Vroom Vroom!

So my 30th birthday was mostly not great on the day itself. But as a total event, it has to be the best birthday EVER! Why? Because way back in February, this redneck, NASCAR junkie bought herself a pair of tickets to the Labor Day NASCAR race in Atlanta. Seven months of anticipation reached a glittering, star-struck peak one week ago.

On Friday we picked up Snapper at school at lunch and drove to stay with out friends Brian and Carol in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They moved there in January, and we haven't had any time with them since then. It was so great to see them! Snapper was elated to see S and V. Baby A has grown like a weed. We ate good food, played at 2 different parks, and spent quality time catching up.

Then came Sunday. How do I begin to describe Sunday? While we sat in traffic, I very carefully painted a big 48 on my cheek.

For those of you who don't already know, I am a fan of Jimmie Johnson, who drives the 48 Lowes car. Matt says I put the fan in fanatic...I wouldn't say I'm quite that bad, but I do love my Jimmie Johnson. I showed some restraint at the race. Even though I did my nails blue with a gold 48 on each thumb, even though I put blue, yellow, and white ribbons in my hair, even though I wore my Jimmie shirt and painted my face, I left the Jimmie Johnson lounge pants in my suitcase and wore jeans instead. Ha ha! When the race track came into sight after 3 hours in traffic, I was more than ready for the race!

We walked around checking out the driver merchandise trailers and the Sprint Fan Zone. I even won a cool hat, which I later saw for sale at the whopping price of $20!

As soon as we were able, we headed into the speedway and found our seats. Because I paid top dollar for the best seats I could get, we ended up sitting up high with a perfect view of the whole track. It also seemed that the expensive seats filter out a lot of the fans who use the race as an excuse to get drunk. We saw very little of that, and were surrounded by nice people.

I soaked up every minute of the pre-race festivities, watching the pit road action through my zoom lens on my camera.

Driver introductions were awesome, and I got a good close-up view of Jimmie! Dr. Dobson gave the invocation, and a country group sang the national anthem. I got all goosebumpy when the Air Force jets did their fly-over.

Then came the famous command: Gentlemen, start your engines! The cars roared to life. They circled the track following the pace car for a few laps, and then the green flag waved and my ear drums flapped all over the place in my head as all 43 cars hit the throttle at once and came screaming by. I swear, every hair on my body stood on end! The stands vibrated so hard that I almost lost my balance just standing there! That moment ranks in the top 5 most exhillerating moments of my life!

The rest of the race was fantastic. We rented scanners and headsets, and got to listen to the communications between the drivers and their crew chiefs. Much to Matt's disappointment, there were no big wrecks. To my almost devastation, Jimmie Johnson broke an axel and spent several laps in the garage getting it fixed. However, it was still a good race with a great finish. Kasey Kahne won. I can live with that, because he is a good driver and a great guy.

Did I enjoy every minute? Absolutely! Was it worth the $270 I spent on 2 tickets? Heck yes it was! Will I go again? Just as soon as I can save up enough money to buy more tickets!

Yesterday I watched this week's race on tv. No matter how loud I turned up my surround sound, I could not feel the vibration of those incredible cars. Nor could I soak up the intense energy and excitement of the other fans. I still love watching the race on tv, but I can hardly wait to go to the next race. Happy birthday to me! It was the best birthday present ever!

Back to School Traditions, Part 5

Okay, so we began a new tradition this year, one that we'll be sure to keep as long as we live in a town with a Sonic. As most of you know, Sonic has Happy Hour from 2-4. All drinks and slushes are half-price! I called my friend Karon, whose kids C, J, and H are Snapper's best friends. In fact, Snapper and J are pretty much engaged...at least they say so. Ha ha! Karon's kids get out at the same time as Snapper, so we surprised the kids and met at Sonic for drinks. I let them pick whatever they wanted. Of course, Snapper asked for a Route 44 Dr. Pepper. I gave in to the Dr. Pepper, but got a medium instead. The kids were thrilled to see each other, and had fun being very silly while they enjoyed their drinks. Yup, definitely a tradition to keep!

Sonic surprise for the kiddos!

Puppy lovebirds. Aren't they adorable?



Snapper was telling the boys a secret. I love how all you can see of her is her hairbow!
Sweet secrets

And the sugar sets in. At this point we say our goodbyes and head for home.

