First Stop – McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport. Flight departure: 6:30 am. Security? Nah. Long lines? Nope. We seriously could have rolled in there at 6:35 am and walked straight out to that plane, boarded that joker and been gone. The thing was a minivan with wings and a propeller. I may have cried a little (like a man of course) Check my vantage point from the last row.

Stop numero dos. Nashville International Airport. Layover? 4.5 hours. Breakfast? Yes. (My first experience with Wendy’s breakfast, pretty good.) While we were eating breakfast I overheard some soldiers from Ft. Campbell discussing some of their recent trips over seas. It was nice to hear (and see) some of our country’s finest men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the freedoms we love so much in this country. For those that may not know, I grew up surrounded my the Military. My dad who is still stationed at Ft. Bragg working with the Special Forces has been serving in the military my entire life and although I grew up engulfed in Military life, I sometimes find myself taking it for granted. But today sitting in that airport in Nashville, TN I was taken back to my childhood days at Ft. Bragg.

While we were waiting to catch our connecting flights to get us out here to Chapel Hill so we could work on our sermon series’ I noticed that there was a great number of kids, babies and pregnant women heading towards our area like desert herds flocking to a water hole.(disclaimer: I do not view pregnant/non-pregnant women and children as desert dwelling animals) I heard the chattering and discussions about “seeing Daddy” and I realized what was about to happen. Soon, one by one, military personnel began walking through the terminals to meet back up with their families they had been away from for so long. I remember being that little kid, getting so excited to see daddy when he came back from his deployments. I knew we would lay on the couch after dinner and catch up on the Braves season, or run down to the batting cages and work on my swing. I also knew he was bringing us back a kinder egg from Germany, a flag from whatever country he was serving in that trip or some other kind of crazy random gift he knew would bring me and my sister a sense of aw.

It’s crazy, now that I have a family of my own, I can only imagine how hard that sacrifice is to be away from family for so long, to come home to a 10 month old baby girl that I had only seen through a computer screen a couple days a month or a little boy who was not taller than his mother. I looked at those families today and honestly got a little choked up. It was like I was watching a puzzle with the one lost piece finally becoming whole. I sat there and watched how excited those little kids were to see their daddy or mommy and how the spouses eyes lit up with a sense of reassurance and I wondered to myself, “Who is going to be more excited when I stand before my Heavenly Father after returning from my deployment?”

It’s a tough question, I’ve got a good guess, but my prayer is a simple one, “Father use me during this deployment, not for my own self worth, but for your Kingdom. Guide me on this Journey.”

I have heard something like this said in multiple variations at least 4 times over the past week. “We’ve only got one life. On our tombstones there will be two dates and a little dash in the middle. What we do with that dash for God’s Kingdom is all that matters.”

Welp, we made it to Chapel Hill, long day tomorrow, how bout we make the best of it.

Outie Five

When we moved to Jackson, we were gladly welcomed in by two great folks. It took a lot of arm twisting, but finally, my mom and dad agreed to let us stay with them as long as we needed to…(TOTALLY lying about twisting their arm, but hopefully that was obvious!) So, here we came, with all of our junk and moved right on back into the home that I grew up in. A little bit different this time, but wonderful! As wonderful as it was to have built in baby-sitters, and no rent for the first time since December 2006, we were definitely ready to have a place of our own. We were ready to rent again if that’s what God had in store, but our heart’s desire was to own a home! So the search was on. One of Chuck’s passions, which I’m sure many people can relate to, is looking at homes online. We found so many! But we never went to look at any. The whole time, I tried to tell Chuck that it was gonna be magical and that his searches were useless. My prayer since the beginning was pretty specific in many ways, but especially in one way. If you’ve seen Miracle on 34th Street, you will remember the end where Santa has given the little girl what she truly wanted for Christmas. It was a house. As her family was driving by, she freaked out all of sudden and made them stop. It was the exact house that she had cut a picture of and given to Santa. He gave it to her. And it just was there like BOOM! here’s your house. So yea, that was kinda my prayer. That God would just lay it in our lap, and hear me out…that we wouldn’t have to look for it AT ALL! SO…on we go!

