Are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Tonight we’re headed to join the masses at the movie theatre to see Twilight, so I am currently pondering the same thought running through the heads of countless teenage girls at this very moment – Am I “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob?”

Yes, I’ll admit that I am a Twilight fan. No, I do not have a Robert Pattinson poster above my bed or a picture of a shirtless Taylor Lautner as my screen saver, but I obviously care enough to know the actor’s names. Rest assured, though, I am not the only non-teenage fan. In fact, according to this article, some women out there are just as obsessed as the teen/tween girls I know. So obsessed that they have Web sites like www.twilightmoms.com devoted to the vampire book and movie series. And I’m willing to bet that some of these ladies actually do have posters and shirtless pictures. Without a doubt.

Obsession and hysteria over under-age boys? I think I’ll pass.

Well-written books with a great screenplay adaptation? I’m in!

I’ll let you know soon if New Moon sways me from Team Edward to Team Jacob. I know – you’ll be waiting with bated breath.

-Laura

Groovin’

Good news – after seven years together, we’re still not sick of each other! Ha ha! Our “dating anniversary” was last week. It still seems like not that long ago that we were sitting on the couch in the living room of Micah’s college apartment just after midnight having the “DTR” chat (that’s Define The Relationship, for all you uncool people). And still to this day, we debate whether our anniversary is technically the 20^th or 21^st, since it was so close to midnight. You know it must be wedded bliss when you can argue about the little happy things!

Enough with the sentimental stuff…

As part of our “staycation” a couple of weeks ago, we took a day trip to the quaint town of Brenham, Texas. Since it’s only about 1.5 hours away, I would still count it as part of the stay-at-home vacation. For all of you Louisiana folks, think of it as St. Francisville without the plantations. It is an adorable small town with several cutesy restaurants and quite a few antique shops. We fit in a leisurely lunch and some store browsing, but then headed to the main attraction – the Bluebell Ice Cream Factory! The 30 minute tour was a lot of fun for us first-timers, as we got to see the ice cream production process. Probably the coolest part was watching them make ice cream sandwiches. The day even provided a flashback for Micah, who worked briefly at Dreyer’s Ice Cream factory early in his college years. It definitely gave my sweet tooth a deep desire for a cold treat, so we were thrilled to discover that the tour ended with a free scoop of your favorite Bluebell flavor. It was the freshest tasting ice cream we have ever eaten!

Yes, we even got to wear cool hats. Jealous?

This past weekend was Fallapalooza, Micah’s major fall event for the Tallowood middle schoolers. This was something totally new that he created to replace the annual middle school retreat, an event that couldn’t quite come together because of budget constraints. What a huge success! A week before Fallapalooza, 40 middle schoolers had signed up. By the time the doors closed last Friday night, more than 130 students were in our youth building! Teenagers are always so last minute. The students played laser tag on-site in one of the church buildings, dodging behind inflatable barricades and existing doors and furniture. They loved it! The simple thrill of getting to play no-holds-bar in an area that is usually off limits to their routine activity was major excitement for these guys. Very fun for us old farts to watch!

Did I mention there was a 70’s theme? We’re not just a very groovy church… The addition of Beatles Rock Band certainly completed the retro theme!

-Laura

Apologies

Apparently the very nature of blogging is to be dedicated for a period of time and then lose track for awhile; only to continuously repeat this cycle. Well, I’m getting back in the groove now. Sorry it’s been so long!

We have been in and out of town lately, driving back and forth to Louisiana. Micah has had some classes in NOLA, so we have become all too familiar with the Texas to Louisiana stretch of I-10. But it’s been nice to visit family and friends.

Speaking of friends, two of ours are getting married tomorrow night on a ranch in Ledbetter, TX, so we’re having a very “countrified” weekend. Too bad neither of us own cowboy boots… We’re not very good at being Texans!

This week, we’ll be attending a youth ministry conference in Houston. Soon after that, we’ll be back in Baton Rouge. Micah is currently attempting to auction off our cat for tickets to the LSU vs. Florida game. Somehow I think we’re out of luck! We’ll be in town for that game, though, so if you happen to have two extra tickets to the biggest game of the season, give us a call!!!

