TGIF

Psalm 36:5-6  “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep.”

I John 4:16-17  “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.”

 

 Sydney and I had fun making these and hanging them in our window while Logan was taking his nap.

Beached

We had FUN at New Smyrna beach on Monday. We were there a few hours  and got home in time for naps.  Rodd spent the majority of the time building sandcastles and cars for the kids to play in….and I actually enjoyed an entire magazine with no interruptions and basked in the glory of the sun!!   In my old age I am getting wiser about sunscreen and am using something stronger than a whoppin’ spf4 these days! I want to enjoy these 3 as long as I can….

 

 A beautiful day and not too crowded

 Building sand castles

 

 Rodd made them a hot tub and dumped a bunch of water in there.

  

  

   Fake sleeping

   Here’s Logan in the car

 Ready to go home

Memorial weekend

After listening to a fantastic message at church, we stopped at Walmart on the way home.  We splurged and bought a canopy to put up outside in our yard. Because we live in a townhouse community, we don’t really have our own private yard so we decided to get this and we’re really glad we did. Without shade, it’s impossible to enjoy yourself outside.

Rodd’s family came over this afternoon and we grilled some bbq chicken for dinner and had a relaxing rest of the day. The kids played in our tiny wading pool and had a blast. After dinner we had smores, played a little more, and then it was bedtime. Happy Memorial Day to you all! Rodd has tomorrow off, so I think we’re going to the beach.  As my mom requested, here are some pictures of our day.  (Click on the photo for more.) 

Memorial Day

Wet n Wild

Go Rodd. (3 posts in a row.) And here I thought he was too good for my blog. Just kidding!!  Another “Go Rodd” is for  passing his motorcycle test!  We’re so proud of him! He had set up a practice test and had been doing it this past week. When he got to the real one it was SO much easier than his practice course so he passed with flying colors.

We went to Wet n Wild with friends this week and it was SO much fun!! It was the perfect day because it was overcast, so there was hardly anyone there. Rodd and Jon loved it because they could go straight on the rides w/o waiting in any lines. Marisa’s sister Bethany was visiting so it was fun having her along too. 

 Unfortunately, our friends are leaving us soon for Arkansas and then back to Thailand –as missionaries with Campus Crusade (Jon & Marisa). We will miss them very much.

 Drying off and staying warm

Sydney, Summer, and Collin 

Our little geriatric

The Count Down!

Some friends of mine are living with the Moi people of Indonesia.  They have been there for several years now and have begun introducing the Moi people to the God of the Bible.  It has been exciting to see the Moi respond to the truth of God’s word.

Recently, the Moi have been faced with some major distractions that would normally have kept them from nearly anything considered important.  But in each situation, they discussed the matter thouroughly and each time decided that the distraction was “small, but God’s talk is big!”  Each time, they chose to attend the teaching and let the urgent matter take second priority.

Praise the Lord for the importance the Moi people have placed on hearing God’s Word!  On Thursday evening at 6:30 EST, the Moi will be hearing about the death, burial and ressurection of Jesus Christ!  Please mark your calendars and pray for the Moi as they hear about God’s sacrificial provision on their behalf!

Do I Need A LunchBox?

Wow, now that Kristie got me blogging, I just can’t stop.

I mentioned in a previous post (“The Wait Of Gravity“) that we have been working with a local company to provide us with some mentoring and training.  End2End Training has been extremely kind in developing a relationship with us by providing us with some free consultations, a free SQL training session and some heavily discounted mentoring.

A few months ago, my home church in Wisconsin — Elmbrook Church – provided me with a grant toward further education.  Since then, I’ve been looking for a class that would provide me with the good foundational training I need to get started with the new development platform.

Just recently, End2End Training posted a new course on their website … ASP.Net Using Visual Studio 2008.  Awesome … just exactly what I needed except that the cost of the course was $500 more than the grant.  However, God knew what He was doing when he provided the grant.  Once again, End2End generously provided me a discount of $500 allowing me to attend the class!

The class takes place in July.  So, although I have a month or two to wait, I’m excited about how this course will help further the development of Gravity.  Even more, I’m awed at God’s sovereign provision.

