Starting to get ready for New Orleans

I am lucky enough to have participated in 2 prior mission trips to New Orleans with my church, Spotsylvania Presbyterian (see us here). We have helped in the rebuilding effort by gutting houses the first year and then starting to rebuild others the second year. We've worked the past two years with Canal Street Presbyterian (see them here) as they help the residents of New Orleans continue to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

This year, our trip is set for July 11-19 and will be quite different. The first two trips were with approximately 10-12 people each time. Not this year. We are taking almost 30 down. What makes this remarkable is that 21 of them are high school students!! Sue keeps wondering what's worse, that i agreed to go to New Orleans in July or that i agreed to go with that many high school students. I haven't decided yet.

This year we are unable to work with Canal Street Presbyterian because they are having Vacation Bible School and their construction coordinator is on vacation that week. So we've partnered up with Trinity Christian Community (see them here). This will be another great experience that I'm looking forward to. More to come later.

2nd swim meet of the season tonight

Camryn and Ainslie have their second swim meet of the season tonight. We'll have to see how tired Camryn is tonight. She's participating in FCA Power Camp this week and is doing LOTS of swimming (among other activities) during the day-long camp.

I may try and post some times for the girls tonight if i can get them.

Camryn and Ainslie's first swim meet of the season

They called the meet (mainly because it was an exhibition against a team outside our division) due to weather after event 48 i believe, so Camryn didn't get to swim her last event which was the graduated relay, but here's how she did (and what place she finished in her event overall), with her best times from last year as comparison

	2007	2008
25 Free	22.90	21.05 (1)
25 Back	33.05	29.20 (3)
25 Fly	27.97	28.60 (3)

She was a member of the "A" 100 Freestyle relay team for 7/8 which won comfortably.

Ainslie did great as well. She was a member of the "B" 100 Freestyle relay team for 7/8 (yes, you read that right) which i believe came in either 2nd or 3rd and also swam in the 8 and under 25 Freestyle.

We are very proud of both of them.

Oh, the score. Spotswood 288 - Spotsylvania YMCA 85

Call me crazy....

What's worse that going to New Orleans in the middle of July (more on that later...)??? How about waiting for the hottest day of the year so far and going to play golf in the afternoon. I'm leaving in a couple hours to head up to
NOVA to play in the Madison Masters golf tournament with some friends from school.

Only supposed to be 100 up there today. Good thing it's going to cool off later in the week, down to the low 90s.

Relay For Life, part 2

Ok, got up early, made some coffee to take with me and was looking at the paper waiting for Sue to get home from her early morning stint at Relay For Life. Then the phone rings. Basically, Relay was to be over at 5am. :-)

So, i got up at 4:15 took a quick shower to wake up and now i get to stay up. That's Ok, now I can sympathize with Sue later in the day about how tired she is. I hope everyone that was out all night at Relay had a great night.

Relay For Life

In honor of my sister, my father and my father-in-law, as well as many other close friends, I am participating in the local Relay For Life. I just got home from my first "stint" which consisted of helping my father-in-law setup our tent area around 4pm today and then grilling burgers, brats and dogs for the early arrivals. Sue, Camryn, Ainslie and myself walked the first hour of the event, from 7-8pm and then headed home to get the girls in bed. Sue is already in bed so she can head back out from 3-5am for another walking shift. I'll be out there again from 5-7am so i'm heading to bed right after this.

If anyone would like to make a much appreciated donation to Relay For Life, please visit my Relay page
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeSouthAtlanticDivision?px=6403958&pg=personal&fr_id=8917

I might post again while walking in the morning.

Mike

A bit of work in Ainslie's room

Can't believe i haven't done anything here since beer fest.

Ainslie's room had no storage whatsoever except for her closet, so Sue and I decided to put my beginning woodworking skills to use and came up with a "built-in" idea for her wall that will include bookshelves, a desk (with some sort of hutch/shelves above it) and a bench seat with drawers for under the window.

Part 1 complete - the shelves.

Here are the shelves. I added a small face frame around the front and plan to make/put doors over the bottom two shelves. I have a bit of touchup to do on the shelves and trim around the closet door.










Here's the wall (well, most of it) that the other two pieces will go on.