-Laura

A crew we will never forget

A couple of weekends ago, we got a big treat as some of our Istrouma girls came to visit! I taught these girls in a Sunday small group for several years while they were in middle school. I even coached some of them in 6^th and 7^th grade basketball at St. Luke’s. And now, they’re all grown up! Seriously, we can’t believe they are in 10^th grade now. The best part is that over the years, we’ve watched them grow even closer together as a group – a built-in support system of life-long friends.

 

 

It was wonderful to hear where these girls are now in life, and what all God is doing in them.

We filled the weekend with talking and shopping. Friday, we went to Katy Mills Mall for dinner and store browsing before spending hours playing Catchphrase. Of course, Catchphrase always leaves you with a few memorable outbursts…

Rebekah:  “An ugly cupcake! An ugly cupcake!”

(loooong pause)

Somebody:  “A muffin?”

Rebekah:  “YES!”

 

One of the girls:  “SHE played the wife of that guy on Cheaper By the Dozen!”

Natalie (I think):  “Ashton Kutcher??”

 

Rebekah:  “The opposite of ALLOWED (a loud) fruit!”

Me:  “A quiet fruit?”

(buzzer)

Me:  “Wait, what was the answer?”

Rebekah:  “Forbidden fruit!”

There were lots of others. All credit goes to my sister and brother in law for introducing us to that game. We’ve had a ton of fun playing with adults and students alike!

Saturday we headed to the teenage Mecca of Houston – the Galleria. After a number of hours shopping, we checked out the ice rink and found it a little too crowded. Determined to still have our fun, we headed to Memorial City Mall to enjoy some skating.

Then Micah, Randy and Jessica headed to an Astros game while we girls headed to a dinner theatre. We saw Julie and Julia at Studio Movie Grill where they serve you dinner while you watch.

After the movie, we hung out in our youth building for awhile. It was an odd phenomenon for us to see our students from Baton Rouge enjoying our Houston student building!

We wrapped up the night with some Guitar Hero and more talking.

The girls joined us for church the next morning and then we devoured some Pappasito’s for lunch.

It was extremely hard to say good-bye to these girls who mean so much to me. I have watched them grow up and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for them in the years to come. God has blessed them with beauty, brains and dynamic personalities. Although I’m sad not to be able to watch them grow day to day, it thrills me to hear how well they are doing and how close knit they are staying.

Other people we respect in ministry have told us repeatedly that your first crew of students will be ones you never forget. They will be life-long friends and people you keep up with as they grow into adults. I pray hard that this will come true with these girls.  Love you all (even the ones who didn’t get to come to H-Town)!!!

-Laura

A weekend to celebrate

We had a lot of reasons to celebrate this past weekend, not the least of those being Micah’s birthday!

Friday night, we went out to a ranch near Giddings, TX to celebrate the engagement of a couple of our favorite people. Jacob proposed to Charis and then arranged for us and a crowd of other friends to meet up with them and celebrate. We had a great time listening to them recount the proposal story, enjoying s’mores over a bonfire and just catching up with a couple of friends we don’t get to see often enough. Of course, the ranch was gorgeous too! It had that Texas-country thing going for it, and made for a perfectly romantic spot for these two to get engaged.

(I borrowed this pic from one of Charis’ friend’s Facebook. She is a professional photographer, and obviously great at it!)

We also had some friends in from Baton Rouge this weekend. Laura & Patrick stopped in for a couple of nights on their way to San Antonio, and to assist with the Woodard’s move.

That brings me to our next reason to celebrate – we have new neighbors! Mark and Tamara have moved to Katy in a nearby neighborhood. Their new house is beautiful and we’re so happy for them having bought their first house! We’re already exchanging favors, and I’m sure it won’t be long before one of us is knocking on the other’s door to borrow a cup of sugar (regardless of the fact that there are probably 3 grocery stores between our respective neighborhoods!).

We might just be pretty terrible friends, though, because we weren’t much help with Mark and Tamara’s move. I guess we had a pretty good excuse, though. We had a marathon Camp Tallowood sponsor meeting Saturday morning. Camp begins Sunday and we’re scheduled to head out on Friday. It’s soooooo hard to believe that it’s already here!

Last, but certainly not least, our main reason to celebrate over the weekend was Micah’s birthday! We celebrated with… well, a meeting. We tried our best to still make it a celebration, with Micah’s favorite – a Great American Cookie Cake!

