Weekend Craziness

Well,

It is now wednesday. We completed our transfer of stuff to the new house on saturday. That being said, we are not even close to being moved in. Having essentially spent my entire childhood in one house (we moved there when i was three). Thus, aside from my easy transition to the condo;I don't have much expierience with moving. And I Intend to keep it this way. These kinds of things should be done as few times as possible.

Let me give you a rundown:

Thursday, September 15th:
We were informed that we would be able to get into the house at about 5:30. I promptly left work, met my beautiful wife and wonderful kids, and got to the house. We looked the place over, signed the final papers and basked in the excitement of finally having posession of our new house.
In order to properly prepare for friday, it was necessary to move a few things into the house right away. One of these things was a futon that we had purchased (and was being stored at dave's house) This was necessary to facilitate placement of the piano (to be moved on friday) as i have no plans of ever trying to move that thing myself.

After a few more odds and ends (toys, etc..) we decided to get an early start on bed, in order to prepare for the enormous task looming on the horizon.
Friday, September 16th:
Friday brought more work for me. I did however take off early to get home and start prepping the one room we had plans to paint (the nursery). This particular room had belonged to the previous owner's only child-- a 10 year old Girl. As with most 10 year old's, her choice of color scheme was a polar opposite from the mostly neutral colors in the rest of the house. Unfortunately the camera was packed, otherwise there would be some pictures-- but imagine with me a very bright purple set of walls accented by the brighted neon green ceiling, trim and closet that you can imagine. Needless to say, killz was required.

Unfortunately the painting process took much longer than expected and actually ran into saturday morning.

Saturday, September 17th:
The morning started for me at around 7:30, when i awoke and showered in preparation for the day. I was to get the truck from public storage promptly at 8:30 when they opened. Right about the same time i was getting the truck, my dad was on his way to finish up painting the room, so that i could supervise the movement of possessions. as a side note, my dad is the best non-professional painter i have EVER seen.

Once people began arriving we loaded the whole truck (plus 2-3 minivan's with seats) and headed to the house. A grand total of 2 minutes and 1/16th of a mile later-- we arrived at our new digs. Seriously people, shortest move evAr!

After unloading and consuming a few snacks provided by my wonderful grandma, We headed to location number two to pick up the rest of the stuff.

Location number two is slightly further than our condo, but not by much. Loc 2 is actually my brothers recently purchased house in the same subdivision that our place is located. He was kind enough to let me take over his basement for staging of my stuff. The condo just did not provide adequate living AND storage space.

So after fielding comments related to the amount of stuff i have (i tried to tell them it was a lot before we got there) We setup a nice assembly line and loaded the truck in record time.

The end of the move was in sight, with a final push-- the truck was unloaded and everyone sat grabbed some of the pizza (courtesy of Todd Waller)

Oh yeah, there was one slight detour to pick up some random play furniture for the backyard.


So the move was fabulous, but left us feeling dead to the world-- unable to move limbs, etc...

and of course immediately following that saturday, we had another HUGE event scheduled for sunday.


The kids were dedicated! That was an absolute blast, and i'll try to cover it more in a later post


oh, Also -- i'll get some pictures up of the new place, and feel free to email me if you would like the address.


peace

Doing Our Part

Here's A little story from New Orleans taken from the interdictor. Talk about selflessness:

We were in motor boats all day ferrying people back and forth approximately a mile and a half each way (from Carrolton down Airline Hwy to the Causeway overpass). Early in the day, we witnessed a black man in a boat with no motor paddling with a piece of lumber. He rescued people in the boat and paddled them
to safety (a mile and a half). He then, amidst all of the boats with motors, turned around and paddled back out across the mile and a half stretch to do his part in getting more people out. He refused to give up or occupy any of the motored boat resources because he did not want to slow us down in our efforts. I saw him at about 5:00 p.m., paddling away from the rescue point back out into the neighborhoods with about a half mile until he got to the neighborhood, just two hours before nightfall. I am sure that his trip took at least an hour and a half each trip, and he was going back to get more people knowing that he'd run out of daylight. He did all of this with a two-by-four.

Lack of posts

Sorry about the lack of posts (as ms. 'anonymous')pointed out in the last post's comment section.) Here's a short life update


Work has been crazy busy, and seems to be staying on course with that this week.

I've had a lot of side work, which is great-- but that brings me to my next point


we move in on SATURDAY!!!!

that's right folks, you are reading the blog of the proud owner of a new(to me) house. We are coming to the end of the 30 days occupancy on the part of the previous owner. We are all set to move on saturday (if you'd like to help--drope me an email)


On top of all of that, the twins are getting dedicated this week at Oak Pointe Church!!!


okay-- now don't be offended if i don't post until next week ;-)

September 4th, 2005 - New Orleans, Louisiana

Sept 4th, 2005: water still in New Orleans

Photo Coutesy of Directnic.com (the interdictor )

If you check out the interdictor, you can see some places where the water's recession is measurable. So for it looks like at the MOST it's 8inches or so (in the areas he photographed)

Also interesting to note that he has been extremely straight forward with what he reports. I have heard several things on the news days after hearing it from him.

Support Headed South

Here in michigan it is a HUGE blessing for your church to be able to afford(maintenance and initial cost) a nice bus to transport your different groups around when needed. My parent's church is one of those churches. Their bus ministry is a vibrant part of their church.

I just got word that my parent's church and their mother church are headed south to help transport people out of New Orleans.

Please Pray for their trip down and througout the process. I know it would be much appreciated.


If you would like to pass a message of encouragement, feel free to post it here and i can get it to them.


Thanks


EDIT: Last minute Grace's bus got called off. There were somewhere in the area of 1100 buses ther and the situation was under control.

Satteline Photo Of New Orleans

Full size satellite photo. If you zoom in you can see the highways dipping in and out of the water.

there is also a livejournal claiming to be in the Central business district in a datacenter This gives them internet connectivity and backup generators (up to three weeks power according to their press release) -- it seems to be real, although i cant vouch for it's authenticity



EDIT: this is definetly authentic--- i'm addicted

Direct Relief Effort

If you are looking for a good place to donate for relief Healing place church has opened their doors as a relief center (they are in baton rough)

Their website describes what they are doing, you can also see more pictures of the devastion here

you can also donate to the red cross

For Reference-- i got this info from the leadership blog (and i found them through Tony Morgan)