Hallelujah! What A Savior

Have I got the best Christmas presents for y'all! You don't even have to get me anything in return because thats just the way I roll. The Austin Stone is going through a series with the same title as this post. Check it out here: http://www.austinstone.org/resources/sermons/category/hallelujah_what_a_savior/
Learn what "hallelujah", how the three shepherds must have felt and about the one place in the bible where the word hallelujah is used and where you specifically might be mentioned in the bible. Trust me, this is a great series.

One of our worship leaders, Aaron Ivey, also teamed up with some of the pastors and staff and came up with a new Christmas worship song that is simply amazing. They have also made it free for download on the church website: http://files.austinstone.org/audio/mp3/Hallelujah,_What_A_Savior.zip
It is a zip file with 2 mp3s (original and acoustic version). If you feel like it, you can also get it HERE and leave a tip (or not, still free) for the artist. Finally, you can also get it from the artist's website here: http://aaronivey.com/
Either way, you won't be disappointed.


And last but not least...the History of Redemption. I could tell you about it, but there is already a great website that'll do the trick. Check it out: http://www.historyofredemption.org/
While you are there, don't miss the link to watch the sermon...it's God's story, a full sermon/story of the bible from cover to cover straight from scripture. I've said too much already, click the link and give yourself just a little time to watch/hear an amazing story. By the way, if you are still looking for a last minute gift, the History of Redemption would be prefect! Great story, great art and it comes with a disc to help memorize the scripture.

Merry Christmas!

Lucky 13

Tomorrow Holly and I celebrate 13 years of marriage. She's put up with a lot! Wacky. If she didn't love God, we would have never made it. Her love for me is about as close as you can get to the way God loves us. She chases after me every day, even when I'm difficult. When I mess up, she forgives me and that's that...she never holds it against me or later pulls out a "remember when." Pretty sure God picked her out for me and used her to show me how He loves us. She goes to all my football and basketball games. Helps me play with a band and watch the boys on her own while I mess around on the guitar. She is one of the best mothers who ever walked the face of the earth. Yeah, I'm blessed. Love you babe...happy 13th.

One thing that stands out about while we were up there and Holly's dad was marrying us...I had the Princess Bride wedding scene in my head and was really fighting back laughter just waiting for her dad to start with, :Marriage..." in that slow funny voice.

Just in case you live under a rock and have never seen the Princess Bride:

New Traditions: Part 1 of 2

This year we did a couple of things that we plan to turn in to family traditions. The first happened while we were vacationing in Arizona. What the first thing you do when you get to your room while on vacation? You jump around on the bed, right? You're basic tomfoolery. We jumped a lot. Threw the boys on the bed a lot, just plain ol' fun. We caught some of the action on camera and decided from now on, hopefully once a year, we will get family pics like this of everyone jumping on the bed together. Things should get pretty interesting once the boys get older and bigger! The last pic was perfectly timed with Holly and Jeremy in mid-flight! You should be see this more soon...

Our First Big Family Vacation

We took our first real family vacation last September. Destination: Arizona. We planned it our the Raider game in Phoenix against the Cardinals which was on the 26th. We DROVE all the way there with two 20 month old twin boys. The drive was actually fun, sort of. We stopped for a short day and half visit in El Paso. Here is our El Paso Photo Album. Visited with the parents, grandparents and check out my lil sis's volleyball game. The boys had their first encounter with popcorn there and loved it. On Saturday the 25th we packed up and headed for a much shorter drive from El Paso to Scottsdale. We made a quick stop in Tucson to see my big bro and his family. We would see them again on Sunday for the Raider game. Made it to our resort in Scottsdale with no probs and relaxed.

Sunday was a fun, long day of tailgating and the Raider game. My bro and a neighbor of his grilled up some tasty food for us then we got to see a great game with a disappointing ending as Janikowski missed a FG in the last seconds. Raiders should have won that game, but gave away too many penalties...not to mention the opening kickoff they allowed the Cards to return for a TD.

We set out to Arizona with a week and a half to spend on our trip and had only one thing planned...the Raider game. The rest of the time was just do whatever we felt like doing once we got there. On Monday we chillaxed at the pool and pretty much did nothing. It was awesome. Tuesday we were psyched to go check out the Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium Holly found online. The zoo was tons of fun with the boys. Got a crazy number of pics too...there was this one really cool bird. Reminded me of one of the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal! It wasn't ugly looking like a skeksis, but it reminded of them...not sure why. Holly had a blast taking pictures of a osterich that was smiling at her. Reminiscent of the scene of Spencer and the ostrich in the opening credits of iCarly. What?? Here are our Raider Tailgate and Wildlife Zoo photo album. We left around lunch for a bite to eat. Boys got a short nap on the road and then back to the zoo to check out their aquarium. Really neat place...but it was crazy record breaking heat the weekend we were there.

The rest of the week was a lot more of nothing. Time at the pool and kiddie fountains and a morning hike at Echo Canyon Park. There were tons of people there on a weekday walking/jogging up this pretty big mountain. Good thing was there was a lot of shade for most the morning, bad thing was it was still pretty warm, but oh so pretty. This is our Final Days photo album for the trip. We had too much fun...it is gonna be tough to top it. These vids are from breakfast one of our lazy days and one from Echo Canyon Park where Jordan all of a sudden decide it would try to repel down the stairs.