Lost and found

Our puppy, Tutsie, wandered out the door today. Actually, both our puppies were gone for about 30 minutes before we realized it. Frankie came back on his own and Tutsie was no where to be found. Candi and the (frantic) kids went around looking a little , but had to give up the search. I came home around 4:30 and started going door-to-door. I found her after about a half an hour.

The scary thing is that, if you remember, not too long ago Molly (our first dog) wandered out and was hit by a car in front of our house. She died. So this was very emotional for us. All sorts of things were running through my mind. Do we need to get professional training to prevent the wandering? We treat our dogs very well, why do they leave? Do we need a shocking boundary collar? Is it possible for us to train a dachshund to no wander?

At the end of the questions I was reminded how prone I am to wandering from God. I think over time God is teaching me to Sit. Stay. As I strive to obey and love God more (almost the same thing, I think) the desire to stray has weakened. I know that he's taught me about His boundaries and why He's placed them there but He always leaves the gate open. What amazing love!? Is that trust on His part? Does He ever want to just shut the gate and keep me in? I don't think I ever would have come to know and trust Him as much as I do (though that is little still) if He caged me. I've said it before - God's love will surprise and put me in awe for the rest of my life.

Or maybe I just need a shock collar.

Pictures from Nori's baptism and Sabino Dam

Thank you Travis and Kristi for taking

the great pictures!

Pruning and reviving

We (the kids and I) did a little yard work today. We have three fruit trees that hadn't been trimmed since well before we bought our house. I'm pretty sure the lemon tree wasn't going to produce much because it had all kinds of unhealthy growth. We bought one of those really long trimmers (15 ft or so) and as I grabbed the branches the kids pulled the rope to seal the branches doom. It was fun as long as the branches didn't come down on top of us; grapefruit and lemon trees have 1-2" thorns.

As we worked I reflected on how much God demonstrates spiritual truths in nature -- weeds and good trees, seeds and growth. I've seen how many plants won't grow well if they aren't pruned. Sometimes a flower will bloom, die, and be left on. The dead flower seems to be the object of all the plants energy. No other flowers will grow on it until it that dead thing is removed. The branches will continue to grow, but they won't grow healthy; they'll become calloused, skinny and frail.

It's the same with us. One dead thing can drain all the fruit-bearing ability from us. Meanwhile other sinful areas quietly pop up and grow. While we pretend the dead sin isn't there, other sins are taking hold and actually go unnoticed by us (because they look "o.k." compared to the sin we are rebelling against). We don't want to confess and allow God to prune that sin away. When we finally do, we also open ourselves to seeing the other sins. God removes them, though painful, and we feel the weight go.

But a pruned tree looks uncomfortable. With no fruit or flowers showing it looks useless. However, if we push on, drinking from the pure water of God and feeding on His Word, roses and fruit will be bursting forth when we aren't watching. Suddenly, we'll be serving our purpose and glorifying God as we were meant to do; and we'll look back and be amazed. And we understand though painful, God needs to cut the dead and evil away from us.

He is good!

I'm glad I took the time to

work in the yard today.

FPF, I cheated a little. Better check it all out.

Sabino sunset run pictures

Here's a few pictures of Candi and I during the run.

Me in the white shirt, blue shorts.
Candi in the front there.
Candi in more water.

What the?

Win I wus spell checking mi last poste, too werds we're marked rong: "Ren" and "Yahoo'd". How wierd that "Googled" is a werd, butte "Yahoo'd" isn't.

Taking a Sickels?

While we were at the Ren fair, someone brought up that the inventor of the toilet was John Crapper. So we go to the John to take a... I just couldn't believe how silly that sounded so I Googled and Yahoo'd it. Here's a link of what I found... interesting.

Ren Fest

We went to the Renaissance Festival today near Apache Junction (east of Phoenix). It was a pretty good time. My mom, sister Lisa, and niece Teagan were visiting from Minnesota. My Uncle and Aunt also went (they live over in the Catalina foothills). There was a definite "fair" feeling to it (as you can see from the Swinging Swan picture), but it was fun anyway.

The joust was probably Candi's and my favorite part. There were four riders (the dark knight, the schizophrenic knight, the brave knight, and the drunk knight (actually pirate captain). We ended up in the section cheering for Capt Boom. Each knight was mic'd so their respective crowd could hear their comments and they performed a bunch of impressive riding skills. Then they ran an obstacle course and jousted (the black knight won). The show ended with them insulting each other's honor resulting in a joust to the death (later that day, which we didn't see).

All in all, seeing the "authentic" weapons and goblets, clothing and wares, using 14th to 16th century bathrooms (plus TP), and seeing the jewelry and animals (the animals have changed a lot since the Ren times, but somehow people managed to keep a few un-evolved specimens around for the petting zoo) was fun.

And once again, I'm amazed at how the American culture has little to no regard for God's intention for sex and sexuality. It seems American women (only in general - don't leave any nasty comments. Of course, if you're offended by that comment you're probably one of the ones I'm talking about and you can leave a nasty comment.) take every opportunity to dress as revealing as possible. Honestly, I have a hard time believing the attire that women were wearing at the fair was representative of the majority of women in the Renaissance times. From the looks of it all men in those times were sword/bow brandishing brigands or heroes. Renaissance women, on the other hand, might have been able to play an instrument, but were definitely all floozies. Exactly why Americans choose to express their sexuality as we do is a whole other blog.

Good music and food

Chihuahua Charlie's.


22nd and 4th St.









Great food.
Nice folks.









Great live mariachi music.

Forever glad we went there.

Good visit

My mom, sister, and niece arrived last night from Minnesota. It is great to have them here. We have a lot planned actually.