4th of July

I have always loved the 4th of July. My childhood memories of the 4th of July include neighborhood block parties, parades with the neighborhood kids (where we decorated our bikes and rode up and down the street while my mom played patriotic music on a tape player in our wagon), swim parties at our house, lots of watermelon, fireworks at Fort Ord, and the annual watching of "Yankee Doodle Dandy." As usual, my mom took advantage of the holiday as an opportunity to celebrate. Good, good memories.

Since moving to Arkansas, our celebration has been quite different. First of all, July is too hot for block parties and kid parades. Second, there aren't a whole lot of big fireworks shows to choose from, so the main shows are very crowded. BUT...I never said different was bad.

Each 4th of July here has been different and special. Last year we went to Jackson, Tennessee with our friends Brian and Carol, and spent a very relaxing 4 days at Carol's parents' house, playing canasta and eating yummy food. This year we stayed in town and had a blast.

At lunch time we went down to our community pool for a potluck swim party. We ate hot dogs and potluck food, and the lifeguards led games for the kids. Popsicles and watermelon added a special something to the afternoon. In the evening, we joined our friends Jim and Karon, and went out to Karon's parents' house in the country. Yes, we ate. Yummy food, and lots of it! But the main focus of our evening was fireworks. In my book, being able to shoot your own fireworks is more fun that watching fireworks, even if our fireworks aren't as impressive. The fireworks were interrupted by a thunderstorm that came crashing through, soaking the yard and cooling the air down to a pleasant 74 degrees. We took advantage of the rain delay to eat the homemade ice cream Karon and her mom made. Oh. My Gosh! It was so good!
It was dark by the time we finished the fireworks and headed home. All the way home I could see fireflies twinkling in the woods.

Here are a few pictures of our evening. I left my memory card at home, so my camera sat very sadly in the bag. I commandeered Karon's camera, though, and did my best with it. It was a good camera, I just don't know it like I know my own camera.

Blog Award

My bloggy buddy Christine honored me with this special award for my blog.



I received it on the day of my horrible plane trip. Getting to the hotel and finding an email from Christine about the award totally brightened my day. Thanks, Christine!

Now I get to pass the award on to five blogs that I love.

Lori at Building Our Nest

Tara at Keeping Up with the Kellys

Rachel at Of Pearls and Plaid

Tammy at Living Unleashed for Christ

Stefanie at The Arnold 5

Alrighty girls, grab the award and pass it on!

I Am Tired!

What a wonderful weekend!

On Friday mid-morning Matt, Debbie, the kids, and I went to the Greek Food Festival in Little Rock. Oh yummy! Unfortunately, I can't eat baklava, and the yummy pastry that Karon told me about was not available this year. But I did stuff myself full of gyros, pastitsia, hummus and pitas, and another yummy spinach-stuffed pastry that I can't spell the name of.

Then I ran home and picked up the food I had made for our friends Mark and Stefanie, and took it up to the hospital. I cuddled the new baby while Mark and Stef ate. Then I took lots of pictures. Here are a few of the best. I'm looking forward to a photo shoot with the baby in their home in a month or so!











After I left the hospital, I swung by Sonic and grabbed a giant cherry limeade before heading out to my scrapbook retreat. I'll spare you the details of the weekend. I just scrapbooked until 2:30 a.m., then lay in my bed talking with my roomie, Stephanie, until 3:15. A severe thunderstorm rolled in at that point, and Steph and I pulled back the curtains, turned around so our heads were at the foot of our beds, and watched the storm until 3:45. Then we went to sleep. We had breakfast at 8, then scrapbooked until 6 p.m. I got 40 pages (20 layouts) done, journaling in all! Maybe later this week I'll scan a few and post them.

All ready to go! Scrapbooking with Wendy


The necessary pile of junk food


My scrap space



Now I'm home, and I'm VERY tired. I'm thinking about taking a nap before community group at 6. Yes, I think I'll go do that now! Happy rest of the weekend!

Oh yes, my blogger friend Sarah Mae is have awesome giveaways at her blog for the next few days. Check it out! Who knows...maybe you'll win something great!

