We are in the clear

Rebekah went to the doctor yesterday and had gained 3 oz. and her billyruben had dropped to 18 which is a big improvement. The doctor is no longer worried which is good. Summer is feeling much better now that we are on track with Rebekah. Thank you for your prayers on our behalf.

Tune to 98.7, which is KLUV in Dalls tomorrow morning at about 8:00. Soon after my quartet will be singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to advertise the Vocal Majority Singing Valentines.

My mother-in-law is leaving today. She has been a great help while she has been here. Starting today we are offically going to be taking care of 3 children all on our own. That should be interesting. As a friend of mine put it, with one we played 2 on 1 defence, with 2 we played man to man, but from now on we are playing zone defence.

If we can keep Anna from writing on walls, getting into all the cabinets and climbing on everything, I think we might survive it.

Have a blessed day.

Bret

Things are looking good

Summer took Rebekah to the doctor today. Her billyruben has been high and she has been losing weight. Over the weekend they have said just feed her every 2 hours even if she is sleeping good. We have done that and she is gaining good weight and her billyruben is looking better by sight though we should have the official results sometime today.

Summer's mom is in this week. Saturday night we had a roast, cream potatoes, cream style corn, mac & cheese, salad, and cornbread. It was good stuff.

Unfortunately, I'm not just loosing sleep because of a new baby. I've put on a few pounds and the more I weigh the less quality rest I get. I've started back with the Atkins diet again today. I've lost 40 before, so surely I can lose 30 now. Now that Summer is off bed rest and there are no major eating holidays in sight, I think I can stick to my diet for a while. Anyways, it is no fun when most of your clothes are so tight you don't like wearing them.

How about the Super Bowl? I wish the Eagles could have pulled it off. But there is no arguing that the Patriots are a stinkin good team. I went to two parties. One was mainly the worship team at Jeff Wheeler's house and the other one was the singles and young married party. We rolled my big screen next door to the youth house for that party and Mark fired up the smoker and smoked 4 beef briskets and 4 big ribs. It was good eating. At the Wheeler's house they had the most interesting desert ever. It was called "Kitty Litter." It was a base of cake with crumbled butter cookies and green dyed sugar. On top was tootsie rolls. After getting over the look of it, it turned out to be a most excellent desert.

Well that's all for today. Hope you like the new picture that is up. I'll try to put one with Anna in it as well soon. I still need to get a big family shot. I'll work on that.

Blessings,

Bret

That is one cute baby!!!! 

Micah with Rebekah 

Back to work, Kind of!

Today is back to work. (for a day anyways) I'll be taking off the rest of the week with the new baby and family in, but there are many things to accomplish today. I was up with Rebekah till about midnight when my mom took over. Thank God for moms and mom-in-laws. She is the cutest thing as you can tell from the pictures. She is a very calm baby. The only time she cries is when she is hungry or needs a diaper change. So far, number 3 hasn't been too bad. I guess it will become more difficult when we start getting out. Instead of getting ready 2 children, we are getting 3 ready.

We will be bringing Rebekah to our "Peak of the Week" service tonight." When you live next door to the church, getting a baby out to come to church is not a hard thing to do. But watch out, I will have hand sanitizer handy for those who want to hold her or touch her. This will be the only time you see me a clean freak.

I finally have a keyboard for my office. Well, it is not here yet, but Ebay is great. I budgeted it in for this year. The one I really wanted was way too expensive so I was going to settle for a Yamaha. I found an auction on ebay for the expensive one. I bid what I was planning to pay for the Yamaha and I won it. I'm so excited. I'm getting the keyboard I really wanted in the first place for the price of the one I was going to settle for. Not a bad deal. Now I can finally do spend some quality time arranging instead of trucking upstairs to play our rehearsal keyboard, jotting notes down and running downstairs to my office to fix it in Finale.

We just bought a van on Saturday. I was going to take my old van and trade it in, but I couldn't get it out of the driveway before it overheated. I think I'm going to donate it to one of these non-profit organizations that uses old vehicles for parts. At least I've heard they are out there. We got a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan. It is used of course. Even with all the rebates and 0% intrest for 60 months, it is way cheaper to get a 2005 with 20,000 miles then to buy a new one. I've bought a lot of cars in my life, unfortunately. This purchase is the first I've felt good about. We could have bought a van with more options and payed a lot more, but we stuck with a basic model with basic feature, because that is all we needed. We will most likely put a DVD player with screen in it though for long trips with the kids. When you live 10-12 hours from family, it really helps long road trips.