Toward the end of June, I talked to my grandpa about a cute house we had seen online. He took an interest in our wanting to buy a house and started searching for us! While at the library with the girls one day, I got a call from Chuck telling me that GrandBobby’s neighbors were moving out in a hurry & leaving everything behind. So we figured, what the heck it’s worth a shot. Condensed version…we went, we loved, we bought! The elderly couple was leaving and moving into an assisted living apartment. Which therefore meant that everything besides the living room, and bedroom furniture…stayed. INCLUDING but not limited to: tool shed with oh about thousands of dollars worth of tools and man goodies, brand new 4-wheeler with oh about 4.5 hours on it, 2 other sheds filled with camping stuff, generator for the house, enormous hand crafted knife collection, bread maker, meat slicer, ice cream maker , grill, deep freezer, all appliances, extra fridge, washer & dryer etc. It was the perfect 1600 sq ft that our sweet family of 4 needed! I immediately knew that this was no coincidence, and if you for one second think that this is a coincidence, and that we were just lucky…you might be smoking crack! This house and all that came with it, was a complete answer to prayer. Because another of my specific prayers for when we got a house, was that it would be a testimony to how amazing our God truly is. I wanted it to make God look REAL good! Like, there’s no other way but God. And that is exactly what we got. I mean seriously, there IS NO other way but by God’s good grace and compassion, that we would ever fall into something so amazing!

We got the house at a BEYOND ridiculous price. Trust me. We got it for less then what they originally paid, and that’s after the $30,000  worth of upgrades they put into it…yea. So sitting in church one morning, I was reading one of my favorite scriptures. Deuteronomy 6:5-9. Which basically says, Love God with all your might! Commit to His commands, repeat them to your children, surround yourself with them, write them on the doorposts of your house. (Which was why I was reading it again, because I wanted to fill my new home with scriptures, and this is one) and on that particular Sunday, I kept reading. Allow me to share. Verse 10) The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. 11) The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns that you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. (Did I mention that there is a garden in the backyard, tons of flowers, a fig tree and a pear tree?) When you have eaten your fill in this land, 12) be careful not to forget the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.

So there ya go. A confirmation of sorts. Never has there been a more perfect verse. A promise of what God had promised us. Remember the scripture I shared in the last blog, Matthew 19:29, Any man who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.

God called Chuck and I to leave Sevierville and come to Jackson to help plant a church. That was not in our plans. Sevierville was our home and our family. Everything that we knew and loved. BUT, we left it, for God. And sure enough, the blessings that we have since received just since we arrived have definitely been a hundred fold. We have an amazing peace about where we are and what we have been called to do. As hard as the task at hand may be, we will do it with all our might, and we will rest easy each night knowing the promise of eternal life that God specifically gave to us and our family. Sorry it was long…but ya should’ve known! lol. May God Bless. Hope this was a good testimony. If not, then God’s gonna have a bone to pick with me! hugs and kisses.

Rach

Sorry.

Back to the story. Before our Ihop stop I took Kennedy to her mothers day out, the trip was going great, like it always does, a little Itsy Bitsy Spider, a little ABC’s, you know, all the good stuff. Well in between songs, out of no where I hear what sounds like a 400 pound man blowing a tuba in the back seat! I aint talkin’ about no little 22 month old tuba either! More like a 65 year old, awww Crap! It slipped, I’m older and I can get away with it kind of tuba.  Very impressive.

At this point I am stuck between the feeling of amazement and disgustination! For those that have not quite caught on yet, Kennedy let one rip. An air biscuit. A toot. As ladies always say, a fluff.  So I turn to her and say, “Kennedy, what was that?” And in response I get this…

What kind of 22 month old already knows how to shift the blame of a fart onto someone else!? After I heard that, I lost it, laughing so much I began to cry. This however was not the correct way to react, because for the remainder of the 10 minute drive to Mother’s Day Out Kennedy repeated the word “Fart” and thought it was the funniest thing since people taking men’s figure skating seriously!

