Was It Worth It?

When is the last time you truly thought about what Christ went through on Calvary?
When is the last time you contemplated on His agony, the excruciating pain, the sense of loneliness that He must have felt?
How many times have you taken for granted the extreme sacrifice offered for your soul?
Why did Jesus do it?
Why did He care?
How did Christ find the strength necessary to go through with the plan?
What was going through His mind on the cross?
Were there unanswered questions that He struggled with in those last few hours?
Did Christ grapple with the temptation to save himself while hanging there?
Could He have battled feelings of hatred as He suffered the torment of the nails, the spear, the awful thirst?
What would it be like to be totally separated from GOD?
Would the silence from above hurt more than the pain inflicted from below?
Could He see the end or was He lost in the moment?
How could Jesus still love in spite of the anguish, the fear, the bleakness?
Where did He find the strength to forgive?
How could His last act on the cross be one of mercy, an execution of grace?

Looking at your life, was it worth it?

Chain Gang

For anyone who gets one of those e-mails featuring urgent messages concerning some kid in England with leukemia who will be saved if you just forward this e-mail to 5 friends or has received an e-mail promising $25 gift certificates from Bath and Body Works, I have a link that you are sure to enjoy (was that a run-on sentence?):

http://www.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~sivann/pub/swf/may02-smilepop-soapbox4.swf

Thanks, Rochenda!

Addison

The other night we were over at Marc & Talisha's house for supper. Marc was telling me how Addison just loves gulping down water, especially when it's out of a glass. As you can see, he demonstrated Addison's new trick. The picture doesn't do this justice. Addison put a death-grip on the glass and inhaled it's contents. I laughed my head off. The whole Taylor family gathered 'round for this one.

Movin'

Lori and I would like to congratulate both sets of parents on successful transitions into new houses. The Waggoners have moved across the Atlantic from Desford, (Leicestershire) England to Peoria, IL, while the Fredericks have moved from Philadelphia, PA to the Souderton, PA area. They did this without the expertise that we would bring to such a big move, and did it quite well, I might add. Hopefully, we'll get back for Christmas.

Spring Is Officially Declared on Spruce Creek Drive

It is now officially spring! Today is the first day for me to go outside without a coat. For those that know me well, they understand (no, that's the wrong word, they observe) my paranoia concerning colds. I hate getting a cold. And now that I'm singing all the time, it's double the "must stay warm at all costs" mania. Yeah, I probably go overboard, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. There's nothing worse than singing with all kinds of junk in your throat and chest.

So, today I started out with a jacket. About mid-morning I realized that this was massive overkill, that I was sweating like a Mohave Desert trapeze artist (I like the analogy, myself). So, I took it off and it stayed off the rest of the day. I spent quite a bit of time outside working on my yard, cleaning the car, not to mention re-training Trey on how to ride a bike, and not once did I go back. I have to tell you, it felt good!

And to further push the envelope, I also intentionally went without my hat. Folks, summer is a'comin'.

Guru

Trey is becoming quite proficient at the computer. In fact, he can actually smoke me at a couple of games on the Veggietales website. He now knows how to navigate around and find what he wants. I was 20 before I even knew the Internet existed, much less figured it out. Kassady likes hanging out and watching the action (for at least a few minutes). Trey gets ticked when she moves around and jostles his arm. She occasionally attempts to "help" Trey out, which cause much dissension in the Waggoner household.

Rejoice! it's Royce

Royce finally got the group he wanted all along. Here is their new promotional picture. The Royal Roycemen is the new group name. We wish them well.

Back

Well, I'm back from another long weekend. I got home about 6:30 this morning. It's been a long day. I'm tired.

I apologize, but I forgot to take my camera on the road this weekend. Which is very unfortunate, because Liberty had a score of great Kodak moments. I'm adding that to my packing list (I've plagiarized the GBS choir/SWSE checklist) the next time we go out.

