Thank you for all your prayers

To all of our friends that I haven't gotten back in touch with the last week, here is a brief summary of what has been going on.

• Friday Mom and 2 friends from the D.C. area came into town. We were looking forward to a fun filled Derby weekend.
• Friday Night the rains started
• Saturday morning, Mom, Sally, Sally E and I all headed out to Louisville in the pouring rain. Kris was called into work and worked 16 hours on Saturday.
• We had a great time at the Derby, the experience was eye-opening, appalling at times, wet, exciting, overall long day. There are many stories that maybe I will get around to at some point.
• Sunday the rains continued to fall. We headed home from Louisville in the pouring rain again, Kris went back into work at 8am.
• Somewhere between 9 and 9:30 the water started filling up at the center he works at. The guys that were working that day were eventually stuck on the roof watching all the trucks drown on the 13+ feet of water. In all about 80 vehicles were lost at West Center. They guys were rescued from the roof several hours later by police boat.
• The rains finally stopped Sunday evening. Kris was home safely, Sally & Sally E's flights were cancelled and got to spend another night with us, and Kris's sister Pam arrived safely in Nashville from Portland. The rivers continued to rise Sunday night and more flooding hit downtown Nashville and other lower areas from the swelling rivers. It was confirmed that a tornado had touched down in the Rivergate area about 5 miles from us, which caused alot of damages to homes, business trees and power lines in a 5 mile stretch.
• It has been a very busy, stressful week so far. We are very thankful and grateful that the only thing lost is our truck and Kris work equipment, all very much replaceable. The clean up continues as the rivers slowly start to recede. It will be a long process for Nashville. Mom and Pam are still here visiting with us. We are hoping we will be able to have some fun still this weekend. Kris has been working 12 hour days and we are hoping he will have this weekend off.

Samaritan's Purse Responds to Historic Floods in Nashville

Much of Nashville is under water, thousands of people in Tennessee have been driven from their homes, and nearly 20 people have died in some of the worst flooding in memory.
Our first Disaster Relief Unit arrived in Nashville last night, and we are coordinating a response with local church partners. Volunteers are being mobilized from across the country. More emergency relief equipment is on the way.
Our crews specialize in cleaning out mud-soaked houses so that they can be repaired. As we work, we help families cope with their losses and offer them hope in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just a few days ago, I was in Nashville for the Dove Awards at the Grand Ole Opry House, which is now flooded. It is hard to imagine the scope of the destruction.
The people of Nashville need our prayers. So do victims of recent tornadoes in Mississippi and floods in Rhode Island, where Samaritan's Purse also has deployed Disaster Relief Units. Thank you for lifting them up and helping to meet their needs in the Name of Jesus. May God bless you.
Sincerely,

Franklin Graham
President, Samaritan's Purse

WAYS YOU CAN HELP
Pray for people who have been affected by the flood.
Volunteer to help flood victims in Tennessee. Church teams are especially welcome.
Give to support our U.S. Disaster Relief ministry. It costs us about $22 per day to provide a volunteer with meals, camp lodging, and other services.

Once upon a time, in a magical land called grandma's house...Lived a very cute and cuddly bear,...that had a wild side! Her ferocious teeth said it all! Only an old, wise bear would be missing so many teeth. One day an unfortunate hunter crossed her path. The skilled hunter did his best to fend her off with his bare hands. Only when he realized he would not be able to defeat the powerful bear, he radioed for help.

His hunting partner quickly trapped the bear.



Eventually, the cute, cuddly, old bear surrendered on the floor of Papa's shop.

Goetsch wins both High Power Silhouette Championships

Goetsch wins both High Power Silhouete Championships

High Power Silhouette Championships down to final match

Many more reports from Nationals can be found on the NRA Blog. I will fill in more details later, as well as all the shenanigans my mother was up to last week.

NPR

I'm pretty sure that anyone who actually checks this page loves me. That is the only reason I am sharing this link. I received an email this morning from a customer that heard me on NPR, and said I did a very good job. My reply to him was "um...what did I say?" You can hear it for your self here.

Need some sunshine?

Sitting here in rainy, dreary Germany is making me long for the sunshine, warm sand, and the sound of the ocean. Hopefully this will spread some warmth to all of us!

At the Mayan ruins of Coba with Mom and Dad.

Kris and I climbed the pyramid. It is the second tallest pyramid in the Latin America, the tallest being the Jaguar temple in Guatemala. I'm sure that pyramid has a better name, but you get the jest of it. This is only about 1/3 of the way up to the top and I already needed a rest.

We made it to the top! Now the hard part....going down. If I had known I wouldn't have been able to walk without pain for the next 3 days, I might not have climbed it. But there was an amazing view of the surrounding jungle from the top.

This is the view from our room. I couldn't get enough of it. Luckily the bugs weren't too bad this time of year because we kept our balcony door open the whole time.

We went to Xel Ha one day, which is a natural water park place. There was everything from tubing down the river threw the mangle (those pictures are still on underwater camera) to snorkeling, and dolphin encounters which was really fun to watch. Kris found some great cliffs to dive and flip off of. Mom went boogie boarding for her 62nd birthday. Yes I did just say that number out loud. That's Dad in the background. He needs more practice at this.
Back to reality. We arrived home late at night right as it started to snow and woke up to this! Well I guess the vacation is over! The only thing better is if we were completely snowed in for 2 more days to rest after a great trip.

74 days later

I have a new friend of a friend over right now that told me the most amazing thing. She reads my blog! (when there is actually something to read). So we all know how the holidays get to us, and January and February are always so busy in my industry with trade and sales shows. And of course February is filled with umpteen dozen family & friend birthdays. So here I am again, 74 days later.

For those of you that try to keep up with me, I have been to Salt Lake City, Orlando, Louisville, Park City, KY and Cancun in the last 2 months and am packing up for another business trip soon. I have turned 29 (or how my friend Ashley put it, had my first 29th birthday), started scrapbooking again, and finally managed to surprise Kris with a gift. I can never surprise him, but I finally got him this time.

Kris has a unicorn: a FN PS90 which in my opinion is a ridiculous gun, but Kris has always been in love with it. You can see it here and decide for yourself. Numerous times he has saved up enough money to buy it, but then would decide he wanted something else...like his motorcycle, or a varmint hunt, or an Audi. Finally, I was able to track down a green one, which of course is much cooler looking than the black one. I bought it the day before my birthday and hid it at Aaron & Ashley's.

The next day we stopped by Aaron & Ashley's to pick them up for my birthday extravaganza, and they had 2 presents wrapped for me. The first one were some really awesome Franco Sarto boots. Love them. Kris looked at the second gift and said "Aaron if I didn't know any better, I'd say you bought my wife a gun." I opened up the gift and there was the FN PS90 box. Aaron, Ashley and I were all staring at Kris and he was just staring at the box. I have never seen him so stunned, speechless, awestruck...he couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally said to him, "well are you going to open it?"

"But it's your birthday" he said.

"I bought it for you though."

"But I'm confused!"

He finally opened the box and was so excited to finally have his unicorn. After he could finally speak, he said his first thought was Aaron had found the graphic design of the box and created a box to look like it. Then he thought somehow I had gotten an empty box from a friends gun shop just to mess with him. Until I told him to open the box, he didn't actually believe it was a real gun. He was just like a little kid with his favorite toy.