Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.

Monday is my day off. It was a glorious day off. But not really. Basically all of my monday consist on playing catch up of all the things I can't do during the week. Like, laundry, cleaning my room, cleaning my bird's cage, taking out the trash, paying bills relaxing you know the usual. So that's what I did all day long on Monday. I stayed in the whole entire day and just did stuff around the house. I mailed out about 10 save the dates that I finally got the addresses for and spent most of the afternoon figuring out what to do on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico, that basically took most of the afternoon, and I still don't know what we'll be doing, haha. After that I went for a run around the neighborhood and did some excersices. It was pretty cold that night and I almost had an asthma attack because of the cold weather!

On Tuesday I just worked from home and watched more tutorials on dreamweaver, css, xhtml, coding all that deal. I'm learning so much from watching these things. These are professionals that teach this stuff and it's great to learn from an industry standard point of view sometimes. So that's basically what I did all day long. I really did learn a lot. I'll be watching more of those tutorials this week too. After that I went to the Gibsons to teach drums to Ricky, Tori and Hunter. They're all doing great. Then after that tuesday is Tara and I's date night. We first went for a 30 minute run and then came back and made chicken and rice. After this we basically spend the rest of the night planning the Puerto Rican honey moon. Which by the way, we still haven't really decided on.

Wednesday was a great day, I got into the office at exactly 9am and sent out some emails and got caught up on some of the songs we're doing this week. Arts meeting at 10pm then we went to eat lunch. Then we filmed a hilarious video for this week, you'll have to come this week and see it.
And here I am, about to call up Jamison into a meeting for our StuCo arts meeting.

Birthday Dinner.

Friday was my birthday.  I turned 25.  I left work around 6pm and drove to Tara's apartment.  She made reservations at P.F. Chang's!  It was so good.  I get the same thing everytime, Lemon scallops.  They are the best.  For one of my birthday gifts Tara bought me Horton hears a Who and we watched that after we came home.  That's probably one of my most favorite movies.  All in all my birthday was really great.  

I remember last year for my 24th birthday how depressed I was the entire day.  I was working at a retirement home in the kitchen basically feeding food to old people and I just remember feeling depressed that I wasn't really doing anything meaningful or that I wasn't using myself to my full potential, sure, I was working for Trinity health and it paid great, but I just felt called to ministry and I depressed that I was 24 and wasn't doing it.  This year it was awesome, I don't make nearly as much working at the church, but I am definitely much more satisfied in what I am doing.  

Saturday Tara, Angie Tyrpak and Morgan Tyrpak went shopping for a little flower girl dress for our wedding.  She is probable one of the cutest girls I know.  I can't wait to see how she looks.  I didn't go, I cleaned my whole room and the bird's cage and got everything organized.  It's amazing how just a simple cleaning can make your whole world seem right side up again.  I made lunch here and waited for Tara to get here.  

We went to Men's warehouse and finally picked out all the styles and colors for the groomsmen and GP's and ushers.  We were there for about two hours trying stuff one and picking colors etc . . . I'm glad that's over.  I just need everyone to get sized and we're good to go.  

After that we went to GO GEAR in Brighton and they were having basically everything 50% off.  So I bought a really sweet jacket and so did Tara.  I'm saving it for next winter. 

After that we went down to the dollar movies in A2 and watch Twilight at 9:40.  While we were waiting for the movie we went looking for wedding bands.  The second store we went to, the guy was one of the worst salesman ever.  He didn't even listen to a word either of us said and had the cockiest attitude about his company and products.  Listen, you don't joke around with people about their fiance leaving you and your marriage falling apart.  We just left. 

So we went to another place and got great deals on the wedding bands.  We put some money down and are just going to make payments on them, basically it's lay-away.  I was very please and felt good about this place, products and the prices.  

After that we went to see Twilight.  I have to be honest, that movie is really really sweet.  I highly recommend it.  

Birthday.

Thursday was great. No staff meeting because Dave is on vacation. I met Jamison at 12 at Amer's in Brighton, we made a little video and talked for about two hours and services and the future of StuCo. It was a great meeting. He's a great leader.

I went back to the office and updated the whole StuCo website for both Brighton and A2. Check it out, nothing complex, just needed to be done. Stuff takes forever! www.stucodotcom.com.

We're not having StuCo this week because of Brad's baby, which is extremely cute so we didn't have Band practice last night. I took Zack Johnson out to dinner and to a movie. We saw Watchmen. Crazy movie. Probably shouldn't have taken him to see that one. We talked a lot about his future in StuCo and what that will look like.

I got home from the movie around 11:40. My room is extrememly messy, still haven't had time to clean it. Maybe I stop getting home around 10 or 11, I'll have time to clean it.

Today is my birthday and Tara is taking me out tonight, I don't know where.

I made a baptism video today, you'll see it on Sunday. I didn't record the video, someone else did and it was just horrible. You can only work with so much. If you see it on Sunday, be gentle!

