December
In the past 4 weeks a ton has happened here and I got some great pictures so I wanted to share. It all started on Thanksgiving as we had our small group over for a huge feast. I actually a few days before managed for the first time ever to put all our outside lights up and started spinning the Christmas music. I have never done that before so Im not sure what's wrong with me.














If that wasnt strange enough late on Thanksgiving day over 80 elk showed up in our back yard and hung out to have Thanksgiving dinner on the green. Here's a picture as we spotted them around the corner a few days later.




















In Phoenix a couple weeks ago Kathy and I drove by a group of hot air balloons landing in the sunset and got alot of pics. It was a beautiful day and
of course great weather for December


Speaking of crazy for the past four months we have been working on ou Christmas musical which we finally did last weekend. It went great as over 1300 people came and were touched by the story and the message. (pictured below is Kathys scene with the Grinch.)




Also last weekend we got pounded with almost 20 inches of snow so the kids got two snow days and we spent 3 afternoons building a snowman, sledding and making forts. Check out these awesome pictures taken in the snow.

The Ginny Owens/ Jamie Slocum concert
Here are some pictures of the concert and me playing the with the band on a song.

California Adventure 07
We finally got to make our annual California trip this past weekend so we headed out on Friday and drove over to Irvine, CA just south of LA for our 4 day vacation.

On the first day, Saturday we spent the whole day at our families favorite southern California hangout, Laguna Beach. Its an amazingly beautiful beach with a great view of the town and the ocean. Let alone the fun spent jumping waves is the tide pools you can find at the southern end of the beach. The kids love these spots as you can spend hours exploring muscle shells, small fish, am and even a star fish.
As always we cram alot of things into a very short time so while we were there we also did another drive down Hollywood Blvd., a tour through NBC studios (where somewhere Tom Cruise and Jay Leno were getting ready for the show.) a day at Knotts Berry Farm, a visit to Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in Beverly Hills and a service at the Mosaic Church to hear Erwin Mcmanus speak. Great time and the kids had a blast. I have a ton of pics I'm putting online so you can check out the trip and everything we did. Click HERE to see the pics!

Family, Fall, Flagstaff

So it's fall around through the Aspens and pines near the peaks to see the fall colors with our friends Joel, Monite and their kids (Justin seen in the bottom right of the climbing picture) Flagstaff is a very unique place as outside of all its ponderosa pines you can find many fall colors. On our hike near the peaks there were not only great colors but all kinds of other strange things around the forest (like piles of lava rocks, pine cones the size of softballs, engravings on most of the trees and strange whistle as the wind passed through the leaves at the top of the trees. What a very awesome place to see God's handiwork and spend a fun fall afternoon.

Summers Almost Over!

Believe it or not the summers almost over and here I am chillin in our hotel room, We wrapped up our first summer here in Flagstaff by actually heading out of town and spending the weekend at the Hyatt Regency downtown Phoenix (for $49 a night thanks to Hotwire.com!!) , riding the slides at Sunsplash water park, hitting the outlet stores in Happy Valley and having Ethan's birthday in the revolving restaurant 24 floors up. Of course it was a blazing 108 all weekend but we had a cool time getting away. School starts here on Thursday and the summer is over. I hope to get all the pictures of ou summer here in Flag on the site soon.

African Children's Choir (performers from

"American Idol Gives Back" )

comes to Flagstaff

Last night CCoF and Trinity Heights brought in the African Children's choir to perform a concert here in Flagstaff and I had the awesome opportunity to host the event. I had first seen the group, as did millions of others, on "American Idol Gives back" just a few weeks ago as they sang with several other well known performers to raise money for www.savethechildren.org The group performed an amazing show lasting over an hour including worship songs, some of their favorites and alot of energetic choreography. It was a privelege to watch them perform let alone share the stage with them. You can check out their site at www.africanchildrenschoir.com This is an very powerful and effective ministry changing children and the culture all over Africa.

Blogging in Baltimore

Last weekend I got home from an amazing trip to the Baltimore, Maryland where I spent almost four days with my college friend Dale and his family. After a few years of dating he decided to finally tie the knot with his fiance Kim. What an amazing place! It was great to meet Kim's family and visit the area let alone be at the wedding. I spent almost 9 hours total in the plane going back and forth, over 4 hours in the car and the first night at the airport making sure I was on time for my plane which left at 6 in the morning. The fun never stops. While traveling to and fro I started to do some blogging and realized that I am way behind and have alot to catch up on so Im writing the worlds longest blog to try and get up to speed with everything going on since our move to Flagstaff four months ago. (pictured: Dale and I on location of the wedding in the Severna Park, MD area)

My New Toys

So in the past few months I've managed to get two new toys that I spend alot of time playing with. One is my new Palm Treo. I can describe it in one word. No make that two. Insanely cool! Who would have thought you could take a a video camera, a phone, email, word, excel, publisher, a photo camera, text messaging, outlook calendar, internet service and all kinds of other bells and whistles and shove it all in a small device you could hold in palm of your hand and take anywhere you go?! If you havent seen one already just go and check them out. I'll warn you ahead of time though that they are addicting.

The other awesome toy is my new Martin acoustic guitar. As it is quoted in the Bible, " can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Well the answer is ... (other than Jesus) Yes something can. Straight from the Martin Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. This guitar has a great tone, and tuning and all natural wood finish for a great sound. Im actually using it in the studio right now on some new songs which is my next big news to share......

Back in the studio

After literally over 3 years I'm finally back in the studio working on CD #3. As of right now Im slowly approaching being 1/3 of the way done with the project. This CD has a whole new sound with alot of new creative approaches to the vocals and instrumentation. I'm excited about how far I have gotten and continue to work on the writing as I am combining some lyrics I've written over the past couple years and half that is being written along the way. Im working in a studio here in Flagstaff owned by one of the keyboardists on my worship team here at CCOF. Please pray for God to do amazing things as we continue on this project. We hope to be completed by late August, first of September.