Karissa to Olive Garden for lunch. I learned that earlier in the day, Karissa had accepted Jesus and His free gift of salvation in the van with Jenn. We're happy for her and have suspected that she was ready, but we have been cautious to not create too much drama or emotional rah-rah! Don't get me wrong, it is a big deal and definitely worth being celebrated, but we want her to keep it in context. A little more on that later...

Friday night we went to Jeff & Kelly's house and cooked out with them and Chris & Alicia. We had a great time! Good food, good drinks, good conversation! It was fun to spend time and catch up with friends we haven't seen in a while! We went and dropped the kids off (put them to bed) at Jenn's parents' house and returned for some more fun. It just occurred to me that this blog is probably excruciatingly boring so far - HA! Anyway, the Deges' left and Jenn, I, & the Trimbles stayed and had some great conversation! Thanks again guys - it's too bad we're not closer - that would be fun to do more often. However, remember it's only an hour and 35 minutes to Saginaw! Today we made it back in an hour and 45 minutes, driving the legal speed limit most of the time, but that included one stop to find a lost pacifier and one stop to use the bathroom and get gas. So an uneventful trip really is ONLY an hour and 35 minutes!

Saturday morning we got up and went to visit my parents for awhile. After having lunch with them at CiCi's pizza, we went back to Jenn's parents' house and got ready for Kylie's "impromptu" 3rd birthday party with our families in Wichita Falls. It was 10 days early, but it was very convenient while we were in town - it saved our families a trip to Saginaw in a week! It was very hot Saturday! That evening I went and got the stuff to fix my A/C in my truck, but by the time I got back home, I was hot and tired, so I showered and watched some tv and then went to bed.

This morning we went to church to visit everyone and let the girls sing in their VBS program. They were cute! It was great to see everyone, and I was reminded after listening to Tom teach that we will never find another church like Grace. He started the whole lesson off by saying something I've thought for years, but haven't known how to express it clearly. He mentioned someone who was considering a business opportunity in another city, and before long, had moved his family and begun a new job. He said that he felt God was calling him in that direction. He didn't know it at the time, but he was letting his feelings determine God's will. You hear all too often "God is calling me to do such and such"...and I'm not the one to judge, but how many times do you think it's God actually calling or just a person's feelings that make them THINK God is calling them? The lesson was on spiritual enemia, relied HEAVILY on scriptural support, and was very in-depth and meaty. Very refreshing! After church, we went out to eat with Jeff & Kelly and we took up 3 tables!! Between our 2 families there are 7 kids!! We had another great visit and look forward to seeing them again soon.

I put more freon in my truck for the drive home. Karissa rode with me and the freon only lasted for about an hour! YIKES!! We rolled down the windows and enjoyed a nice, hot drive home. However, it was a good drive. After listening to her High School Musical soundtrack, we turned it down and talked for awhile. We talked mostly about her decision to accept Christ and what that meant on an intellectual level. I'm continuously amazed at how smart she is - how much she knows and remembers, processes, analyzes, and understands. They say you can judge the intelligence of a person not by the things they say, but by the questions they ask. She asks some pretty impressive questions for a 7 year old! I can already tell she's like me in that she's not happy with surface level answers. I assured her that she doesn't have to get baptized to be a christian since she was pretty nervous about that. She's trying to grasp the concept of the trinity, and I think she's doing a great job - that's a difficult one! She wanted to know how I accepted Christ, and since it was partially a result of my reaction to reading Revelations, we had a pretty in-depth discussion about the second-coming, what hell might be like, what heaven might be like, and how Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for everyone. Karissa said she doesn't feel any different even though Jesus is inside her heart - :) which of course she meant from a physical sense.

I popped my hood tonight to get a reading on my A/C compressor, and the neighborhood guys immediately flocked to my driveway. Funny how that happens! I was very grateful though since I'm not very mechanical and they got my A/C to blow cold air again! I'm hoping it lasts a few more months...I'm planning on FINALLY getting a Jeep towards the end of the summer!!

Sorry this is so long! I know it's a chore to sit there and read one of my long posts. Leave a comment!