It All Came Together

After a very frustrating Thursday night (United gave them bogus hotel vouchers, and after finally admitting the error, put them up in a hotel 20 miles away from the airport), Frank and Tammy finally arrived on Friday afternoon. Their luggage, however, did not. After a thoroughly aggravating hour of trying to track down their bag, Frank happened to walk by the Delta Airlines baggage counter, where he saw their bag. He was assured that Delta does not carry baggage for United. But a closer look revealed that apparently, that day was an exception. Frank and Tammy's bag was sent on Delta Airlines, via Atlanta. United never told them this. It was miraculous that Frank saw the bag sitting there with another airline. I repeat again: AVOID UNITED!!! The whole trip was disastrous, and United did nothing to compensate Frank and Tam for any of the stress or screw-ups. I have never been so relieved to leave an airport! And that's saying a lot, because I travel frequently. We left the airport and made the drive to our office where took them on a tour of our ministry headquarters. That night, Matt and Frank went to see the new Wolverine movie, while Tam and I started into her training.

I suppose I should give some background on Frank and Tammy. I met Frank through my friend Jane-Holly in 1997. He was a sweet, quiet guy, and we ended up becoming very close friends. I would go so far as to say Frank was one my closest friend during that year and the next. That December, I went to Frank's high school Winter Ball with him. I had a blast getting to know his school friends that very fun night. It was on that night that I met Tammy. Shortly after that, Frank and Tammy started dating, and I enjoyed getting to know her. We share some great memories! Then in 1998, Matt and I started dating. We joined Frank and Tammy for dinner before they went to prom. In the months after that, we lost touch. Frank moved to Sacramento, and Tammy went away to college. I thought about them often, but was never able to track either one of them down after that.

Fast forward 10 years. I had always wondered what had happened in Frank and Tammy's lives. I searched for them both online, but had no luck. And then one day I randomly decided to search Facebook. I played a "what if" card, and searched for Tammy with Frank's last name (which is a very unusual last name), in case they had gotten married. And what do you know, they had! I was SO excited to get to rekindle our friendship! We have visited them three times in California, the most recent visit being in February.

While visiting them in February, we learned that Tammy had applied with a missions agency to go into full-time ministry. Her focus area--a performing arts ministry within her church. In order to build and grow the existing program, Tammy needs to raise financial support to pay her salary and help fund the ministry. And she was freaked out by the whole idea of raising support. It so happens that Matt and I are in the missionary business, and know all about raising support.

Then in March, I threw out the idea to Tam that she should come spend a weekend with us and we could train her. She took a faith step and asked her church to pay for her trip. To her surprise, her church said yes, and also offered to pay for Frank to come!!! So the purpose of Frank and Tam's visit this weekend was training in raising support. Needless to say, fitting what should be a 4-5 day training into 2 days was a daunting task. But we were all up to the challenge.

We spent the better part of our weekend at our dining room table, working through the nuts and bolts of the process. Tammy is going home with an awesome database for tracking her contacts, a biblical perspective on being a missionary and raising support, and a presentation of her ministry that casts an amazing vision for what God has called her to. I know she and Frank both feel much more confident and eqipped to move forward. Matt and I will coach Frank and Tammy in the coming months as she raises support, and as Frank assists her.



Tammy's ministry is SO COOL!!! Those of you who have daughters understand how dance has become to sexualized, even dance classes for little girls. I know I struggle with the thought of putting Snapper into dance classes because so many of the movements are sensual, and the costumes provocative. For those dancers who continue on for years, many struggle with eating disorders as they attempt to fit the world's mold of "beautiful." Part of Tammy's ministry is dance. She offers several dance classes for kids, teens, and adults, that are wholesome and modest, as well as very professional. It allows the dancers to enjoy dance, while still glorifying God with their bodies. It also removes the pressure to be physically perfect.

Tammy also recognizes that dance and music communicate with people's hearts in a unique way. Each year she puts together a dance and music program that shares Christ with the audience. Their program attendance has grown so much that this year they had to rent a theater for the 4 performances! Every summer Tammy takes several of the dancers abroad to perform and share Christ with others. In July they will be going to Trinidad for 10 days!

Big dreams hover as part of Tammy's vision for the ministry in the next two years. The dance program will expand, and she will be starting drama and other performing arts programs as well. Her goal is to give her students a way to use their creative gifts to bring glory to God. I am really excited to see Tammy grow as God provides her support. I'm also excited for the future of this ministry. It is so creative and has great potential. You can visit Tammy's blog to share in her journey, to see pictures, and watch video of her dancers. If you stop by, leave her a comment to let her know you were there. I know she'd be thrilled to share her ministry with you, as well as tell you about partnership opportunities. How awesome to get to be part of this!

