Archives for January 2010

I’m just one of a team of people that blog/twitter at journey.

“Welcome to 2010.”

I can’t believe how crazy that simple statement sounds to me though. I swear just yesterday people were freaking out if the whole world was gonna implode when 1999 hit the new millennium. Jake asked me on the way home from church on Sunday if the world was going to end in 2012 cuz that’s what his friends are saying. I told him that was just a popular myth cuz of a movie that is out and he said, “why would a movie lie to people like that?” I told him it was cuz not all movies are true. This was evidently news to him, which is really scaring me about what he must think of his cartoons 🙂

Regardless of how we got to 2010 and when the world is going to end, I’m still clearly late to the party. Need proof?

• I have not seen any of the twilight films. I think I’m the only youth pastor in the country though. Someone asked me the other day, “You work with students and have not seen twilight?” Yep, I’m that guy.
• I own a wii and was just given an xbox 360 by a student. However I rarely play either of them & still suck at virtually all video games.
• I still have a home phone. (Not one newly wed couple or young single I know even has one, they only use cell phones. I tried to cancel mine and get with it, but it’s part of a package deal with cable/internet and if I drop it, my bill actually goes up)
• Speaking of cable, I should cancel mine any day now too. You can watch almost anything online now anyway. I’m positive this is only a matter of time, but currently I’m still in the DVR dark ages.
• I have an HDTV now, but only a DVD player. We are in the non-blueray abyss I hear.
• We still check the mail. I talked to a friend today who didn’t get our yearend/christmas letter cuz it was mailed to him. He said he stopped checking his mail like a year ago cuz he pays all his bills online and never checks his mail cuz all it ever has is junk mail and ads. HAAAA. Time to chuck our mailbox key.

So, in an effort to do some minor catch up I spent some of my day canceling stuff that has grown obsolete for others like a decade ago or something.

• I canceled the newspaper. Yep, just today. We already reduced it to Fri-Sun, but even that was still not used enough to justify the expense.
• I canceled receiving several more of my paper bills- they only come via the net now.

I just took down my Christmas lights today…. in like 85 degree weather. Ridiculous. I tell you ridiculous. I miss Nor Cal in the winter so much. I miss rain, cold, seasons, and the chance to hit the slopes. I miss the powerhouse snow ski trips so much!

But thanks to some generous Christmas presents, we took the whole tribe to the snow and curbed my withdrawal a little! It was sooooo much fun. It had been such a long time since we’d been, that it was virtually a whole family first. Since we’ve been in San Diego for 5 years, I think TJ was the only one who even remembered going before. That is now all changed forever.

We decided to sled for one day, spent the night, and then went to Bear Valley to ski/snowboard on Tyler’s 10 year old birthday! My dad skied, I boarded, TJ and Ty took lessons in the morning on snow boards and then I bonded with them on the bunny slope in the afternoon. Becky, Billy, and Jake all took 1/2 day lessons for skiing. Then Jake hit the slopes after with me while Becky and Billy called it a day and hit the lodge for hot chocolate with Shannon and my mom.

Oh man, what a great couple of days filled with fun memories. Here’s some pics we snapped of our time. So dang blessed.

The Berrytribe Christmas ’09 represented close to the last annual “first” for our family of 7. We’re coming up fast on the one year anniversary of bringing Becky & Billy home, and this gave us the chance for our “first christmas” with them. Everything was new: tree decorating, our traditions, presents, lighted homes in our community, everything.

But perhaps one of our deepest ponderings of the season is that many of Becky and Billy’s peers in the orphanage have now “moved on” and are essentially now in the Ugandan foster care system of sorts- and will be there permanently until adulthood. It is humbling to realize that they would have been there too had God not plucked them out and placed them in our home last February. This is both a great privilege and responsibility for us.

Here’s some pics of our family: