concerto.

I forgot to tell you about the CONCERT.

Guess who we had come to our church. If you've seen facebook, you already know....

Dave Barnes, Kristian Stanfill, and Brandon Heath!!! I was only excited about DAVE BARNES.

Here are the two reasons why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81HmfmL1P5Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vLEbbgD2g&feature=related

Kim and I signed up to be the hospitality people. We were told we would provide the performers and their peeps with food and transportation and whatever was on their rider (for those not in the celebrity industry, a "rider" is the list of things the famous people ask for to be in their rooms.) We would also be about the business of making them nice and comfy.

A week before the concert (which was on a Friday night) the church (people) sprung.... sprang.... springed! into action! There was a lot of cleaning. Our friend Alli found a huge and gorgeous dead moth in one of the high hanging lights. Many, many chairs were moved into the "concert hall." The utility closet which happened to have a shower was transformed into a nice little bathroom, complete with mirror and brand new shower curtain and bath rug. And Kim and I had to deal with the holding rooms.

You see, one side of the building (four or five rooms) were where the bands would be chillin'. The other side of the building was turned into the room where they would dine (not "dining room." we tried, but weren't that fancy). The rooms they would be in most of the night were actually Sunday school rooms. So after all of the toys, the toddler sized chairs and tables, and the baby books were removed, the rooms were rather bare. I went into decorator-mode. I grabbed pictures of flowers and beaches, candles, baskets, and a bird cage, and random knick-knacks all from our apartment. I tried to make the rooms really warm. We also added some card and board games. We brought our Keurig individual coffee (or hot coco or hot tea) maker and our coffee cups and made a little station outside of their rooms. By Thursday night, we had driven the car back and forth to the church maybe 80 times.... and I'm only exaggerating a little.

On top of all of this, Kim and I had to purchase and make the food. After much going back and forth about trying to do something unique and nice, or doing something easy, we went the easy route. Yes, praise God for the Publix down the road, where we bought sandwiches and wraps made and cut by THEM. Yay!!

We were told everyone on the buses coming were all healthy and some were vegetarians. Man, if I was on the road, I'd eat Five Guys everyday..... and be obese. But whatever. Sigh. So, for dinner, we cooked chicken tacos (make 'em yourself!), veggie soup, strawberry salad, apple crisp, and had some brownies and cookies (so they wouldn't be too healthy!!) and cokes, teas, etc. We mostly used all of our own kitchen stuff- plates, platters, bowls, ice buckets, crock pots- so their tables would look pretty.

The folks arrived! There were bands, sound guys, the famous peeps, and managers. I tried to stay out of their way and just make everything available to them. I felt most awkward around Dave Barnes. I couldn't care less about the other two. And Brandon Heath was the headliner- I don't even like his songs :) (shh, don't tell him). But a few of the volunteers and kids played cornhole and frisbee with 'the guys' and 'the bands'. And Tommy and Jon eventually showed up! Their job was to help with parking. I think they had fun telling people where to go!

Finally, the concert started. You have to realize, both Kim and I took off work. I woke up at 6:00 to make 2 batches of brownies. We had ordered the sandwiches at a quick stop at Publix, and had been organizing, cooking, and setting things up since. I think we got at the church building before 8 am - WAY too early to be up on a day you don't go to work. So, by the time the concert started, we were worn out. I poked my head in for a moment or two to see DAVE. But other than that, we just made sure things were refilled and clean.

The 2nd best part of the night was getting Dave Barnes' autograph and taking silly pictures with him!!!!!

But the number one best part of the night was....drum roll..... Tommy and I got a kid! To be more specific, we signed up to sponsor a child in Africa. Her name is Barbra. Brandon Heath promoted a ministry he works with - Food for the Hungry - and now we help a little girl and her family. They took a Polaroid and I took a picture of it with Tommy's phone.

So at the end of the night, we had to load up piles and piles of decor, appliances, dishes, and games into our car. I think Tommy and I left a little after midnight. SO TIRED.

I had an awesome time though.

And the next day...... My parents came to visit!! -see next post!-

oh, may!

February 24th was our last blog posting. Wow. That means it has been 2 months and 15 days since I’ve told you, my beloved and faithful readers, anything about our lives here in good ol’ Florida.

It probably has something to do with the last post being so amazing. A guest blogger, Tommy Himself, recounting the tale of 50 McDonalds McNuggets in one sitting!! How can you top that!?

Alas, I will get over my fear of typing a substandard post to update all of you.

I have gone back in my calendar, and the first exciting thing that happened after the infamous night of nuggets was this: we finally got to join the group who leads worship for the service on Sunday morning! We were so excited. Both of us haven’t done that since high school, and we’ve both missed it. So it really was a blessing to get asked to do this and then to be able to worship together. I told that to some of the girls in my small group. Being married has allowed us to be a part of a small group where we learn the Scriptures together, and now we’re part of a praise team- so wonderful! Since then, we’ve both spent a few times playing and singing. We’ve both had to pretend that we know songs we don’t, and we’ve both been very good about not messing up too badly!

For another weekend, Tommy got to go visit his Bama friend, Adam, in New York (“New York CITY?!” – Pace’s salsa commercial). So, I got to drive him to Jacksonville and spent the weekend chilling (yes, I took off Friday too so we would be fair in time off) while he pretended to be a local city man. They didn’t do a lot of touristy stuff, but he did buy me a sweet sweatshirt while they looked at hospitals (job hunting??) and ate lots of expensive food.

Since Feb 24th, my job has become very…. busy. I was busy before, but this is a little different. Instead of visiting a certain few child care centers, my team of two became the monitoring squad. Basically, we have to visit and assess every single center that we work with. An assessment takes three hours, at least. We have about 120 centers all over our county. They all need to be assessed before the end of May. So we have been all over the place, watching many, many children. We will sit for three hours, and then write about them. Rinse, repeat. Symptoms: a hazy memory which blurs all rooms together, contracting childhood illnesses, and dreams of the book “Too Big for Diapers”.

Some fun quotes from these visits:

A three year old: “I said I was sorry, man!”
A two year old: "...and don't glue the noodles on yo head!"
A three year old: "is that a white teacher??" (pointed at me)

And most importantly, Tommy has been looking for his next job (hence the looking at the hospitals while in NYC). We've had several ups and downs along the way, though it has been a relatively short way. More on this later....

Upcoming posts: Mom and Dad Visit. Bevin’s Baby Shower. Easter.