A Man's best friends....Dogs and Cars

The summer is flying by and before long I will be getting up early and heading to work everyday. Since I started teaching I have been ready for school to start back by the time the middle of July rolled around. This summer is different! This summer has went by way too fast and I am no where near ready to go back.

I think I am apprehensive about this new year because I am having to move classrooms, as well as teach a different grade level. With a new grade comes new and unfamiliar standards, as well as new requirements from the state and a different set of teachers. I am teaching 5th grade next year instead of 4th grade and the good news is that I am only teaching Math and Science. It seems like there would be less pressure since I will only be teaching two subjects instead of 5, but 5th grade is a critical year where students are required to pass both the Reading and Math portions of the CRCT to be promoted to 6th grade. Too add more pressure, I will be co-teaching and team teaching which will bring the total number of teachers I am directly working with to 4 (possibly 6, depending on how many co-teachers we have) and means that I will be teaching some of the special education population. Just a lot of changes, as well as added pressure has me nervous about starting the new school year.

There is another reason that I am dreading school starting back! I have gotten some fun new things to play with this summer. One of those things was free and the other was NOT!

First off, there is Daisy! I got a new puppy as soon as the school year ended from a fellow teacher. Daisy is a bullador. At least that is what they are called when they are sold on the open market, but this litter was a complete accident. Daisy is 1/2 registered labrador retriever and 1/2 registered English Bulldog. She looks like a lab but has eyes like a bulldog. She looks at you like she is about to cry, even when her tail is wagging like the propellor on a helicopter. She also sits like a bulldog. She doesn't squat but sits squarely on her rump! She is funny and everyone who has seen her loves her! I just wish she would stop teething and biting on everything that comes near her face!

This is Daisy at about 6 weeks old:


Here she is again at almost 11 weeks...she is growing so fast and is going to be a HUGE dog!


Ahhh...and my newest toy! I finally got my dream car! On July 3rd, I went to Alpharetta and bought a 1967 Camaro RS Convertible. It is SHAAAWWWWEEEETTT! It is basically how I wanted a car. I wanted it to look nice enough for me to drive, but not so nice that I couldn't do a little work on it myself. It is a fun car to drive through the mountains.

I haven't looked at them in a long time because I knew that if I looked it wouldn't be long before I bought one. I was sitting at the 'rents house one day and decided that I would just check on Craigslist and see what the prices of them were running in a poor economy and at the top of the list was a 1967 Camaro RS Convertible. I called Dad and Mom over expecting them to tell me what any reasonable parent would tell their child. I expected to hear that I didn't need to spend the money and that I could wait to get it. NOPE, not in a family who LOVES muscle cars!! Dad said, "That's a good deal! Nancy, call the bank and see if he can get the money." Mom agreed and the next day the deal was done! Not how I expected it to go down, but I am happy with my purchase.

My dad has a 1966 Chevelle that is fully restored. My brother has a 1932 Ford Sedan that he is working on, as well as another 1966 Chevelle. So I figured that it was time that I joined the crowd!

Here she is!

Side View:


Front view......that's mean!



I am also still playing the guitar and I feel like I am getting better at it all the time. I love playing and am keeping myself occupied with one of these three things virtually every second of my day. I am considering and debating about whether I should post some videos of me playing guitar on here to get some feedback from the people who read the blog. I am nervous about that though because I am not sure how I will take the negative feedback. Maybe one day I will get up the nerve...maybe one day soon!

So that is why I am not ready to go back to school this year. I am not ready for the summer to end. I am enjoying this summer like no summer I have had since graduating college! I am content with where God has me right now and there is a peace that is indescribable being in this position. I am trying to stay in THE WORD and to stay humble so that God can use me to help others while I am trying to help myself. I am finding that more and more opportunities are presenting themselves for me to witness to people who do not know the love and forgiveness of living a life with Christ and to Christians who need some help along the way.

I thank God for his blessings and the toys that He allows me to play with in my free time. They are not mine but His and I know that He can take them away just as fast as he has given them to me. My prayer is that I will never let the possessions that God has blessed me with take precedent over the Creator who let me have them in the first place.

Filling time

The more I have thought about that my last post the more I feel that I should explain why, now, after 28 years I have decided to learn to play guitar. There are a few reasons and I will get the vain ones out of the way from the beginning.

Reason 2: Because it would be cool to serenade my future love with the guitar and a song.

Reason 3: Because I have always wanted to be a country music singer. It will probably always stay in my living room or in my car, but you can't be a country star without knowing how to play guitar. It is a rule!

Now reason number 1: Because God wants me to be happy in my relationship with Him and Him alone before getting into a relationship with someone else.

Sounds kind of cheesy I know, but hear me out. I have always hated being by myself. I have always had friends. I inherited them because I am from a family eight generations deep in a small town. At 20 years old, I was diagnosed with a liver disease that eventually caused me to have a liver transplant just before my 25th birthday. Partly because of the lifestyle of my friends and partly because I didn't want to share my pain with others almost all of the friends I grew up with went away.

I became different from them. I no longer drank or partied. I no longer took part in the things that had made our life exciting for the past couple of years. I was scared and had no one to turn to other than my family. I was lonely and I was depressed and didn't know how to handle this.

I had never faced these two things before. I became a Christian as a young boy and grew in faith until I was in high school. I then wondered what I had been saved from and decided that I needed to go out into the world and see what was so bad. I knew that I was running from God and I knew that I was running from the life that he wanted me to live, but at the moment I didn't care. Then my world came crashing down and I had no where to turn. My life was such a mess that I didn't think Jesus wanted to hear about my problems.

I turned to one girlfriend, then another, and another. I was slowly making my way back to Christ but I had no idea of how he wanted me to live. After my major heartbreak last summer, I really began to get into the Word like I never had before. I needed a change and I knew that another girlfriend was not going to give me what I needed. I prayed and prayed until I got one word from God.

