Reached my goal!

Over 1,000 miles for the year!  I've now totaled 4735.6 miles since I started riding 4 years ago!

She's Back TAing

Kathee has been asked to TA-hostess a class for first-year students and their spouses.  Kathee and I took it last year.  Doctor Douglas' wife, Rebecca, who attends the class and leads the breakout session each class for the wives, asked if Kathee would TA.  Kathee's responsibilities are to buy snacks for the first couple of weeks, set up the snack table, make the coffee, and keep the coffee pots and water pitchers full.  

So after 4 years of doing catering all through college, she's back to catering and hosting the table and welcoming first year students.  

As I went to lunch with a new student today who has had a very difficult transition to Covenant, Kathee's role, though not grading papers and whatnot, had a hugely important role!  

I'm really proud of her!  And after she agreed, she found out she'll make a little bit of money (we thought it was a volunteer position).  So each Monday night, Kathee works from 5-8 to serve and help.  She is SO COOL!

Fall Classes Start Tomorrow!

So after a couple weeks off, the fall semester begins tomorrow.  I'm excited to have a bit of variety back after spending all summer focused on the Hebrew language.  So this semester I have the following classes:
Acts and Paul
Counseling in the Church I
Exegesis and Homiletics Lab II
Mentored Ministry Practicum I
Old Testament Exegesis and Communicating the Scriptures
Pentateuch

A couple of comments and then I should shuffle off to bed.  First off, I'm only taking 11 credits this semester (thanks to having already taken one from a distance).  That being said, a friend of mine told me the other day that the saying goes that it's going to be a tough semester if you have one exegesis course (basically that means you'll be doing a lot of translation work from either the Greek or the Hebrew).  This semester, I have three exegesis courses (with OT Exegesis, which is Hebrew 3, Pentateuch, and Acts and Paul).  And, bear in mind that two of those classes I will be doing a lot of translating from Hebrew to English, and one class will be from Greek to English.  I'm up for the challenge, excited for the challenge, but know it'll be a ton of work!

My Acts and Paul professor was my Greek 1 professor, and I decided that I wanted to take any class I possibly could with him.

My OT Exegesis and Pentateuch class are taught by the same professor, who is becoming one of the leading scholars on the book of Leviticus.  His layman's commentary on the book of Leviticus just came out last year or the year before and he has a scholar's one coming out soon.  I had him for Covenant Theology I.  My boy's wicked smaht.  So I'm excited, and a bit intimidated about having him.

My Exegesis and Homiletics lab prof I'm also a bit intimidated by as I had him for Christian Ethics a few years ago (from a distance) and know he's also wicked smart.  And he just came back to Covenant after being the preaching pastor here in St Louis at a large church for 10+ years (while teaching here as an adjunct).  He went to Yale, blah, blah, blah, I'm intimidated and am excited to sit under him and learn how to be a better preacher.  In the scheme of things, who else would I rather have as I continue to grow and learn how to preach to adults!

The rest of the classes are fine.

I'm not chomping at the bit-excited for any particular class yet (I think I'm still a bit tired from Hebrew this summer), but assume that will come back to me beginning tomorrow as I head back to class.

God is good.  All the time.  All the time.  God is good.

Night all.

Brother's Gran Fondo

So I'm pretty proud of my brother Nathan.  For the second year in a row, he and his business partners, who are also his friends, have organized the Dubuque Gran Fondo.  It's a road bicycling race, that in Italian means "great endurance."  Basically, it's a road race that is brutal.  This year's gran fondo race was almost 80 miles, with the medio fondo being almost 40!  As part of the course, there is almost 12 miles of gravel (which on a road bike is AWFUL) and many feet of climbs (which, in my opinion is also AWFUL).  However, gran fondos are a pretty big deal in the world of road cycling, with more and more springing up each year.  Last year, Greg LeMond came and rode a bit of the race and stayed around to sign autographs and other things!  

Although I'm not sure I could do the actual gran fondo (the most I've ever riden is 40+ miles), I thought I could have done the medio-fondo this year.  However, as we weren't able to make it to Dubuque to participate, and since I didn't have class, I took one of my days of riding last week and did my own grueling version of the DGF.  40.1 miles was fun, and hard, and tiring.  

Maybe next year I'll be able to actually ride in the fondo.  That would be AWESOME!  It would be the first time I'd ever particiapted in an actual organized race.  And how cool that my brother is one of the organizers for it?!  That would make my day!

As a side, this past week was my best week riding.  I logged 164.3 miles.  I'm within 100 miles of my annual goal of 1,000 miles.  I know I can get to 1,000 now!

This One Marches to Her Own Drummer

Each morning when I wake up, Hope is dressed in some sort of Princess outfit.  The other day, she had on her fairy-apron princess dress.  What is that you ask?

 Well duh, it's when she puts on one of her aprons as a dress and then puts on one of her pairs of fair wings...

And then puts on another apron for the front part of the dress.  I'm just glad that as she's gotten older, and has taken this fashion to the streets, that we have been able to talk her in to wearing something on underneath the aprons!  

She's happy.  And she thinks it's cute.  And she did it herself.  So we are all good here!

It's a Chore

Kathee does a great job of expecting the kids to participate in housework.  A few months ago she started having the two older kids put away the dishes each morning after breakfast.  And now that Gideon is back in school, they have to get it done before he leaves for the bus.  Sure, there is a lot of bickering and fighting.  Normally one of them ends up in tears ("she's not helping out," "she's not handing me the glass correctly," "she's being mean," etc) a couple times a week, but it's still a good exercise for them.  Last week, Esther got into the act of wanting to be on the countertop to help her older siblings put away the dishes.  She thought she was the big time!  She is.    

Knocked Out

Had quite the uneasy experience today as we were getting ready to leave church.  After helping Esther down the stairs, we started walking toward the door.  In the process, Esther must have tripped over the back of my foot.  I saw her fall down out of the back of my eye, so I stopped, picked her up, and gave her a quick lookover to make sure she was okay.  As I turned her toward me it looked like she had knocked the wind out of herself in the fall and that see was winding up to catch her breath.  Her eyes were enormous (looked like fear) and she kept winding up.  But nothing came out.  She looked afraid.  So I started saying, "Esther breath, Esther breath, Esther breath."  Then her eyes started rolling back in her head, so I said, "Esther look at me, Esther look at me."  She was kind of in and out and then she just passed out.  And reawoke a few seconds later.  It was quite frightening for me (when stuff like that happens, Kathee is the calm one and I kinda freak).  She didn't cry much and just seemed disoriented.  So as she started snapping out of it (with no vomiting) we started asking her questions, of which she knew all the answers.  So we got in the van (with Kathee sitting next to her) and didn't allow her fall asleep on the way home from church (which she normally does each week....Esther, not Kathee).  Anyway, she's back to normal.  Frightening.  Something I don't want to see in any of my kids again.  

Officer Costas

Rode up behind this policeman on the Rock Island bike path with my friend Justin Wilson yesterday on our ride.  We decided that as a joke we'd draft off him and banter with him a bit.  I took the lead.  Then as I pulled alongside him I was going to ask if the bike path is like driving, where you can't pass the policeman because if you do they'll pull you over for something.  As it turned out, it was Zach Costas (who was in my youth group 15 years ago)!  We talked for five or ten minutes and then Justin and I rode off.  How awesome is that?