Victory again on a great night!

Caleb stayed in the worship center for almost the entire celebration service tonight. We had to sit in the back, we had to break through the roped off area, we had to use earphones, we had to allow him to lay down on the pew, BUT HE DID IT! Thanks to JEN for not giving up and making this happen, you are a great momma! Thanks to everyone at LCC for being so supportive. Thanks to Mrs. Hoffman, his kindergarten teacher at JF Burns for all the time and special energy put into Caleb, it showed tonight. Thanks to everyone at JF Burns for all their support. Thanks to Caleb's extended family who never quit loving him. Thanks to everyone who has prayed and continues to pray for Caleb. Oh, and get this, at one point in the service he even walked with mom to the front of the worship center while she wrote a list of her blessings and the entire band was playing at the time! YES! YES! YES! thank you GOD!

The service tonight was awesome. Thanks to Jared for following the prompting of God and for leading us in a wonderful time of praise and reflection. Thanks to our LCC band, you guys rock! Thanks to the choir, they were really ON! Thanks to everyone who took time to worship with us this evening. WOW! God was praised and we were BLESSED!

Jen got to go out for the evening with the band (she deserves many nights out, so I was glad she got this one) and I got to go home and enjoy my kids. We modeled hats right before bed, enjoy the pics...

God is good all the time and all the time, God is good!
B. OUT!!

victory today

We always look for the little things and point to them as victories. One of those moments happened tonight. Jen was gone to a meeting and I was having a blast as Mr. dad. Caleb decided he wanted to try Playstation 2 and the game "Curious George". What that usually means is that Caleb wants to watch dad play the game. Like riding his bike, Caleb just has not been able to figure out how to use the controllers. So, I got it ready fully expecting to do the playing. Well, off he went. He was patient and persistent. He kept trying and suddenly he was past the first level, then the second, then the third. He did get stuck on a bridge that is really hard and then on the lilly pads, but man, he was moving. I was so proud of him and told him so many times. He got frustrated from time to time, almost shed a couple cheers but he DID IT! The first thing he told mom when she got home was that HE DID IT!
For most parents with a 5 year old boy being able to accomplish a couple levels in a video game is not biggie, but for us, it was another huge milestone. WAY TO GO CALEB, DADDY IS SO PROUD OF YOU!






B Out!

Short Term Mission Trip Opportunity

The Day Finally Came

While at Middler camp in June of 07' Jennifer called Children's Hospital to make an appointment for Caleb. The first available for this type of observation was Thursday, January 17th. It finally arrived. We left the house around 8 am and dropped Lauren off at her Grandma Bell's. Jen, Caleb and I headed toward town.

We arrived at Children's around 9:30 am. What an awesome place. We are very blessed to have this hospital in our back yard. From the minute we arrived, they were helpful and concerned. The nurses, doctors, residents were all very personal and professional. They called Caleb "Prince" because he was so charming. He did great! We were at the Hospital until after Noon. I will give you an idea what they said in a moment.
One of the reasons that caleb was so good was the BRIBE! We promised if he was good, he loves shrimp. He wanted to sit by himself in his booth and to completely order his lunch himself. He did an incredible job. We had a wonderful lunch and finally headed back to Grandma Bell's.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and genuine concern. We don't know much more than we did, but at least we are making progress. Following a lot of questions and observation they confirmed our belief that Caleb is most likely somewhere in the "Autism Spectrum". We are looking at Asburgers (sp?) Syndrome or possibly Non Verbal Learning Disorder. It could be one of these, a mix of these or none of these. It could be simply a large anxiety problem. We have scheduled 3 other appointments over the next 3 months and will be scheduling a couple more. By May of 08' (almost a year from starting this) we should have a good idea and a direction for Caleb to move.

Another piece of good news. Last week Caleb's school (JF BURNS) in the Kings School District agreed that Caleb had enough delays to start the process of an IEP (Individual Educational Program) even without any diagnosis. We are praising God for this. If you are looking for a great, awesome, caring, personal, incredible school district to move into, I highly recommend the Kings School district and especially JF BURNS!

