The Non-Essential Adventures of D'Art

I found this video while surfing on a church blog for Community Christian Church. I think it’s hilarious! Tell me what you think.

This past week I spent the majority of my time watching middle school students indulge themselves with pixie sticks and ice cream sandwiches.  I also watched as they engaged in worship and as they enjoyed a taste of freedom, being away from mom and dad for a couple of days.  I had a student in my room that didn’t come from my church, and obviously came from a bad situation.  I watched him cringe as the week of camp came to an end.  I watched what will one day be life change.  I watched students get involved who would never think of getting involved anywhere else, except for camp.  I watched God.  I talked to him.  I communed.   As tired as I am, I think that I got out of camp as much or more than the students did.  I felt God and I saw him work quietly throughout the camp all week.  I love youth camp.

This week, I’ll be incapacitated. I’ll be spending the week as a counselor at a Middle School youth camp. I don’t know what that does to you, but it excites me as well as makes me a bit nervous. It’s like my bowels are in a fist fight with my adrenal glands. We shall see how it goes. I’m sure I’ll come back with some great stories, and maybe a wedgie or two. Oh well, I’m off. I’ll be back soon.

A week ago, we ended our real life social experiment, also known as our family vacation.  What’s it like spending 3 days with 22 people in one house, you ask?  Well in any normal situation it would be dreaded and I’m sure it would live up to that expecatation.  But not in this case.  It was…FUN…unexpected fun.  Here are a few factors that I think really helped with that:

**The house we spent time in was 4 stories and 6 bedrooms
**There was a pool table
**There was a  jucuzzi
**Everybody got out sometime or another
**We got out everyday
**We played Bingo…and there were prizes
**Family is still family no matter what
**A pool was close by
**There was food, good food

So overall it was a great couple of day.  To tell you the truth we were dreading it just a little bit, but all turned out well.  Oh, yeah, we also saw these Bears:

They showed up while we were headed to lunch.  They got into our trash can and threw it down the hill.  Her cubs soon followed.  So we got a little taste of the wild as well.

On another note, my mom took this picture.  My brother said he took a better one, he also said he was going to send it to me so that I could post it here….Oh well someone once said: “Family is still family no matter what.”  I guess I’ll leave it at that!

Who knows, maybe we’ll do it again next year.

Toady is the day that Fathers are celebrated everywhere…well almost everywhere. I realized today while I was teaching at SHIFT, our Middle School Worship envriroment, that Father’s day isn’t a great day for everyone. Sure we think that single people, mothers, children, they don’t get to participate, but that’s not who I want to talk about. I have more than a couple of students in our ministry that don’t know their father, or that their father is in jail, or are raised by their mothers to hate their estranged father. What a tough day on these guys. A day that fathers are appluaded and praised, these students don’t get it. “Why would I call my father today, I haven’t talked to him in years. And besides he doesn’t even care about me.”

If that’s you, don’t know your father or are estranged, I’m truly sorry. But you have the chance to change that, then next generation doesn’t have to endure what you have. So to you I say: Don’t get married until you know for sure that you will spend the rest of your life with that person, continue to work on your marriage, it’s not easy, but it is worth it. I’ve seen it done. Lord willing I’ll do it too. Besides it makes for a great Father’s day.

Happy Fathers Day Dad.

The answer, a little bit of ice and a hot tub. It must have been a muscle. After icing Dahson’s arm, that “I hurt” and playing in the hot tub, Dahson was able to mover her arm. So I am forgiven, and I feel a ton better now. Until you have hurt your child, you will have no idea how bad I felt. But now I’m off the hook. I have no idea how people hurt children on purpose. I profussley appoligized to Dahson again and again, letting her know that what I did was an accident. But for people who hurt children on purpose, I’d like to put a swimmie on you! All is well.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Read Those Darn Swimmies

Yesterday we played in the pool, all was well and we had a great time, until Dahson decided that she needed to go pee-pee. Out of the water she came, and off came the swimmies, that had kept her afloat for the past couple of hours. The restroom part went well, the washing of hands went well, and we even managed to stay on our feet in a very wet and slippery public restroom. The problem came when I tried to reinsert Dahson’s arm into the swimmie. I don’t know what you know about 4 year olds and water, but mine needs those things around her arms to keep her head above water, and they are called swimmies. They are constructed of plastic, and sometimes have a bit of trouble going on or coming off of a dry arm. But since her arm was still wet, I didn’t think that we would have the same problems. In a haste to return to the luke-warm water of summer, I pulled on the swimmies. Arm one went on without a hitch, arm two, no such luck. The second one was giving me a little bit of trouble so I tried to pull it on with a little more strength. A scream occurred, and the fiasco began. Now I’m no doctor, but I didn’t think much was wrong. I thought that I had pinched her, but she was really giving tender care to that left arm.

She had a tough time sleeping last night as she winced in pain. This morning we could still tell she wasn’t feeling well, so we headed to the store and picked up a sling. So Dahson has been sporting a sling for the past 6 hours. I hope all is well. We will take her to the doctor when we get home on Thursday, man I feel bad. Oh, speaking of feeling bad, we were at the outlet mall today, and a lady asked Dahson what happened. To which she replied, “My daddy hurt me.” Man I really feel bad now. All thanks to those darn Swimmies!

This picture is from a Japanese metro train. It says that the following kinds of people are entitled to the “priority seating”:

1. People with injured arms
2. People carrying small children
3. Pregnant women
4. People with injured legs

Now get your minds out of the gutter, punk.

I stole this from my friend Glen’s blog. It was too funny to not share. Thanks Glen for the great blog.