Laziness, and no big topics to contemplate. Put those two together and you end up with my blog as of late. Sorry folks. So, a make-up post of sorts.

• Only four more weeks until the baby is due. I’m sure we don’t really understand quite how life will change going from 2 to 3 kids, but we’ll figure it out. Excitement is building among all the residents of our little home. (Well, maybe not among the cats.)
• We’re now several weeks in to our first Stonebridge small group and we’re really enjoying it. It’s fun to make some new friends. I did get a few weird looks last night when I briefly touched on the whole gay marriage thing, but my lament about Christians being known more for their support of Prop 8 than for their love for their neighbor was well-received.
• I’m applying for a new position here at work – a fantastic opportunity. Not going to say too much about it here just now, but I have an interview tomorrow at 1 pm.
• Another thing that’s sneaking up on us – Laura will turn 5 this summer, and so the school questions start coming up. We’ve pretty well decided to homeschool her for the time being, and communicated that intent to our local elementary school last month. Now I’ve gotta get the ins and outs of the homeschool support/oversight system understood in preparation for next fall. Oh, and sign up with HSLDA.
• When I have trouble coming up with something for the fifth bullet, you know that either things have been fairly uneventful or I’m just having a horrible time remembering anything. *sigh*

Last night after Wednesday night church, as we were just about to settle down for the night, Becky called out to me from downstairs. It wasn’t her usual voice, asking me for something – this was her oh-no-this-is-trouble voice. “Chris I need you downstairs.” When I got downstairs, I got part two of the announcement. “We’ve got water all over the floor.” Now, the words “water on the floor” bring back instant connotations of the flood last summer. Fortunately, though, what we found wasn’t anything near so troubling. Which is not to say that we were very happy about it, since there were puddles of warm water all around the floor near the water heater.

I pulled out a flashlight and confirmed my suspicions: the water heater had developed a leak and was dripping the last of its contents out onto the floor. I turned off the water and gas feeds to the heater and Becky got out the towels. (One nice side-benefit of the flood: we now have a large supply of towels that are good for nothing but wiping up the floor.) We wiped up the remaining mess and then, rather than settling down to watch a little bit of TV, pulled out the computer to do some online water heater research. My posts to Twitter and Facebook evoked sympathy, advice, and at least one offer to help with an install. But having neither the time nor really the know-how to do the install, I decided to head for Lowe’s this morning, based on their proximity to our place and a good recommendation from a friend.

I had a one-hour window this morning to leave work, purchase the water heater and arrange for install, and get back to work before my meeting started. It was a quick trip to Lowe’s, and I found that at 8:00 in the morning there are plenty of employees there and ready to help. I selected my heater of choice, ponied up for installation and the city permit, and headed back to work. The woman at Lowe’s figured there was no way we’d get it installed today, hopefully tomorrow, otherwise it’d be Monday. I offered a quick prayer for an installer with some free time and headed back to work. Thirty minutes later I got the phone call back from the installer. Would I be available today at 11:00? So providential timing number one: we were able to get the heater installed the same morning.

It’s a nice water heater, too – high efficiency, 50-gallon, eligible for a rebate from the gas company, 12-year warranty, etc. And, so far as I can tell, it heats water nicely. (My shower tonight was quite pleasant.) Oh, so on to providential timing number two: our income tax refund got deposited to our bank account yesterday. It’s not how we’d planned to use the money, but it is sure a blessing to have it there for the need.

Thus concludes this chapter of the Mundane Adventures of Chris in Iowa. Tune in this weekend to find out about Chris’s first time on the Stonebridge worship team. Good night.

I’ve been neglecting this blog for the past few weeks, so it’s time for an update of sorts. So… bullet points!

• We’re in the home stretch of the pregnancy… just a little more than two months until baby #3 is scheduled to make his/her appearance. The girls have finally decided that they’d like a little brother – they want to have a prince to play with them when they’re playing princesses.
• We’ve decided on sticking at Stonebridge for the forseeable future, and we’re starting to plug in. First up: small groups. The group we’re joining starts up next Monday night. It’ll be good to just sit down and get to know some folks.
• In the vein of church stuff, I’ve contacted the music pastor at Stonebridge and arranged a time to get together and talk about how I might occasionally serve on the worship team. The key word here is occasional. I don’t want to be in a position where I’m indispensable. I think it can be worked out.
• On the work front, the project I’d been working on for the past 18 months got shut down last week. All of us working it are getting transferred to new projects and new groups. I’m going to be joining a group that focuses on aircraft certification. It’ll mean a lot less coding and a lot more documenting, but it’ll be very good experience and learning for my DER ticket.
• It’s still winter in Iowa, but it’s been at least tolerable the past week. It got up above freezing yesterday, and we haven’t had any significant snowfall this week. I can handle winter when it’s like this.
• I’m really looking forward to a weekend with very little on the schedule. Nothing scheduled for Saturday, just church on Sunday. Time to crash.

Well, enough for now.

In the 11 or 12 Christmases Becky and I have spent together, each has been celebrated with one set of parents or the other; most of them with my family, which has always lived closer, but a few Christmases we’ve made the drive to North Carolina to celebrate with Becky’s family. This year, though, a convergence of plans and events has set things up so that we will be spending Christmas day at home, just us and the girls. We’ll get to see my family the following week (for a wedding, no less!) but this week it’ll just be us.

Becky and I now get to start to decide what our family Christmases will look like. There’s a huge amount of latitude, given that there are no expectations from anyone. If we want to make changes, now is the time. If you think about it too long, it becomes a little bit overwhelming. Becky touched on it yesterday when we were discussing our Christmas dinner menu. She said she didn’t plan on making all the usual side dishes to go with the ham, but when I noted this was her chance to start a new tradition, she said she didn’t really know where to start.

