• It was an amazingly beautiful weekend. Fortunately the beautiful weather is sticking around for today so we can play softball.
• Oh, and I’m going to ump the second game of the night. I don’t remember if I’ve said it before, but I enjoy umping games almost more than I enjoy playing them.
• Got a bunch of projects completed on the house this weekend.
• New carpet put down in basement: complete.
• Nasty mold scrubbed from laundry room wall: complete.
• Pegboard hung in laundry room to organize tools: complete.
• Tools organized: not so complete.
• Crock Pot cord repaired: complete.
• Music leading both Saturday night and Sunday morning: yep.
• Double-edged sword: if I had the Versus channel I could’ve watched the Dallas Stars play last night. On the other hand, had I stayed up to watch, I would’ve had to watch until the fourth OT to see them win.
• Go Stars! Bring on those Red Wings.
• If the Stars win the Stanley Cup this year I’m gonna buy that Mike Modano jersey I’ve always wanted.
• Enough with the bullets already.

Signs that spring is finally here:

• Warmer weather, finally. high temps in the 70’s for the majority of this week. Woohoo!
• The grill has been retrieved from its exile in the shed and is being prepared for some cooking. We’re gonna use it for the first time this season tomorrow.
• The snowblower has been exiled to the shed, taking the grill’s place.
• We’ve sown grass seed in our annual attempt to get grass to grow under the oak tree on the west side of the house. I will try to be consistent with watering this year and see if we can get something going.
• Softball! We had our first (and probably only) softball practice last night. This morning my throwing elbow is quite sore.

Along with spring comes my list-making of all the house tasks that need done now that the weather’s warmer. The driveway is in sad shape and needs patching - this winter was really hard on it. (Really, we’ll need to replace the driveway within the next few years.) The trip and soffet on the house needs scraped and repainted. We need to keep replacing windows. The garage door really needs replaced, but it can wait one more year. On the smaller list, I need to clean out and organize the garage, and get the pegboard hung in the basement. And the list goes on… and I’m sure I’m forgetting things.

Still… the weather is warm, the sun is shining… I’m not gonna complain.

• Playing basketball three times a week is good for your game and your weight, but sure does make you sore.
• Hard to believe it’s almost February already. Next weekend: trip to Lincoln, NE to see Caedmon’s Call and Andy O.
• Five-hour road trip to see said musicians: seems relatively short. Oh, and Mom is coming down to watch the girls so Becky and I get a couple days out to ourselves!
• Doing double-duty this weekend - leading at both Imago and Noelridge.
• I’ve registered a domain name to hang out a shingle for web design services. Don’t know how much business I’ll manage to drum up, but after doing so many freebie websites for friends over the past several years, it’s fun to think that I could actually get paid for it instead.
• Tweet140 mocks me even as I’m writing this post.
• Haven’t traveled for work yet this year but that’s gonna change soon - there’s the threat of a last-minute trip to Seattle in mid-February, and a scheduled trip to Augusta, GA in early March.
• I think I might actually only finish two books in January, which is a real low for me. It’s not that I haven’t been reading - it’s that I’ve been reading a long, thick book that has to be read slowly.

This excuse for a real post brought to you by the two Advil I took with breakfast this morning.

My mom has mentioned more than once how she enjoys seeing our girls’ personalities as they get bigger and start to really develop. She sees Laura as having more of my personality: quiet, methodical, the classic introverted engineer. (Poor kid!) Addie, on the other hand, is the more ornery outgoing one, much like my brother Ryan. I knew I more or less agreed with Mom, but saw it very clearly last night.

We showed up at church around 5 pm to get ready for Wednesday night dinner (which we were serving). The daycare kids who occupy our basement after school were just getting ready to leave. Of course Laura and Addie wanted to play with them, and for a few minutes both of them did. But it was only a couple minutes later that Laura started feeling overwhelmed by the group of noisy kids, and she retreated into the kitchen with us. She was much happier just hanging out there where it was quiet.

But Addie? She was wearing a necklace of gold plastic beads that she got from a parade this summer; it has a big gold plastic disc pendant that advertises a local bank. Since the kids didn’t know her name, they saw the bling and started calling her “hip-hop baby”. She spent the next 10+ minutes chasing them around, teasing them, ducking into the kitchen where they weren’t allowed, only to then poke her head out, get them to scream, chase after them a bit… All the more hilarious because she’s not yet 2 and they were all between 8 and 10.

Parenting is so much fun.

Weekends are going to look a little bit different now that we’re having church on Saturday night. Something to get used to. This weekend was actually pretty great; a phone call from my sister saying “hey, we’re bored, can we come visit this afternoon?” changed our direction pretty quickly. So the folks and Rebecca came down in time for church on Saturday night and then hung around on Sunday until late afternoon. It was great to see them and hang out.

Saturday night went well down at Imago Christi - certainly better than the first week. Sermon was tighter, music was more together, adding Dave Paris on the guitar with the worship team was a big plus. Picking a song for the meditation after the sermon continues to be a challenge - it’s just hard to know what the right song will be until I hear the message. Saturday night I wanted to use the song “Jesus, Name above all Names”, but the 70’s style of the original song was turning me off to it. So for the last five minutes of the sermon I worked out a new tune in my head, and then sang it. It actually sounded pretty good. I should go write it down while I still remember it.

Watched a bunch of football yesterday and was surprised and disappointed to see the Colts lose to the Chargers; not so surprised or disappointed to see the Cowboys lose. I’m gonna have to cheer for the Packers from here on out. There has to be somebody who can beat the Patriots.

Well, that’s your weekend update from Iowa. It’s now Monday morning and there’s work to be done.

