Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Broken Window, a Car Wreck, and a Dream Coming True!













How quickly the days get away from me! I've got three days worth of life to record and just a few pictures to "prove it" this time. The batteries on my camera had to be recharged, so I am left to depend on my memory. Lucky for you, oh faithful reader of my blog, I'll be uncharacteristically brief!

Tuesday, I had two Reach Them to Teach Them meetings; the first one was with Anderson and Candice McQueen. Candice was referred to us by Eric McNew as a gifted, new young talent in the world of graphic art. She seemed very interested in picking up our project; the trick now is getting her price down to an affordable rate. She has initially quoted us $65/hr. She will be working off of Eric's designs, so I hope the time per hour will be reasonable. I like her, and I'd love to hire her, but in the world of non-profits and spending other people's money, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what God provides for us. While we were meeting at Panera (my new office), I happened to run into Eddie Speeks. Talk about a divine appointment! I have been trying to get him tracked down for a while now. Eddie said that "he was gonna call me TODAY" (Lucky for him, he ran into ME, huh?) We briefly talked about getting together Thursday or Friday of this week. The second meeting was with Martha Riordan and her father, Dan, at the Panera in the Commons (my "west" office). Dan was very interested in learning more about the "dream" of Reach Them to Teach Them and once the foundation was laid, he was ready to help us build a dream! Dan brings administrative expertise that we desperately need. Strategic planning, organizational structure, and a "business" mind are his strengths, so we are thrilled to add him to our "dream team." Oh yeah, he works for FREE! Well, the benefits are out of this world, so there will be perks! Back at home, I fixed tacos for dinner and Chelcie's friend, Becca Cox, joined us. I went for a quick walk, caught up with Jenny Morris via cell phone, and the kids and I finished reading Stuart Little tonight!

Wonderful Wednesday started out great! I met Anthony Ingram downtown at Market Square to tour a very special place that is currently under construction. Merti Elliot was there for a brief time, so I got a quick update from her before she had to leave. Rick Kuhlman and Ben Bannister led our hard hat tour of 4 Market Square. Check out http://knoxvillefellows.com/ for more information about this creative, incredible plan to share the love of Christ with our city. I'm sure I'll write more about this in the days ahead. From there, I was off to another Reach Them meeting. This time with Ed Knowling and Jesse Jones regarding our website (http://www.reachthem2teachthem.org/) It is due for a major update. With our new date for the 2008 event (Oct.28) and our new speaker (Dr. Don Bartlette), we need to get the "word" out on the street as soon as possible. Our meeting with Jesse was productive in a backdoor kinda way. After discussing some of the additions we'd like to make to the site, Jesse confessed that he did not have the technical expertise to do the work and he was going to charge $25 per page to do the work. With all the coming changes, it is just not financially frugal of us to pay Jesse when Ed can do the technical work for free. We settled our dilemma with Jesse being our "man" for new webpages, and Ed will handle the changes to the site. I'm sleeping better at night knowing that Ed will take care of it. I also ran into Robert Eldridge's mom and dad! Funny, the folks down at Market Square had just mentioned that Robert was writing all their insurance. Well, after two days worth of meetings, I was ready for a little Mommy time with the kids, so Sam and I took off for Dick's to purchase another set of Pokemon cards as his reward for being a tough guy when he got his stitches. I had no clue that those darn cards are more expensive than Webkinz! I thought I was getting off easy! Chelcie ran into a wall (?) and busted her cell phone so she and I headed down to the Verizon store to transfer her phone data to my old cell phone. She feels like she's back in the dark ages, because she can't send or receive pictures, but she'll adjust. Back at home, Tom, Addie, Sam, and I went for a walk around the block. We saw the most gorgeous rainbow! My fingers literally itched for my camera so I could "blog" it, but I didn't have it with me. We were lucky enough to have timed our walk just right to catch a train as it rumbled down the tracks. We all enjoyed waving to the engineer and listening to the lonely, peaceful sound of the train. Yet another busy day in the lives of the Crawford family!