Doesn’t the green dinosaur just make you smile? Ha ha! We also had dinner Saturday night with our friends, and then Sunday lunch with the same peeps. Good times, good times…

-Laura

Recovery Room

After several naps on the pull-out couch, we finally feel like our bodies have recovered from a major lack of sleep. Why the insomnia? Our annual Middle School Lock-In!

Friday night, Micah led 153 middle school students, 12 high school student sponsors and 25 adults to four different locations around the Houston/Katy area all throughout the night!

The whole night was a blast for everyone involved. It is the first youth event that we have ever been a part of that has been “sold out.” During the last three days building up to the Lock-In, the “buzz” on this event was wild. It seriously felt like some exclusive night club everyone was trying to get in to. Unfortunately, because of fire code, there had to be a limit. Once all the students who neglected to pre-register found this out, there was a mad rush for the last few spots.

Since last year’s Lock-In attracted about 100 students, Micah planned for a slight increase of 15 or so. We never expected so many to show! The greatest part? Almost half of these kids are not church-goers. So for many of them, this could have been the first time they heard the gospel message! Yes, among all the activities, we found the time to squeeze in a short presentation of God’s word. That is why we do what we do, right?

After starting at our youth building (with a line out the door and wrapping around the parking lot!), we brought the students to CiCi’s Pizza for a nice, healthy meal (ha ha). After consuming a few hundred pizzas, we loaded up the buses and headed to Pump It Up, an inflatable games event space. This was a HUGE hit. One kid had a tooth knocked out (complete with a whole lot of blood), but everyone else was loving it!

From there, we headed over to Times Square, an all-purpose entertainment space. Between bowling, arcade games, laser tag, billiards, dancing to music videos and DDR, the students stayed entertained for hours. I think the ice cream sundaes at 3 a.m. also helped!

Right when we were all starting to crash at 6 a.m., we loaded up the buses to go back to the youth building for breakfast. Doughnuts, cat-naps, basketball and video games rounded out the “night” as parents arrived to pick up their suddenly-tired children.

If you’re interested in seeing a couple hundred more pictures from the Lock-In, click here!

Whew! Now that it’s all over and we have caught up on sleep, we can enjoy a Memorial Day barbeque with some good friends!

-Laura

Seminary and such

This weekend I feel like we’re both in seminary. Micah is currently working on his second 15-page Old Testament research paper. To make matters really fun, the computer that he had saved the first one on was fried by a sudden power outage yesterday. We don’t know if we’ll be able to get that computer up and running, but THANK GOD he had printed out one copy of the completed paper already. If worse comes to worse, then we can simply retype the whole thing – an inconvenient, but relatively easy fix.

We took a break and saw “Angels and Demons” Friday night. After we both read this book twice, the movie was a little disappointing. Maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t read the book… Director Ron Howard changed the story to a sequel instead of a prequel. Kind of an odd switch, but maybe it just felt right since he made a movie out of the DaVinci Code first. I know condensing a 500 page novel into a 2.5 hour movie is probably a challenge, but I wish all the details would have been included. Oh well. I feel the same disappointment after each Harry Potter movie – I love the movie, but hate that they left out little crucial scenes.

In other random weekend news, this morning was senior Sunday at Tallowood. A few of the seniors who we’ve gotten really close to were over here last night and earlier tonight. They are a great group and we’re going to miss them when they all head off the Baylor and A&M next year! But, we have a busy summer ahead of us and they’ll be part of all of it! 

Speaking of the summer, Micah is leading the Junior High Lock-in this weekend, which is the official kick-off to the Tallowood summer. Crazy that it’s already here! 

-Laura

Swine Flu and Flooding

 Despite the dramatic title, we haven’t actually had personal experiences with either one of these… yet. But, it’s been an eventful week so far in Houston!

The week started out with a massive thunderstorm Monday night. I was drugged up on some Benadryl, so I surprisingly only woke up a couple of times. Micah, who sleeps like a log despite the conditions, didn’t even flinch as huge bolts of lightning lit up the sky outside our windows all night or when the thunder crashed so hard I thought a tree had fallen. We woke up Tuesday morning to local news coverage of flooding all over Houston’s west side (our area and the area where we both work)! 

An area of Katy just North of us

An intersection underneath I-10 and Beltway 8 right in between our two offices! We both drive through this intersection several times a day, but Tuesday police divers were rescuing people and cars from about 15 feet of of flood waters!