Today we went to the zoo. That was really fun. We love seeing and interacting with animals. I don't understand the brutality of the animal kingdom, but I am amazed at God's imagination. I think I would have probably just created the same animal in several different colors. Did you know that the tongue of a woodpecker wraps around the inside of its head? Anyway, we fed the giraffes today. They have a really, really long tongue. I also learned recently at a Creation Science talk that they have a valve in their body that is used to regulate blood flow to their neck and head. They have to bend down to drinking water and it prevents blood from filling their head. Without the valve, when suddenly attacked and forced to flee, if they raise their head up real fast to run they would definitely get woozy and maybe pass out. I think God is smart! Anyway, here's a picture of the giraffe tongue. By the way, it looks dry like a cats, but is actually really slimy.

After the zoo we went to Kon Tiki (NW of Broadway and Swan, I think) and it was a pretty cool atmosphere. Good food. They had a huge habitat with a monitor lizard in it. It was probably about 4 ft long!

Tomorrow we're going to Chihuahua Charlie's for dinner with my Aunt and Uncle too.

Illegal to homeschool!

I was emailed an article recently by Jonathan Falwell that had the shocking title "Will Home Schooling Become Illegal?" Obviously, this got my attention. Candi and I spent plenty of time praying and talking about whether we wanted to home school and if it was best for our kids. I've never considered that it might not be legal for any reason.

I was initially a little unnerved at the thought of it, really. I love it. Our family is so much happier homeschooling (in a plethora of ways). So I got online and researched what was actually being said. This link is by Ann Zeise of the HomeSchool Association of California which explains why we have little to be alarmed about in California (that's where the article was about).

I poked my head around a little more and found some sad articles covering Germany's home schooling situation. Evidently, it is 100% illegal there. The government controls what is taught and how it is taught. This article talks about how parents are having to flee the country if they want to home school to prevent losing their children to the state. And this one discusses how UN rulings which oppose home schooling could become a factor in the US.

It's scary to think we could be in that situation (especially with Hillary Clinton's plans for schooling). I won't say that home schooling is for everyone. I will say that there are pros to it that far, far outweigh the cons; the benefits of it have definitely outweighed the cost of it (and the cost of not doing it).

Sabino Canyon Sunset run

Candi and I ran in the Sabino Canyon 6.4-mile race Saturday night. It started at 5:30 pm and it was gorgeous out. I was a little nervous because I have never ran a 10k race (it was just a little more than that) on my own pace (usually Candi and I just run together). Anyway, it was my first 10k race and my first time racing in Sabino. I didn't know what my pace would be or how to set a goal time. Plus, they really ramped up the publicity this year (registration was almost 400) and there were some fast people racing (check the complete results here). Here are our stats:

............Overall
..............Place....Age Group.....A/G Place.....Time...........Pace
Dale........31...........30-39...............11...........43:32.7......6:48/M
Candice..62..........20-29................2.............46:34.3.......7:17/M

That's right! Candi got 2nd place. Candi takin' home the trophy! That was awesome to hear. She ran over a minute and half faster than last year - that's a huge gain. Over all it was fun and it's a great experience to push myself that hard. I don't think I could do it that fast without competition; the sound of the footsteps behind me and the guy 20 ft in front of me. I'm pretty sure I could have ran it faster because I tried to conserve energy for the last mile (it really gets steep there). Next year I'll be under 40 minutes.

A huge thank you to the Dusek Duo for watching the kids so we could go goof off! You guys are the best!

Long time, no talk...

Well, it's been well over a month since my last blog. Of course, I just chose not to blog even though I wanted to. A quick recap - I am finishing Theological Survey 201 and start 202 next week sometime.

Candi's ankle is somewhat healed. Her ligament is not healed and sometimes looks like it is dangling under her ankle bone. Plus there's overall mild swelling constantly. However, don't cry for her too much; we are running the Sabino Canyon 10k this Saturday at 5pm (come on out and root us on if you're not going to Beginning's instead!). She is getting on swell with school, too.

The kids are doing great. At the beginning of our school year, Nori and Bubba both had their strengths and weaknesses. The strengths were pretty strong and the weaknesses were the fear of the day (when getting to those subjects). Now, the strengths are even stronger and God's grace has given us the wisdom to teach to their styles and see what prevents them from excelling at those, too. Nori is getting math quite well now (even though she says differently) and Christian is really picking up his reading ability (even though he says differently). It's great to see progress; it's amazing to see the change since we started homeschooling!

Wyatt is a smart little bugger. We took proactive steps to teach Nori and Christian the basic stuff (letters, colors, shapes). We don't have much time to do that with Wyatt, but he spends so much time around the others that he's just picking it up. It's funny how much he's learned from toys too. He has learned blue, green, and red from his Cars toys (blue - Mr. The King, green - Chick Hicks, red - Lightning McQueen). Wyatt also loves to get out and "go bye-bye". He loves playing in the dirt and roughing up the dogs. He's getting further into his ability to express lack of appreciation for naps, eating yucky food, and his parents not focusing on him. That boy can scream! Funny thing is we can see right through it and getting him smiling pretty quick, too.

Really cool news - A couple of weeks ago, while on a hiking trip with our friends, the Harts (and their tribe), and the new music leader at Beginnings, Seth, Candi reminded me that Nori and Christian wanted to be baptized. There is a ton of water in the river right now. Nori went for it; Christian didn't want to deal with the cold (all the water is coming from melted snow off of the Catalina Mountains). It was an awesome experience to baptize my own kid! I love seeing them grow in their faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus; this was just another step. There were a lot of other people there outside of our little group and I'm so, so proud that they both were "not ashamed of the gospel of Christ". Christian really wanted to do it, but he's never been one for cold water. I know he'll get his chance as the temperatures get into the hundreds.

There's a ton other stuff that happened but I don't have time now.