well, after 2+ long years of meetings and travels, the pastor search at CABC is over. (well, depending on the vote, but my part is over. if, heaven forbid, the vote is negative, they will be finding a new committee!)

after logging countless miles and hours, we merely traveled down ih-35 30 mins to salado to find God’s man, Brian Dunks. you can find out more on CABC’s Pastor Search page.

it was definitely a learning experience for us all, but we could see God’s hand all the way through. we received many good names of good preachers and good pastors, but God only pointed to one. if you had told me 2 years ago that we would take only one vote and that it would be unanimous, i would have laughed. but God, as only He can do, pulled a very diverse committee together early and encouraged us greatly. we met often, argued very little, wandered some, but stayed true to the task and God rewarded us. as always, God’s timing is perfect.

i am very happy with our choice and think that CABC is in store for many more years of serving God to the fullest. thanks to all of you who prayed us through this. unfortunately for Salado, they now begin the journey.

woohoo, i get my Sunday afternoons back! more naps!

a good friend and roommate sent me this video today. he was wishing we could have used it on another one of our roommates. i wish we could have, too. of course, this is a commercial, but there are plenty of youtube videos out there of real people doing this to others. watch out for any that want to play this game with you!

on sunday we sat down around 8 to watch planet earth on the discovery channel. our friend griff had suggested watching it and i had heard good things elsewhere. griff’s main take on it was that it really shows how great God’s creation is and how everythng works together and works well.

it was not long before hannah’s bedtime, so she sat down to watch it with us. this segment was about the great plains on each continent and some of the animals that live there. it was really cool. there were tense moments where our first instinct was to change the channel, but they turned into teaching moments for hannah. the first was a fox who was trying to penetrate a colony of geese. for a while the geese handled him pretty well, but they left their nest vulnerable, so the fox either ran off with eggs or baby goslings. we had to explain that out of survival some animals had to kill other animals to eat them. they handled it well and hannah seemed to understand.

another situation was a night scene at a watering hole in africa. it seems that at night the elephants lose their upper hand. they showed how a pack of lions could attack an elephant, separate it from the herd, and take it down. again, it was not a violent scene, but nature at work. that elephant fed a pack of lions for a week. again, we had to teach hannah about survival of animals. i think she handled it well.

but the best part of the evening was as we were going to bed. you see, hannah sleeps with a stuffed elephant named ellie. ellie has been around since day one when aunt julie gave it to hannah. it is a rare night when we go to bed without ellie. hannah’s comment on this night was, “the lions can’t get my ellie because she is stuffed!” pretty cute! even cuter is that she constantly holds ellie by her tail so as to keep the rest of ellie’s body soft. it works in her mind.

when i was telling griff about this story, we then traveled down the road of what happened in the garden of eden. when everything was in perfect peace and harmony, did the animals eat each other? my initial thought was that God provided food for them through the garden where they didn’t have to attack others. there truly was peace. it wasn’t until the fall of man and the closing of the garden that the animal world became survival of the fittest. anybody have any other input? just a curiousity.

for those of you around central texas, if you haven’t driven around and noticed the bluebonnets, shame on you! for those of you not around central texas, man, you’re missing out! this year they are beautiful. a few inches of rain last week didn’t hurt!

as you might imagine, it is the time to take pics, so we went out to my parent’s ranch to take some. we weren’t sure what the condition would be, but the field we normally go to was amazing. probably the most bluebonnets since we’ve owned it. the pictures do some justice, but it was simply beautiful. check out the pictures in the right sidebar or click the image below.

we also had snow today. we’ll just call it a White Easter! we don’t get snow in the winter, we get it in April. also amazing. dana and i even had a snowball fight! it just makes it bad for my girls in those pretty Easter dresses - talk about cold! those pictures are included in the ones above.

on a website front, i updated a little. well, more than a little. i took my custom site and migrated it to Wordpress. it was quite a feat, but i think it will be worth it in the long run. let me know if you encounter any issues. i’m going to have to work on the rss feeds, though. you might just update yours if that’s what you’re using. enjoy

on occasion i get up early and exercise. i’ve got a route that i follow in our neighborhood that helps me keep my love handles from growing into a pot belly. on many of those occasions there is usually something worth noting. one constant that i’ve noticed are the cats.

[note: i am not a cat lover. i can deal with them, but i will never own one. they are pretentious, self-absorbed, non-loving (unless they want something) creatures. i’ll take a dog any day.]

as i go along the way, there are at least 2-3 cats on every block for about half my route. they are sitting by the street and have a tendancy to follow me along their property and even a house or two past. they zip around my legs and look at me intently. i have to be rather careful not to either trip and fall or kick one, though the latter is tempting at times when they get in the way.

i discovered a while back that there are two ladies that walk a similar route, usually 10-15 minutes after i pass. one of those women carries a bag of cat food with her and stops at each house with a cat and puts a handful of food down byt the curb. she has them all conditioned that at a certain time each morning she will be there. over the months the numbers have risen gradually. i can only imagine how this has grown from 1-2 cats per walk to 15-20. i have seen the increase in interest. i’m wondering if word has gotten out in the cat world that an early morning kitty diner has opened in castle heights. pretty soon this lady will have to get a cart to carry the food!