And Now He's Even Older

Our boy celebrated his 6th birthday this Friday. I am still reeling about having a six year old. He is one amazing boy. We sure are blessed to have him in our family.

So, Friday we started the birthday festivities by learning a little Spanish with Miss Amy Gonzales from church. Daniel did a fantastic job singing "Lo mas que nos reunimos" ("The More We Get Together"). He is one smart kid. Next we went to see "Horton Hears a Who." We enjoyed popcorn and M&M's, not to mention the trailer for this movie. After the movie we ran over to Game Stop for Daniel to use his gift card that he got from Grandpa Sperry and Meme. Then we headed over to the Mart de la Wal for Daniel to buy this with his saved commission money. We took a quick breather before we headed over to our friends' house to have pizza, cupcakes and presents. We took their son to spend the night at our house and left our daughter to spend the night at their house. This was our very first sleep over. I presume that it is the first of many in their lifetime.

The festivities continued Saturday when Grandmama and Grandaddy Hipps came bearing gifts for the birthday boy (and his sister). That's when Davis and I gave him this. Davis was able to get it at a good price from a co-worker that was selling it so that he could buy an XBox 360. One of the games that we got with the PS2 was Kingdom Hearts 2. He has been enjoying playing it, as evidenced by the way he is constantly telling us about the parts he's already played and speculating on the parts that are coming up.

We are so proud of Daniel and look forward to watching him grow into a young man.

A Quick Lesson in Patience

One might think that, as a woman who is around small children all the live-long day, my wife would have developed the patience of Job, if only as a sanity-preservation technique. And, for the most part, she does display great patience. Once in a while, however, (read: anytime she gets a strong enough urge for sweets) the effort of remembering to be patient gets to be too much. And thus, she is occasionally burned by her impatience. Like this afternoon, when she made some cookies for part of Daniel's church homework, and decided that the moment to try the first one was the same moment that they emerged from the oven. Apparently, the hissing noise emanating from her tongue first alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. And so, of course, she immediately proceeded to wolf down the rest of the cookie, presumably in hopes that the sense of accomplishment at having completed the task at hand would overcome the searing tongue pain and inability to taste the cookie itself. I think the lesson here is obvious, don't you? If you're going to eat a cookie hot out of the oven, do it FAST!

Cyberspace just got a little smaller

Try and follow me here, but I was going through my blog roll (which is alphabetized by blog name in my favorites tab) so I started with Adam DeWeber. He recommended this site. I had just recently heard of this site through Stephen Lowe's blog post on Friday. I found "Stuff Christians Like" to be interesting because my friend, Holly, sent me an email telling me about this other blog that she had found funny. Turns out that the author of "Stuff Christians Like" got his idea from "Stuff White People Like." So I decided to start at the beginning of the "Stuff Christians Like" blog. In the comments of post #24 the church Vintage 21 was mentioned. Our friend Matt Stevens is the Worship Pastor there. And in post #23 Carlos and his arm tattoo is brought up. In the comments section LeAnn asks if he is talking about Carlos W from Buckhead church. Turns out he is one and the same. I had heard about Carlos and his blog from a post on Adam's blog. From Carlos' blog I got to his wife's blog. Reading through some of her blog I came across this post. As you may (or may not know) Davis and I are from Columbus, GA. Pretty crazy is all I can say. I spent way too much time looking at blogs this morning so I thought I would compose a post about it to make my expended time "worth while."

Good Stuff

"Hey Mom, did you know every year over 5 million people from all around the world visit the Grand Canyon?" Daniel said this out of the blue just now. He said this because it was mentioned in the BOOK HE WAS JUST READING!! That's right. He just picks up a book, starts reading, goes until he's finished. It's pretty much one of the greatest things ever. Just thought you should know.

Murphy-Proofing

Dave Ramsey often talks about how, while you're in debt trying to get out, it seems like Murphy (of Murphy's Law fame) moves in. Vehicles will break, various family members will get sick, chandeliers and large sections of plaster will come crashing down from the ceiling onto the good china, etc. Fortunately, we've managed to confine our woes to the first couple of categories... so far.

