We had a great time at the beach!  Here are two quick videos of the boys playing.  Sorry for the sea sickness caused by my video skills with the teenie-tiny video camera I was using.

Here’s what we’ll be talking about today with the kids at McBIC. (2/21/10)

Both services at McBIC are cancelled today. Have a great day of Family Devotions!!!

I’m just testing things out.

Here’s the song for April:

There’s no doubt about it for me blogging is hard work. I mean I try but, I guess, it’s just hard for me to write things everyday, every week, were sometimes, even every month.

What I’m actually trying now is MacSpeech. It’s a program where I talk into a microphone and it transcribes my words. I’m good at trying to do this blog post using MacSpeech.

I’m also struggling with what this blog should be about. I mean the name of the blog, or I should say the name of the website, is balloonpastor. So does this mean I should be blogging about balloons or does it mean that I should be blogging about being a pastor. Or maybe, this blog should be about my family. Questions, questions, questions.

We’re also in the midst of redoing a few websites for our ministry.

So I guess what I’m trying to say, is that this might not be the best place to come and look for the most recent, and timely information.

If you want to stay abreast of what I am doing, the two best choices for that, or to follow my twitter feed which is found at the top of the blog or to follow me on Facebook.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. This is something we’ve heard and teased kids about for years. Of course, how can we forget about the older adult rendition of it called “All I Want For Christmas Is My Upper Plate”?

Anyway, it’s Christmas time and we are bombarded with the usual array of TV commercials advertising every toy and gadget on the planet. As we watch something, it seems I hear more and more comments like, “That’s cool”, “Oh, neat”, or my favorite, “I have to have that”. Is your house similar?

Well, this year, our house is a little different. I mean, we still see the commercials, I still hear some of those comments from my boys. But, when the TV is off, or in the quietness before bed, the boys share with us their thoughts, their desires, the things they really want. And in that time, I don’t think I’ve heard them say one of those toys, one of those gadgets, one of those things being hawked at us thru the tv.

From our youngest, Josiah, he says all he wants for Christmas is … for his brother to walk.

And from John, he says he doesn’t really want anything…. but he would like to walk again.

As a matter of fact, it’s been really tough getting any kind of list from John this year. He doesn’t really want anything. I mean he does, but he doesn’t. And he has trouble coming up with what he would like.

So, we’ve been walking around our house singing “All I want for Christmas is for John to walk”. Of course, I like to joke around as I add my 2 cents at the end of singing that by adding the lines … “and an Amazon Kindle.”

I’m not sure who has been impacted the most by John’s surgery. John, or his brother Josiah. John obviously has had to go thru a lot. But so has his little brother. Josiah has had to see his big brother, his best friend, go thru the surgery. To not be able to run around. To not be able to play the same way. To not be able to come upstairs. Both, actually, all of us have been affected.

John’s surgery in early November went well.

He has progressed quite nicely. Thankfully, he has had very little pain or discomfort.

Here’s John and Josiah playing on the wheelchair

He has move from having both legs cast, to one cast, to his CAM boot. He has even started crutches this past week.

We are hoping he will be fully out of the wheelchair by early/mid January. He’s a great kid and has kept a fantastic attitude through it all. He’s had a few moments of jealousy – seeing his brother playing soccer in the back yard or playing in the snow this past weekend. But overall, he’s been doing great.

And though all of this, all of us, not just John, have learned to appreciate one of the “simpler” things in life that we have taken for granted – the freedom of movement. The ability to just go where you want to go. To walk. To go up steps. To jump off the porch. To run. To play.

We are so thankful. We have been blessed in SO MANY ways. We have had family and friends shower us with love, cards, gifts and offers of help.

And you know what, as I think about it, we have also been blessed this year concerning Christmas. This year, our whole family has been given a new perspective. This year, our list of things we “need” is small. our perspective has been changed. We are so much more thankful for all we have. We have been blessed with a change of perspective and a realization of what is really important – our Lord, our family & our friends.

Thank-you to all, you have truly blessed us.

Sunday evening are our family movie nights! Tonight’s choice is a classic – It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a great flick!!

OK, you can file this under the “Kind of Cool” tab. I just used a service called TweetCloud and it looked at all my tweets from the past year and made them into a word cloud.

It’s always interesting to see what I was thinking about.

Here’ one from all my tweets from the past month.