Wow, what a fun time at Trunk or Treat the other night at McKnight. Here are a few snapshots, but hats off to the Coles and the Martins (I am sure among others) for a great night.

If your church doesn't have these each year..suggest it. Similar to the Fall Festival in Littleton, this is a great outreach activity to the community.

St Louis has a neat tradition of not merely coming up to the door expecting candy. The kids have to work for it with a joke. Last year the winning joke was this:
Tiny girl: What does a fish say when it hits a wall
Us: I don't know...what?
Tiny girl: Dam !

This year the winning joke goes like this:
Chubby kid: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
Us: A stick?
Chubby kid: Nope. Defective Merchandise!

Yeah: Small and big kids dressing up for fun
Nay: Big kids dressed up as Colts leaving Denver with a last minute win

"Serenity Now"

The title of this post is a not-too-obscure reference from Seinfeld. If you can't let things go...just try repeating Serentiy Now. Of course that remedy proved to be full of holes on that episode. It reminds me of my longstanding problem of needing to be at church on time (or anywhere else for that matter).

Now, I don't have the best memory in the world, but one I do have is of our yellow 1973 Pontiac Catalina idling in front of our mailbox on the occasional Sunday morning-with the horn blaring as if to say hurry the heck up, we got a long drive ahead with places to go and people to see. The funny thing is that we only lived a few blocks from the church building. I indeed inherited this trait. I want to pack up, load Benny, and lay on that horn. In the same way that smokers need that first drag to reduce tension, I have this delusion that hitting that horn will give me the same satisfaction. As my wife reminds me-I do my best sinnin' in my singular effort to drag everyone to the building on time.

Tday was no different. One would think it would have been different, since we were the scheduled Greeters. After all, don't they usually show up earlier than everyone else to actually greet? However my Love decided she needed to have a bit of breakfast. "It will only take a minute" says she, as we whip into McD's. "I'll even go in". My inner voice is chanting, Serenity Now, over and over. After 5 minutes I finally decide not to be stressed out. I turn on Jimmy Buffett, and look at my surroundings. Lo and behold I saw these signs at Walgreens. I cracked up and lost all my high blood pressure and tension.

Day 366

Today marks day 366. 1 year and 1 day ago we picked up Benny. On day 364 we celebrated our first Gotcha Day, complete with an airplane cake and a pinata. I'm thinking the pinata is a Mexican thing, but hey-Guatemala's close enough. This party could not been a hit without his cousins Abby and Carly taking care of the entertainment portion, and Gabrielle taking the pictures. We kept the party small, but it was big to us.

We certainly are blessed. There was a memorial service yesterday for the Leicht family. Their daughter passed away prior to birth. This time of the year, there's a lot of talk about "heroics" on the baseball diamond. One of the most heroic things I have seen came at the memorial service when Sandy and Mike opened up their hearts, and shared several words and thoughts about their feelings and their little girl. The turnout of people praising God and the sharing of heart-heavy emotions are great examples of why I believe in worshiping as a congregation. You simply don't get this benefit from praising God on your own.

If anyone would like to remember the Leicht family. They request a donation be made to Christian Family Services. See the link on the right margin.

YEA: Being able to expose and share the grit and dirt from your life among friends.

NAY: Having the grit and "dirt" exposed for you in game 2. I guess we aren't all "Mr Perfect"...besides, aren't most "Gamblers" cheaters anyways?

Due to strong demand, and verbal strong-arming, I wanted to post a bit on Benny. For the past few weeks, he has not eaten hardly any meat. Today is a milestone-he ate a bunch of ham. Not earth shattering, but hey, I'm not Reuters.

Benny continues to be fascinated with computers, and is consistently messing with our Mac. He is just tall enough to reach up and start fiddling with the keyboard. By this time, he probably thinks that "Stop" and "No" are computer-related terms. Right now (thanks to our dear son), the fonts are big on the screen, and the screens don't look "normal". Any clues to the fix?

Speaking of computers, here is a shot of him at the computer in Guatemala-almost a year ago. Hard to believe.

I'm not sure what has happened to the pictures from the previous posts, but here is Benny doing what he loves-just playing. This is a plane that I played with growing up.

Last night was a great win for the team, although the first inning wasn't looking too good for Carpenter. If you managed to see Kenny Rogers pitch an agressive game for Detroit the other night, you saw an inspiring game (for the over-40 crowd). His ball was breaking big, and he had a great intensity showing on his face. That is what sparked Detroit to win the series, in my mind.

Aaron and I drove down to Birmingham this weekend to pick up a piano for his wife. Along the way, there were legions of Nascar fans going to Talladega. I'm not really a fan of racing, but ended up watching the last few laps of the race. Wow, what a finish. I'm sure it was bittersweet for the winner (# 25-don't know his name). He bumped his 2nd place teammate as he was making his move to pass Earnhart Jr on the last lap. That bump caused him to careen into #8 (Jr), taking them out of the race. #25 cruised on to win. The funny thing, everyone was throwing beer cups and booing him as he exited his car in victory. Oh well, I guess that's racing.