mike jones

What would camping be without some card games (friendly competition, of course)!

We had several different games that were had during our time at the campground. The team games included Skipbo and Euchre. The guys prevailed as normal, though I’ll admit we did get whooped pretty good during one game of Euchre.

Here’s the up tally to date:

Guys – 12
Girls – 6

Peace.

I’m sitting here late tonight listening to songs in my iTunes library while watching some goofy movie on tv. I’m not really following either but my mind seems to be resting not being able to focus but drowning everything else out. My mind goes crazy, especially in the silence and I find myself trying to get my brain to slow down and chill out.

Anyway, I hit some Hillsong United tracks in my iTunes library and don’t really notice much until I get to a song that seems to grab my attention and bring me to a time of deep reflection.

I have grown to love Hillsong United’s music and style over the past few years. They have some incredible songs. But this song, which I love anyway, is Take All Of Me, off their 2004 CD, “More Than Life”. This song hit and I ended up going back and listening to it over and over and over, weeping all the while. The melody of the song is so simple. Here are the lyrics:

I love You
All of my hope is in You
Jesus Christ take my life
Take all of me

You broke the night like the sun
And healed my heart with Your great love
Any trouble I couldn’t bear
You lifted me upon Your shoulders
Love that’s stronger
Love that covers sin
And takes the weight of the world

I love You
All of my hope is in You
Jesus Christ take my life
Take all of me

You stand on mountain tops with me
With You I walk through the valleys
Your grace is all I rely on
Love that’s stronger
Love that covers sin
And takes the weight of the world

I love You
All of my hope is in You
Jesus Christ take my life
Take all of me

I love You so, and I give up my heart to say
I need You so, my everything

God I love you so. I have no hope but you. Forgive me for not always giving you all of my life. Forgive me for trying to hold on to those areas I think I can control, yet fail miserably at. You have given me life and I ask you to take all of me, with no reservations. You are my everything.

I haven’t wept like that because of a song in quite some time.
There is a lot of power in these words, and in the music of this song.

Thanks for letting me bear some of myself.

Peace.

Upon our return from our camping trip (check out my previous post), we were greeted by a nasty odor and a bunch of water all over our kitchen floor… our fridge had decided to die on us during our time away.

Maybe it was lonely.
Maybe it felt neglected, not being opened a trillion times a day.
Maybe it just figured that 6 years was long enough to be a fridge.

Whatever the reason, the thing must have literally ceased to cool or keep things cold the moment we closed the garage door on our way out of town to go camping. Everything inside was a total loss.

There is nothing like losing your fridge… almost makes you feel, oh how did the department store salesman put it – like being naked. OK… But it does make you feel kind of stranded for some reason.

The only thing worse than losing your fridge is finding it coming home from vacation that got rained out.

Actually, the worst part about it was the smell… don’t know what to say about that or even how to describe it. Wow!

So, a journey with yet another appliance ends and another begins (and so does the payments

Is your refrigerator running? )
Peace.

Wow!! Finally back to the blog world on my Mac… I took a week-long vacation with my family. I, of course, had a lot of grand plans of books I was going to read, songs I was going to write and things I was going to get done, but time flies faster than I could have imagined.

I spent the first part of the week just chillin’ with my wife and kids – watching cheap movies, cleaning out our basement and getting ready for our camping trip. We then spent the second half of of the week camping – tents and sleeping bags (though we were at a KOA so we had showers and indoor plumbing). We had a great time! Some good friends of ours joined us for part of our camping time and we had a blast. Rained a bit but not bad… until….

Torrential downpour on the morning we were breaking camp. Soaked to the bone and most of our camping gear drenched, we left for home, cutting our last day activities short. I would still count it as a great trip.

I actually had planned to do some serious blogging the first part of the week, but with my kids in shock that I was actually on vacation I decided to hold off until we went camping. The comment that got me was, “you mean you’re really taking a vacation – from the Mac too?!?!”

Yeah.
Enough said.
I have a problem.

So needless to say, when we got to the KOA with the supposed wifi hotspot, I was disappointed to find the ‘wifi’ link was a plug in for a modem connection to your own dial-up service… who has dial-up anymore So, no blogging. Great time with my wife and kids though.

I love camping… the tents, the campfires, the s’mores, the marshmallow doughboys (if you’ve never had these, you have to try them), the fishing, the games… lots of good childhood memories. I am finding though as I get older that it would be much easier to go camping in an RV or something of the sort to eliminate the set up and break down time (not to mention give you some protection against the elements) but for now…

How about you? Anyone else like to go camping?
Good camping antidotes?

Have you taken a break lately just to spend undivided time with your family?
Peace.

I jumped on the bandwagon here, but added a twist….

Here’s my family simpsonized. It was the closest we could get at least (sorry Seth, they didn’t have Mohawks available for kids).

Wanna try? Go here and check it out!
Let me know what YOU come up with.

Peace.

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