Day Fourteen - February 14, 2010

Happy Valentine's Day! While we don't have a lot of major holidays to survive during this deployment, we do have several important dates - Valentines, my wife's birthday, our anniversary, our oldest daughter's birthday, my birthday and our youngest daughter's birthday. If there is good news on the holiday front, my wife is slated to be home before Thanksgiving and Christmas - I've been deployed through those holidays before and no matter what your home situation is like, those are tough. On the ships I was on during holiday cruises, the mood was always somber during holidays.

To make this Valentine's Day tougher, it fell on a Sunday. That Sunday morning service just doesn't feel right without my wife.

With all that said, today was a very good day. I woke up early, was able to read the paper and shower before getting the girls up. The morning routine is going quite well and we had a good breakfast - egg, sausage and cheese breakfast burritos, hashbrowns and bananas. I also made chocolate milk - nothing like a thick glass of Ovaltine in the morning!! While I like Hershey's syrup on ice cream, is still prefer Ovaltine in my milk!

I felt brave today and the roads were clear so I let the teenager drive to church this morning. My wife called just as we were pulling out of the driveway so she got to hear me remind the daughter of the rapidly approaching ditch on the way - for some reason she loves to hang entirely too close to those drainage ditches on our road!! She was a little rusty and I take most of the blame for that - she hasn't driven in awhile - the weather can take some of the blame as well. I do hope I can find the strength to allow her to keep practicing - as I say that I can vividly remember the intense humping action of the car from her hitting the throttle too hard and then letting off to compensate - but I have to be strong and allow her to do this.

Sunday School was good - we had several new folks in class today. We reviewed the chapter test, discussed a few items for clarification and started the new chapter. The first two chapters of Dr. Woodard's book are key to understanding the concepts later on in the book so I went extra slow on them and reinforcing the information. I'm very happy to report that everyone has been bringing their books with them to class and some have even been reading them during the week!! I was really worried we'd be busier replacing "lost" or forgotten books but that hasn't happened.

The 11am service was excellent - our visitors to Sunday School stayed with us for service and it was very good. We brought the Secret Pal bags to church and the pastor's wife distributed them after church. My wife received one as well from her secret pal as did our youngest daughter. My wife received a writing kit, pens and chocolate!! The youngest daughter received a really cool Build-A-Bear kit - it was actually a dog, but she gets to stuff it and sew it up.

During service, I was surprised by the pastor - he had me come up front and he gave me an "award" for being the "right man" - it was very nice. The church also recognized the lady of the month and she was quite deserving of the recognition.

We're going to grow feathers as we had chicken, fried potatoes and veggies for lunch!!! For supper tonight I stopped by the local chinese restaurant and we had orange chicken, rice, broccoli and of course, fortune cookies!

This afternoon I ran by the library to pick up a book I needed for some research on my "homework" project for this week's interviews. I wanted a particular graph I remembered from a book and couldn't find it online - I was able to check our library online and hold the book until I got there.

I let the teenager drive us back for evening service and she did somewhat better - we still don't have a warm fuzzy about her need to hang so close to the ditches. Evening service was very good - it is somewhat relaxed and is a true worship service. A newer member who used to be a pastor at another church delivered the message and did well.

We had the chance to talk with my wife on the way home. She had class most of today and it was a linguistic lecture on islamic languages. She will be re-issued her weapons tomorrow and attend classes as well all day - your weapon is your buddy and it never, ever leaves your side so she'll be sleeping with it as well as dragging it around.

We have deciced we are not going to count down total days - that is rather maddening and causes you to stress too much about the wrong things. We have deciced we are going to count down Sunday's though - 33 to go!

The girls devotion tonight was very similar to the message Dr. Yoho delivered Friday evening - "Valentines" and referenced 1 Corinthians 13:4-10. It talked about God's love. My devotion was "The discipline of heeding" and referenced Matthew 10:27 and Chambers talked about when to be quiet and when to talk. I actually understood this one - well, at least I think I did!

The girls were supposed to be out of school tomorrow for President's Day but the snow day a couple of weeks ago is causing them to be in school. I'll take advantage of the day to get my final writing project on lacing and tying a shoe done for my interview this week - did you know that mathematically there are over 2 million different ways to lace your shoes? Did you really need to know that? Phineas & Ferb taught me something a month or so ago I'll probably never forget - that little plastic tip on the end of your shoe lace is called an aglet!! They have a great song about it too - fortunately for your, my singing voice isn't such that I could do it justice so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Day Fourteen comes to a close - here's looking forward to Day Fifteen!!