Late nights, fast living

I'm pulling what will most-likely be an all-nighter programming.

I'm working on a new website for Bible Study Fellowship. It's finally due tomorrow and I'm trying to incorporate a lot of semi-last-minute changes that have come over this week.

Meanwhile, this week has been pretty amazing - and I don't mean in a good way.

Last week I was out with the youth group when Nancy called and said we probably needed to take Corben to the E.R. because he couldn't breathe. By the time I got home, she had received a call from the doctor and had treated him with some old medication that the doctor said would be OK to use and Corben was already improving. He had trouble for the next 3 days. Our *brand new* individual health insurance that we just got the previous Friday excluded any coverage for any of Corben's breathing problems, so we forked over $160 for more meds - that won't be applied to our deductible.

He started to improve by the weekend, then Saturday while we were at a young adult party Emma started to look pretty sick. That night she got what Corben had - breathing trouble and all. She's just coming out of that and Abby started to show symptoms yesterday - and then Corben - who was all better - threw up last night at dinner. Our sleep has not been happening for too long.

Monday I launched a site with RF Technologies. I worked with their internal team and a third party shopping cart company to set up an online store for them. It has been mostly good, although there are some integration issues that we are still resolving.

On top of that, I've had this deadline looming. I had it well in hand until all the changes came in this week. Then Tyler's machine started to act up earlier this week. Several times Wednesday it just died while he was working on a project for another client. Yesterday it was worse. This morning it died, then bluescreened, then wouldn't run for more than 5 minutes, and now appears not to work at all. I went out and ordered a new desktop today, which should be ready tomorrow. Tyler has been very patient with the slow laptop he had been using since he started with me in February. Hopefully this new (expensive) machine will improve the overall quality of his development experience.

All of this has been piling up on me this week and I have felt crushed by it all. I had a great meeting with Greg - our pastor - this morning. We sat in Starbuck's and talked about how we are doing, our lives, the life of our church, what's going on, youth, what needs to change, young adult ministry, etc. It was a refreshing time, I didn't want to come back to the office.

Tomorrow night I leave with a group of 6 young adults from Peak for a serving trip in Arapahoe National Wildlife Refuge. We'll be planting willow trees in an area that had been devestated at some point, and now cannot re-grow due to the high population of elk and moose. There is the potential for a lot of wildlife contact, and a lot of contact with folks from Boulder who will be joining us.

June looks like it may bring a repreive - maybe. I have a serving trip to Wounded Knee Indian Reservation in South Dakota with several of the youth the first full week of June. The following week I have a freind from Germany coming to visit with his sister for a week. I haven't seen Steffen in a few years and it will be nice to spend some time showing him Colorado and getting to know his sister.

Well I need to get back to work here, I still have a lot to do.

Thanks for checking in!

Sometime soon I will write about something other than how overly-busy I am - like how this afternoon for a little while I planted potatoes, carrots, beans and onions in our garden - and how great it was to have my 3-year old son and 6-year old daughter get so excited about planting some vegetables.

BIZZEE

So here'sa quick rundown on the past few weeks and what is coming.

Two Saturdays ago our church had a worship retreat for several hours. It was basically to just get everyone on the same page.

That afternoon we practiced for 5 hours for an upcoming worship concert.

Last week Mark and Jackie visited. It was great to spend time with them, we really miss them both.

Friday I went to a young adult ministry training day with Dan Kimball. It was pretty good.

Saturday I took 13 young adults from our church to a conference for young adults put on by RightNow ministries. It was also pretty good. The music was good. Caedmon's Call was there and they are great to watch perform live. That was a 14-hour day.

Sunday I didn't play on the worship team for the first time in a long time. Sunday afternoon I practiced with our church band for 4 hours in preparation for the upcoming worship concert-thing.

Tonight I have youth group.

Tomorrow night I have worship team practice.

Friday night is date night WAHOO!

Saturday we go to Sterling to the big State Prison and play our worship concert. I'm really excited for this. It will be a long exhausting day, and I'm just a little nervous about being in a State Prison.

I've been going too fast - again.

I've had some time to enjoy a few small distractions, though. I bought a small trailer 2 weeks ago and have been putting it together in the garage. I finished it yesterday and loaded it with brush from our yard that needs to be hauled to the dump. I'm planning on drawing this coming Monday night, it's been over a month since I've drawn. I'm trying to finish a very large picture frame for our Pastor's wife. I've been working on this for over a month and am being very careful, but I want to get it to them soon. This morning I went to the men's Bible Study, which I haven't gone to in a few months.

I need to sit down and take inventory of what I'm doing and make some decisions about what needs to be removed or scaled back.