I hope and pray her mom can instill some manors and lady like qualities in my little girl since I have already started her off on the wrong foot. But just know, if you ever find yourself in an awkward fart situation, you can always pass it off on someone or something else… that just makes it 10 times funnier.

Outie 5Thousand

There are more over on Facebook Pops go check em out!

Outie

One friend in particular, (Ben Fair) left yesterday to spend 3 months in Africa serving in the Mathare Valley, Kenya. I know God is going to use Ben to full capacity while he is serving this summer. Ben is a true example of what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ, putting others before himself and sharing the love of Christ with everyone he comes in contact with.

Last night I decided it would be fun to give you all an insight into a fun memory for each month he will be gone (3) from the past 5 years Ben and I have known each other. So here goes fun memory numero uno.

The year was 2004, I was a 19 year old college sophomoreand Ben was a 24 year old college freshman, again. Our dorm rooms were on the same hallway, we were approximately two doors down from each other.

In this day and age there was certain gaming website that was fairly popular entitled PartyPoker.com. On this web-site you could create a player name and participate in some online FREE (no real monies or gambling involved in the games we played) Texas Hold Em. In our circle of friends this was a pretty happenin’ place to be around 2 a.m. any given night of the week.

This particular night, myself, my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) and our good friend Tony White aka “Tweet” aka “T-Dub” aka “T-Dub-Fa-Sho!!!” (insert arm pump) were playing a friendly game of Party Poker with our Party Poker grandma friend JJGrandma and 6 other strangers online.

This particular night, was the night we introduced Ben to the magnificent PartyPoker.com. He was quickly intrigued, created a player name (Bob Marley) and searched for our table on the web site.

Quickly Bob Marley aka Ben found the three of us at a table and attempted to join our table, but in the attempt to join he found that the table was already full. So Bob, aka Ben had to wait for a seat to open up. While he was waiting patiently for someone to leave the table, he discovered the chat room box at the bottom of the screen where you could exchange words with other players.

Our circle of friends began conversing on the chat board and following about 20 minutes of waiting for “Bob Marley” to join the table, Rachel, T-Dub, Bob Marley and myself began to grow impatient that no one would give up their seat for our buddy Bob. 

So what did we do, being the mature Bible College Students we were? Ask people nicely to depart “our” table? Let everyone know it is better to share and give than be greedy and stay at the table? Give up one of our seats for Bob?

Heck No! we all reverted back to our 3rd grade minds and began ridiculing the players that would not leave so “Bob” could play. We were like a pack of sumo wrestlers on a box of Twinkies! (don’t really know what that means) But we were cracking ourselves up. It wasn’t like dark ”I hate you” ridiculing, more along the lines of that one annoying kid in class that does and says everything he knows is going to drive everyone to stabbing themselves in the eyes with pencils.

I don’t think I have ever laughed that hard in my entire life, T-Dub and I were roommates at the time, we were both in tears, I might have wet myself a little bit. Ben was burning incense which was a No-No at Johnson and the whole hall was filled with smoke. Rachel was on speaker phone with us from her dorm room crying with laughter. JJGrandma was crackin’ jokes with us, they were mostly old lady lame jokes, but that made it all the funnier. Our RA was ticked because we were so loud and Ben smoked us out of  the hall, “They smellin’ whatcha burnin’ Mon!” I kept yelling at Bob aka Ben.

Holy cow it makes my stomach hurt now just writing about it. That night it felt like I just got finished doing 775 sit-ups to improve my abs to put a picture on another popular website at the time hotornot.com. Lame-O

Dang man, that night was stinkin’ awesome I think we stayed up till 4am trying to kick these people off the table so Ben could play with us…no one ever left the table so somewhere around 4:30 am we started our own table. But it just wasn’t as fun with only us 4 playing and no one to trash talk.

