Counting Blessings

I hope everyone has enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving meal like our family did today. As I reflect on the day I realize there are so many things we have to be thankful to God for. Not only did we eat well today, we never wonder where our next meal will come from. We live in a multi-room home with indoor plumbing. It is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Every morning we get up and have to decide which of our many clothes we will wear for the day. We are in excellent health and can work to provide for ourselves. Our kids are receiving an excellent education. And most importantly, we are free to worship God publicly. It is so very easy to take all of this for granted.

LAST CHEMO! Speaking of health, unless upcoming tests prove otherwise, Pauline had her last chemo treatment Tuesday. We are so glad even though the final word on all of this will come closer to Christmas. She has done very well, and even spent yesterday cooking for Thanksgiving.

THANKSGIVING ACTIVITIES. For me the kick off to every holiday season is the Cross Plains Heritage Commission’s covered dish supper the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I had a stomach virus that night and missed it. At least I was better the next day.

East Robertson Elementary served their Thanksgiving meal Friday. I was unable to make it to that one either, though my stomach was much better. Vicki ate with all three kids (the cafeteria ladies let her spread her meal out). When Vicki was eating with Nate he looked over his tray, pointed to the meat, and asked Vicki to identify it. She told him it was turkey. Then he asked, “Why did they put slobber all over it?”

Sunday night marked out annual Community Thanksgiving service at church. It was held at our church with Cross Plains Methodist, Friendship Baptist, Milldale Presbyterian, and Owens Chapel Methodist participating. We had a big meal before the service. The Men’s Chorus from Friendship sang and their pastor, Keith Jackson, spoke. Milldale’s pastor, Kyle Gott, lead the communion. It was really a great service. Close to 400 people attended.

THANKSGIVING DAY. Today was a beautiful day. The kids and I spent this morning getting leaves off the yard. We cleaned about a third of the yard and spread the leaves in the old soybean field behind the house. Vicki spent the morning cooking.

We all gathered over at Pauline’s around 1:30 for dinner. The menu was the usual ham, squash dressing, sweet potatoe casserole, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, corn, green beans, rolls, and cranberry sauce. This was all topped off with carrot cake. After clearing the table the kids and Mom played a game of Monopoly (I was the banker and helped Nate). Mom blew everyone away.

DIFFERENT HABITS. When you have a married couple there are bound to be differences in the way they do things. For example, I am pretty good about putting things back where I found them. Vicki tends to set things down wherever she is when she’s done using them. The pen I try to keep in the computer desk best illustrates this.

Oh, if only I COULD keep a pen at the computer desk. Vicki is always taking the pens off somewhere else. We have pens that started life at the computer desk and have migrated to God only knows where. I think she sticks them behind her ear and forgets them so they ride on her head only to be discovered hours later when she is nowhere close to the computer. It wouldn’t be so bad, but I like to use a specific type of pen, the Pilot Precise V5.

Recently she defended herself to the last when I asked her to find at least one pen for me to write with. She gets defensive now because this has been going on for years. This time Jenna looked through Vicki’s purse and found two pens from the desk right off the bat. My new favorite nickname for my wife is “kleptoPENiac.”

RECOMMENDED PODCASTS. I recently got an iPod Touch. We all enjoy the games I have downloaded on it. I also enjoy several podcasts. Here are the ones I enjoy listening to. You can subscribe to any of them on the iTunes store free of charge.

LifeChurch.tv -- I enjoy Craig Groeschel’s sermons.

John Eldridge and Ransomed Heart -- I subscribe to a couple of these.

StarDate -- A daily astronomy update from the McDonald Observatory.

StoryCorps -- A weekly podcast from the StoryCorps project.

The News from Lake Wobegon -- Garrison Keillor -- Need I say more?

Two Chairs, No Waiting -- A new podcast for Andy Griffith Show fans.

Speaking of astronomy, Jupiter and Venus are putting on a great show every night just after sunset. The Moon will join them for a tight conjunction Monday night.

Joe

The Brevity of Life

This last week has been fairly routine for our family, and I was wondering if I’d have much to write about this weekend. Then a colleague and friend of mine passed away unexpectedly around 2:30 Friday afternoon.

Barry Baker was the Supervisor of Career and Technical (Vocational) Education for our school system. He was returning to Springfield from a meeting Friday afternoon. As he was driving along Highway 431 (the Tom Austin Highway) he was involved in a head on collision with another vehicle and died from injuries sustained in the accident. He was 54. The other driver, who happened to be a student at one of our high schools, had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted over the centerline of the road. He was ejected from his car and will be okay.

