MAC Portland, OR
I’m grateful to John Gualy for taking care of Justus. The three of them are flying, rooming, eating and playing together. Once the gymnastics meet is over, they will go to the mountains on Sunday for some snow sledding and hiking.
John is promising to text Justus scores as they come in. This is the first time I can fully appreciate SMS technology. Okay, so I’m a little slow, but I’m coming around.
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The next morning, after returning from a week-long trip to Disney World, Justus performed at a gymnastics meet. Considering he had no workouts for a week, he did great. He stuck many of his landings and improved his scores from WOGA on both Rings and Vault. Justus felt good about his outing despite his setback on Pommel. Below are a couple of pictures and video of Justus’ performance. Enjoy!
-D
Justus in a split on floor routine
Justus on parallel bars
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Merry Christmas – 2009
Amidst the clamor and chaos this season is Grace. She shines far brighter than any Christmas tree, lit rooftop or mechanical reindeer. She is more hopeful than any child gawking gifts or mother giving birth.
As captivating as her countenance appears, her message is scandalous. Her disclosure makes no apology, requires no alliance to advance, and serves no one. She is disappointing – disappointing to anyone who would try to dilute her potency, malign her authority, or dowse her resolve.
Hear her message:
Truth and I are personified through a babe who was born in a filthy barn. This boy grew up among the poor and underprivileged, stood defiant against traditional wisdom and established religion, and died after public ridicule and torture.
And yet His story was not by chance, but by grace-filled intention.
Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges; He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated Him to the place of highest honor and gave Him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Philippians 2:6-11 (NLT)
For His birth announcement, flashes of lightning and thunderous voice were replaced by the light of a singular star and the voice of an angel. Deserved fanfare was dismissed for shepherds and vagabonds. And wondrously, the Creator of the universe was conceived and born.
Jesus embodied grace – the grace of love and unmerited favor towards us. The extent of which Jesus reached out to each of us so personally, so completely, so undeniably proves the size and scope of His love for you and me.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8 (NIV)
The message is simple. To the sage and noble, the message is foolishness. To the humbled, healed and forgiven, Grace lives and abounds.
May you and yours find a new sense of grace, wonder and joy through the birth of our Savior.
Merry Christmas,
-D
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Valeri Liukin, a former gymnast for the dissolved Soviet Union, competed in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea and received a gold medals in team competition and high-bar, and silver medals in parallel bars and all-around. Today, he is an Olympic coach and co-owner of three gymnastic training centers in the Dallas area. You may recognize his last name as more recently, his daughter, Nastia Liukin, was also a gold medal Olympian gymnast competing in the 2008 games.
This year, Justus and his team were invited to compete in the Valeri Liukin Invitational (for a second year in a row). So, last Thursday afternoon, Lisa, Justus and I packed up the car and drove up to Frisco, just north of Dallas for a Friday morning competition. Rebecca stayed behind with friends.
The four-and-a-half hour drive was pleasant. We stayed at an aLoft Hotel, owned and managed by Sheraton. The accommodations where very contemporary and chic – not something we would normally go for, but it was cool. For Justus, the chic aLoft was a pretty special place.
Friday morning, we made our way first to Starbucks (for me) and then to IHoP (for him). (You see, I already knew, being the self-professed coffee snob I am, that I wasn’t going to be happy with IHoP coffee. They’ve disappointed me before. The extra stop before breakfast was not only nice but mandatory.) The morning was very relaxing: Justus’ stomach wasn’t in knots, he ate well, and we had a few laughs with the camera (see pictures below).
After breakfast, we drove to the gym where Justus checked in promptly at 9am. The facilities are the best we’ve been to in the four seasons we’ve experienced. This working gym is huge, open feeling and very clean. There are permanent bleachers set up on two sides of the gym for parents and other visitors.
Justus and his team did very well. Their performance and attitudes were much better than last year. Last year, Justus’ gut was in knots before the event, and he was crying when the event was over. Not good. This year felt completely different. The boys knew this was the first competition of the season, they knew that they were not entirely ready and that was okay. What a difference a year makes.
Justus’ best score of the day was on rings, 14.8, placing him 12th out of 52 boys. In all, he scored 14+ on four of the six events. A very strong start. (Level 7 is well-known as the “weed-out” level. So, it’s important that Justus, the coaches and the team pace themselves for the demanding season.)
After the meet, the Level 7 boys scarfed some old fashioned steakburgers and frozen custard at Freddie’s down the street. The boys had fun being boys and the parents enjoyed just hung out. A good time was had by all.
Pictures and video are below. Feel free to leave your “shout outs” and encouragements for Justus in the comments section.
-D
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Thanksgiving and snow!