Then Jason and I talked for a while about the worship band and how basically to make it better. Aaron Smith and Robbie white stopped by and we went out to eat lunch at a chinese buffet. They came through StuCo and are now in College. I also taught both of them drums. Very cool people.

After I came back and made this graphic for StuCo A2 to pass out this Sunday. I designed it and put 4 graphics on eat regular 8.5x11 piece of paper. I'll have to cut them right now.

So that's about it.

Good two days. Not to mention learning about Programming like html xhtml css and all the other add ones. Very boring stuff but it's cool to get to finally know it and start to understand it.

Here's the graphics:

Sunday and Monday Tuesday.

Sunday was a rough one. It was a good one, but boy it was a rough one. I'm from Indiana, and I'm not really used to this whole time change deal. I have been in Michigan almost five years, you would think I would be used to it, but I'm not. So I lost an hour of sleep. Let me tell you something: I am the kind of person that NEEDS his 10 hours of sleep at night.

So Sunday, I was so ridiculously tired, it was also the Sunday I led worship in Adult service. It was a great time, I even led the performance songs and the encounter song. This was my third time leading and I felt a lot more confident in my voice. Leading I could have done a little better on, it's not like StuCo, it's a lot more intimidating when you lead for adults, haha. But seriously. I stuttered like 4 times, haha. Oh well.

I heard the Band in StuCo went great. Ben is a great student leader and I was thrilled to hear about how well they did. I look forward to Ben getting more actively involved in leading so ultimately I can just sit back and focus on other things. He's almost there!

We all ate at Chili's after church, I had the shrimp pasta alfredo, it was really good. Tara informed me it has 1800 calories in just that meal. Thanks sweetie.

After that, Tara and I just went back to my place and I took a quick little nap. I was hoping to get down to Ann Arbor by 4, but no. I was literally the most tired I have ever been. Plus my head and stomach were hurting, it was not looking good. I ended up going to Ann Arbor and getting there at 5pm.

StuCo that night went well, we had about 7 or so students. Not as much as the previous weeks. But I can tell they're really starting to get on board with what we're doing at this church. I can tell we have some definate leaders in the group. 3 of them are musicians, which is awesome. I look forward to starting a little worship band. We're launching StuCo on March 22nd from 4-5:30pm at the Boardwalk. Sunday night overall went awesome.

Right after church I just left. I was coughing and my lungs felt like they were on fire and I always felt like I was going to throw up.

I just went straight to bed.

Monday was crazy. I didn't do anything but lay in bed and sleep. I probably slept for 12 hours, just watched TV, backed up my computer, organized my iTunes, installed some software and just watched movies all day long while my little Bird crawled all over me. She must have thought I was in trouble or something, she seemed concerned. I really didn't eat much.

Tuesday was a good one, I woke up completely rested and was ready for the day. I got into the office around 9 and organized some services, looked at the future services to make sure everything was going smoothly, emailed some artists, planned some time, emails, myspace updates, website updates, the usual stuff. I also started watching some tutorials on xHTML (html) CSS, asp, jsp all that deal. It's pretty interested stuff and I've actually always wanted to learn how to AT LEAST kind of understand it, if not completely write it from scratch. I'm a designer, not a programmer. The StuCo website is all done is dreamweaver so I want to really learn the in's and out's of that program and the process has started.

I leave every Tuesday at 3:30 to teach the Gibsons drums. Sean and family surprised me with a birthday cake and a little gift. They are such an awesome family. May God bless them Greatly. I pray for him and his family and the loss of Sean's mother.

After that Jeff had a surprise for me for my birthday, which is friday. So all day I had no idea what I was, when he picked me up last night, he told me . . . . .

WYNTON MARSALIS and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra!!! Amazing!! It was so amazing. Dude has won 9 grammies. He's also the only musician to win in BOTH classical and Jazz. But really, it was crazy. Every one of the musicians was incredible. It was to watch history and watch one of the greats. Props to Jeff for the birthday gift. It was awesome. He's a good big bro.

So, today was a little more rough, we had an arts meeting at 10 which went well. Planning for upcoming services.

I went out to lunch with Jason and we talked about marriage and married life as well as Brad's brand new Baby girl Bella, that's so awesome, we're so proud of him!

Today was more of a meeting day and working things out day. I'm going to do a baptism video and learn more about html and css.

I did make the graphic for the new upcoming series for our church check it out. Also, I made a little blog header for Brad's blog.



I hope we use this graphic, Jeff was cool enough to ask me to tackle it. The series is called wide awake.

Alright, I'm going to start on this baptism video for Sunday. I have to meet Tara at the secretary of State at 5 to get the corolla titled and insured etc . . . Then we have StuCo unplugged, it's the last one.

Until the next time.

Leadership Community.

Today I got to lakewood at 9am for leadership community. This is where we celebrate wins with our leaders and cast vision. This one was a good one. We had over 90 leaders come. Jason, Jeff and I lead some worship and I led one song. The food was amazing as always and it was just a great time of celebration. Dave is a great speaker and vision caster and just got us all ramped up for Ann Arbor.