"Rest."

That is the hardest thing for me to do. Seriously God? I am 27 years old! My life plan had me married by now with a kid or two. I was supposed to go to college, meet my wife, get married right out of college, and have kids after a couple of years.

God said again, "Rest."

Over the next few months, I began to read about that word and its use in the Bible toward believers. I realized that I can either rest in God's plan or work against His plan. I have decided that I would rest in Him knowing that His plan for my life is much better than my own.

Instead of worrying in my loneliness, I decided to embrace it. One night last fall, I was praying about my loneliness and asking for comfort when God put the thought in my mind about playing guitar. God said to me, "You have always wanted to play the guitar but you have never taken the time to learn it. Now is the time. When you feel lonely, play the guitar. Sing to me, play for me and you will forget about the loneliness."

I would like to say that I picked it up right away but in truth, I only decided to act upon that about 6 weeks ago and I have gotten such a blessing out of playing the guitar. Every free minute I have I am either playing the guitar (if you can call it that!) or thinking about playing the guitar.

Two of my desires in life have always been fitness and music. God has now given me the time, energy, and ability to do both things for Him. It may sound crazy that I am working out for God or playing music for God, but both times are times of worship for me. God has blessed me with a second chance at life because of my liver transplant, so I am called to take care of this body. Every time I work out I can thank God for the opportunity and strength to walk into the gym. Playing guitar has the same effect. I thank God for His grace and His plan for my life. I can't see around the curve in my life that is ahead, but my driver knows exactly where we are going. I have finally decided to REST in God, and I am as blessed at this moment in my life than I have ever been before.

Here is a great Pat Green song to go with the post since I am terrible with pictures!

This Confounded Guitar!

That confounded thang! That is what Grandma uses when things are driving her crazy. The phrase was mostly used like this, "Those confounded kids are driving me up the wall!" That was the joy of growing up next door to your grandparents. We never had the loving, doting grandparents you see stereotyped on TV or written about in books. Ours had the power and need to whip us, fuss at us, or do whatever was necessary to keep us in line. Don't get me wrong my grandparents loved us and still love us beyond measure, but they saw us everyday, not once or twice a year. We got on their nerves! Seven cousins all growing up on the same road, running up and down the same hills, slamming the same screen door a couple thousand times a day. I understand why they were the way they were.

But anyways....about this guitar....

Anyone that knows me, knows that I love three things in this world. Those three things are music, sports, and classic cars. Classic cars have no place in this post, so I will leave them alone for now. So onto music and sports.

I have always been the kid who loved music...any kind of music! My only requirement was that I could sing along. My cousin and I would turn on the radio and bust out some "Islands in the Stream." My brother and I could rock out to Travis Tritt's "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" and David Lee Murphy's "Dust on the Bottle." Heck, my sister-in-law and I bust out Lady Antebellum or Jason Aldean EVERYTIME we get in the car together.

I am not a big fan of bands that scream, but if they have a ballad or two I probably like them. I am always on the lookout for new bands so leave me a comment about some bands I need to check out. I have been told that I should be a music rep who sits in bars and listens to upcoming bands and suggesting who should get a record deal. For the record, I would love that job so if any record execs are hiring.....hit me up! I love music and live music is even better. I am sure that I go to at least 6 large production concerts a year, probably 10 small scale concerts, then there are the local bar acts. I would go to more if I wasn't working off a teacher's salary.

The funny thing is about all of this love for music is that I can't play a single instrument. Not that I haven't wanted to though. I've taken piano lessons off and on growing up, and guitar lessons as well. That is where my other love comes into play. Every time that I would start getting in the swing of playing piano or guitar, some sport would pull me away. Sports were literally a year round thing and always took precedent over the instrument.

My sports consisted of baseball and soccer in spring and summer, soccer and football in the fall, and I would wrestle in the winter. Wrestling would overlap both football in the fall and baseball and soccer in the spring. I spent my entire childhood playing 2 or 3 sports all the time. I had wonderful parents who had no life for 18 years following my brother and me around to our varied sporting events. How I found time to even attend music lessons is beyond me but the music was always the first to go.

After high school, I picked up the guitar a few times and said that I am going to learn to play it only to lay it down after a few weeks. Then about two months ago, I decided that I needed to learn to play. This time I have stayed with it, practiced, gotten some old guitar players from church to help me along and am learning how it all works. I am just not learning fast enough for my liking.

With sports, I was always an athlete. I could pick up playing a sport fairly quickly and be pretty good. I was never the best athlete, but I could hang in there with the best athletes in any sport that I played. I never really faced major frustration with sports. This is where the guitar is KILLING me!

I have to admit that I have come a long way in the 7 or 8 weeks I have been intently playing, but it isn't coming along near quick enough. I can play a few songs, albeit shaky and not quite in time. I have a number of main chords in my repertoire and they are coming along, but I am ready to be jamming out like Brad Paisley or Keith Urban yesterday! I just can't seem to grasp it yet though. My fingers do not want to go where my brain is telling them and my right hand just wants to stop working when the left hand is moving! Everyone tells me that I am doing good and if I keep working it will come! I'm working but I do wish that it would hurry. Patience is a virtue that I have yet to be blessed with, though God has tried to put in there.

So the point of this post is that if I could only learn the guitar I would be on my way to Nashville, cause singing isn't the problem. Singstar says I should already be there!


Here is the brother being boring playing Singstar with his hand in his pocket and eyes intent on the screen. Fortunately, there are no pictures of Tanya or myself rockin' it out. I think I feel another Singstar party in the works! Maybe to celebrate the beginning of summer break!

If you have any tips for me about how to play this confounded geetar....leave a comment.