This was an enjoyable tour. Our schedule included 5 concerts in 4 states (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming). Wi-fi was not to be found (hence, the lack of posting over the last few days). This was a great trip in terms of enthusiastic crowds. Man, I think every church we visited was plugged in! They even laughed at my jokes (which really helps hone my definition of enthusiastic). I almost felt Seinfeldesque. Almost.

k-la's post

OK, k-la. This post is for you.

UUGGGHH

Trey is no longer allowed to take pictures of me. He is grounded from the camera.

Handywoman

I'm trying to impart to Kassady all of my prodigious knowledge concerning all things mechanical. Here, she begins working on a light fixture. She did a little bit better than I usually do. It took her about 86 minutes to get it fixed, just 13 minutes over my normal time.

Catching Up

Well, after a long break, I'm on the road again. We arrived in Elko, NV a little bit early, so I'm killing a some time before we go set up. We're about 300 yards from a Wal-Mart so Doran and I ran over there to stock up on food items for the bus. Who knew they made Chex mix in a "Turtle" flavor? Good stuff! Try it.

By the way, I got a message from Jonathan this afternoon. Dale has walked about 300 feet today and was able to eat a little breakfast and dinner. Also, great news! It looks like both of his kidneys are operating normally. God is good. This whole thing is a miracle! Keep praying for Dale, though. I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I know that he still has a long road to full recovery ahead of him.

We just got our instrumental tracks back from Nashville for two of our upcoming albums. We're going to be recording a song I wrote, "Great Day", on our June project. It's pretty cool to hear Nashville musicians take your idea and expand on it (which is a good thing, if you ask Chuck). I was impressed.

I don't know when I'm going to have a chance to update this thing, so I'll at least have something by Tuesday.

So, Who Is More Intelligent Here: Man or Monkey?

This article in the the London Daily News cracked me up. Nothing like half-witted tourists.

"A troop of mischievous monkeys at London Zoo have had to be re-trained after showing too much interest in mobile phones.

The ring tones and bright lights proved just too attractive to the squirrel monkeys in their new no-barrier enclosure.

Visitors who held out their phones to video or take photographs attracted attention from the monkeys who attempted to take the object.

A short training programme was developed which put an end to their interest and the monkeys are once again roaming their environment in a more natural state of play.

Staff at the zoo used old mobile phones that some of the keepers donated and put sticky substances on them that squirrel monkeys don't like.

'They soon learned not to touch the phones. They are back to their usual pastimes of sleeping and foraging now," said Malcolm Fitzpatrick, curator of mammals at the Zoological Society of London. '"

If sleeping and foraging are indicators of simian behavior I have a couple of people I would like to recommend to the Zoological Society. One of my favorite comments to the story was posted by Bob from Nevada, MO:

Instead of re-training them, can we breed the phone-grabbing instinct into them, then deploy the monkeys on buses, subways, and in stores and theaters? Sounds like a good way to enforce cell phone etiquette to me.
I would like to second Bob's motion and amend it by adding that if that plan doesn't work, we send in the Trunk Monkeys to finish the job.

(full story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=382180&in_page_id=1770)

I really dig ice cream!

Kassady, not to be left out of the evening's fun (see post below), dug into the ice cream. Literally. I guess it was good 'til the last drop. I like the tongue's anticipation of what's coming.

Wild Game

This picture was taken during "Waggoner family game n' ice cream night". We played UNO, Sorry, and Candyland and enjoyed cookies and cream ice cream. I'm the only one who didn't win a game. As you can see, Trey inherited the Waggoner tendency to enter into the game physically. Both Bobby and I have a propensity to jump up when the game gets to be a little intense. We also start talking louder and louder, each trying to outdo the other. Our family reunions are a little chaotic and require Tylenol.

It's all about who you know...

It's nice to know people who know famous people. Tony, someday I want to be able to hob-nob with the big dogs like you do (I left off the picture of Tony getting bussed by Hillary).