The good news, reportedly, is that once you're out of debt and you've got an "emergency fund" well-established, Murphy tends to move out. I think that's one of the parts of being debt-free that I'm most looking forward to. I know it's not a guarantee, but even if he hangs around for a while, when we have a fully-funded emergency fund, I just don't think his petty little annoyances will push my buttons quite so much. All that to say,

"Pack your bags, Murph; we're kicking you to the curb!"

Definition of Accomplishment

I was reading through this post by my friend, Robby, regarding the experiences of his life vs. having a sense of accomplishment. I thought it might be interesting (to me) to highlight some of the more bizarre events of my life. I won't try to come up with twenty-one things (seriously, man, 21? How'm I supposed to compete with that?), but let's see what I can come up with off the top of my head. So, following his format...

I've sung onstage at Carnegie Hall,
I've kissed the Blarney Stone,
I've eaten Fried Chicken in 18 of our United States,
I've seen the Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore, and Old Faithful,
I've seen snow on the ground in July,
I've been a featured guest musician onstage with a singer who went on to win a grammy for singing with Bon Jovi,
I've met and done work for members and the office of my favorite band growing up,
I've played bass and sang backup on three CDs,
I've loved and lost,
I've also loved and won...

This isn't the exhaustive list I had planned, but it might be enough to spark a conversation. As to what I've accomplished, there are a few things I think worth mentioning, and I hope that they'll inspire my friend, if he reads this...

I've been a member of a band that helped reunite at least one person with her Savior,
I've helped to invite God into a room full of people who might not know him,
I've taught children that Jesus loves them while Tony taught their parents the same thing.

I think that will do for now.

May I Have the Peep Toe Special?

So Davis and I attended a wedding this weekend. In honor of the occassion I went and got a manicure and pedicure (always nice to have a excuse for extra pampering). At the reception we sat with some church friends, Tony McCollum, and his lovely wife and daughter. As comes with ladies, there was some discussion about clothes and shoes when peep toe shoes was brought up. Now for those of you who may not know (that would be the men-folk) only a couple of toes "peep" through the toe opening of the shoe. Thusly, Tony came up with the hilarious idea of getting a pedicure just for peep toe shoes in which you only get the toes that peep out painted. I got a very hearty chuckle out of the idea of walking around with just my big and pointer toe painted, then I slip my foot out of my peep toe shoe and the rest of my toe nails are untrimmed, unfiled, and unpolished. Considering how popular peep toe shoes seem to be, you never know: the next time I go into Creative Nails I might see the peep toe special on their menu.

Exploding Gas Pump (Prices)

As I may have mentioned here before, we're attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University classes every Monday night. This past Monday, we got to talking about how to save money on gas prices. One of my friends, who works for Ryder, mentioned 4 potentially money-saving tips:

1) Wednesday early AM best to buy gas (prices go up on weekends, cooler air gets more gasoline into the tank)
2) Fill up when at 1/2 tank (less air in tank = less evaporation)
3) use slowest pump setting (faster pumping causes more gas to escape through vapors)
4) don't fill up when the trucks are there delivering the gas (when the trucks are filling the tanks, sediment can get stirred up and sent into your tank)

Nerd that I am, I decided to research this some more. I trust my friend's advice, but I wanted to find some more sources before mentioning the tips on my blog. From a quick Google search on "gas tank filling tips," I found this Snopes article. Basically (if you don't want to click away from this post), the article says that the tips may be true, but they aren't likely to save you a significant amount of money, even in the long-term. (note: The article doesn't mention Wednesday specifically, just the cool of the morning part. Other searches suggest that Wednesday may generally be the day of the week gas is cheapest.)

So, how can you save significant money on gas? There actually seems to be a lot of advice out there:
1) SolveYour Problem.com has an article on 62 gas pump tips - "Gas Prices Are Outrageous,Save Me Some Money!"
2) BankRate.com has 11 car-care tips that save gas and 10 ways being a smart driver saves you gas
3) AAA has a Fuel Cost Calculator to help determine how much gas costs and how much a given trip will cost you (I notice my friend, Ren, has a similar widget on his blog).

Anyway, I hope this helps someone. I think the "being a smart driver" article might benefit me the most, but that may not have anything to do with saving money.