Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Christmas at the Mission

Celebrating the Season with our Friends
(and family) at the DTRM

This Christmas was probably the best we've ever had, and a large part of that is because of the friends we've developed at the rescue mission. What started as a service opportunity has quickly become a second home to us, complete with a whole bunch of folks we have come to consider to be a part of our family.

Karen was inspired with a whole bunch of ideas for connecting our church, and us, with the Mission for the Christmas season, but without a doubt, our favorite event was the night we had the workers from the mission over to our house! These folks have grown to be so dear to us over the last year!

The next event to be planned was a dinner for the ladies who live at the mission, or whom we helped move out over the last year. The dinner would be patterned after the annual Christmas dinner the ladies of our church put on each year, and the goal was to make it just as special!
With everything else going on during Christmas, Karen was a little apprehensive about getting enough volunteers to help pull the dinner off. Everyone is already so busy at Christmas! But, she decided to put a little ad in our church newsletter, just to see what would happen. Well, the results were phenomenal! Without Karen calling to recruit a single person, we ended up with over 60 volunteers!

So, the plans were laid. In addition to the dinner for the ladies, there would dinner and activities for their kids, a gospel-oriented magic show, stockings filled with goodies and toys for each person, and a few surprises.

Before the ladies' dinner, however, we found out that the Rescue Mission does a Christmas party for all the little kids who live around the mission. Talk about giving your holidays some perspective,...the folks at the homeless shelter putting on a party for the poor kids in their neighborhood. Wow....

So, Karen put out the word among the Sunday school classes at our church, and, once again, the response was beyond our wildest dreams! The gifts completely filled one of the classrooms at our church, wall to wall!

On the day of the party, folks were lined up out the door of the rescue mission, and everyone left with a little something.

Finally, the night of the Christmas dinner arrived. Everything went according to plan,...well, almost everything :-), and it was a wonderful way to cap an already awesome Christmas season!
More pictures,...

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 15, 2002

Second Annual Football Road Trip!

Seattle vs. Atlanta at the Georgia Dome

After our trip to see the Packers play the Titans last year, Karen decided she liked the idea of getting a whole Sunday to herself once a year. So, when the tickets went on sale last summer, we looked at our options and decided (well, DAVE decided) that since Seattle was to be visiting in Atlanta, it was time to see the Seahawks again!

After a couple of weeks, we got our tickets and started making plans for Dec 15th.

Since Atlanta's MARTA system has a station out on the Alabama side of the city and drops off right at the Georgia Dome, we decided we'd give that a shot and hope to avoid the game traffic. It ended up working out great!


We checked out our seats beforehand on the Georgia Dome web site. It has a great utility that creates a picture of what you'll see from any seat in the stadium, and it turned out to be right on! Compare the result at right with the picture we took from our seats above. Pretty cool!

We arrived about 1 1/2 hours before game time and were able to see several of our favorites players warming up. That's Michael Vick below.

Of course, the best part of the game was,...well, the GAME! And in this particular case it was better than we could have dreamed,...lots of exciting plays, down to the wire drama, and the Seahawks actually won it in overtime! The final score was 30 -24. You can check out the NFL films highlights at nfl.com, but for all our enthusiasm and sign waving, we don't appear in the clips. Oh well, maybe next time :-)

We're already saving our nickels for next year,...maybe it'll be the Raider's turn this time,...