Another 1 in the Books
It seems like just yesterday I was sitting in Pappacito’s Cantina in Houston, TX with my best friend, David Poston, waiting for Y2K to wreak 2012-like destruction on our precious American computers and financial servers, causing mass chaos & ultimately the beginning of the end of the world. If I remember our thought processes from that night correctly, we decided that if the world was going to end, we wanted to go out in style and full! It also didn’t hurt that Dave was an Asst. Manager there at Pappacito’s and most, if not all, of everything we consumed that night was……well, free.
That, as of tonight, was exactly one decade ago. 10 years has gone by from that night to this night, and soooooooooooo much as changed, both for David and I. But instead of taking 1 really loooooooooooong blog post to run down the last decade, here’s a quick run down of the highlights of 2009 for me, Andy Barlow. It went by in a flash!
- January 2009: Mary finds out we’re expecting our second child! We’re pumped after we originally thought her to be pregnant in September 2008, but were mistaken. We begin to make preparations by trying to help Aubrey understand she won’t be the only kiddo around the Barlow house.
- March 9th: Mary and I celebrate 7 years of marriage. We almost celebrate by going to a Houston Astros game, but alas, we have no $$. We stay home and drink Minute Maid orange juice instead.
- May 12th: Mary and I witnessed our 1st student wedding. A former student from FBC Newark and good friend Rachel (Harris) Graves, marries her fiance Richard Graves, in a small ceremony in Marshall, TX. Awesome!
- May 19th: I performed my 1st wedding ceremony for my middle sister, Elizabeth, and her (now) husband Michael. It was an outdoor wedding in Greenville, TX that almost was moved indoors at the last moment due to rain that wouldn’t stop. Other than the rain, everything else was perfect.
- May 2009: AndyBarlowBlog.com hits the internet and people all over say to themselves, “Yes! I’ve been waiting for this!” Over 1000 people subscribe to the blog in the 1st week (not really).
- June 1st: I board a plane for the Arbonite Region of Haiti for 10 days with Hope for the Hungry and REACH Camp. What an awesome week! My heart was broken, my faith was challenged, my stamina was beat down, and in the end, the people of Drouin, Haiti had a mostly finished school (We ran out of building supplies. You can read my journals for the week by clicking “misions” or “Haiti” in the tag cloud to the right.).
- June 15th: Mary and I celebrated the completion of 1 year of ministry at Coastal Oaks Church in Rockport, TX. We love that God has called us here to work with, serve, and lead this truly unique group of Christ-followers.
- July 10th: Mary and I leave for Arkadelphia, AR for an incredible week of REACH Camp, taking our students from Coastal Oaks to their 1st new camp in 6 years.
- August 8th: The aforementioned 2nd child arrives……….1 month early! Avery Claire makes her entrance into the world completely catching us off guard. That night is a haze to me…it happened that fast. Mary’s water breaks at 8:30pm, Avery is born at 11:23pm…did I mention she was a month early?
- August 29th: I turned 30..and lived. ‘Nuff said.
What a year!?! I can’t wait to see what 2010 has in store…later!
