Crude Quote of the Day

I AM SPARTACUS!! (Pronounced Shpotukush)

Maybe not Spartacus, but I am 1/3 of the way done with my master's degree program!  I just turned in my benchmark project for our last spring semester course.  It ended up being only 27 pages in length so only just over ten total hours of work on putting it all together.  Heather is still sitting over on the love seat feverishly typing away in order to get hers turned in by the deadline of midnight eastern time.  I have to say, this particular course was really intense with all of the projects that were due.  I believe that Heather and I both wrote about 150 pages worth of material each when you combine all of the projects due.  It was a lot of work and hopefully worth it. 

People have asked us both when we will have some free time and the common response from us is "May of 2009."  That is when we should be finishing up our programs and achieving the master's degree.  Then maybe Utah will grant us state teaching licenses.  We can only hope. 

In other news, the school year at ICS is winding down.  Ther is only one more concert and two more graduations to go before the last day of school on June 6th.  At that point we will quickly pack up the apartment and move everything into storage while at the same time working on all of our pre course work for summer intensives in Virginia.  We will be out of town for pretty much the entire month of July for on campus classes at Liberty University.   By the way, did you know that Chuck Norris was the commencement speaker last week at Liberty?  Pretty cool huh!  Okay, enough with all of the Chuck Norris jokes.  Yeah, you know, like the one that goes, "When the boogie man goes to bed at night, he checks under his bed for Chuck Norris."  Alright, I'll stop there.

Check out Heather's blog for other recent events.

Sorry, no pictures at this time.

Later...

Another Quick Update

I forgot to include these yesterday when I updated on the other happenings.  As you may have seen on Heather's side of our page, Steven and Alex came out last week for spring break.  She posted some pictures but I wanted you to see the two of them in their not so natural state.

Steven catching some mad air and then Alex coming along and trashing his kicker.

Alex showing his amazing skills after not having been attached to a board for six years.

Enjoy!!

Spring Update

Well, Heather has done a wonderful job of keeping everyone up to date with the Hope happenings but I wanted to give you a quick update on a couple of things.  First, this past March was our annual spring music ministry tour.  As always it was an amazing and exhausting time.  There are so many things that I could tell you about but it would take forever.  We did 13 concerts in six days, 11 of which were in the first four days.  We traveled a total of 1470 miles during that time as well so needless to say it was very busy.  There were a couple of times that it was a bit hairy when driving over mountain passes in whiteout conditions from the snow but we made it.  On Thursday we had a little down time so we headed to Mesa Verde National Park.  It was really cool to see the cliff dwellings from the Anasazi people from about 1300 years ago.  Here are just a couple of pictures for you to enjoy.

You'll notice the hole in the ground right in front of us.  Well, it is an underground room that we all piled into.

One of the most important items on the trip....

We were in one of the new Prevost H3-45 motor coaches for the trip which made it much more comfortable to travel.  I drove it for a while when I just needed to relax.

The week after we returned from tour was the spring drama production.  This year we did the Broadway musical "She Loves Me."  Gordon, our director, had asked me if I would be willing to help with one of the parts.  He needed an "older" character to contrast with the high schoolers.  I agreed to do this forgetting how much work actually goes into the productions.  It was a lot of fun to do though.  Here are a few pictures of my character, Mr. Mareczeck. 

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving is a special one for the Hopes.  Thanksgiving day itself holds a special place for us as it was six years ago on this day that Heather and I met.  This year though was our first to celebrate together as husband and wife.  We both have so much to be thankful for.  It has been a long road that God used to teach us many hard lessons and finally bring us together.  We have Him to thank for how He takes a special interest in each one of us.  We have a great and sovereign God to praise and thank!

This Thanksgiving was also special because instead of going to friends for the day Heather and I stayed home and had others over for a big feast.  It was an exciting time for us as neither one of us has ever cooked our own bird or put together a complete meal. 

We started on Wednesday night with the prep of our homemade dessert.

(Notice the product placement)





I made the crust and Heather made the guts and together we created a wonderful pumpkin pie.  Then on Thursday morning while talking to Mom & Dad Hope we began preparation of the bird!  It was still a bit frozen so we had to wrestle the neck and other treasures from the inside of the bird.  When all was said and done, it came out really well.









Around 1:30 we sat and had a great meal with some of our close friends.  The Heisers and Rachelle.



After the meal the girls sat and looked through the newspaper ads while Al and I watched football on TV. 



All in all there is so much that we have to be thankful for and we acknowledge God as the giver of all.