Well, it is time for me to go to a doctors appointment. Have a blessed day.

Bret

She is getting upset at this point. 

Rebekah is Here!

Rebekah London Morris was born into this world on Jan. 30th, 2005 at 11:45 am. She weighed 7lbs. 3oz. She is 21" long. She is beautiful as you can see. We are home now and adjusting to having 3 children. Micah loves her. He said "Can we keep her?" Anna just yells, "Baby, baby, baby!!!" Summer is doing well. My mom is in for a few days and Summer's mom is coming in on Thursday. All is well. I'll probably post more pics later.

Bret

Picture of Rebekah London Morris 

Baby by the weekend

Well, Summer had a lot of contractions all last night. I think she is really close. I'm working hard to get all of my work done so that I can be off tomorrow if the baby comes then. I'm pretty sure we will have a baby by the weekend. We are not going to the hospital unless contractions get really bad or her water breaks. The past two, we have gone too early to the hospital. She feels confident enough that she knows when she needs to go this time. I got the car seat out of storage this morning and it is very dirty. Summer is going to wash it today so that it will be ready to go. I guess I will install that this afternoon. She is packed and ready to go. Though she had lots of contractions, guess what she was doing this morning? Cleaning. I helped her out for a little while before I came in to work.

Well, today is Wed. which means I have lots of worship deadlines today, especially since Summer could call at any minute saying "Let's go to the hospital."

I'll keep the blog informed as much as I can, though I'm not sure if I'll have internet connection at the hospital or not.

Blessings,

Bret

Nesting and a full moon

Well, Summer is officiailly off of bed rest and she is nesting. I got home for lunch today and I found the living room totally rearranged. I wonder what I will find when I get home from work this evening. It has happened every time though. When the baby is close, the cleaning and rearranging starts to happen. She is really enjoying being off of bed rest and being able to do some of those things.

Last night we went to Grapevine Mills mall with some friends and as soon as we started driving we noticed it was a full moon. It just so happened that both Micah and Anna were born on a full moon. Supposedly, on a full moon there is something about the barametric pressure or something that makes it a general rule that when there is a full moon there are a lot of women delivering babies. At least that is what the hospital said. She didn't have the baby, but I can tell it won't be long. I'm officially on call. I guess we'll see what happens as the days unfold.

They had a big 30th birthday party for me on Saturday night. I honestly don't feel any different being thirty then when I was in my 20's. Stephanie Reynolds and her son drove from Paducah to surprise me. They also brought my favorite chinese food, Chongs. It was supposed to be a surprise except my son can't keep a secret. He came to me about 30 minutes before the party and whispered that Stephanie and YoYo (Kevin) was coming to my surprise party. Gotta love the kids.

Sunday night we had a big talent show with our church. We had about 300 people show up. It was a great night with lots of great talent. We had everything from a band playing 50's music, to a magician, and even a 3 person drum line that rocked the talent show. It was a great success.

I'm reading through the Bible this year and have challenged the staff to do it with me. We should be finished with Genesis by Wed. We have already read through Job so far. We are reading the Bible chronologically.

Please don't ever download a screensaver unless you know it is not infected by spyware or viruses. One of the ladies (I won't mention her name, though her first name starts with Myra :) downloaded a cute screensaver along with a virus and a ton of spyware. I have yet to get her computer totally clean and I've run at least 10 scans on it. It is getting better, but there is still some stuff hiding in the computer. I'm about to take the computer and make it target practice at a gun range. It's ok Myra, we have all downloaded spyware and viruses unknowningly at some point in our lives.

Well that is my ramblings for today. Blessings to you all,

Bret

The Baby is close

Micah was 2 weeks early. Anna was 3 weeks early. Does that mean that Rebekah is going to be 4 weeks early? I hope not, but it is looking like it. Summer is starting her 35th week today. She goes off of bed rest tomorrow. She is already feeling contractions. I'm thinking we will be lucky to get through the end of Jan. before having a baby. Time will tell I guess. The good thing is that Summer is healthy and the baby at this point is healthy and the doctor says there won't be any problem in delivering this early if she comes soon. We will still try to hold off until Feb. if at all possible.