Our weekend was not all work, though. We did get to play! We enjoyed great pizza and awesome southern barbeque. We went out for frozen custard at 10:30 p.m. We played with the kids, went to church, and went to the farmer's market in downtown Little Rock. Tammy had never been in a thunderstorm. It was a very stormy weekend, and she loved the spectacular thunder and lightning! We put together a little scrapbook with pictures of her dancers. And we also just hung out and talked. We were sad to put them on the plane back to California this evening. Overall though, it all came together beautifully, and ended up being a productive--albeit short--weekend.

Upidstay!

United Airlines is upidstay. That's STUPID in Pig Latin. Forgive me if you work for United. If you do, you should go find a job at a better company.

Anyhoo...

Our friends Frank and Tammy are coming for the weekend. Tammy is just starting the process of raising financial support for her dance ministry. Basically, she's going to be a full-time missionary. Her sending agency does not offer any training on raising support. Our sending agency, however, does. Matt and I were thoroughly trained before we came on staff with our ministry. So Frank and Tammy are flying out for an intense weekend of training with Matt and me. They left their 9-month-old son back in California. Frank could only get 2 days off work, so their visit is only from tonight thru Sunday late afternoon. That's a very short amount of time to accomplish what should take 5 days.

Well...

The day started off bad when their flight out of California was delayed 2 hours due to a small mechanical error. Because they were flying out of a smaller airport, that small airport had to wait for authorization (from the higher-ups at a bigger airport) to fly after making the repairs. Frank and Tammy had the pleasure of sitting in the plane at the gate for over 2 hours.

Then...

If there were police in the air, the captain would have gotten a speeding ticket. He flew that plane at 540 knots (that's 621 mph), which is 100 mph faster than normal. Go captain! They made up great time in the air, and I thought they were going to make their connection in Denver.

But...

They (and a pack of other from their CA flight) ran, and got to the gate right as the gate attendant had closed the door. And she would not let any of them on the plane. That captain could have held the flight 5 minutes to let all those people on. That plane sat at the gate for another 12 minutes. I know this because I am--according to Tammy--an airplane stalker (only when someone I love is on the plane...don't worry!), and I follow flight progress at this very cool website. It tells you the scheduled stats for the flight, as well as the actual stats. And once the plane has taken off, you can watch the plane's progress on a cool little map!

So...

Frank and Tammy went to the customer service desk to get onto another flight. Guess what? The next flight from Denver to Little Rock does not arrive until 2:30 p.m. Tomorrow.

It gets better...

Since the airline (not the weather) caused this problem, the airline needs to take care of the stranded passengers. They gave Frank and Tammy a wimpy dinner voucher and a hotel voucher. That's it. Seriously? That's almost an insult! Not only are Frank and Tammy losing almost a full day of their already brief trip, they're going to end up having to pay for breakfast and lunch, which otherwise would have been eaten free of charge at my house. And all this after being made to sit at the gate in a stuffy airplane for over 2 hours, and running their tails off through the Denver airport.

In conclusion...

I told them to go back to customer service and push a bit. They should get vouchers for breakfast. Frank will still have to go home Sunday, but the airline should move Tammy's return date to Monday, free of charge. If not, they should receive a voucher for a free future flight, because the airline messed up this trip.

This said...

1. I know that God makes no mistakes.
2. I know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him. I do love Him. So do Frank and Tammy.
3. I know it will all work out okay in the end.

I just needed to fuss a bit.

What I've Learned

Happy Tuesday!
Here's what I've learned this week.

1. A visit from a friend is food for the soul. Our best friends Stan and Noel came from California last week. Even though poor Stan got really sick for half the time here, we still had fun. Come visit us! Our guestroom is ready!

2. The fact that I hate running has not changed. What I learned, though, is that a really good pair of running shoes makes running so much more bearable! I got a great pair of Sauconys yesterday. I walk/jogged a mile (first time I've done that in a LONG time), and guess what? I'm not even slightly sore today!

3. You never get used to the sting of a negative pregnancy test.

4. My almost 3-year-old, Pepper, has figured out deceit. *Sigh* Time to work on honesty. That should make for an interesting series of posts!

5. God knows best. If you humbly seek HIS plan for your life, He'll work it out. Ask Him for what you want, but trust Him for His best (even when it is hard and/or you don't understand His decision). He always works it out. For a cool example of how God moved in direct response to my prayers, read this post.

For more records of learnings, tune in to Musings of a Housewife.
And enjoy these pics from my photo session with Stan and Noel!