Mr. Baker and his wife had one daughter, and had recently become grandparents. He had been one of the Agriculture teachers at East Robertson High School for many years (though after my time as a student there). He has been working in his current capacity for about five years. In that time I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know him (I already knew his wife as she taught at one of our schools). His office has been next to mine after we moved to our current location last year.

Mr. Baker was a man of extremely few words (for those of you on Mom’s side of the family who remember Warren Letsinger then you’ve got the idea), but once you initiated the conversation you found a real friend. Due to his nature he was a great listener, but I always valued what he had to say. I guess it was because I knew whatever words he said were carefully chosen. Many teachers recognized this and would come to him for advice. He was also well respected among our supervisors at our Central Office as well as his old faculty at ERHS.

I don’t know if Mr. Baker was ever a Boy Scout, but he took their motto to the extreme. His car was practically a traveling toolbox, complete with an air tank for flat tires. I once told Vicki I was glad he and I travel the same route to work in case my truck ever broke down.

The hardest thing about all this is the abruptness of it. It just reminds you that there is no guarantee that you’ll come home when you walk out the door on any given morning. Mr. Baker is the third school system employee I knew to have died this school year. The other two were ladies who lost their battles with cancer (one of them died Wednesday) and were not unexpected. I knew these ladies well, worked with them regularly, and had a high regard for them, but the relationships weren’t as close as knowing Mr. Baker.

Mr. Baker’s funeral is tomorrow. Our schools will operate as normal, but our offices will be closed in his honor. This funeral will not be easy for any of our Central Office staff.

Joe

Fabulous Fall

We have been enjoying some of the best fall leaves that I can remember in a long time. There’s beauty everywhere you look. I sure wish it all lasted longer than 2-3 weeks. We’ve also been enjoying some warm weather. I’ve even gone upstairs and retrieved a few short sleeve shirts. The temperatures took a nose dive over the weekend.

There’s been a lot of activity going on in our area fields too. The Pinsons have been combining the soybeans, and Bill Chatman has been plowing the corn fields in preparation for sowing wheat. Last night he was still at it when I went to bed.

UNDER THE WEATHER. I think it all started when Ben began coughing after we got home from vacation. This eventually spread to Vicki. Then Ben started feeling pretty rough last weekend. Next was Aunt Mar. By Sunday neither Aunt Mar nor Ben felt like going to church so I stayed home with the two of them. Vicki took Ben to the doctor Tuesday and learned he had walking pneumonia. He also missed school Wednesday and Thursday. So far Nate, Jenna, and I have stayed relatively healthy.

SPEECH WRITER. I think I have mentioned that Jenna is in 4-H. They had their local speech contest a couple of weeks ago. She really struggled with writing it, but she must have written a pretty good one as she won second place in her class. She’ll get to go to the county speech contest toward the end of January. Her speech is titled Caring for Our World.

THAT’S JUST GROSS! So Vicki and Jenna were watching TV when a commercial for some Internet search engine came on. The premise of the ad was how easy it is to find answers to obscure questions like, “What are hot dogs are made of?” This made Jenna turn to Vicki and ask, “So, what are hot dogs made of?” After Vicki replied, “You don’t want to know.” This look of horror came over Jenna’s face. Voicing her thought she asked, “Dogs?”

Well, Vicki did straighten Jenna out of the ingredients of wieners, but now they are both wondering why the food is called a hot dog in the first place. I sure don’t know, but then my preference is for another misnamed food anyway -- hamburgers.

AFTER SCHOOL SNACK. Think back to childhood. What was the first thing you did when you came in from school? Get a snack, right? For me it was a peanut butter sandwich. Well, our kids are no different, and Mom and Aunt Mar are eager to please -- too eager. I got to their house a little earlier than usual the other day and saw the whole spread. Jenna had finished eating, but Nate was still in the middle of his meal. While no ice cream was served this particular day (an oversight I’m sure) I found Nate working on a bowl of Cheerios, a cup cake, M&M’s, Reese’s Cups, and Teddy Bear cookies. And we wonder why they won’t eat much for supper.

BIG DREAMS. It’s that time of year when kids start to think about what they want for Christmas. We used to get catalogs from all the stores when I was a kid: Sears, J. C. Penny, etc. I loved looking through the toy pages in these books. It seems like Service Merchandise would print the best selection of toys in their wish book. I think they printed a special toy catalog. Well, for our kids THE book is the Toys ‘R Us catalog. They pour over it, pass it around, put it by their bed at night, etc. Since Jenna and Ben know some inside information about how Christmas works they know they’ll have a budget for picking out what they want so they are really busy trying to prioritize their wish list. What they don’t know is how much that budget is. I’m sure this will begin to drive all of us crazy soon if Vicki and I don’t decide on an amount quickly. ‘Tis just about the season!

Joe