Family Fun-4.jpg, originally uploaded by Elijah Stephen.

Celest and I are teens again. That includes taking cute-silly-fun photos. I’m thinking about getting braces. Does anybody else have an irrepressible desire to TP something?

I love Flickr Explore.  I posted my favorite four from last week on Tuesday so, as I was browsing Explore, I had to find some excuse to get them on this blog, so that’s it.  Pictures that are creative and awesome are just such a sweet reminder of God’s common grace.  Even though our world is spinning in sin, he allows his attribute of creativity and beauty to still flourish in our world.  That’s common grace.  Think of his awesomeness when you encounter awesome things.  Favorite?   The fighting one is hilarious and brilliant in my opinion.

Well, I hope your weekend was good.  Mine was busy as always.  The wedding that celestial and I did photography and music at (respectively) was quite entertaining.  The highlight, for me, was the Father/Daughter dance that suddenly turned into a reenactment of THIS.  It was pretty cool.  And it was cute and stuff too.

Oh!  Another highlight, that was less cool, was Celest and me trying to share the roles of parent while simultaneously tending to our respective duties at the wedding.  “I can’t watch them right now; I have to play the song for the couples first dance.”  “Well I can’t watch them right now; I have to take the pictures of the first dance.”  “Hmmm… that  grandpa over there looks nice enough; maybe we can ask him for help.  Yeah, he is pretty drunk; he might say yes.  Yeah that’s probably not a good idea.  Ok, instead, we’ll just let them run around like crazy.  Awesome!     

Actually, joking aside, they did pretty great and waited patiently every time Celest and I were occupied at the same time.  We hit up Big Spoon afterward. 

Today was good as well.  I usually play acoustic, but this morning at bayside I pulled out the Teli and had a good time worshiping the Lord with some electric noise.  I’m probably going to start leading that way from now on—at Bayside.  I don’t know if the coffee house that Origin meets at is quite ready for the Electric.  We’ll see.  So how was your weekend?  Any big plans for this week?      

So, it’s wedding season apparently, and Celestial is booking them like crazy.  And she’s shooting another one tomorrow (which I happen to be playing at as well).  I just wanted to take this opportunity to throw some of Celestials work up on this blog—Hmmm… not like throw-up… I didn’t mean that.  I mean… I wanted throw her awesome work…  ah… on.  Yeah on.  this blog.  Throwing it on!  Bring it on!  I’m taking this opportunity to say hey! my wife is awesome and look what she can do with wedding pictures.  Ok… I should be in bed right now, but, whatever.  Check out these pics and let me know what you think.  Grace and Peace!

Oh my gosh!  I am such a sheltered white boy!  I told you on Saturday that I was on my way to shoot a wedding with my wife Celestial in Sac Town.  We drove home at about 11:00 that night after a very long day of capturing moments—a beautiful, but very long string of moments; those folks can party. 

On our way home things got a little crazy with us little Rocklin white kids mixed up in the ghetto!

Our transmission has recently started going out.  What I mean by that—since I know nothing about cars—is that my car makes a funny grinding sounds during random moments of a drive and, given the oil puddle and low levels of it in the transmission, we assume with certainty: TRANSMISSION PROBLEM!!!  It’s always the transmission right?

Well, I was a bad husband and forgot to purchase the transmission fluid that needed to be added (sorry Celestial) and given the substantial increase in curious grinding noise, an immediate stop was going to be required.  So, we keep our eyes open and pull into the next gas station we see with lights on.

Bad choice!  There were lights, but not enough.  There were people, but not friendly ones.  There were different races but none like mine (calm down, I’ve got a little of everything in me).  Conditions were not perfect.  But we needed oil!  So in I went.

As I came out, two guys followed me, and my oil, back to my car.

Scary guy:  Hey, do you have a light? 

Silly White Boy (Me):  No dude, sorry, I don’t.

Scary guy:  How about a couple bucks so I can get one?

Silly White Boy (Me):  Awh, Sorry dude, no cash.

(Scary guy gets right in my face and this is the part where I start to wet myself).

Scary Guy:  Hey, brrroww! (insert sarcasm, slurred speech, and alcohol breath) “Dude” isn’t something that you say in these parts.  You say dude to the wrong person and you’re going to get yourself killed.

