10/11 update (on 10/12)

I will not concede that a day has ended until I've gone to bed...

Things around here continue. That is to say, we continue to exist and take what life is giving us with the best of humor and utmost patience (at least as much as we can muster). Since I wrote last we've: missed a wedding due to a sick child, played for church (my first time, Amy's second), worked, played and dreamed of better days. I find myself looking for the first hints of the vision becoming reality and wonder whether I'll have the patience to even see the thing begin.

I told Amy today (yesterday) about an idea to get us a little more established in the church arts community in the area by hosting a vocal workshop. The idea is that if we can do a workshop on a topic or two with fairly wide appeal, we can begin to develop some relationships with people in the area from other churches, in the hope that word of mouth will spread and allow us to begin to explore more specialized topics on a more regular basis with more people involved. I'll probably mention this at lunch tomorrow (today, okay, I've got to stop that) with Hal, our worship leader at New Hope Family Church, to get his take on it. Amy and I are having to look at this as a personal investment with mailings, flyers and other expenses coming out of our already empty pockets. I'll be looking into some grant opportunities in the months to come, but hope we can get the ball rolling on something soon.

It was good to play again on Sunday. We thought we were going to be out of town at Amy's cousin's wedding, but Xander woke up Saturday morning at 3:00 by throwing up. Instead of heading to Minnesota, Amy and the kids came back here from Yankton and we stayed put. Since we were around, we gave Hal a call to see if we could sit in. I was a bit nervous since I haven't played electric in almost three months and we were doing songs I hadn't heard and others that I knew, but in different keys and/or with different chord progressions. I hacked my way through the sound check/rehearsal and felt embarrassed. I told myself that I wasn't playing to impress anybody, just to worship, which seemed to help quite a bit as the service itself went much better. Any time you play with new people it takes a little time to get comfortable and to know how you fit in. It will still take us some time. I just wish I was able to be at the mid-week rehearsals since that would expedite matters a great deal. That would require either a job change on my part or a schedule change on the church's part. Neither is likely, so here we are. We'll make the best of it, but I hope to prove, over time, to be a consistent, reliable contributor to the team. Sunday I just felt like a warm body for most of the morning.

Amy and the kids got to go to a birthday party in Mitchell for our nephew Chase today while I went to work. Everybody was in bed by the time I got home tonight, but I see balloons hovering at ceiling level, so I'm going to assume that they made it there and back and went to the party.

Today (literally) is my Dad's birthday, an occasion that deserves its own post...