Gaither Vocal Band - "It is Finished"

Whew! This is good stuff. The best version yet! I'm looking forward to the Gaither Concert all that much more now. David's solo is awesome!

TJ

Hide and Seek

Nelson-the guy I work with- and me have started playing hide-and-seek in the clean room at work when it's slow. Yep. Hide-and-seek. Not for long. Just something to do. So I thought I had found the perfect spot. I was between 2 doors. There's like a 2 foot gap in between the walls. So I found a spot behind a double door that really doesn't get used much. I thought it was a great spot until he couldn't find me. I heard someone moving around outside the door so I became a little concerned. Sure enough, they were getting ready to open the outside door. My quick thinking came to mind. I opened the inside door and bent over acting like I was cleaning up broken glass. It was a good move. He didn't even notice when he opened it. Good times.

TJ

David Letterman at Taco Bell

I used to have a video tape I recorded of the David Letterman Video Special #3. This is Dave "working" at Taco Bell. It's great.

Good News!

We got our foster care license in the mail today! We are now ready for kids! Woohoo! We are going to Little Falls to visit the kids again on May 1st and 2nd. We are still waiting for some of the paperwork on their side to be completed. Hopefully soon!

TJ

Dove Awards

I've got to get with it. The Dove Awards are tomorrow night and I haven't picked my winners yet! Every year I pick who I think will win. Why, I don't know. But I do it anyway. I can actually watch them on The Gospel Music Channel. Woohoo!

Here's a list of my pics for winners. My pics are highlighted in yellow.

TJ

weekend

Will, Melissa and Adelynn came up for the weekend. We had a good time. On Saturday we went to the Como Zoo in St. Paul. It's a free zoo. We saw all sorts of animals (and people). I have a really good story about Sunday but I just can't share it on here. Let's just say it may not be a good thing that Melissa finds everything funny. There's a short summary of the weekend.

TJ

New York Recap

TJ keeps telling me to do this, so now is the time. New York was SOOOOOO great! I totally want to go back again sometime. I'm going to get TJ to go with me next time. There is plenty to do, and we didn't not come close to doing it all. We spent most of our time around Times Square. On our way there we realized that Rockefeller Plaza was only 4 blocks from our hotel so that was cool. We walked up to the Ed Sullivan Theater, and we wanted to go to the Hello Deli. It was closed, and we thought maybe he was only open when Dave was taping, but as we got closer there was a sign in the window that said, Attention Customers, after 16 years, we are finally going on vacation we will be gone from Friday through Monday. Rupert and Mary.
So the only time they've ever gone on vacation was the only 4 days we were there! Oh well. Maybe next time.
Saturday it was raining... we had quite the adventure on the bus tour getting soaking wet, and freezing our hind end's off! It wouldn't have been so cold if we were not wet! But it was still fun, and funny to think back on. :) Dana and Lyle's wedding was set for 6:30 on Saturday, and it stopped raining just in time! That was awesome. We took some really neat pictures of them in Central Park. The trees are already budding over there, and the grass is green, so that made it look even prettier.
On Sunday it was nicer. A little windy, but Sunny! We took a bus tour UpTown, along Central Park, through Harlem, The Upper East Side, and down Millionaire Mile. I got lots of pictures of really cool buildings. We went past the Museum of Natural History. We should have gone there after hours to see the people come to life. :) ha ha
In the afternoon we had a Cruise booked to go around the island. We got to see the skyline, and they told us about the buildings, not that I really remember it all, or any of it! :) And we drove right past the Statue of Liberty. We decided not to take the ferry out to the Island since we drove right by it anyway. It looks pretty much the same when you are 50 yards, compared to 50 feet away from it. Just bigger I guess! I took lots of pics of that too. If you want to pretend you were there, just send me a picture of yourself, and I'll photshop you in. :)
Late Sunday night we got in line to go to the top of the Empire State Building. I think we finally got to the top and out on the observation deck about 11pm... it was so beautiful to see the city in lights at night. I'm glad we went at night instead of during the day. Interesting tid bit about the Empire State Building.... They built it in 13 months... building 4 stories a week. They almost went bankrupt because of building so quickly, and no one wanted to rent it, or come see it. But then the movie kind kong came out, and once they filmed him at the top in the movie, everyone wanted to come and go to the top. So the movie saved it from going bankrupt. In fact, so many people came after that, there was a constant 8 hour wait to get to the top for 5 straight years after the movie came out. I could not imagine waiting in line for 8 hours just to go to the top. We only waited for a little over an hour.
Monday morning we went to the Today show, and got to be on TV! Plus I got a picture of LeAnn Rimes. She was right in front of me. I could have touched her if I wanted, but that would be weird. Some of the pics are on facebook. I can't post all 400.... that would take forever. Just think how big my scrapbook is going to be!
Well.... that's the recap. I could say more, but I better keep it short.
-Stephanie

