Community Dinner
April 24, 2008 at 1:37 pm | In Misc4 | Leave a CommentI love Thursday evenings. Each week we do a community dinner and it is such a great time to connect with neighbors and eat some great food. Tonight we will be fine dining on my hamburgers and hot dogs! The weather is begging for me to fire up the grill.
We are really beginning to see an increase in interest of the community dinner. Like Poker it took a few months to get going, but then all of a sudden it has really taken off. Tonight it isn’t out of the question that we have 20 people here. Crazy.
Nolan in the grass (I just learned how to send photos from phone to computer)
April 19, 2008 at 1:29 am | In Misc4 | Leave a CommentTags: Add new tag
The weather is warming up. This means community becomes much easier! People are walking their dogs and their kids around, everyone is doing yard work, and the Reeve family can park themselves on their front porch and meet anyone and everyone. I love it! Church is simply more difficult in the winter when everyone is shut in.
Another thing I love about this time of year is my grass. For about a month and a half our yard looks great. Then it will wither and die. Mowing is kind of fun right now, but later in the summer it’s more like mowing my weeds than my grass. Seriously, couldn’t God have made it so that grass flourished in the scorching heat and weeds died unless it was 13 degrees outside? Enjoy it while it lasts I guess.
Here’s a pic of Nolan enjoying our grass!
It’s a daddy day
April 18, 2008 at 12:08 am | In Parenting | 1 Comment
Today was a great day with Nolan. I’m still in that stage where I want to hold him every second since our little scare so we just kind of hung out today. The weather is nicer so we went on a long walk. We stopped and talked with neighbors. Charlie and I discussed that weird feeling of anger when something happens to your kid. You aren’t mad at anyone (which is really frustrating), you are just mad. He also commented on how women tend to be really calm in emergency situations while the fathers freak out.
I wouldn’t exactly say I “freaked out” 
He’s right though. Something about pushing an 8 pound kid out of their bodies makes women handle stress really well. Who would have known?
Nolan’s 1st Hospital Visit
April 16, 2008 at 5:13 pm | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
About 3 weeks ago Kristan had to go to the hospital to have her appendix taken out. Then, the next week, had my medical emergency (ok, I just slammed my finger in the lawnmower – don’t ask). This week it was Nolan’s turn. We were all heading down to Kristan’s hometown to visit family when Nolan starts to get fussy. I turn around to get him a toy and I see a medicine bottle laying open on his lap. The pills were very large (much larger than anything he has ever swallowed) and nothing was in his mouth so we hoped and prayed for the best.
Of course we called poisen control and they confirmed our plans to take him to the ER just to be safe. When we arrive they took a blood sample and soon discovered that he had indeed ingested some of the pills. Then the fun starts. We had to give him some charcoal liquid which is standard for overdoses. Nasty looking stuff. It was nasty coming back up too! Nolan soon vomited up the thick black liquid all over himself, Kristan, and the bed. After we washed him off he still looked like this:
Finally this morning the stuff started working itself out of his system. It was a long, scary night though. Kristan and I prayed yesterday over Nolan and were just reminded of how precious of a gift he is to us. Thank you all for your prayers the last 24 hours! Nolan is back to his playful self already.
Shuffle 4/12/08
April 12, 2008 at 12:21 pm | In Misc4 | Leave a CommentI’m stealing this idea from Jason who stole this idea from Conner in Baton Rouge. All you do is hit shuffle on your itunes and grabbing the first ten that come up.
“Vindicated” – Dashboard Confessional
“Soul to Squeeze” – Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Blue Clear Sky” – George Strait
“You” – Switchfoot
“When I’m 64″ – Beatles
“The Very End” – Derek Webb
“Whatever it Takes” – Lifehouse
“Those who Trust” – 100 Portraits and Waterdeep
“Blue Eyes Blue” – Eric Clapton
“Sarala” – Caedmon’s Call
To all my visitors coming over b/c Tadd showed me some love
April 11, 2008 at 12:47 am | In The Patio | 1 CommentAnytime Tadd links to my blog I start getting hits from people all over the place that have NO IDEA who I am. If you are one of those guys who doesn’t know me yet…welcome to my blog! Also, a year from now, you still won’t know who I am.
The Patio is a church plant that currently exists for about 400 families. That’s how many people live in our community (you might call it a mission field). That number will grow in the next decade, but right now that’s all folks. We aren’t exclusive. We welcome people believers who are looking for a new church home (It is VERY unlikely someone who isn’t a Christian would stumble in unless they live in Reedy Fork Ranch), but those believers learn really quickly that they are expected to join us in being the church in our community. This summer a family of 5 and 2 single women are all moving into Reedy Fork! Instead of a mission trip they are making a life decision to live missionally!