Thanksgiving weekend was filled with loving family and fabulous food. Mom and Dad Hyde drove in on Thanksgiving Day with Nanaw. We spent the majority of the day at the Brandau’s snacking, watching football, eating a huge dinner and enjoying each other’s company. Warren offered a touching and heartfelt prayer of Thanksgiving and we all had a great time. (I’m reminded each time our two families get together how wonderful everyone gets along. In fact, my folks have taken trips to Europe with Lisa’s folks without us! But we’re not bitter.) Lisa, the kids and I made out like bandits with the leftovers. We didn’t go to the grocery store for a week! Thanks to the Brandau’s for their gracious generosity and huge hospitality.
On Friday of the next week, Houston and surrounding areas received a couple of inches snow! It was the earliest snowfall in Houston history (by five days), snowing from about 9am to 2pm. By the time the kids came home from coop, the snow had already melted a bit, but that didn’t stop them from dropping there wares at the back door to play in the front yard.
Below are some pictures of the Thanksgiving gathering and celebration in the snow.
– D
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Lessons learned from a yard sale
A couple of weekends ago we had our first big yard sale. By all accounts it was highly successful: we made over $500 in cash, visited with complete strangers, and sold almost everything.
Timeline:
5:45am – The alarm clock sounds; Justus and I make a pot of coffee and begin sweeping off the driveway and sidewalks.
6:15am – Rebecca, Justus and I begin putting out the goods. Lisa makes a pot of oatmeal. The sun is coming up.
6:30am – We notice die-hard bargain hunters circling the block. We are still putting out and displaying items.
6:45am – Our first two customers grow tired of waiting. They park at the curb and begin browsing. We are still pulling our wares in the yard – boxes and boxes of clothes, shoes, books, toys, videos, electronics, sports goods and exercise equipment.
8:05am – The first wave of shoppers is gone. Half of our inventory is already depleted. The ten signs Justus and I put out around the neighborhood the night before say, “Big Yard Sale.” I’m already feeling we’re now committing false advertising.
11:30am – The major traffic has come and gone, only the occasional straggler browses the leftovers. Justus and friends make signs stating everything must go, every item is half-price.
1:30pm – Lisa’s parents bring us lunch. We are so hungry!
2:30pm – We close shop and clean up. Whatever remains is put directly in the truck for a single trip to Katy Christian Ministries.
It was a great day.
In our preparation of the event, Lisa, the kids and I sorted and categorized. Our dining room looked like a self storage unit. We read blogs of experts on the strategies of yard sales. Time and time again we read not to expect great success in selling books and clothing items, especially shoes. Well, of course we had hundreds of books, clothes and oh yes, a sea of shoes. Lisa and I priced everything in hopes of blessing others, not to make a lot of money (Most children’s books, shoes and articles of clothing went for 25-50 cents). Nothing was sold tattered, broken or with missing pieces.
Our first blessing that morning came a little after 7am: an elderly Hispanic couple speaking very little English. They saw all the children’s clothing and shoes. They took an entire bin of shoes before Rebecca could finish sorting them. They filled seven yard bags of clothes to presumably take back to their extended family in Mexico. In hindsight, we had the perfect amount of clothes. The old man looked through my table of electronics and asked if I had an amplifier for sale. I didn’t have one on the table, but felt compelled to fetch the 200W Sony Dolby surround-sound amplifier collecting dust in the house. I sold it to him for a song.
Two days prior, I mentioned to a family friend that I was selling a 4×8 speaker cabinet with a Peavey 400W amplifier, a beginner electric guitar player’s dream. I was asking $50 for it. That evening, the friend’s son, who plays guitar in a youth rock band at our church, called to inquire about the cabinet. We had a great “nerdy” conversation. As he was about to hang up the phone and ask his dad if he could buy it, I felt Jesus prompting me. I told the teen that if I thought there would be any possibility that this equipment would contribute to the honing of his gifts and the sharpening of his faith, I wanted him to have it. He was blown away.
About midmorning of the yard sale, a special needs teacher dropped by and thumbed through the boxes of books. I helped her make trips to her car with all the books that would soon bless her classroom. In hindsight, we had the perfect amount of books.
Later that morning, a car pulled over and a lady climbed out to inquire about the golf clubs on display. She asked seemingly disappointed already, “These are right-handed aren’t they?” I said, “No, actually they are left-handed.” She lit up and called her teenage son from the car. Her son tried out the clubs. The clubs, golf bag, accessories and even the golf shoes were perfect for him. The teenager was so pleased he could start playing and the mom was simply delighted.
Sure, we were blessed to make some money and to regain storage space in our house. But I think in the end, we were more blessed to be a blessing to others, and that will stick in our minds long after the event is over.
-D
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New Windows
This weekend we took another step in remodeling the house – we replaced all 15 contractor-grade single-pane windows with energy efficient windows. The effort took about seven hours to complete. The house feels seriously upgraded (one of the few upgrades you can enjoy inside and outside), the view is clearer (the old windows were tinted brown), and the occasional barking dog and passing truck are greatly muted. Below is a video journal of the day’s events, from demolition to installation. Enjoy!
-D
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Rough Evening at Gym Practice
When I picked Justus up from practice this evening, everything seemed fine. He was walking and cutting up with his friends like normal as he came out to the truck. Once he got in the car he proceeded to tell me he fell backwards from a handstand on parallel bars. He said he didn’t know what to do, so he just closed his eyes and said to himself, “Oh snap…”
He fell on his backside from what we can tell, but not before hitting his inside ankle and right armpit on the bar on his way down. When I got him home, I inspected his armpit and found a large red welt. We iced him down before bed: one pack on the ankle under the Ace bandage, and one under the cellophane rap around his right shoulder.
All seems well. We’ll see how he feels tomorrow.
-D
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2009 Harvey Family Reunion
This year, Mom hosted the Harvey family reunion (‘Harvey’ is Mom’s maiden name). Everyone seemed to enjoy the cooler weather and Mom’s family recipes. Nancy, Dennis and Sharron came in from Illinois, while Aunt Betty Lou, Lowell and Rhonda hailed from Arkansas. Johnny, Paula and the boys joined us for the weekend gatherings. Lisa and Rebecca came in from Katy, and Justus and I drove in from Oklahoma City following his Future Stars regional qualification meet.
Both Saturday and Sunday evening, we all enjoyed good food, shared lots of laughs and exchanged stories of our favorite memories. Many of the stories we’d heard before. To our surprise, there were also some new ones. Still, we were touching our past by keeping those memories alive – our own verbal history of sorts. For some of us, we never got to shake hands with our great uncle Edward, or hear the laugh of our Great Grandma Elizabeth, but by listening to the stories from those who knew them, we enjoyed reaching back and getting to know them a little better.
– D
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One of our family goals this year is to visit at least three Texas historical sites. The Battle of San Jacinto was fought in modern day La Porte, Texas, just east of Houston. Even though the weather was rainy and blustery, we were determined to enjoy each other’s company and further our goal despite what the skies were saying. From our house, it takes about an hour to get to the location of this final battle where Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836. From that underdog and unconventional victory, Texas was instantly transformed from being a underrepresented and under-appreciated territory of a dictatorship to its own sovereign nation.
Before visiting the battlefield, we stopped and visited the nearby USS Texas, a WW I battleship docked in a dedicated slip off of Buffalo Bayou and the Houston Ship Channel (video). The ship’s restoration was commissioned in 1990 under Governor Clements and is still underway today. Several of the compartments are fully restored and underscore the inherent requirements of the ship’s self-sufficiency (i.e., the barber shop, the dentist, the surgical ward, a soda fountain). Another observation was the location and accommodations of ranks on the ship. The officers ate, slept and worked toward the bow (front) of the ship where it was quieter. As we made our way aft (rearward) on the ship, we noticed that the ranks became lower and lower. The common shipmen class worked, ate and slept in much more modest conditions aft, toward the stern, where living and working in close proximity of the engine rooms meant putting up with the constant noise and incessant vibration. In my opinion, the lowest job on the ship had to be the shoveling of coal into the boilers. We could, even now, sense the dank, still air down on the third deck. It must have been miserable.
From the ship, it was a short drive within the same state park to the San Jacinto Monument, a look-alike of the Washington Mall and Monument. Leave it to Texans to make the San Jacinto Monument not only the world’s tallest war memorial, but also 15-foot taller that the Washington Monument in Washington DC. The memorial sits precisely on the ridge that separated the Mexican and Texas armies prior to the final battle April 21st, 1836. Inside the memorial is a museum of Texas artifacts dating back to Nuevo España times (1535). Massive acrylic paintings, depicting milestones in Tejas history, line chamber walls crowned by ornate twenty foot ceilings. We took an elevator up to the observation deck overseeing the landscape and surrounding areas. It was there that I finally understood the position of the armies on that fateful day. The battle was won decisively in less than twenty minutes. General Santa Anna surrendered. The Texas victory not only paved the way for Texas independence and annexation to the US, but led to the inevitable US-Mexican War in which Mexico ceded over a half-million square miles of land to the US (becoming California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico).
All the pictures in the album below are courtesy of Rebecca (except for the pictures she is in, of course). Enjoy!
-D
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Vacations lead to blisters
I’m enjoying the idea of being away from the office for a week, so much so that I’ve already made the mental shift to “vacation status.” The feeling that leads you to say careless responses like, “Whatever. I’m on vacation,” and “Oh sure, dear. Whatever you want to do.” Usually it takes me more than a weekend for me to make this shift. And three-day weekends are usually not enough either; by the time I ascend to my personal sabbatical stratus, it’s time to descend like those short commuter flights that don’t even have time to pass out peanuts.