• Just realized I never gave you all any feedback on the first service at Imago Christi. It went pretty well - had 60 in attendance. Music was OK, though I starting singing the wrong verse of one hymn at one point, which threw everybody off.
• Just started my new book list for 2008. You can find the link on the sidebar. Only one book on it so far.
• I have resolved to not get any more books from the library until I read through the pile that’s next to my bed. It has grown to where it won’t fit under the lip of the bedside table any more - must be 15 books there. They’re good things that I want to read, I just keep preempting them with newer stuff from the library. Gotta whittle that pile down.
• Just heard that Andrew Peterson will be doing a concert in Cedar Rapids the day after my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! Hey Andrew and Heather, when will you be back in the area for spring break? Want to come down to CR?
• Speaking of Andrew and Heather, we’ve been plotting (well, Becky’s been plotting) our trip to WA this summer for the wedding. It’s looking like fun.
• Next note on the wedding: I’m gonna have to buy a suit. I haven’t owned a suit in years. The blazer I wore during college hasn’t fit me through the shoulders since probably 2000.
• It’s harder than it should be to remember that the Saturday night service at Imago wasn’t a one-time event. I’ve got to plan music for this Saturday… should do that today.

Today is my last work day for the year. Thanks to a day of vacation tomorrow and a generous holiday schedule from my employer, I will be able to enjoy the better part of two weeks away from the office. Not that it’ll be slow during that time… we leave Saturday to visit my family in Wisconsin. It will be so good to have everyone back together… Rebecca gets back from Panama on Saturday. Oh, and I’m also very ready to be allowed to dig into the massive pile of cookies that Becky has been making over the past couple of weeks. I think her goal this year was to make so many cookies that she could take them up to my family’s place and still have cookies left at the end of the visit. I’ll bet she achieved it.

Lots of other blogs do Top 10 lists at the end of the year, proclaiming their best new albums or movies or books or the like. I don’t think I’ll be doing that here. First of all, I doubt I’ve bought 10 CDs all year. And I haven’t watched too many movies, either. I may do a book roundup, though - I’m probably gonna be over 80 books for the year, maybe I can do a retrospective.

After reading the above two paragraphs, I’m amazed that content like this keeps anyone coming back to this blog. Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.

Christmas shopping is complete. The Christmas program is over. We’ve received a bunch of Christmas cards already. We still haven’t gotten any sent. Apologies in advance to organized friends like Stephanie and the Hollands. It’s not that we don’t appreciate you thinking of us and sending us the pictures. We do, really. We’re just not organized enough to get our own sent out this year. When I was growing up it was the family joke that we would send out a New Year’s letter, because our Christmas letter always went out really late. I think this Hubbs household might have to do the same thing.

Tasks for this week: baking cookies. Well, that’s mostly Becky. She has baked so many cookies this last week already. Toll House cookies. Chocolate Espresso cookies. O’Henry bars. Chocolate chip cookie dough balls. I know the Chex Mix is coming up yet this week. She has a schedule for every day divided up into morning, afternoon, and evening, with baking tasks laid out appropriately so that she can finish before we head to Wisconsin on Saturday. I am impressed, as usual, with her organizational determination.

Other tasks for this week: Wrapping presents. Just because they’re all bought doesn’t mean they’re ready for Christmas. We’ll load up the coffee table downstairs with all the wrapping implements and then turn something on the TV. I’m thinking it’ll be more Heroes. I never watched Heroes when it started last year on TV, and once I got behind, I knew it was no use trying to start in the middle. So I got Season 1 and we’ve been saving it until we had time. Now with the writer’s strike and no new shows to watch, it’s the perfect time. We watched five episodes over the weekend. Totally hooked. If not Heroes, it’ll be time to break out the Muppet Christmas Carol. It is pretty much a yearly tradition - who can fail to love Kermit as Bob Crachit and Michael Caine as Mr. Scrooge? So much fun.

I’m taking Friday off work to get a head start on the holidays. Then we pack and head off to see the family. Lots to do between now and then, though. After all, it’s only one more week ’til Christmas.

Usually I’m the guy who is out shopping on December 23rd, if not December 24th, to finish up all my Christmas shopping. But not this year! Thanks to the wonders of amazon.com and other online retailers, my Christmas shopping has been complete for almost a week now. OK, ignore that one thing I need to pick up for my sister… but yeah, everything is bought and in the care of US Mail or UPS, making its way to my house in time to be wrapped and transported to Wisconsin for Christmas.

I should really be careful with this - now I’ve set my performance bar pretty high for next year!

• I’ve stuck you, my blog readers, with far too many links this week and not enough other stuff. Now, that being said, they are all good links. You’ll find good stuff if you visit them.
• Finally thinking about Christmas shopping. I think it’s gonna be a Amazon year. I have some good book ideas for almost everybody.
• Chatted with Ryan for a while yesterday and it’s interesting to see us progressing remarkably parallel paths of theological thought and reading. Makes me wonder what it was in our common upbringing that’s moving us that way.
• In the same chat conversation there were enough ideas come up to give me an outline for one of those books that I’d love to write but keep lamenting I never have the time for. I really should make an effort.
• Tonight we’re doing Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Becky’s been looking forward to steak all week. Hooray for Christmas bonuses!
• Church plant update: the lease agreement for the building was signed yesterday. Assuming the other party signs it (which they should), we’re officially in the building and will be starting January 5. Awesome and scary at the same time.
• You know, if you go back to the real definition of awesome, something that inspires “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like”, then the scary part I juxtaposed in the previous bullet is pretty much redundant.