The great thing of having such a defined, specific “mission field” that I live in is…well…there are a lot of great things:
1. No drive time: I wake up and I’m there.
2. Cheap “outreach”: I make more contacts taking my 10 month old son for a walk than if we send out mailers. Poker night, ladies night, and flag football all are big hits too!
3. Fun “outreach”: Yea, poker night is our biggest hit. OK, it’s not “outreach” in the traditional way, but that’s another blog for another time.
4. Easier schedule: I read a lot of pastors blogs, and one common thread is that they all seem really busy! I work very hard, but let’s just say I get to spend a lot of time with the people I love.
5. No classes (this one may be a sin…I’m not sure): we don’t have membership classes, spiritual gift classes, and we definitely don’t have leadership classes. In another setting I would be all for it, but for The Patio it just doesn’t make any sense. Another blog for another day.
Anyway, there are a lot more, but this post is long enough and I don’t want to discourage any potential future readers! Do I sound desperate? Haha, trust me, I’m not.
I believe church planters can even learn from people doing things that are WAY different than what they do, so I encourage you to stick around, email me, shoot me your blog site. Heck, call me if you want: 336-209-2329 (Please don’t call while the Astros are playing…you can check ESPN to find out game times).
By the way, Tadd’s doing some awesome stuff out there isn’t he?
Stop what you are doing right now and read this blog
April 8, 2008 at 3:18 pm | In Check it out | Leave a CommentRead this.
Upcoming Events
April 8, 2008 at 2:11 am | In Misc4 | 1 CommentWe have some amazing things coming up in the next few months! In May we are partnering with Starmount to help them with what they call “Reedy Fork’s Re-opening”. They are expecting 300 people and we get to be in the thick of it serving the community and getting the word out about The Patio. This relationship with Starmount has been so beneficial for us, and I pray that it continues to bigger and better things for Reedy Fork Ranch.
Also, this month we are going to do an ice cream party. If we were a church trying to reach an entire city this kind of thing would be a drop in the bucket and barely even register as an event. However, for our community our Ice Cream parties are some of the most successful things we do. There is never a better time to meet new people than when they are stuffing themselves full of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Nolan loves the Astros
April 4, 2008 at 4:02 pm | In Parenting | 1 CommentNolan and I watched our first Astros game together! During Nolan’s second feeding I brought the game up on the computer and we caught J.R. Towles hit his first home run of the season. As excited as I was about the Astros beating up on the Cubbies, I was more thrilled to get Nolan in his ‘Stros bib seeing his first glimpse of my team.
His favorite part was the “Aflac” commercial. Midway through an inning the duck walks out on the bottom of the screen and delivers his signiture phrase.
Nolan then HOWLS with laughter! So I started shouting “Aflac” at him and we just laughed and laughed. He loves baseball!
A real man would have burned a hole in his finger himself
April 4, 2008 at 12:31 am | In Check it out | Leave a CommentTwo weeks ago Kristan and I bought a new lawnmower. Last summer we borrowed a friends self-propelled mower and got extremely spoiled. Previously we had used a mower that cut grass slightly faster than me on my hands and knees with a pair of hedge clippers. With the self-propelled mower I could start her up and go in and make a sandwich while it did the work for me.
So I was pretty excited to get a brand new “go inside and relax while I do all the work” mower of my own. Then I started putting it together. I was setting up the handle of it in kind of a hurry. In my haste I guess I failed to lock the top piece into the lower section. When I let go it folded up like a lawn chair and caught the tip of my left index finger between the two pieces. Underneath my nail it quickly filled with blood and started throbbing pretty badly. Being the tough guy that I am I went inside and stomped around looking for someone to blame other than me…
Kristan – Although she had said only moments before that “lawn care is your thing”, I really didn’t have much room to be mad at her. I had in fact put off putting the mower together for 2 weeks and then decided that it was far to simple to glance at the instructions.
Nolan – If we lived on a farm he would be taking care of the yard work by now. Alas, kids in the city don’t have the work ethic
The salesman – Who said that putting it together was so easy Nolan could do it. Yea, I am pretty embarrassed if that’s true.
Anyway, this morning I woke up and it hurt enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep. If it interfered with any other natural function of my day I may have let it go, but I enjoy sleep; so I quickly looked up online how to relieve the pressure under my nail. Apparently all you have to do is heat up a tack or the pointed part of a paper clip and hold it on your nail. If hot enough it should burn a hold in the nail and release the blood underneath. I even watched a youtube video of it being done here. When I told Hal my plans he (in all his nursing wisdom) said I was stupid to try this at home.
So I went to my doctor and, after convincing me that she had never done this procedure before, she pulled out an instrument with a tip as hot as a thousand Suns and stuck it on my finger nail. Then there was a “pop”. Then blood sprayed out all over the floor and walls (ok, I may be exaggerating – I don’t like blood). And it feels much better now.
Doctor lady did tell me she is pretty sure my finger is broken near the tip though. This extremely long blog took FOREVER to type!
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