Dale Bailey update

For those with Frankfort connections, I'm sure you have all heard about what has happened to Dale. When he went into surgery this morning, they gave him a 10% chance to make it through the procedure and told Jonathan that he would have to have a leg amputated and a kidney removed even if he did make it. Some of Dale's last words to Jonathan before he went into surgery were "We're serving a big God."

I just got off the phone with Jonathan again and Dale is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. He made it through the surgery to repair his mitral valve, aortic valve, and descending aorta. It looks like he won't have to have his leg amputated. The blood is flowing to the leg and it's pink and functioning normally. He will possibly have to deal with nerve damage to the foot, but if he makes it successfully through the next few weeks, he will walk again. There is also an outside chance that they can save the kidney. He might be able to avoid dialysis.

Keep praying for Dale (as well as for Cheryl, Jonathan, and Susan). The doctor told Jonathan to tell people to keep on praying. He told him that he knew that they were people of prayer, because none of this should have happened. Dale is not out of the woods yet, but there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. Like Dale said, "We're serving a big God"!

Uno is not for the faint of heart

The other night after Grace Teens, a bunch of us played speed UNO. Probably, many of you have played different versions of speed UNO, but this particular variation was crazy. Not only did it involve beating each other to laying down a card, but it also included the switching hands option, the 2 silence rule, the accumulative rule, and a lot of other crazy things that were new to me. It took Ashley a little while to catch on. Here I shove many cards towards the recipient of 4 "Draw 4"s.

One Bad Biker

Shortly before we moved to Idaho, some our dear friends from the Immanuel Church of the Nazarene (Webb and Kate Helton), gave Trey this purple electric motorcycle. I was immediately jealous. I always wanted something cool like that when I was kid. I can't tell you how many times I requested the electric Jeep 4X4 for Christmas only to be disappointed upon opening my present containing dress shirts. I secretly wanted to ride the thing myself.

Well, this is the first year that Trey has actually been big enough, not to mention coordinated enough, to ride the bike. So, he has had a blast. He kind of has the steering down, kind of knows how to break, and definitely knows how to pull the throttle all the way back. It's pretty funny to watch him. He's not real confident in his ability to steer, so as he roars up the sidewalk, he brakes violently before coming to any object. On our block, many people have the mailbox/newspaper box on a pole in the middle of the sidewalk. So, instead of just going around them, Trey flies up to within 3 feet and then slams on the brakes, coming within inches of the boxes. He, then, very slowly and carefully navigates around the object in his way. When he's clear he's back on the throttle.

Our family went for a walk the other night, and Trey wanted to ride. The motorcycle is actually pretty fast. I have to stay at fast jog to keep up with him. While, he was slowly making his way around another box, I took off at a run. I was also pushing Kassady in the stroller. I got up to a driveway about 40 yards down the road and turned around to wait on Lori and Trey. Well, Lori had told Trey to catch up with Daddy and Kassady and Trey took her literally. He came flying up the sidewalk to where we were standing. If I would have been thinking I would have surmised that there Trey doesn't differentiate between obstacles, mailboxes or people. As I stood waiting and Trey got closer it finally clicked that he wasn't planning on braking. Now, the motorcycle is fairly small, and he is only going about 6 or 7 mph, but I'm still thinking that he could cause much damage to my person. Sure enough, he didn't stop, he steered right for us at full throttle. I shoved Kassady out of the way and jumped the other direction as he went motoring by.

He thought it was hilarious! So did my caring wife Lori, who upon seeing the narrowly averted disaster, burst into uncontrollable laughter (which lasted for several minutes). Kassady and I weren't as impressed. We spent the rest of the walk behind Evil Knievel.

Biker Babe

Kassady was insistent upon trying out the bike for herself. I grabbed her just as she was pulling back on the throttle. Close call! That girl ain't scared of nothin'!