Family Date night.

We had a great family date night last night.  We surprised Jill and we had the boys all dressed up in Sunday clothes when she got home and we took her out for dinner. Caleb ate tacos last night at El Jaritos!!!

Ethan's Biking adventures continue

Ethan can now get started on his own and stop on his own.  These are important skills (especially the stopping).

FPU 2009

From FPU SUnday Night class 2009

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am. We just finished this years Financial Peace Class. This years class was awesome! These people got serious about getting control over their financial lives. They sold stuff, they got extra jobs, they saved money. It was amazing the diversity of people we had in the group. I loved the younger people in the class learning this stuff. Knowing if they really learned and applied this stuff their future is going to be great!

We have a bunch of people that took the class that agreed to help teach it next year because it made such a big difference in their lives. They are looking forward to sharing it with others.

Alright here are the numbers! When the class started we asked everyone to turn in a card (anonymously) with how much debt they had NOT including the mortgage.

We had a total of 28 families that started with us in the beginning.
They had a total debt of $916,344.00

Tonight when we finished the class we gathered the numbers again to see if we made an improvement.
21 families turned in numbers at the end. They had only $524,072.00 in debt (not including the house)

That is awesome! I am so proud of these people!

The Hope video I've been working on.

Go here to see some of the other videos.

Big day for Ethan

Ethan's 1st Lost tooth

Ethan lost his first tooth and completed a 50 peice puzzle.

Ethan can do a puzzle all by my self

Debt Ski

Town Hall For Hope

Last night we had about 50 people come to Trinity last night (not bad, considering how well I promoted it) for the largest ever web simulcast Town Hall for Hope. It was great. Dave Ramsey spoke for about 30 minutes about the economy and put where we are in terms of history into context. It was fascinating having my understanding put into perspective. Then he took questions from people all over the country.

He ended with a call to action and gave everyone 3 things to do in dealing with the fear about recession.
1. Get up and Take Action
2. Stop Listening To Looser talk
3. Start Giving

The whole thing has been exciting when Trinity first signed up they were anticipating about 500 locations simulcasting the event.  By the first night of testing there were over 6000 locations (glad I wasn't one of the tech guys pulling this off!  (Praise God for the people that did!)). The first night of testing was full of bad lip sync, buffering and loosing the stream all together, but I guess when you provide10 times the number of streams you are going to have issues.  Well they got it all working and it was neat to see momentum pickig up for the event.  We were told early on that Fox Business Network was going to broadcast about 30 minutes of the program and if the webcast failed then that could be one of the many backups they provided.  Well as the response grew.  Fox Business decided to broadcast the full 1.5 hours commercial free! I'm glad we were able to participate.

The Latest Adventure

Well we went down to Alexandria to hang with Maw Maw and PawPaw. We planned a fishing trip on the Red River to catch catfish.... we ended up on a little island on the side and we did more adventuring than fishing. It was great fun.

My first Double

Jill and I have been "getting ready" for the Triathlon on May 3rd.  Jill has been doing more running.  I have been doing more swimming.  Our goal is just to finish.  

Today, I was excited though, because I did my first 'double'. At least that is what I heard it is called.  I rode my bike for 15 miles and then got off the bike and ran 3.  I know the bike took me an hour (no matter what I do my average speed is 15mph on the bike), but I didn't see how long the 3 miles took.  I am just excited I was able to do it.  

Ethan Russ House Visit

Ethan went to the Russ House Retirement home with his class to sing to the residents and then had an Easter Egg hunt.  Here are all the pictures from the whole class