Well so far, this state of blissful tranquility has led only to my demise (and I have seven days to go):
- I practiced my guitar a ton. Now my fingers are blistered.
- I offered to shop for groceries this weekend, and then proceeded to completely blow our cash budget by, um, $100. I guess I don’t have a good feel for that. Lisa thinks I just need more practice. (Why doesn’t somebody add price scanners to shopping carts?)
- Later that morning a family friend, leaving for vacation, brought over a box of fresh vegetables from the farmers coop. Now it turns out I shouldn’t have bought so much at the grocery store.
- My lack of planning for the evening has led Rebecca to share a movie she picked out at the video rental store – a total teeny chick flick. It was cute, but entirely predictable.
Really, this weekend was full to the rim with thankfulness and gratitude.
- My family has already had several family meals together in a row.
- Although not quite as enjoyable for Justus, I helped him with his math homework.
- In church yesterday morning I shared a testimony of Lisa’s conquering of cancer. Thank God! Next April will be her ten-year anniversary being cancer free.
- Lisa’s parents, Nancy and Warren, treated my family to more food for the refrigerator and a dinner out (which is always enjoyable).
While I’m vacationing, this week will be “normal” for everyone else in the family. I look forward to getting some things done around the house, likely leading to more blisters. The kids have their schooling and activities. As a slight change of pace, we’ve planned an outing Tuesday afternoon to the San Jacinto Monument and Battleship Texas together. That should be fun.
-D
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One school year at a time
Like most of you, Lisa and I are PSKs (Public School Kids). For the most part, public schooling was a positive experience for us both. In fact, its positive influence inspired Lisa to seek a career as a middle school teacher. Wow. I don’t know about you, but it takes something really special to influence one to become a middle school teacher. (wink!) But that’s a subject for another day. Since then, she has changed her career to full-time motherhood/home operations manager/social coordinator/taxi driver. (Actually, her title goes on and on, but that too is a subject for another day.)
With all that said, our kids are experiencing something quite different. Although they’ve started in public schools, we’ve slowly transitioned them from public, to private to home schooling. And this year will be the final step.
It’s been a terrific journey for all of us. Each summer we evaluated how the previous school year went and planned for the next. Each wary step was made with prayer and careful consideration. We never looked beyond that. We simply took one school year at a time with only two simple stipulations:
- We would stick to our decision the whole year, and
- if we didn’t like the outcome, we could backup to what did work the next year.
That’s it.
We’ve had a lot of folks ask us why. Why would we enroll our kids in private school or home school while living in one of the strongest academic school districts in the Houston area? Admittedly, Lisa and I have wrestled with this for several years. (I don’t mean arm wrestling, leg wrestling or WWF, I mean the cerebral kind.) Some of the reasons why homeschooling seems right for us at this time are:
- We believe in the superior ideals and principles of the classical education model introduced to us by Grace Classical Academy (GCA) three years ago.
- We love the flexibility that home education brings, both in terms of customizing the curriculum for each child and scheduling agility around activities. (A flexible schedule is increasingly important for Justus, for example, since his competitive gymnastics program takes more and more of his time).
- We feel that much of the public school day is woefully inefficient.
- As for organized social activities, Justus and Rebecca remain fulfilled through gymnastics, theatre, baseball, dance and coop clubs. We don’t need the public school system for that.
- While we don’t intend to shelter our kids from the intense secularism that plagues our society and experienced in our schools, we intend to introduce it to them on our terms using a biblical world view.
Suffice it to say, we’ve studied and prayed hard.
And so the transition began with our first year at GCA. I’ve never thought about it before, but it’s seems that GCA was purposed to be catalyst for getting us to this point. Even though Lisa hadn’t taught professionally in over ten years, before our first year at GCA was out, she was assisting in the classroom. (She just couldn’t help herself.) By the second year, she was a fulltime 5th and 6th grade teacher teaching all subjects, and saying at the end, “I can do this!” Last year Rebecca was homeschooled full-time and Justus went part-time to GCA on an optional university model (Tuesdays and Thursdays he homeschooled).
Suffice it to say, school starts on Monday and we’re doing the full monty: homeschooling both kids full-time. I say “we,” but everyone knows that Lisa is doing all the work. I’ve helped a little with selecting the math curriculum and setting the daily schedule, but Lisa will be doing all the teaching. So, I guess Lisa can add “teacher” to her job title now. I’ll be flying in occasionally to provide math and science support. (I’m actually looking forward to that.) Our kids will attend coop on Fridays for cooperative learning with other students for humanities (history, literature and Bible). Rebecca will be taking physical science this year and will share science lab experiments with her friend, Anna. Rebecca and Justus will be challenged in math, Greek and Latin roots, grammar and dictation, creative writing, typing and critical thinking. Whew! It’s going to be a challenging year, but our entire family is looking forward to the riches the school year will bring!
-D