My birthday is Saturday. Turning 30 has not affected me that much. Actually I'm kind of looking forward to being in my 30's. I think 30's are a good age. I'm still in great health. I'm now old enought to have a little experience under my belt and I'm not too old to do most anything I want to do. 30's are good. (That's what I'm telling myself anyways.)

I did go to the doctor and all of my blood work came back perfectly normal. They did breathing tests and EKG's and chest xrays cause of a family history with heart problems, but everything looks good. Unfortunately, because my dad had colon cancer, the doctors are recommending that I go ahead and have a colonoscopy. I'm not looking forward to it. If you ask me it sounds like a pain in the butt. They also said it would be healthy for me to lose a few pounds. Duh! Who couldn't stand to lose a few pounds. (I'm typing this as I'm making a decision to go to Snuffer's for my staff birthday lunch. Snuffer's is known for their cheese fries.)

Worship minsitry is going well. We had one of our best rehearsals last night. The worship team is really starting to gel and are sounding great. I'm looking forward to the possibilites in the future.

Have a great day.

NCAA Football needs a playoff

Ok, here is a quick rant. Auburn needs a shot at USC. Technically, so does Utah. 3 undefeated teams in one year after the bowls. Yes, I concede that USC is awesome, but Auburn and Utah need the chance to prove themselves. Maybe USC had a difficult schedule in conjunction with being ranked 1 at the begininng of the season, but if Auburn didn't have such a poor beginning of the season rating, they might have played for the National Championship. Personally, I think Auburn could have beaten USC. Ok, so I'm a biased SEC fan, but still they should have an opportunity. Strength of schedule doesn't always say who is the better team. Auburn wnnt undefeated in a tough conference and it still didn't help them. What's up with that????? OU, though they didn't do well deserved to be there, but so did Auburn. I hope that this year will fuel the need for a playoff system cause there are alot of teams that may lose their first game or two, but then develop into the best team in the nation. They need a shot at the national title in a playoff. Ok, rant over. Have a great day.

The first week of 2005

Happy New Year everyone. It is a new year which means lots of planning and setting goals. I've done it every year and this year is no different. I've got my usual goals:

Lose wieght
Exercise More
Improve Spritual Life (pray more, read Bible more, etc.)
Finish lots of books that I'd like to read
Be more organized

I think the key to these goals is accountablility. If I don't have people that remind me to stay on task, it is easy to forget or just plain put it off. I'm working to get our staff to read the Bible in a year together as a staff so that we can be accountable to one another. I'm working on getting a YMCA membership so that the guys from the "compound" (all the church homes) can go excercise in the afternnon. As soon as my wife has this baby, she'll be able to keep me accountable on the lose weight thing.

It is also the year I turn 30. That means I need a doctor to give me a tune up. In my family there is a history of heart problems, cancer, and thyroid disorders. That means I need to take a stress test for my heart, get blood work done for my thyroid, and a colonoscopy (groan!). I'm not looking forward to these, but you got do what you got to do to make sure you are healthy.

Well, I gotta run for today. May your day be blessed.

Bret

Getting back in the swing of things

I know. It has been too long since I've posted. Since around Thanksgiving my wife has been on complete bed rest with a few privilages. I basically have been working out of my house for much of that time. The church has been gracious enough to work with me in that area. She is doing well though. We took a trip to KY and TN for Christmas. About 10 minutes before we arrived it started to rain ice. By the end of the next day, we had 14 inches of snow in Paducah. It set several records. It is odd to leave Dallas when it is 70 degrees out and arrive in Paudcah to 20 degree weather. What's worse is it got down to -5 on Christmas day. That is a 75 degree difference in temp. over just a couple of days. With 14 inches of snow, my truck was trapped in my moms driveway for two days. My truckbed was full of snow. There were places where the snow had drifted that I would step in snow up to my knees.

It was a huge Christmas. I've never seen so many gifts in my life. We came to Paducah with a washer and dryer, two bins with our clothes and one big bin with all of our Christmas gifts that we bought for people. We dropped off the washer and dryer and proceeded to totally fill up my pick up bed full of gifts (mainly for my children). I'm thinking about getting rid of all the toys my kids have just so we have room for all the new ones they recieved.

Road conditions were tough going to the in-laws. Highway 48 was a solid sheet of ice and snow. We went very slow on that road. At Summer's parent's house there is a huge hill. As you can imagine it is tough to climb with it covered in mainly ice. I backed up and got a running start the first time, but it wasn't enough and my truck started going back. I tried to brake but that just made the truck start to slide sideways, so I let go of the brake and we went flying down the hill backwards. That was a very uncomfortable feeling. The second try I got lots of speed and barely made it up the hill.