We will keep everyone updated. Thanks for your prayers and love!

B OUT!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY GIRL!

January 13th is a very special day in our family. It was the day (3 years ago) that Lauren Jessica Richard was born. She has become our little "princess". While the day did not feature a lot of "fan-fare" it still ended up a very nice day. It began with church. She learned "Jesus Loves Me" and has been singing it throughout the day. THANKS TO KURT, ALICIA WEBER and also to NANCY ROSE (and any other volunteers at LCC) who take the time to help shape our kids into followers of Christ.

After church we joined several of our new friends to LCC and enjoyed a delicious Domino's Pizza and bread stick lunch. Our family just loves Pizza With The Preacher! It was nice to relax and share with folks that God has lead to LCC in the past few months.

This afternoon we all just "hung out" at home. It was nice. We watched football, played, laughed and just enjoyed being a family. At one point, the entire Richard family sat together on the couch, a special moment indeed.

This evening we were invited to Grandma and Grandpa Bell's house (thanks for the invite) but decided to decline because we had planned a special "Richard family only" evening out. We used gift certificates from Christmas and had a wonderful meal at Red Robyn! YUMMY! We realized that the last time we went to RR (about a year ago) we were not able to finish our meal because Lauren threw such a fit that we had to leave. HOW FAR WE HAVE COME IN A YEAR! Tonight she sat in the booth next to daddy and smiled, laughed, talked and just charmed everyone. Here is another victory tonight. It seems that EVERYONE at RR had a birthday tonight. The servers would come by, CLAP REALLY LOUD and sing a "happy birthday" song. You may say, "big deal" unless you know Caleb. He is terrified of clapping and anything doing with birthday songs. Tonight, he didn't let it phase him in the least. It was loud and frequent and he just ignored it. WOW! Praise the Lord. Now, we didn't test this victory by telling them it was Lauren's birthday, but I believe the time will come.

We ended our evening out with ice cream at UDF! Caleb had a chocolate cone with Chocolate ice cream, Jen had peanut butter cookie dough, I had a mix of butter pecan and a turtle ice cream, Lauren had chocolate with sprinkles. We ended up bringing Lauren's home because she is so distracted and eats so slow. Once home she really "dug in" and then headed for a bath.

Lauren's party will be Friday night. There will be family, friends, cake, ice cream, presents and singing. It will be a great day. However, I don't think anything we do will compare to this simple day together.

Thank you God for my wife, my son and my daughter. You have blessed me so much more than I deserve, I am a very blessed man. Amen!

Enjoy the pics of Red Robyn (above), UDF and of course the chocolate face birthday girl!

Looking forward to Sunday

Join us for the start of a timely series entitled "Relationship Rescue". We will be looking through the Old Testament book Song of Solomon for a Godly perspective on Relationships, dating, sex and marriage. You might think this series is only for a select group of people, however, it contains some very important principles that EACH of us need to hear, know and apply. If you are in the Loveland area, please stop by and share in worship, fellowship and God's word! I can't wait to share this message and the entire series with my friends and family. See you on Sunday 8:45, 10 or 11:15!

B. OUT!

View Beyond The Pew

Okay, so reading scripture while hugging a skeleton might have been a little over the top. Trust me when I say that I meant no disrespect, but what else could I do on a family sunday and with my scripture text as Ezekiel 37!

What a great day! It just seemed that everyone was really excited to be at church. There was a buzzzzz in the building all morning long. Attendance was good. Offering was above budget for the 3rd week in a row (thank you Lord). The Child/Parent dedication was well received and a true blessing for everyone participating. Congrats to Casey, Brooke, Andrew, Israel & Ethan (parents too) on your dedications. I am expecting a few pics to be sent my way soon and will plan to post them here. If you would like a copy of the video shown during the dedication, please e-mail Jared Adamson (jadamson@lovedtolove.org) and he would be happy to send it to you. On that note, thanks a TON to Jared for taking a lot of extra time to put that video together. We are in DIRE NEED of new computers. The computers in our office are very, very, very outdated, especially when it comes to doing some of the advanced things we are doing in our services. As a result, Jared spent over 4 hours on something that should of taken 30 minutes. UGGGH! Thanks Jared. By the way, if you are reading this and would like to help get Jared a computer that would handle what he needs, give me a call or shoot me an e-mail ASAP!

