rob bell = amazing!

Mmmm. Sounds like camp in my room (my windows are open).

Tonight, thanks to the cooler weather and the inspiration of Joy and I talking today, I went through a whole bunch of stuff in my attic. Old toys, school papers from middle school, etc. I have one box of stuff to give away, and 3 big trashbags that are each about half full of trash. Some of the stuff I found cracked me up. I still have yet to read my essays/creative stuff. I think maybe I oughta scrapbook some of them. That'd be fun, and a nice way to keep them.

Here's an interesting tally of things I found:
~ a Pog (remember those?)
~my Exodus scripture portion and quizzing stuff from that year
~a D.A.R.E. workbook with cartoon characters that are the same style as the Simpsons

Sooner or later I'll recover from this packrat syndrome of sorts.

But anyway, in greater news, I got to spend (part of) the weekend with people from the Easton church. It was amazing. Yesterday we went from the church to Arlington, VA....The highlights of the trip alone were taking pictures of things like the Pentagon (!) and a billboard that had a picture of a pig's head and "Does this billboard make my butt look big?" But our destination was to hear Rob Bell speak.

He was AMAZING. Whew. I can share some quotes and stuff but he talked about everything. For serious. "Everything is spiritual." And it wasn't a typical sermon type deal, with 3 main points or whatever. He just jumped right in when he got on the stage and said, "In the beginning...." and went on from there. AMAZING. Also hooray for dry-erase boards. "Yup." I took like 4 pages of notes in my journal, which I actually am almost finished.

As Jen put it (even though she wasn't there), he talked about "Life, the Universe, and Everything." haha.

On the way back we stopped at Carraba's for "dinner"--at this point it was about 8:30, and we didn't get seated till 9:30. Yikes. I had mezzaluna, which is some sort of ravioli type thing. I couldn't taste the spinach and Joy claimed there was chicken or something in there, that I wasn't sure I could taste. There were a lot of family stories shared at dinner. haha.

I spent the night at Pastor Kevin and Joy's (with only 7 week old Ryan there; the girls were elsewhere), and I got to hold Ryan a bunch while Joy got ready in the morning. Awww. They had cornpops there..."Spin the cornpops"

Lately people have been telling me they don't like babies. Have your own opinion, but having seen two baby boys this weekend (Ryan and 12 day old Roman), I must say, at first glance you can't tell them apart...cuz babies just seem to look the same. I've been babysitting 7 month old Cordelia, and just seeing the difference developmentally between them is crazy. Some babies are cute right away, or they're just cute because they're so little. Hm.

The service at Easton was pretty amazing. Something in Pastor Kevin's sermon I tied to both Brian McLaren and Rob Bell. Crazy.

And then, tonight, we watched this creation vs. evolution video. Rob Bell quote: "Faith or science? yup!" The movie had an intense "us vs. them" mentality going on. Crazy. I talked to Mom-Mom about it later (having Pastor Kevin's sermon in mind) and she said sometimes you have to have that separation, and can't always answer "yup"....Hmmm "Go go gadget brain!" and get ready for the fall! Yikes!