We traveled back on Sunday and got back on Monday morning around 1:45.

Summer's parents will be flying in today and will be here about a week. They are going to help catch up a few things which will be wonderful. They are going to take down Christmas stuff, organize all the new toys, and maybe even paint Anna's room.

Summer goes to the doctor today. I am anxious to see how this trip affected her if any. She has pretty much done nothing the whole trip. She has ridden and rested.

I got a call from Jerry Rushford a couple of weeks ago and I've been invited to lead worship at one of the morning sessions of the Pepperdine lectures. I'm excited.

Well, I will be posting more now that I am somewhat in my office on a normal basis. If you are reading this after such a long break from me posting, all I can say is "WOW." I feel honored that you would stick around. Thanks.

Bret

Thanksgiving Week!

Well, it is the day before Thanksgiving and thing are going well. Summer is still doing well with her pregnancy. We will not be traveling to KY and TN for Thanksgiving because of how young the baby is still. at 25 weeks it is too much of a risk to drive 12 hours each way and do that in a period of 4 days. Our families agree.

My plan is to cook Thanksgiving dinner on my own. Ok, I'm sure Summer will coach. I am really glad that places like Cracker Barrell are open just in case my cooking doesn't turn out too well.

Just in case you were wondering, that picture below is a picture of my Warhammer 40K figures. I put that together and painted it.

My new admin has started and she is doing a great job so far. I think she will be a great asset for the church here.

So what do all of you do the day after Thanksgiving? (that is an invitation to post a comment) The tradition for us is after sharing the day together eating, watching football, and the Macy's day parade, oh, and of course playing cards with family, we get all the shopping ads and find all the best deals and what we are interested in buying and then we get up on Friday and are at the stores by 5-6 depending on when they open and get those great deals. Summer wanted a 19" TV for Christmas, so I waited in a long line at 5:30 in the morning at Circuit City so I could get one for $49. I got the last one. Every year though, I start to think that it is just no worth the $20 you save to fight traffic, lines, and of course getting up that early just to get a deal, but that is what I grew up doing, so I guess it is just a habit. I guess there is a little pleasure in scoring the good deal too. Well, have a blessed Turkey day.

My Hobby 

Lots of Changes

There are lots of changes going on this week. Last week my admin's water broke at work and she had a baby the next morning. One of our other 3 admins is pregnant and having a baby in December. That leaves one admin that has been here a while. We have 2 new admins starting this week. One started Monday and one starts tomorrow. Things will be a little hectic for a while because there is much training to be done. My new admin will be a girl I grew up with. Isn't life funny? I move 10 hours away from everything I've ever known and my new admin is my former elder's daughter and she is married to one of my best friends from high school that I ended up performing their wedding ceremony. If that isn't strange enough, the admin that has been here for a while used to live in Paducah because her husband was a minister at a church there. She knows my grandparents. Isn't it a small world?

I'm back to ebaying. If you know what you are doing, you can get some great deals on ebay. I'm also selling things on ebay. It is a great way to get some money for things that you normally wouldn't get money out of at a garage sell.

I moved my recording studio to my office at chruch so we could make room for Rebeka in February. Micah now has his own room. He is so excited.

The kids are so into Christmas. All they want to do is watch Christmas videos and sing Christmas songs. Micah has already written a letter to Santa. He wants a guitar and a choo choo train.

This weekend I'm participating in the "Lazy Man's Decathalon" It is a batchalor party for Mark Moore who lives next door to me. He and one of our new admins are getting married in Dec. The events consist of miniture golf, Galaga, ping pong, eating, and the like. Sounds like my kind of decathalon. I'm hoping my ping pong skills will bring me the win in this tough line of events. I'll need to train my eating skills this week so I can rise ahead of the competition. It's hard work, but someone has to do it. :)

Have a blessed day!

It has been a rough week, but God is awesome

This past week has been rough. Of course the hard drive failure was just the start. Thursday my wife went to the doctor and found out she was put on bedrest for the weekend. We were fully expecting her to be on bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy like last time, but God is good and everything is much better. My wife said it best, so here is her email that she sent out. Praise God!!!!