It was so cool to have the kids in service again. I know that parents are ready for NP-3 to begin again, but family worship is always a nice thing. See Holly's blog, but I think they are about ready for a new and improved season at NP-3. Don't miss the fun this Sunday morning at 8:45 or 11:15.

It was moving to see so many people coming forward for prayer. It was exciting to see so many people "getting the Word" and applying it. It is awesome to hear about spiritual resolutions being made for Christ and His church. It was amazing to witness a "new birth in Christ" at the conclusion of our 11:15 service. Congrats to Shala Pachta on her baptism. How cool that her grandpa had the honor to baptize her. The angels in heaven rejoiced! It was really neat to hear a new friend to LCC (she has only attended 3 weeks) share her excitement about God's call on her life and to meet with her to talk about it today. It was miraculous to talk with a brand new friend in the foyer (sunday was his first time at LCC) about how God had lead him to LCC and how excited he was about the message and how the Spirit of God had spoke to him during the service. I am praying he attends Community Night on Wednesday. On a personal note, it was really nice to have great friends from Brazil, Indiana (Matt, Kathy, Shane and Logan) with us all weekend and worshipping with us at Loveland. Faith, Fun, Family, Friends and so much more!

It's so great to be a part of the Family of God! I said it Sunday and I will say it again, "I have the best job in the world".

B. OUT!!

Guided by Technology?

YES!
It has been nice to have SO MANY of you tell me how much you have missed my blogs. It is good to know that people actually read this thing. Why have I been gone so long?
Christmas? YES
Family Time? YES
Busy? YES
all these are true, however, the biggest reason has to do with technology.
The weekend before Christmas my computer tried to load 8 updates from window's vista and got "stuck". I decided after a LONG time to just shut it down. In doing so, I destroyed my operating system. UGGGHHHHH! No computer!
I want to say a great big, huge, mega THANKS to Clarence K. for getting my computer back and running. I lost all of my pictures, favorites and files, however, I have a computer again. Clarence is a great guy and has done great things for our website at church. Let me know if you need someone really good to hire for web page work and I will pass info along to him.
Now to the next thing. Early this morning (like around 3 am) I was eating pizza, chocolate and salsa all in one bite and a good friend of mine was using my camera to tape the event when the "picture card" malfunctioned and WHAM all my pictures are gone. I am most sad about our Christmas pics and the MANY, MANY, MANY,MANY pics of our LCC NEW YEARS EVE BASH I took last evening. I was looking forward to placing some of those on here as well as on our web page, but they are GONE! :o(::::::::::
If you were at the event last evening and took any pics, please let me know.
If you know how to get pics from a card that WILL NOT WORK, please let me know.
If you would like to have my technology curse, PLEASE TAKE IT!

Hey, it's a new year, right! Whoooo hooooo!

Todd Temple, congrats on the ping pong tournament victory last evening. You were better than the other 21 players and you deserved the championship! (although, we don't have any pictures to prove you won?)

George Wise, thanks for giving your energy and time to allow us to have the New Years Eve Bash at the school, it was awesome!

Thanks to the well over 100 folks who joined us for any length of time last evening at Loveland Primary school, it was a huge success.

FINALLY, thanks to George Wise, Keith Wrassmann, Julie Preston, Angie Miller and Tony Miller for playing UNO well into the morning and of course for being such great sports as I BLEW EVERYONE AWAY ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR! UNO CHAMP! YEAH!

Have a blessed 2008! Happy New Year!

B. OUT!

p.s. check out this web site to watch the archived weather segment from Rich Appuzo and notice who sent him a picture...ME! http://www.skyeyeweather.com/weather_rush/