Famous

Wow. My wife is so famous. So, of course, that makes me famous. Stephanie was on the Today Show this morning in the audience! She called me last night and told me to record it cause they were going to go down there. So I did, not really thinking they would get on tv. But sure enough, right at the beginning of the 9 o'clock hour there they were, yelling and waving right behind Matt Lauer and some other lady filling in for Meredith Viera. It was so exciting. Stephanie even pinched Matt's butt. : )

She comes home later tonight so she'll have to blog tomorrow and maybe post some pics.

TJ

Live from New York

Hey all!  We are at Dana's hotel helping her prepare her hair for the big wedding.  Yesterday was beautiful.  Today it rained, and rained.  It has finally let up, just in time for the wedding! Yay.... We took a taxi to get here.  That was awesome.  They made me be the one to hail the taxi. 

We're having a great time, even considering we were soaking wet after riding the open top bus and walking in the rain all day.

We'll I'll get into all the details later.  Just letting you know we're having a good time.  We need to skit-scat over to central park for the wedding now.

Chow-

Stephanie

Hand Model

I'm sorry, but this is funny. I got this off of WHOTV.com.


Iowa Hand Model Settles Suit With Martha Stewart

A Clive hand model and magician who lost a fingertip in a mishap with a lounge chair marketed under the Martha Stewart Everyday brand and sold by Kmart has settled a lawsuit with the companies.

An attorney for Patrick Albanese says the confidential settlement was reached Thursday. Albanese filed the lawsuit in November, claiming the chair collapsed when he moved it last June, snipping off the tip of his right index finger.

Albanese claimed Kmart and Martha Stewart were negligent for not issuing a warning about the chair, for not inspecting the chair and in its design.

The fingertip was reattached but Albanese's attorney, Guy Cook, says he still has some loss of feeling in the fingertip, which has affected his slight of hand magic skills.
--------------------------------------

TJ

Just got back from my nephew's birthday party. Now I'm going to watch The Office. Stephanie, Jamie and Shirley went shopping a little bit. They are leaving the house tomorrow morning around 3:30am! Crazy. And I thought I got up early. Their flight leaves at 6:30am. I don't think they need to get there that early. Better safe than sorry, I guess. I'll have to have Stephanie blog from NYC. I know she will be taking lots of pictures. I'll have to post some.

TJ

Acting

I don't do drama. I'm not serious enough.

I'm in the Easter Cantata at church. I'm not singing in the choir, but am speaking. It's a dialogue between Peter, John, Jesus and Mary between songs. I'm John. It's not even really acting. It's just reading. But I have a really hard time reading with passion in my voice without being funny. I'm too much of a comedian. On Saturday evening we had practice at church. Thankfully, it was just the readers. I'm the first one to speak and when I read my first line I read it with a low voice like a radio DJ. Well, that set off Keith(Peter) and Bri(Mary). Jesus wasn't really laughing. So every time we read read we would try not to laugh then someone would hear a little snicker and we would all bust out laughing. It was not good. So we'll see how the real performance is. I'm normally fine during the real thing. Hopefully.

TJ

Snow Coming

I'm typing this on a beautiful Saturday morning. But, it's not going to stay that way. We're supposed to get around 5" of snow tonight. I really hope this is it for snow. I'm ready to go swimming. If you look out our sliding door in back you can see the water slides at the new Owatonna water park. It opens next week. :)

Good news for some of you, including me. The Gaither Vocal Band will be at the Clay County Fair in Spencer, IA on Sunday, Sept. 13th! This is the first time I've ever seen them at a fair. I know they have a big European Tour through October and they are still in some big arenas this fall so it's not like they are getting desperate or anything. This is actually a pretty big fair with some big names. It looks like this will just be the GVB too. There is no one else advertised for this concert and it starts at 7:30pm, so that kinda makes me think it will just be the Vocal Band.

TJ

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

I thought this was pretty good.

Stephanie just got done setting up for the garage sale this weekend. Hopefully she has half decent weather for it. They have a lot more stuff than they thought. After work I drove Stephanie all around town so she could post Garage Sale ads all over. The garage sale starts at 8 am on Friday and it's also on Saturday so come on over.