"I wanted to update everyone on our pregnancy with Rebekah London. I had a Drs. appointment Thursday. Up to that point, everything had been looking great. When I went to the specialist on Thursday, he did an ultrasound and saw I had what he called funneling or beaking, which is an opening in my cervix. That was not a very promising thing since I was only 25 weeks along. He told me to go home and take it very easy and come back first thing Monday morning to have another ultrasound to see at what rate I was having change. I had an appointment scheduled with my regular dr. Friday and he with even more concern reiterated what the specialist had said. They were very concerned and said if there was any increase in the funneling, I would likely have to go to the hospital for the rest of the pregnancy. I did take it very easy over the weekend and Bret took amazing care of me and the kids. We prayed for a miracle. not only for the baby to be healthy and strong, but also be born at the right time and for me to not have to be on bed rest for the remains of the pregnancy (esp. in the hospital). I asked God to give me a miracle I could testify about to everyone. I know he is the God who provided another sacrifice in Isaac’s place, he is the God who was able to place a baby inside of Mary, he is the God who was able to keep the fire from consuming Shem, Ham and Japheth, he is the God who closed up the mouths of the lions in Daniel’s den, and he still is that same God and I asked him to do that today. I promised I would still praise him regardless and if he chose not to close up my cervix, I asked him to do something much greater. He did close up my cervix and I want him to receive all the credit for what happened. After my appointment this morning, I am not on bed rest. The specialists want to keep seeing me at least once a week. I am still supposed to take it easy, no lifting, pushing, prolonged standing or walking, but I don't have to be laying down all the time. I can do several things I couldn't do on bed rest. I am still taking it extremely easy and staying off my feet allot. Please keep praying for us and thank God for his answer to our miracle. We love you all so much and wanted to share our testimony of God's miracle with you. Summer"

Blessings,

Bret

Backup Your Files

You don't expect for a hard drive on a less than 6 month old laptop to crash on you. Well, I have news for you: They do. I have not backed up anything since I got my laptop at the end of April. Yesterday, I had the big blue screen that scares people. I turn it back on and get it going. I had to go to a meeting so I left it on so I could deal with when I got back. When I got back the blue screen was crying out to me once more. This time when I turned it back on, it said "No Operating System Found." Surely this was not happening to me. Well, it did. My hard drive is fried. So I took it to Fry's where I purchased it. After lots of confusion (when I bought it, they associated the Serial # on my computer with the description of another laptop I bought) they checked in my computer. Thankfully I bought a good warranty. They will ship it to Fujitsu since it is still under manufacturer's warranty. I'll get my computer back in 6-8 weeks. Joy. The good things are that they have given me a loaner which is a brand new computer until mine is fixed and they think they might be able to recover my important docs like email, and my docs. They will have that done tomorrow. I'm typing on my new computer. I spent the evening putting everything back on it.

How about the election? Wow. There were several things made me excited. Of course, GW has 4 more years. Yeah!!! Another was that people came out voting based on moral issues. Praise the Lord that people are still concerned about morals. And of course I'm excited that we know the day after instead of a month after. I hope that the parties can get rid of such differences and accomplish something. And I did say both parties. Both parties need much improvment. I'm just glad all the bashing TV ads are over.

We have a girl from our New Friends New Life ministry being baptized tonight. It will be a real special evening. Well, it is time for me to finish all my stuff for tonight. Have a blessed day.

Bret

Good Weekend

I had a nice weekend. Friday was spent almost entirely with my family which is a great thing. Saturday my quartet got to work with one of the top coaches, Jim Casey. He taught us about "speech-level" singing. It is really facinating. Our quartet seems to have a lot of potential.

Sunday went very well. I thought that service was smooth and the worship team sounded great. Unfortunately my voice took a vacation for some reason. I barely made it through leading on Sunday, but my voice held up. Then last night we had a big Halloween bash at our place for the "compound." That is the church houses and all that live in them. There were about 20 of us including kids. Mark fired up the grill and we had a BYOM (bring your own meat) party. We had a great time. If you can believe it, the guys were remembering old 80's songs from groups like Chicago, Journey, Boston, Duran Duran, Huey Lewis and the News, etc. It was fun. This morning staff got together to pray and we've been discussing lots of church stuff. I've had lunch and I'm ready to start back in. I have several things on my plate that I'm working on. One of the hardest is learning flash. I want a cool worship ministry site and so I'm working throught the big flash handbook so I can design and keep up a cool site. Well that is about it for now.

Don't forget to vote tomorrow.