Calling it “home” is a little odd…I do think of my current house (the one I share with my husband) as being “home.” But there’s something about going back to the place you grew up. (Even if it’s not the same house-or in my case, not even in the same town!) At any rate, it was good to be home with my parents this weekend.

A few highlights: The trip started as most of our roadtrips do: with a little Kirk Franklin to get us going…Beth S. rode with us and she was introduced to this fun little “beginning of our roadtrip” tradition, as well as a little Brak. Hopefully we didn’t scare her off.

Ben helped my dad run some electrical wiring in the basement, so they can continue working on finishing it off. (I mostly took pictures and held the staples.)  Ben got to use the drill.  Notice the manly sawdust shavings on his arm.

Laura came out to visit…bringing a very unique and much appreciated birthday gift for me. [Thank you, friend….I so appreciated the gift & your presence this weekend. ] I didn’t get any pictures of Laura & I, but she & I took some pictures around my parent’s yard.  Here’s how that turned out:

this is a cool tree in their yard: 

this is a cool fencepost in their yard: 

 this is looking down the road they live on:

and this is a cool leaf: 

Ben got to ride motorcycles with my dad too.

this is my dad, Hodaka Dave:

My mom cooked BBQ ribs for dinner…YUM! We only saw my brother for a few minutes (literally), but it was great to be “home” again for a little while. And we got back in time for church Sunday night, and then had our last “after church dinner” with Dusty & Rebs who are moving to Korea.

i ordered some bike gear the other day. Here is the fedex track:

Status: Sortation Center Departure
Est. in Home 10/23/2007
Date     Time     Description     Location
October 20, 2007 1:44 PM Sortation Center Departure DALLAS, TX
October 19, 2007 6:31 PM Electronic Shipping Info Received OKLAHOMA CITY, OK *
October 17, 2007 8:39 PM Sortation Center Arrival DALLAS, TX
October 17, 2007 6:38 AM Sortation Center Departure MARTINSBURG, WV
October 17, 2007 5:30 AM Sortation Center Departure ATLANTA, GA
October 16, 2007 10:34 AM Sortation Center Arrival MARTINSBURG, WV

Dallas to OKC back to Dallas…thats kind of crazy. I hope it manages to find its way to Colcord in the next couple days.

I read an analogy the other day that i really liked, and i hope i can apply to the way i think a little bit.

I’ll just quot the author, Michael Brooke, of Concrete Wave:

Concrete Wave wishes to remain a ball bearing – small, hard to find and continually in the state of being polished. Our goal is to provide readers with a deep impression when they get hit with it. Conversely, we do not aim to be a beach ball – big, seen all over the place, colorful and yet leaving very little impression when it hits. A beach ball is very fragile indeed and must avoid challenging environments, because it requires so much air to keep it afloat. A weighty ball bearing can withstand both challenging environments along with the pin pricks of adversity.

I hope that the things i am involved in, my marriage, New Life Ranch, our Community Group, our church, even just me as a person are always ball bearings. I hope that when God decides to use me for his glory that i can make a deep impression, not a loud bang when i break. I hope that no one ever looks at Beth and i thinks that we have it all together if really we are just a bunch of air holding up a facade. I hope that my life can be a life of impact, not colorful fluff that can’t stand up to life.

Im working on a huge project at work right now. Every few years we do a big all camp video. Basically the idea is to condense NLR into a ten minute video that we can show to people who want more information. Ten minutes of finished video is not much, but we pack a lot in and it takes a lot of time to get it all done!

Right now i am sorting though 5 hours of interviews i shot of some of our staff. basically i am using sound clips from the interviews to explain what we do at NLR. Hopefully none of them will be to mad when they relies that i interviewed them for a half an hour to get a 20 second sound bite!

Setting up for the interviews was actually kind of fun. We basically turned your house into a studio. Beth and I cleared out one of our rooms and set up lights and backdrops, and our bedroom became a little control room. It all worked really well from a technical perspective. Now we will see how it comes out as a finished product. As always, Cass was a huge help, both his expertise and for letting me use his gear.

a few pictures:

The gear list for those that care:Canon GL2, Shure KSM (something), Firepod, Dell Dimension 9200, Vegas4, Rokit5 monitors, random studio lighting, and a backdrop from Picture Me Studio.

We were blessed with a free weekend at a cabin at the Buffalo River a couple weekends ago. We’ve been saving it up for some good weather because we wanted to get out and do some hiking and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors. We chose our anniversary weekend. So, thanks to John & Libby & the BOC for providing a setting for a great weekend! We had a great time hiking around to some areas we had never been to before. I used Ben’s trekking poles (like ski poles, but for hiking) for the first time & was amazed at the difference it made!

We played around with the timer on the camera one evening right at sunset. Here’s how that turned out…

The other night NPR had two stories that you might enjoy…

If you live in NWA this one is for you:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14927055

The other one is a really interesting story about how the Amish forgive. I think the thing that really stuck out to me was that it seems like for them forgiveness is a an act of a community. For sure, forgiveness involves an individual choice, but perhaps if we are to grieve with those who grieve, we can forgive with those who forgive as well.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14900930