Around The Shoptaw House

It's been a couple of weeks, so let me catch you up some on what's going on around here.

First off, Benjamin has gotten started on T-ball. He's had three practices including the initial "get-to-know-you" one that was more informational than hands-on. He seems to be enjoying it, though the fact that he got "spiky shoes" may overshadow the whole game thing. We haven't gotten his schedule yet, but it looks like it may not run as long as we thought, as the snack schedule has April 30 as a possible team party. No practices this week with spring break, so I'm guessing that his games will start around the first of April.

While he's getting on the field, his daddy is as well. Church softball is starting back up. We've had a couple of practices and, depending on who is playing on a given day and how reasonable the level of opposition is, we might have a chance this year. I wouldn't think a title or anything, but we might not lose all the games.

Played cards last Friday night and it was a wild night. I started off with a lot of hands that were worth at least limping in on (I saw K-9 at lot, including three times in a row) but weren't worth anything after the flop or would be raised even before then. Then I went through a stretch where I didn't catch anything, which probably kept me in the game.

After that, I had a few solid hands that held up and let me build my chip stack back to above-average levels. But not much later came the hand that didn't kill me, but did mortally wound.

Charles goes all-in in fairly early position. It folds around to me and I look down at pocket kings. It's going to take 90% of my stack to call, but what can you do? Charles turns over 9s. Which, of course, means that a nine comes on the flop. I never improve and go out later when I'm big blind holding pocket 9s against pocket aces.

Wasn't the worst hand of the night, of course. Jon and Charles had a memorable one where Charles went all-in and Jon called. Charles has 8s, Jon aces. Eight comes on the flop. Turn is an ace. River is an eight. Quads beating a full house. Jon also lost an ace-high flush to a full house. I told you, wild night.

Meron is heading to Women of Faith this weekend in Shreveport. I think this is the fourth time she's gone (Oklahoma City and Little Rock twice) and she always enjoys them. That means, of course, that I get to juggle the kids while she's gone, but I feel much better about that this year, with Sarah close to two, than I did last year.

We also spent last weekend cleaning up (at least in part) the office/scrapbook room, which means that Meron can now get back to her scrapbook table. She is way behind, but she's already gotten a couple of pages done and I think is glad to have that option for an activity, especially on those nights when Facebook is slow!

Major changes coming to the church. I've talked about the two campus thing and we kick off the planning of that tonight with the first meeting of the launch team which I'm co-chairing. Hopefully I haven't taken on more than I can handle, but I think with so many people getting involved in the different aspects, we should be OK.

Not entirely because of that, because he probably would have moved anyway, but Blake, our pastor for the last four years, is moving on to Little Rock come end of June. Blake's done a lot of good things here and gotten us to the point where we can honestly consider doing the two-campus thing. Four years ago, there wasn't a chance.

Unfortunately, that means Benjamin loses his best friend Micah. We've not told him yet, though, since there's still a good bit of time.

Our new pastor was a fairly surprising appointment. David Scroggin had been director of the Wesley Foundation for over 30 years, but he agreed to step out of that and come back into a full-time preacher mode. His experience and the fact that people know him will be very helpful in getting this other service/location off the ground. It wasn't what we were expecting, but it was what God figured we needed, it seems!

Hopefully I'll be back in less than two weeks with some pictures!