Another Happy Birthday

I want to give a shout out to Justin Aman, whose 18th birthday was yesterday. Yesterday was also the Homecoming football game for Melba High School. Unfortunately, Justin apparently (according to the team trainer) tore his ACL on the third or fourth play of the game. What a bummer! This is his senior year and it appears that he will have to miss the rest of the season. Aaron, Duane, Marc, and I went to the game last night. Melba whipped up on Marsing 44-20 (or something like that). I feel extremely bad for Justin, though. Life isn't fair sometimes.

Well, Happy Birthday, anyway.

Happy Birthday, Ray!

"A happy birthday to you, a happy birthday to you. Every day of the year, may you feel Jesus near. A happy birthday to you, a happy birthday to you. The best one you've ever had."

Ray, if you'll drop your change in the white plastic church we'll give you an unsharpened pencil.

Come and Dine

The other day I heard a commotion in our hall closet. Kassady had somehow pulled the doors open and in her exploration of the closet's contents discovered my stash of toilet paper.

Now, to give you a little background on this, when I was a child my parents believed in rationing toilet paper. There was often a shortage of this valuable commodity in the Waggoner household. Way too many times, I had to run the 4 or 5 blocks to my grandma's house to do my business. There was a certain terror that drove me. As a result, I have developed a phobia of running out of TP. This is an overwhelming fear. I know that I probably carry it to extremes, but I am nearly always prepared for any emergency.

I have a TP shelf in the closet. I buy the huge packs of tissue. When we get down to 12 rolls it's time to go buy some more. Well, Kassady discovered my cache. However, when Kass sees an object she usually associates that object, regardless of design or texture, with food. As I came around the corner, Kassady was sampling the delectable squares, humming with pleasure.

Kassady ran away from me and began tearing off strips of toilet paper, putting the shreds in her mouth. Her mother was horrified. I was honored.

After confronting Kassady with the accusations of toilet paper consumption, she shouted, "But I didn't inhale" and dove under the bed. I don't know, it didn't make sense to me either.

Lately, Kassady hasn't been getting enough to eat...

I told Trey and Kassady that they will later hate me for taking this picture. This is one of the embarrassing snapshots that you show their future dates. Great stuff!

"Why did I Just Say That?"

Have you ever asked yourself why you said something? It happened to me today. I'm walking out of Wal-Mart with my bags in my hand when the chirpy greeter says "Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart". I instinctively replied, "THANK you (emphasis on THANK)". I thought to myself, why in the world did I say that? I mean, I just spent $39 of my money on items that are slightly over-priced, and I'm THANKING them? What's up with that? "Hey, I just spent the equivalent of what it would cost me for a month's subscription to DSL internet service, but I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity of spending it here at Wal-Mart instead."

I do this a lot. I'm a fairly outgoing person, but many times it's tough for me to make the initial contact with a person. So, I revert to cliches or inane statements that don't mean a thing. Stupid! I'm going to try to improve on this. It's hard, though.

AYC Board Meeting

I returned last week from the fall AYC board meeting. It was great to see everybody and interact with the guys. The award for the most weight lost during the summer goes to Jack Hooker and Mike Hobbs. If Mike would have stood sideways and stuck out his tongue, he could have convinced me that he was a zipper. Those guys have really shed the pounds!

There's so much back-slapping that goes on at an AYC board meeting that I can only compare the experience to a typical encounter with Amos Hann. You get the picture.

While I don't have pictures from the actual board meeting last Tuesday, I was able to obtain from hotel security photos of the Vision committee's conflab on Monday.

The security cameras caught this conspiratorial meeting of the AYC Vision Committee. The minutes of this top-secret conclave are kept in the files of the Illuminati. Yes, they are one and the same. Now you know the rest of the story. I was initially kept out of the meeting, but managed to find a way in. I ordered the pizza.

Jack sits contentedly after singlehandedly devouring most of two pizzas, breadsticks, and an order of Cinnasticks. I am marveling at what I've just witnessed. A word of advice: never get between a dieting man and a deep dish.

I was caught making yet another profound statement as Ray, the Prez, looks on. I'm not sure what Mac is doing in the background. I think he's stealing the hotel soap.

Hammin' it Up

We had a great time last night! I took several of the Grace Teens to hear Ken Ham(http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=2) in Boise at a regional Answers in Genesis conference. He spoke on the topic "How to Defend the Christian Faith in Today`s World". As usual, Ken did an outstanding job! We also enjoyed a mini-concert by Buddy Davis. Overall, it was a phenomenal evening! On the way home, we stopped by McDonalds. What is it with kids and teens and McDonalds? Mickey-Ds definitely owns the market. It was a great evening as you can tell by the pictures.

Is there a more welcome sight to the hungry individual than the Golden Arches by the side of the interstate?

I'm still trying to figure out what Darnelle is doing with his tongue in this picture. Tiffany talks through her Big Mac.

Brooke reclines while Tosh dines.

Some of the girls of Grace had to get their pic taken in front of an old, beat-up, pink and white Beetle. What's up with this whole "punch-buggy, no punchbacks" thing?

Josh, the newest member of Grace Teens, tries to "peace" things together.

Josh is a blur of activity as he attempts to hold his own against Tracie. He had a unique strategy: trap the puck underneath the paddle (or whatever you call those things) and lull his opponent into a catatonic state by sweeping it back and forth. Once his opponent, Tracie in this case, has a case of the glazed-eyes, he picks up the puck, walks to the other side of the table and places it in the goal. It was effective. He won.

You just have to know Tiffany. Here are her exact words, no exaggeration: "Oh cool! Check it out. This is like a McDonald's PacMan game." She played for quite some time.

Marc thought that he was playing a virtual reality game. After the police had left the scene, I told him that it wasn't a good idea to keep referring to yourself as Mario while humming the Nintendo 64 theme song.

I just grimaced as I saw the teens playing this game...OK, that wasn't funny at all. I tried.

McD is for kids

Man, whatever happened to the days of the McDonald's kiddie land? You know, the Hamburglar slide, the Ronald McDonald statue that all the kids climbed on, not to mention the giant Grimace swings. Today it's all about video games, air hockey, and foosball. All of the McDonalds in our area have made the switch from playland to virtualland. Not that any of the teens complained. They had more fun than any of the kids would have: