Wow, it has already been 10 years that Melanie and I have been married. Totally AWESOME!!! I thought I would attempt to write a poem for her. Check it out at Word Junkies.
Archive for the 'Joe' Category
When I was 9 when I moved in with my real dad, Randy Barnes, and his wife, Carol Barnes…my step-mother. You know, I really don’t like using that “tag” step-mother, because she did raise me, even though she was not my biological mother, she played the part and she played that part very well. You see, I came to them from a very, I mean very abusive step-father. So mom and dad went from raising a daughter that was about to start 1st grade to immediately having a 9 year old, not even a month later 10 year old son. One thing that stuck out was mom and dad’s love for God. I am not going to say that it was a “Cinderella Story” for me, because it wasn’t. It was TOUGH for me.
Now that I am older, and a father, I look back at the whole situation. I put myself into Carol’s shoes and thought of every thing that she went through. I was not her son, I was my dad’s son that was coming from an abusive home. Wow! That must have been an extremely hard decision for them to make, for her to make. That was a life changing event in their lives. Not only was it tough for me, it was extremely tough for them as well. Probably harder on them then it was me. I was by all means not the perfect kid…come on, I had learned some very bad survival skills from my abusive ways. But, you know what, I would not change the events that happened. Could it have been better, sure, but God had a plan for all of us. I could not imagine how my life would have turned out if it wasn’t for Carol. She taught me some very good life lessons that I use, some everyday.
Carol, Mother, Mom, Friend….I thank you and Love you more than you will ever know!!! Happy Mother’s Day!!!
P.S. Thank you for not being the “evil step-mother”.
In the past week there have been numerous emails about the computer network infrastructure at the seminary in DR Congo. I have been banging it around in my head about taking my Apple MacBook Pro. The only problem with this is it cost me a lot of money and it would be horrible if anything happened to it, like it getting taken away from me by the border patrol in DR Congo…YIKES!!! So what I am looking for is an older Apple laptop. My budget is $300 - $400. I need a laptop so I can do my mission work. So I am asking that if anyone has an old Apple laptop or know of someone that has one, please let me know. I am also thinking about just leaving the laptop there so they can get the full experience of how AWESOME Apple is, or I just might keep it for future mission trips. Not sure yet, still praying for the whole thing.
God Bless Your Day
There are little things that our kids do that just make us so proud! The other day Aaron comes up to me and he has 3 pennies in his little hand. He tells me that his G.G. Pa gave those pennies to him. He wanted me to have them so I could take them on the mission trip to Africa and give the pennies to the African people. How awesome is that! God is great!!!!!
So, the family and I are in Hobbs, NM visiting family on my side. It has been awhile since I have seen my Grandma and Grandpa, this would be the kids great grand parents. The wind has been blowing something awful here. I took some pictures of it all, the “haze” is actually dust and sand in the air. Let me tell you, Melanie and I both REALLY miss home right now because of the dust. We forgot how the “West Texas” dust is. Poor Melanie’s allergies are just really getting to her. However, it is so wonderful to see the family again. The kids are having such a great time hanging out with their cousin Emily. Emily is my sisters daughter. Anyways, here are the pictures.
I do a little web development on the side. I really like Word Press and am getting involved with Joomla. So, Katie and I got together and she wanted me to help her with her website. Go check it out, oh, and all I did was the back end work, Kaite did the rest…she is AWESOME!
I just got a comment on the WordJunkies.org blog that I did. Oh, and if you have not checked out that blog…you got to. These poems are awesome. So, Sandi made a comment on that blog and left her blog web address. So I went and visited her site….AWESOME!!! I cannot say enough about the Floria family. If there was a vote for “family of the year”, it would be them! Another blog you should check out is Kamala’s World. This ladies is so remarkable, just by looking at her you know that God is in her heart and He is doing some really remarkable things in her life. Go check their blogs out. The links are in my “Awesome Blog Links” to the left of my blog page.
God Bless Your Night
Remember when you were a kid and report card day came? I was so scared! I did good in school, I stress good and not great. I really didn’t put out the effort. I did enough to get good grades. I hardly ever did my home work. I never study for test. School was so boring to me. There was one teacher that actually got my attention and made learning fun. Mr. Sam Nichols, he was my science teacher through all three years in high school. If I could go back in time and do school all over again, I would have put forth the effort and instead of doing enough to get good grades, I would have worked hard to get great grades. Any student that is reading this, I know school is awful sometimes, but it will not last forever. Do good in school, because if you do, there WILL be more opportunities out in the “real” world for you.
Anyways, the kids came home with their report cards. What a wonderful day! All A’s from both of them. I know that they worked hard to get those grades, too. I know because I am there when they get home and I make sure they do their home work…the right way. They did so good and I am so proud of them! Parents, a word to the wise, be involved with your kids school work. Show them that you care about what they are doing. Even though they might not show you respect for it now, they will at some point.
If you haven’t told your kids that you love them today, give them a big hug and tell them that you love them!
God Bless Your Day!!!
Sorry I have not blogged to much the past week or so. Work has been really crazy. I have 3 courses that I am developing. This past week, 2 of my older courses had a big change in them and I had to update the courseware and all. That has put me a week behind on my new development. I tell ya, it has just been crazy. I have been getting really stressed out because of all this. What is weird about my stress is it makes me want to clean. I look at my house and everything just seems dirty which of course stresses me out even more. Weird huh?!?! Today was awesome though. At church I worked with the kids, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders and it was really fun. Made my stress level go down a lot. I was not able to attend service, but I have the cd of the sermon and cannot wait to listen to it with Melanie.
God bless your new week!
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