Today. Sam woke up ready to go to his best friend, Evan's, house, but he wasn't supposed to be there until 1:00. Sam busied himself gathering his bathing suit, Pokemon cards, change of shirt (just in case) until about 9:00. Now his challenge was what to do for the next four hours?? Our Amish Friendship Bread was ready to be baked as today was "Day 10" on our bread-baking schedule. With Sam's help, we made four delicious loaves of bread with plans to share one of our loaves with Evan's mom so they could be our friends for life. Sam and Addie worked hard cleaning the hardwood floors with scrub brushes. Addie took on a leadership role, making sure Sam did his fair share while I cleaned up the kitchen from our bread-making adventure. Before we knew it, it was time to take Sam to Evan's house! On the way there, Drew called me and said, "Mom, can you come to Kingston Pike and Bridgewater Road right now?" Caught off guard, I said, "What?" Then came the words every parent dreads hearing, "I've had a wreck!" Then he added, "...but I'm not hurt!" (whew!) I assured Drew that I'd be right there. Not wanting to panic Sam, I dropped him off at Evan's and made my way back to the car in time to have Drew call me back and say that Dad was there, no one was hurt, and the car was just "dented a little." Turns out, an elderly couple had accidentally run into the side of his car. Actually, the couple wasn't driving-that would have been really weird. The elderly gentleman just gave us his information and said he wasn't going to report the accident to his insurance company, he'd just pay us himself to keep from having his insurance canceled. Poor guy! I just hope he doesn't hurt someone before he decides to give up driving. And I hope we get his check to have the car repaired!
At 2, I met with Travis at the Kingston Overlook Chick-fil-a. He generously treated me to a chicken sandwich, an iced tea, and a chocolate milkshake. Even more generously, he shared with me that the Chick-fil-a owner/operators agreed to be our title sponsor for the second year in a row! To add to that, Chick-fil-a is providing dinner at the Tennessee Theatre for 1,600 people free of charge! They want to bring their "cows" and pass out coupons, and generally create a celebratory feel to the entire evening. Travis was concerned that I would not consider the "in-kind" donation of food in the total necessary for the title sponsorship ($15,000). I assured Travis that I LOVE being associated with Chick-fil-a, and am more than willing to make accomodations to allow "in-kind" donations to make up the cash difference. This is yet another miracle in a long line of miracles that have happened to make this whole movement possible! Never before, at least in the ten years Travis has been their Director of Marketing, has Chick-fil-a agreed to provide that many free meals! He said the most he's ever heard of them providing was about 300! In addition to that, they also agreed to cater the pre-event at Two Rivers Pavillion FREE as well. Talk about a pouring out of God's blessings! We are grateful!

After my meeting with Travis, I headed home to pick up Addie because she wanted to join me when I went to pick up Sam at Evan's house. I had briefed Sam as to the "procedure" for leaving Evan's house (say thank-you, say you had a great time, come right away, don't make me ask you twice, tell him mom thanks, ...you know the drill). Once we got there, I started talking to Evan's mom and the boys continued to enjoy each other's company! Evan wrote the sweetest letter to Sam (see photo)! Sam is just in awe of Evan and would easily spend 24 hours a day just hanging out with him. Isn't that how it's supposed to be with a BFF?

Finally, back home AGAIN, preparations were frantically being made to leave for Nicaragua in the morning! Tom, Chelcie, Drew, Andrew, and Abby were all at the house packing and weighing all their bags for the flight ahead. Scotty stopped by to chat with Tom for a few minutes and I got to hear all about his new classroom at Maryville Middle School. To add to the chaos, two guys were replacing (yay!) the broken out window in the kitchen as well as the broken garage window. Their price was the best of the three estimates we got, AND they could fix the windows right away. So...my "panes" are fixed! Through it all, Buffet just watched and drooled on the floor.
Looking forward to 7:00 tomorrow. My weekly "meeting" at my west office with my West Valley support group. I gotta do better on the photo-ops! Oops! So much for BRIEF! :)

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