The I-10 feeder road off Gessner near Tallowood

As long-time residents of the Gulf Coast, floods have come to be expected. But not in APRIL! We still have almost two months until the beginning of Hurricane Season!

No huge deal, though. The city has recovered quickly. All the water is pretty much gone and I’m sure insurance companies are getting lots of phone calls now! 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, apparently Houston is now being threatened by the daunting Swine Flu. This morning, the local news reported that a baby died of the Swine Flu in a Houston hospital, marking the first American death from the virus. In the city where I reside… Great! 

No worries, though. We didn’t have any flood waters in our house (or even on our street), and we’re washing our hands as much as possible! The Swine Flu is apparently only a major threat to infants and the elderly (just like the regular seasonal flu), so I think we’re safe. That’s not to say that other age groups can’t catch it… I believe we are just much more likely to recover from it and not die!

I’m really making you want to come to Houston now, right?

In better news, we got a visit from Kerri and Nick this weekend (before all the craziness)! Kerri is one of my oldest and dearest friends from Dunham, we roomed together in college and have been bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. It was wonderful to spend some time with Kerri and her newly-wedded husband! We enjoyed a hibachi and sushi dinner, spent some time at the zoo, caught three hours of the NFL draft and took in an epic Astros game (alas, we lost).

While at the zoo, we visited this little guy, who has literally earned the title of the “world’s cutest animal!” 

Not to make our little Buddy jealous, but Toby the Red Panda is pretty darn adorable!

-Laura

Spring Fever

Here in the Deep South, we don’t really experience four seasons. You have your basic “hot” season… and your basic “cold” season (even though the temperature barely dips below 40 degrees).

Because we usually skip straight from winter to summer, we don’t quite know much about this thing other people in the world call “spring.” That is, except for one week. Yes, one week a year, we experience sunshine, cool breezes, azaleas blooming, etc. It is beautiful, but it is also fleeting.

Well, that week has come… and might already be gone. We have had one beautiful week of temperatures in the 70’s, endless sunshine and gardens blooming. It’s the type of weather that makes you look out your window at work and yearn for the outdoors. It makes you roll down your car windows and wish you had a Beach Boys CD in your car.

Yes, there is a soundtrack for this type of weather, and it certainly includes a little “Good Vibrations.” I would also include the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That,” the Dixie Chicks’ “Long Time Gone,” Phil Collins’ “Can’t Hurry Love,” Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride,” Don McClean’s “American Pie,” the Byrd’s “Turn, Turn, Turn,” Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and tons more! Man, I need to make myself a mixed tape…

Alas, as I mentioned, this weather is fleeting. Soon (as in, probably later this afternoon), ridiculously high temperatures will be here. The hot summer sun will bear down on all of us, making you feel like a Looney Tunes character who has been left stranded in the desert.

So, we’ll enjoy our mini-Springtime while it lasts!

 -Laura

PS – While we’re not looking forward to the dramatically high temperatures (especially Micah, since his car currently lacks air conditioning!), there are lots of summertime things to look forward to! Micah and the rest of the youth staff journeyed over to Camp Eagle this week for a little Camp Tallowood prep trip.

Camp is going to be such a blast!!! Not to mention Israel… more on that later…

Fiesta

We just got back from a weekend in San Antonio with some of our middle schoolers.  It was a great weekend to spend a little more time with some of our most consistent students.

We spent all day Saturday at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It was a really great day at the park since the morning was overcast. This meant no sunburns and NO LINES! It was pretty nice to just hop on some of the park’s biggest rides.

Some of our 7th grade girls doing their best High School Musical impression.

Micah with Sylvester, who apparently had a man-crush on him.

Me with the giant Bugs Bunny I won on my first try at a game of Plinko (Price is Right, anyone? Anyone?). Purple and gold, of course! But now we have a life-sized stuffed rabbit in our living room with no purpose…

8th grade girls chilling at the end of the day… of course they’re wearing their Bucee’s shirts (Bucee’s is a truck stop that our students are obsessed with… yes, I know that sounds weird, but this place is pretty awesome. And it’s a great stop on our way to San Antonio or to Camp!).

Kate & Kendall on some spinning ride that made us all a little sick.

 Micah’s hero