theothegrey

Amy’s Xanga has some hilarious pictures of the kids.
Sam & Carol visited Houston last week. Their daughter Jocelyn was born 2 days after Mia. They have some good group pics of the 3 kids.

This weekend we started teaching Emi how to use the mouse and keyboard. She’s learning to play a few games at www.sesameworkshop

Emi does a chicken dance after completing each part of the game.

I threw down the gauntlet by telling Emi that Mommy was a fast typer, but I was much faster. She repeated my propaganda. Amy of course was in the room so we had to duke it out. We found a free typing test online and we went several rounds. Who do you think won?

Try it yourself at www.typingtest.com.

For the latest family pics and some early indo board videos, see Amy’s blog espressoaddict

I wrote this on Friday:

I’m at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit (via satellite in the Woodlands.) It’s been a fun time of learning, growing, and stretching my leadership. For me one of the best parts of being here at the Summit is being here with our leaders. I love our leaders. They’re people who love God and love moving our ministries closer to what God desires — things like building a deeper spiritual community, loving those who don’t know Jesus, and living by mission. After a full day of conference talks yesterday, we gathered together to spend another two hours talking about Meta. And if I were to let it go, i think we could have kept talking for two hours more. It’s so much fun to see both experienced leaders and new emerging leaders mixing, encouraging each other, and building friendships.

Justin, Scott, & Pastor Dave deep in thought. James checking in with work via wifi.

Dave & Julie after 2 very full days of leadership talks. The Sweis and Chiaos in their own makeshift overflow section. They brought their newborns, Justin and Caleb. That is serious dedication to God’s work! We brought Emi to the Summit a couple of years ago and I know how incredibly tough it can be to try and be with your family and keep up the pace of ministry.

Greg is now onboard as the pastoral intern. Here’s Steve breaking down the sg numbers during one of our evening sessions.

Grace talking about the worship ministry. Simon and Scott talking with really fast hands.

And last but not least…the dude who greeted everyone in the morning with his sign of protest. “Jesus came to save not entertain!”

A couple of people over the last week asked me about the banner for this blog. For those of you who live in Houston, it’s a picture of I-10 heading west just past 45, our THE 45 (I’m still a Californian who uses articles in front of freeway numbers). I took it one day while driving home from the University of Houston. I just started shooting through the front windshield.

I’ve seen some WP blogs with changing banners. I haven’t had the time to figure out how to do that, or if blogsome even allows for that. It would be cool though, because I have a couple of other shots that I’d like to use.

This pic was the runner up. I took it in our backyard. The rain created some light flooding. I used Adobe Elements to get the gold color.

We had a two “first evers” today. Amy’s sister, Grace, returned to California. We’ve had extended family with us for over 2 months. For the first time ever we are on our own as a family of four. The second thing is that we let Emi wear underwear without any diapers or trainers. Scary stuff…