As Traci and I leave North Carolina and move to Kentucky, we both agree (my father does too), New Life Fellowship of Chapel Hill was our “Rockville” in North Carolina. We have friends here that mean the world to us, friends that will forever be family.

The memories I have are many, but here are 11 of my favorites…

1. Rafting down the New River, and nearly getting tossed out on the very first Class 1 rapid.
2. Moving into Traci’s home, and 10 of my “family” show up to help us move in.
3. Playing bass in the praise band every week, and performing with Turning Point (Rainey, Dave, Pam, Laura, Doug, Lettie, and Keith, you guys can never be replaced).
4. The race to the alter (Traci and I beat Rainey and Laura by days, so they had to copy us on everything).
5. Sabbath afternoon biking trips down Crabtree Creek, or through Olmstead Park.
6. Cramming 30 people into our little, tiny house for Potluck or Game Night.
7. Dinner out or poker with the guys.
8. Keith, Joe, Jayce, Henry, Jason, and I discover, it is possible to score a 0 in Call of Duty 4.
9. Hitting my best tee shot on the 9th hole, off the light pole, and bouncing back down the cart path as Dave, Brian, Brad, and I all roll on the ground laughing.
10. Friday nights with Doc, Kathy, and Terry just bringing in the Sabbath.
11. Matt, Cindy, and Morgan... guys there are no other words needed.

I’ve now been lucky to have my own Rockville, and hopefully this won’t be our last. But I hope that someday, my children will be able to find their Rockvilles, because they are truly special.

So my sister just passed an email to me with an article from the Washington Post in it. This is article supposedly won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. It's a long article, and it will take time to read (especially if you read at my pace), but it's worth the time. It made me wonder how often I've missed the "roses" because I was too busy. I think tonight will be a great time to go home and just play with my daughter.

So today started off like normal. I’m late for work, and running around to get everything together. Coffee… check. Laptops… check. IPod… chest pocket, check.  Alright, let’s kiss the family goodbye. As I lean over to pick Susie up off the floor to give her a kiss… thump. That’s right, the iPod slips out of my pocket and lands squarely on the top of her head. It take a minute to sink in, but then the tears begin. The look of shock, and the cries of pain just break your heart as a father. She looks at me like “What did you let happen to me?”  I feel horrible. I try holding her and whispering sweet comforting words in her ear, and it appears to be working. Then I see it… the giggle stick. 

Susie plays happily with the giggle stick

For those who don’t know what this is, it’s like one of those rain sticks, or cow noise makers, except the sound is a little different. It’s a wonderful toy, and one of Susie’s favorites. Every time it goes, she smiles, and this time is no exception.  I grab the giggle stick, shake it a few times, and the smiles return instantly. The tears haven’t even reached the full expanse of her cheeks, and she’s smiling again. I wipe the tears, hand her to Traci, and she’s smiling.

If only we adults could forget something or someone that hurt us that quickly. How often do you find yourself still angry or bitter hours, days, weeks, months, or even years later by something a good friend did or said.  I thought when I became a father that I would be doing the teaching, not the other way around. Obviously I’ve got a lot to learn still.

So on Saturday, I was moving from one room in the house to another, carrying my laptop with the plug hanging out of it, and sure enough, it caught on a doorhandle.  The laptop came out of my hands and dropped to the floor.  Immediately the computer frose, so I rebooted but when it came up the computer didn't see the hard drive, and you could here this skipping sound.  Needless to say, the hard drive is dead.

This would be all fine and dandy if I had been backing things up to external devices (as every good computer geek knows) but I hadn't been.  I had every single audio file that I've recorded from Disney World on there. I also had some pictures on there. And probably one of the worst things was I had the code for my websites on there. Now, I've got none of those things.  So I'm going to be sending my hard drive out to a data retrieval shop, where they will hopefully be able to get everything back, but probably at a cost of about $500+.

So for future reference, please back up every