It seems to me that part of the reason traditions don’t change too greatly from generation to generation isn’t just the fond memories we have of years gone by, or the actual love of specific foods or songs; it is also the added comfort and ease of just keeping things the same – in other words: change is hard. Now, that’s not a very heartwarming thought for a pre-Christmas afternoon, but it’s what I’ve got for today.

So yeah, I don’t forsee any huge changes for the Hubbs family this Christmas. We might go wild and fix a few different side-dishes to go with the ham. But we’re still having ham. Some things are just too sacred to mess around with.

Yes, we have a weekend coming up. Unfortunately, we’ll be heading into the weekend with a house full of sickies – Becky, both girls, and I are all fighting colds, coughs, and sore throats. Ick. So, here’s my list of guesses of things we’ll do this weekend.

• We’ll want to sleep in tomorrow morning, but won’t really get to, since the girls pretty much are up at 7:00 regardless of what day it is.
• We’ll rent another DVD or two from the store and catch up on a bit of our movie watching. Maybe Wall-E or Hancock.
• We’ll hit CiCi’s for cheap-o pizza.
• We won’t get to church, given that we’re all feeling icky.
• We’ll visit the library sometime… probably Saturday.
• We’ll watch some college football… most definitely the Florida/Alabama game.
• I won’t post anything more interesting than this to the blog.

There’s my profound list for Friday. I’ll check back in on Monday to see what kind of score I get.

Children have ways of saying things that just cut you to the quick. They don’t realize it, but you hear the words, and, whammo, they’ve got you. Today’s example: my four-year-old daughter Laura.

Laura loves her daddy time, and loves to play. Some days it’s Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders; other days it’s playing “horsies” in her room (we each get a toy horse and have pretend conversations!); other times we play hide and seek in the house. (She always hides the same place: under the covers on our bed.) And when she wants me to play with her, she always asks the question the same way.

“Daddy, do you want to play with me?”

It’d be so much easier if she asked “Daddy, will you play with me?” or “Daddy, can you play with me?”. Because then at times I could respond “sorry, Daddy can’t right now” and just go back to whatever else I am doing. But instead she asks “Daddy, do you want to play with me?” and then I’m forced to check my motives.

Too often my first (internal) reaction is something along the lines of “but I was just checking my email” or “no, I want to finish reading this article online”. And then I’m convicted. Shouldn’t I really want to play with her?

Time moves fast. Laura is already four. Next year she’ll start school of some sort. We won’t always have time to play horsies or hide and seek or Candyland. When I stop to think about it, I really do want to spend the time with my girls that I’ve been given right now. Facebook, email, and blogs can wait. So I’m thankful that God can use even my daughter’s simple requests for Daddy time to convict me of my own selfishness. So if this blog sits dormant from time to time, or I don’t respond to your email very quickly, be patient: I might just be playing horsies.

It’s been a crazy week so I’m reduced to one of these play-by-play lists. Sorry.

• Note to self: eating at Texas Roadhouse only two hours before playing a rec league basketball game: not such a good idea.
• Looking forward to getting out of town this weekend.
• There is pretty much nothing cuter than a four-year-old excited about being invited to a friend’s birthday party.
• Is Thanksgiving really only two weeks away? Where has the year gone?
• I’m getting a kick out of Fake Geof Morris this morning.
• It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to Mel Brooks’ The Producers soundtrack. Hilariously clever lyrics.
• I’m with Kari – it’s too early for Christmas music.

It always seems to be the bitter, cold, rainy days. Yesterday morning I took my familiar perch behind the piano at Noelridge as an aging group of family and friends gathered to remember the life of a dear lady who passed away last week. Save for a few grandchildren present, at age 31 I was easily the youngest person in the room, and my position at the piano gave me forty minutes’ opportunity to study the faces of those assembled.

It was a wrinkled and care-worn group gathered yesterday; five pews filled with family grieving a loss forseen for some time now during battles with cancer, a dozen more pews of friends, each remembering happier times. Fairlene was remembered as a “feisty” woman whose love for family and desire to serve could be seen in the faces of her sons as they sang “Amazing Grace”, and in the pulpit that she and her husband hand-crafted for the church sanctuary. Her death was in many ways a sorrow – as deaths always are – but in many ways a relief; Fairlene is now free from her pain and suffering and is rejoicing in the presence of God.

As I looked around the room I saw faces that reminded me of other similar gatherings. There in the back was Dave, who sat in the same front row grieving a wife lost to cancer seven years ago. A row nearer sat Wanda, remembering her husband who has been with the Lord for several years now. Each one came in quietly, shared the sorrow and memories, sang the hymns of trust and assurance, and then bundled up to face the bitter wind at the grave site.

My schedule forced me to make an exit at this point, but I knew how the day would continue. Soon they would return to the church for the lunch awaiting them in the basement fellowship hall, and as the sandwiches, salads, jellos, and desserts were eaten the quietness of grief would slowly be replaced by the happier babble of life, the telling of stories, the shrieking of small children, the laughter at the memory of times past. And this, too, is life. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.

This morning the sky was clear as the sun came up, and it gave a hint of hope to the cold air. Fairlene’s hopes were fulfilled on Thursday night as she left us to be with her Savior. In the words of the psalmist that were read yesterday: “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” We can though, like Fairlene, have hope in the God who has been our dwelling place in all generations.

• Your house doesn’t have to be amazingly clean to invite friends over.
• Even if it was amazingly clean when the night starts, it won’t be when it ends. Not with 4 kids playing for three hours.
• That’s OK. You can always clean up again.
• Good food + good conversation = a great time.
• Hearing friends’ back stories is fantastic.
• When your friends read your blog, you have to try to remember which stories you’ve already blogged and thus shouldn’t re-tell.
• We should do this more often.