Silly White Boy (Me):  (trying to maintain composure) Oh yeah?  My bad, I will totally keep that in mind.

Scary Guy:  Good.  But you need to say you’re sorry. 

Silly White Boy: (thinking: Not good. Need wisdom Lord. Help).  I totally apologize.   

Scary Guy:  No, say you’re sorry. 

Silly White Boy:  I am very sorry.

So, kinda bizarre and freaky right?  Well, thank you Jesus, after I said sorry for my dude calling, I was clear headed enough to redirect scary guy’s mass of energy (and the other guy) off of wanting to kill me and into the task at hand—my Transmission!

I don’t know if you have ever had the privilege of watching 2 wasted guys try to figure out how to check the Transmission oil, but it is quite amusing.  They spent about 5 minutes taking off every cap on my engine—the wiper wash was no exception; apparently it’s not always easy to tell the difference between a container of Windex and a transmission. 

At any rate, we are alive.  We got out of there after there were no more caps to remove and just before my radiator got filled with transmission fluid.  It felt like a safe time to leave and so we just took care of the fluid a safer distance down the way.

No joke, this was one of the few instances in my life where I have been legitimately frightened for my wife’s or my well being.  (BTW, Celestial was ducking down in the front seat gettin ready to call 911 the whole time lest you think I exaggerate the intensity).

Ok.  So what do you think?  What would you have done? 

Happy Saturday to you!  Here’s my quick little EP (short CD) update for any who are interested.  Remember how I had planned on releasing it in January—Is it January yet?  Oh yeah, it’s pretty much half a year past January.  My bad!  

But, thank the Lord, I have been able to get back to work on it after putting it on the shelf for the last couple months and last night I got a substantial portion of the vocal work done between the hours of 12:00AM and 5:00AM—Very sweet hours for recording!

Anyway, I will keep you posted.  Right now (on a different note) I’m off to do another wedding shoot with Celestial.  Photography has been a pretty great new addition to my artistic world over the last few months.  I’m almost good with a  camera—almost.    

I do love the many ways that the Lord has given us to express our joy (and sometimes pain and other negative emotions because of sin) over life and love.  Art is such a cool thing, even if it takes us a while to put it into a CD sometimes.  Anybody else working on a project of an artistic nature?

I Guess I haven’t been to the Mall in a while but I just saw this today.  Pretty excited.  No more driving to Sacramento for the Genius Bar.  Hope they open soon!  We are totally anxious.  Any other Mac people in the house?

I don’t know if you were able to make it out to the Club Retro gig on Friday, but I have to break the bad news: If you didn’t make it, you missed out.  And I’m not saying that because you missed my performance—that would be pretty arrogant and lame—it’s because it was a legit night, and the crowd was massive! 

The band line up was so great!  Now, I have to be honest, I only was able to catch 1 or 2 songs from each band, but that was enough to leave me pretty impressed.  Celestial had a photo shoot to get to after I got done with my set so I hung out with my babies for the remainder of the evening.

It was funny; I left to get food for Avonlea, Avery and myself, and when we got back to the show… they were asleep.  I wasn’t going to carry a 3 year old and a 6 year old through a venue, and even less likely to wake them—that is never good!  Luckily there was a door around back by the band entrance that I was able to keep open.  I listened to Josiah’s portion of the show from my car—with my kids asleep in the back seat.  Parenting requires that you get a little creative folks!  Someday I think I’m going to write a book:  1000 Ways To Still Do Stuff When You Have Kids.  Its kind of a survival guide of sorts.          

Good times right!?  And yes, the portion of the show when I played was good as well.  There were tons of people crammed into that little place (300-500) and they all seemed really excited.  My prayer is that Jesus was seen through my set that night more than me.

So, I know it was a while ago now but, what did you do Friday night?  Were you there or did you have other business to attend to?

I don’t know if you’ve checked out my wife’s photography in a while but if you haven’t you should.  She upgraded to a pretty rockin camera a little while back and it’s really showing up in her most recent work.  She is way to humble about it (…And it shows in her prices) but that’s probably a lot better than the alternative I guess.  So anyway, check it out.  Let me know what you Think.  Do you have a favorite pic?