davejenbarnes

I hear that new tires make all the difference.  Dave agrees.  He took the van in this morning to Discount Tires and got a set of new BF Goodrich Precept Touring tires.  The old tires were bald.  Shiny bald.  Yul Brynner bald.  And cracking on the edges.  Don’t-wanna-drive-on-those-tires-another-hundred-miles bad.  We couldn’t get free new tires thrown into the arrangement (and probably wouldn’t have wanted the tires that would have gotten thrown in to a deal like that) but Greg at LoneSt★r Motors got us a deal we could not refuse.  Let’s just say, “Wow” and go with it.

So a big shout-out to Dave’s folks for coming to our rescue and making these new happy treadful tires (and the extended warranty) possible.

**cross posted on my photoblog**

Every year, our church has what they call a Concert of Praise.  It’s an evening service held with all of the Hill Country Bible Churches in the association.  This year, there were so many churches (due to church planting!) that the concert had to be split between “East side - West side” with two concerts occurring simultaneously.  It was pretty amazing.  Over 5,000 decisions for Christ were made in the last few months as a result of the Backyard Bible clubs, GO Trips, and various other ministry efforts.  What a joyous occasion to celebrate!

I do feel like I completely missed it, though.  I mean, I was there and all… but I had two DSLRs (with different lenses, so I didn’t have to switch lenses in the dark) between me and the “action” and I was continually looking for good angles and “the next shot.”  This was my first time shooting dark stage shots without the calming prescence of my brother and I was praying that I’d get an acceptable number of photos for the Worship Team.  I’d done the sermon shots on August 3rd… but the house lights were up for those.

Not a good pic at all (bad point of view) but here’s Dave.  He was “working,” too, see?

James was there.  He sat in the audience and reports from the parents I had him sitting with were very good.  We have a very well behaved 3 year old, apparently.  Go James!  Woo!

Here are some of my favorites from Sunday night:

That one with the balloons waaaaay up high, in the upper left hand corner is my favorite.  I just love the foreshadowing!

I shot with my brother’s Canon 400D and my Canon 300D.  I had the XTi set to save in RAW mode and the 300D to save in jpg mode (because I have lost my other 2Gig memory card) and I have to say… … … …I was blown away with the jpgs that came off of the 300D.  I was so blown away with them that I didn’t even bother opening them in CS3.  The thing that amazes me is that you probably can’t tell which ones were the unprocessed jpgs off of the 300D or the processed ones off the 400D unless you knew which lenses I had on which camera.  Heh.

Before kids, I was the one with the camera.  Everywhere.  Taking pictures.  Tons of them.  Even if it was annoying to other people.  Now that I’ve had kids, it seems I have traded “babies” and completely forgotten about being the shutterbug.

So, when we invited some friends over for lunch today, partly to show off the house, partly to celebrate David’s birthday… well, I completely forgot to take pictures.  I even borrowed my brother’s 5D and super lenses for church this morning (yes, some of them came out awesomely!) and have three digital SLR’s and about a dozen great lenses laying around with tons of memory cards and batteries and flashes to boot… yes, I forgot to take pictures.  I even bought him a birthday cake (boston creme pie cake!) and put these swirly colorful candles in the top… yes, I forgot to take pictures.  I used to be so good at remembering to take pictures.

BUT, I did take some church pictures.  Here are some of those.  Josh Davis was a guest during the sermon and it was obvious that Tim Hawks was having a blast being up there with him.

My mom and dad came down yesterday afternoon and surprised us with a new garage door opener (and a drill for David) for Father’s Day. David and my dad got to spend the rest of the day installing it in the garage (which was a virgin garage, never having had a garage door opener installed in it before). It now opens at the push of a button. It has already been SO NICE going out to the cars via the garage.

What can I say? It feels good to know that sometime today the last payment will be drafted from our checking account (shouldn’t they change the name since nobody writes checks anymore? debit account?) and that we own both cars, outright. Who cares that they decrease in value? At least we don’t owe more on them than they are worth, which to us is a lot since they get us from point A to point B and are in overall good shape.

Now we need to save the car payment amount every month for the 100,000 mile checkups on both cars.  Oh, and the red coupe needs new tires.

I have tears streaming down my face right now.  I just saw the Trailer for Ricki Lake’s documentary film about birth.  The film embodies my philosophy and also my experience of having had one hospital and one completely, utterly, joyfully UNMESSEDWITH birth.

Three quotes from the trailer really grabbed my heart.

Cesarian is extremely doctor friendly. It’s twenty minutes and I’ll be home for dinner.

Basically what the medical profession has done is convince the vast majority of women that they don’t know how to birth.

If I could do that, I could do anything. To me, that’s the power of birthing and that is what we are taking away from women.

Birth: it’s a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to examine and question the way American women have babies.

The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal.

Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?

I urge you now to see it!

Congrats to my amazing friend Amy and her family on the arrival of Audrey Jeanette! She was born at 11:39 a.m. weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces and 20.5 inches long.

Amy is a relatively new friend of mine (by that I mean in the last few years) but such a kindred spirit with the love of all things yarn. She’s inspired me to keep knitting even with a *somewhat* colicky Lowell and a super-duper James around and believe me, it isn’t easy to come up with free time these days.

Congratulations, Amy. You’re a super star!