Desert Gills

King's Stilts was a childhood favorite of mine: "Patrol Cats... CHARGE!"

1.    Let me just tell you, theological differences of opinion within a marriage are hard enough, but have any of you navigated 'preferred translation differences?'  Earlier this week, I was reading the family devotional Bible to the kids that I sort of like.  It has nice illustrations and good depth.  Ok, Ok, it does water things down in the text, and my beloved wife prefers her full ESV illustrated Bible.     So in describing the Ruth story, I read to the children that Ruth came to Boaz and said 'she needed a husband.'  Tara grimaced, pulled out her preferred translation, said mine was awful, and had me read hers, where Ruth says "Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer."     7 year old E was reading along in Ruth 3 in his own Bible as he sat next to me, and at these words, his face lit up.  "Thats exactly what mine says," he blurted out excite...

I'm at the end of 4 weeks of intensive French here.  Its been a very productive immersion time.  Every day I have had at least 4 hours of lessons with our teacher above.  She is the same teacher that we had when we were here together last year.  She's a great teacher, and I have really benefited from a lot of one on one correction.  Many days, she and her gracious husband above have had me stay for lunch, or a beer, and plenty of French conversations.  They have been a huge blessing to me.

While we are thankful that no violence has engulfed our hospital's region, those closer to the problems have posted informative reports here , here , and here .

We celebrated Grandma's 60th birthday with a trip to Splash Lagoon.  We don't have pictures from the 'big slides,' but here are our two littlest enjoying the wading pool with Gma and Gpa.