The Wait Of Gravity

Okay, so Kris has been after me for a while now to add a post to our blog.  So, here is my first formal addition to the blog … an update on our personnel project — codename: Gravity.

Since I’ve never fully explained the name behind the system, let me start there.  Gravity is a natural force that draws things toward a common point — well, that is my loose definition.  The idea of this new system is that it is drawing together all the personnel records from our international locations and housing them in a common system.

When the oohhhs and aaaaahhhs over such a brilliant name choice subside, I’ll continue.  As I’ve stated in the past, we have decided to make this new system entirely web-based using ASP.Net, AJAX and C# with a SQL Server backend.  Now for the kicker.  As with any project, the users are hoping to have it yesterday, so we’ve dedicated as much manpower as possible — myself and my buddy Jack.  Yes sir, two whole men to tackle this entire system.  Of course, when you consider that two men accounts for half of our programming staff, that’s pretty signifigant.

Well, although Jack has some experience in VB.Net, he is a DBA (Database Administrator) at heart.  So, Jack has begun working on migrating our current data from FoxPro tables into our new SQL Databases.  I have been so thankful for Jack in this regard.  Data migration just happens to be one of my least favorite things to do.

I, on the other hand, have been busy trying to come up to speed on ASP.Net, AJAX and C# while at the same time trying to develop our different object layers and user interfaces.  While this has been a fun learning experience, its also been extremely frustrating at times.  These are usually times when I’m trying to ”pump out” a quick little interface that should only take an hour at most, but because I’m not familiar with the technology it winds up taking a day or two.

I have finally put together a nice little sample interface and we’re ready to do some early testing to get a feel for how well this type of interface will work for offices such as Papua New Guinea that have high latency issues.

At the same time, we’ve been able to hire a local company (End 2 End Training) to provide Jack and I with a little mentoring.  This has been a huge help!  They have really helped me come up to speed in some more current programming techniques as well as developing a better system of unit testing.  We’ve been very thankful for their input!

Unfortunately, my time is still split between the development of the new Gravity system and the maintenance and updates needed in the current personnel records system.  This means that often times, Gravity must wait.  While its frustrating to constantly have to shelve the new development, it is a nice break to be able to return to FoxPro where I can code without the frustration of a learning curve.

So there you have it.  You’re now as up to date on the Gravity project as I am.  For those of you who are developers, we are always looking for help.  Once we settle on a design for the Gravity system, we will be in a much better position to offer up small projects to those who’d like to be involved.  Please let me know if you’re such a person!

Happy Birthday Jan!

Happy Birthday Jan. We wish we were there to celebrate with you today! If I was there I may have even gone to the gym with you at the crack of dawn. We made brownies today in honor of you…and Rodd who said he was in the mood for them.  This only happens about once a year (unlike Sydney and I who are always in the mood for brownies) so we jumped all over it and made some.

Here’s a sign made with love and very careful detail from Sydney. I wanted to write “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” on it but she told me that would ruin it. 

 

 

 

 

 

From Sydney:  ”Auntie Jan, The picture is for your birthday and it’s like a rainbow, but not like a train track anymore. Do you like the glitter? I love you and I miss you and I just want to come see you and that’s it.  ”

Back to the Dr.

Our poor Sydney has now come down with a terrible double ear infection.  She woke up from her nap this afternoon crying so hard and telling me her ears hurt. Usually I’m the type to wait it out a bit…but I knew it was bad so I called the doctor right away, and we got in before the end of the day. I was so glad!! She just finished her antibiotics for the bronchitis this morning and is now starting a different medication.  Between S & L we have spent more $$ on medicine and doctor’s visits than we have on our food budget for the month so far. Yikes!  BUT we are SO thankful that we can so easily call a doctor up and have our kids looked at so conveniently.  It’s something we usually take for granted.  Thanks for praying for Sydney.

Saturday recap

 Sorry for yet some more pointless pictures of our family.   One of these days Rodd will get on here and write about something a little more interesting & blogworthy, but for now you get to hear from me again.  Saturday was a major CLEANING day for our family. Van, bike, garage, windows, baseboards…  basically everything.  It was a GREAT feeling to have it done, but by the end of the day we were exhausted.   Today we just relaxed…and played with motorcyles and made silly faces.