The weather today was ridiculous, it was raining like crazy and super duper gray outside not to mention the fog. Due to all the rain we have a flood warning right now and the lakewood property was pretty much all mud. I had to pull Karen's car out of the mud with Troops.

After that I just went home, worked on a little of the songs for tomorrow and just relaxed. I got a new macbook pro, thanks to insurance so I've been backing up everything and getting all my files from my old one to my new one. Tara is at Lydia's wedding shower and I'm going up to Howell in a few to pick her up and then we're going to Premarital counseling tonight.

We'll see how that goes. Not really into it, to be honest. We have over 10 couples there.

Friday.

I was up until about 3am last night doing the epistle and altering the graphics for it as well as messing around with the StuCo website (www.stucodotcom.com) so needless to say I was in the office late today. I woke up around 9 and got in the office a little after 10:30.

It was such an awesome day today, It was t-shirt weather and we had all the windows in the office open, it was so nice. When I came in today Hollie Schrock and Brooke were in the main auditorium setting up for Leader's community which we have here tomorrow at 10am. We have over 90 people coming, it should be a good time.

I spent the day helping with clean up around the office and doing some graphics and editing some videos for Sunday. A big part of my fridays are programming the production computer for Sunday. This is the computer that shows the slides, videos, graphics, words etc . . . Every visual element you see comes from this computer.

Here's some graphics I did today:

On Sunday we're doing an game with M&M's. It'll be pretty fun. Lunch was awesome, Me, Jeff, Jason, Brad and Joy all went to Los Tres Amigo's. It's an awesome mexican restaurant in Howell. I got the fajita burrito. I didn't want to go really because I brought my lunch but everyone was rooting me on. So Jeff bought my lunch, which is really nice of him. I stink with peer pressure. After that Brad and I went to the Apple store in Novi.

We didn't buy anything, but he did buy starbucks and I did buy a pretzel from Auntie Anne's or whatever that place is. after I'm done with this blog I'm going to practice some songs for Sunday and then go to a Student's Battle of the Band at 7pm. It'll be fun, he's a drummer and I'm hoping to get him involved in StuCo.

The StuCo leader's meeting is also tonight but I got the blessing to go to Brian's concert. It's right across the street so I'm sure I'll have enough time to swing by and at least be apart of the meeting.

It's been so long since I've blogged I haven't blogged about Blast 2009. It's our winter conference in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin at the Kalahari Resort. Over 700 come and it's awesome. The 2|42 StuCo band also worship for two sessions, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.



Here's the recap video I made.




Alright, I'm going to go practice these songs for Sunday. Hopefully, I'll get to see Tara Tonight.

Jonathan

Thursday March 5th.

Today was a pretty good day.  My heart goes out to Sean and Kendall Gibson and family.  On Sunday we heard the new that Sean's mother had passed away.  Sean and Kendall are amazing volunteers in our church.  They are very involved in StuCo, both of them lead high impact cell groups and Sean is on the offering team and Kendall helps out with administration stuff and heads up the communion team.  They are both amazing people. 

Yesterday a lot of the staff went to the showing and then today we pushed staff meeting back to 12 so we could all go to the funeral services.  I was amazed at the turn out.  I remember when my grandma passed away, almost no one showed up.  I met Sean's mother once and didn't really talk to her, but I'm sure she was an amazing women, she sure mad an impression on a lot of people.  

Our staff meetings just keep on getting bigger and bigger. Since it started at 12, we had pizza brought in for us all to eat and we pitched in.  Most of the time was spent with the new Database program.  Sarah Jacobs has been rockin' that role.  We talked about Ann Arbor and other very important things.  Launch is March 22nd, it's getting close!

After Staff meeting Jamison Brad and I had our Arts meeting for StuCo.  We planned this week's service at the Hollering Wolf cafe in Howell.  It's the first time I was in there and we got yelled out because our computers were too loud.  The funny thing is, we were the only people in there.  Choose your battles?  We talked about the up coming summer conferences and camps and I got the website kind of all geared for sign ups.  You can check it out if you're interested.  www.stucodotcom.com

After that we went to Kroger to pick up some M&M's for a game we're doing this week.  It'll be good, oh yes.  It will be good.  You'll have to come to find out what we'll be doing.  

Since the church bought new Production computers (the computers that we use to put all the graphics/words/videos etc. on the screen) we got Adult service's old computer and Kid Fusion got our old computer.  The new computer is MUCH MUCH better and faster and has a better graphics card.  

After coming back from Kroger I moved all of our stuff onto the new computer and plugged everything back in and made sure all the shortcuts worked, they do.  No problems at all.  It's currently defragmenting right now.  Man I do not like PC's.  

So here I am blogging while Jeff and Craig work on Reason stuff.  I'm leading worship this Sunday in Adult service, so I'm kind of anxious about that.  It's been about a year since I've led last.  

Come Sunday and check it out.  

Jonathan