so here's a quick look at march for us
- we went to hot springs, AR where rudy gave his first professional presentation. he was awesome! i was so proud of him. he worked really hard to prepare and seemed so
comfortable up there. we got to stay at the historical
arlington hotel right next to the "al capone" room. we got massages and had fun just spending time together.
- we left and drove straight to nashville and got to see BB King himself in concert at the Ryman Hotel. we had given my dad tickets for his birthday and my parents, craig, rudy, and i all got to go. bb was amazing! he's 82 years old and can still dance better than i ever thought about ( i know that's not saying a lot). he was so entertaining. i would love to sit and just listen to him and his band sit around telling stories. (Speaking of blues and jazz, donald miller, author of blue like jazz, is going to be speaking at hope prebyterian on saturday, april 12th. tickets are $20 and go to habitat for hope. go to www. habitatforhope.org/thinkhope)
- we've also been training for the rock and roll half-marathon in nashville. here's a picture of the mississippi river where we usually run. typically, we run right beside the 2nd row of trees - now half-way underwater. the water level is up so high. they closed the back road into our neighborhood b/c it was flooded. it's going down now though.
- please pray for ethan powell's family. his link is to the left.
we've had an action packed and fun last few days. thursday we drove to birmingham and had dinner with our good friends scott, kathleen, corinne, and grayson (here's a recent picture of the greatest kids in alabama). thank you for the yummy dinner. we loved seeing y'all! then we went to the george strait concert that was part of rudy's Christmas present. his concert was fabulous and 
even better when kenny chesney showed up! they sang "amarillo by morning" as a duet - wow. we got our picture made with sarah johns ( i've never heard of her but she opened for george and we thought she might be famous one day!) but i'd rather post
the picture of kenny and george. friday we went to helen keller's birthplace. i get a lot of laughs about this, but she really was my "childhood hero" and i learned a lot about her life. what an example of deter
mination and service to others. this is a picture of us by the famous water pump where she learned to finger spell. next we enjoyed the natural springs in tuscumbia, alabama. then - i'm not kidding, i couldn't make this up - we went to the world's only coon dog cemetery. we kept seeing signs and brochures about it so we decided to check it out - not realizing it was 30 miles out of the way! i've never seen so many atrocious fake flowers. there were grave markers on every grave. some were made of marble, some carved out of a piece of tin, but most with heartfelt epitaths. i love dogs, but i'm not really sure how i felt about it. the pictures really don't do it justice. ove
rall, the best part was that it was really great spending time together and making memories. 