Party Poker always made for great times. This night was no exception.

Hope you enjoyed the sneak peak into one of the many fun incidents from my past with Ben. If you did not enjoy it, here is where I insert the phrase “You had to be there!” There you go that should make it funny now.

Im Outie

God has blessed me so much, I have the greatest wife in the world and the best baby girl a Daddy could ask for.  Rachel is doing a great job as a mom, she has got this thing down pat, three more babies to go….Rachel is thrilled!

Check out this angel.

Sleepy Time.

KJ's new Pearls

Ol' Blue Eyes

Lizard Girl

Sippy Cup

There you go Pops, your beautiful grandbaby!

Tommorrow we will have a guest blogger, make sure you check it out, its gonna be good.

Night World

You see my Mam-maw (Grandmother) does this dead man float thing whenever we go swimming, she can hold her breath for like 4 minutes and she just floats face down in the pool for 4 minutes at a time, its pretty freaky.  It always messed with my head, even though I knew she was just “relaxing” I always wanted to throw a football at her or hit her with a pool noodle just to make sure everything was still good, but just as I would start to rear back with the football or a noodle she would role over onto her back and continue floating around the pool. 

I tell you this because that’s exactly what our fish has been doing this last week, and every time I would flick the bowl, Ol’ Redfin would freak out in a seizure-esk panic attack, swim two laps around the top and then dead-man float some more.  Well, yesterday morning Ol’ Redfin was no longer chillin’ at the surface level, instead he was floating with his face in the rocks, with his tail fin sticking straight up like a flag pole.  I flicked the bowl but there was no response, just a red fish-stick.  It was a sad day, a “travesty” as Rachel would say, the loss of such a great life, Ol’ Redfin.

From there we discussed the burial arrangements, I suggested we give him the proper burial and flush him, while Rachel suggested we feed his remains to the 3 stray kittens running around our culdi-sac.  After a drawn out heated debate of about 42 seconds I won and we proceeded to flush Ol’ Redfin, but not before Rachel recited the Sinners Prayer.  It was a touching moment, I even think I saw a tear in Rachel’s eye (although I believe it was because she was laughing so hard) either way it was moving.  Redfin you will be missed.

Please do not call PETA on the Van Hook family, the following picture is just a memorial in his remembrance.

I’m Out

Getting back to my birthday day, later that night Rachel and Baby K surprised me at church with a birthday cake and we had a mini snack time birthday extravaganza with the KIDZPLAYCE crew.  Also I got me a new Kelty hiking bag with a special pocket for a kid up to 40lbs.  Its a pretty sweet bag and I got an awesome deal on it down at the local Mast General Store. (greatest store ever)  And last but not least I got bamboozled and then suckered Rachel into falling for the Banjo Minnow infomercial.  That’s right I got the whole 110 piece set and a DVD for $19.95, I can’t wait to get out on the river and let the Banjo Minnows fly.  I hope these things work or else infomercials will be ruined for me forever.

On Sunday I woke up to my first ever Father’s Day.  It was such an awesome feeling, I got a bangorang(adjective used in the movie Hook staring Robin Williams meaning cool, awesome or off the chain) glittery fluffy white princess cat card from Baby Kennedy, a Bass Pro Shop gift card from my mom and a priceless gift from Rachel.  You see last week she learned how to do all this cool stuff on a Mac so she decided to make me the greatest gift ever.  She made an awesome DVD of a bunch of pics of Kennedy and I set in motion to a real sad daddy daughter song.  I cried.  It really opened my eyes to how blessed I am.  It is truly unbelievable how much God has blessed my life, and I deserve none of it.  I thank him everyday for every hour He gives me to spend with Rachel and our new baby girl. 

thank you Lord.

 I love you Dad happy Father’s Day.

Nothing like a day in the smokies with my beautiful girls.