Ready to board

Here we are at seatac ready to board.  Just think...after 23 hours of flying and layovers we'll be there in Jerusalem!  Oh and a moment of confession: since we had to be at the airport at 3:30 am i broke my Lenten fast and went for a nice cup of coffee.  Remember, God wants obedience more than sacrifice!

New Blog Layout and Forthcoming Exciting Content

I know, it's not much of a post to talk about things that you are going to do, but I thought I would send out a heads up about Sandy and Talia and my trip to Israel and Jordan.  We will be posting videos, pictures and thoughts throughout the trip, and if you wanted to follow along feel free.

It is an exciting thing to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own hands the very places where the stories of the Bible were born.  It is quite a faith building experience to put real places and experiences on things that you have only believed in without seeing.  We feel quite blessed to be leading this tour and hope that there will be many to come...who knows, maybe you may join us on a future trip to the Holy Land.

Rice Crispy Treat Chaos

So it was a crazy afternoon at the Smith house filled with marshmallows, food coloring, dots, red hots, licorice, and rice crispies.  Rice Crispy Treat Snowmen, Rice Crispy Treat Wreaths, Rice Crispy Treat Regrets.

Just another Reason I love Clearwire

A week or so ago I got a notification saying that I was able to upgrade my clearwire internet service to their new "clear" service, which is a 4G WiMax network.  So I signed up, a couple days later my new modem arrived, I plugged it in, and what do you know?  I got a connection at least 5 times faster for the same price!

What an effective customer service model; they upgrade their service, give you more for the same price, and do it all in a few short days!  I know they are the new guys in the ISP world and they have a lot of work to do to build a customer base when they are up against the big guns of Verizon, Comcast, etc....but they actually seem to make the customer experience pleasant and painless (a claim that neither of the aforementioned giants can claim).

Attention to anyone who provides a service to people:  make people feel good about the service you provide AND the way you provide it.  That's what drives repeat business and referrals.

Get Low & Get Mean

Olivia is at her basketball clinic this morning and they were doing some drills.  The coach said,"get low and get mean."  Well Olivia got low, but the smile never left her face...not so much mean, but that's ok with me.

Basketball Tryouts part 2

Ok so Jaz is at night two.  It's a new experience for her but it is always good to get stretched.  I totally remember trying out for the basketball team in junior high. 

It's pretty cute to see abunch of 5th and 6th grade girls who think they are Lebron.

Heavenly Date

So Sandy and I took advantage of the fact that all of our kids are in school, and Ava is in Idaho, and went out for a lunch date to Pen Thai in downtown Bothell..great food.  She had the heavenly beef and I had the garlic loverls delight.  So good!  We sat right in front of the window and watched all the cars and people go by.  Great food, great entertainment, heavenly date!

Oh and btw we had back to back dentist appointments this morning and tied on the plaque score...a whopping 92%, thus the celebration.