Amy J. Bennett

Conversation at Chick-o-lay

January 14, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Chick-o-lay…that’s what Lexi calls Chick-fil-A. We ask her multiple times where we’re going just so she’ll say it. We had a funny conversation at Chick-o-lay today. Scott is one of those people that always has an answer for everything. He always has a quick comeback for anything you say and normally he turns your words around on you just to be funny. Me–not so much–I’ll think of something 10 minutes later, laugh to myself and realize how stupid I would seem if I would try to explain my oh-so-great-but-very-very-late comeback.

Anyway, I thought I had him cornered today but sadly, no. (We were laughing the whole time this happened so please don’t take this for more than it’s worth)

E: Mommy, will you play Chutes and Ladders with me when we get home?

Me: No, honey, I have to work but Daddy will…I bet he’d play five times with you.

Oh, I thought I had him. Emma has a fantastic memory and no way would she let him get out of playing anything less than five times with her.

E: Daddy, will you play five times with me?

Scott: Sure, I’ll play five times with you…(Scott looks at me knowing he has the upper hand) if Mommy’s nice to me tonight.

Me (faking a very surprised and happy voice): Of course I’ll be nice to Daddy, I love Daddy!

[insert family hugs]

Lesson Learned: Play with fire and you will get burned.

Winterjam 2008

January 14, 2008 by Amy 6 Comments

Up until about two hours before the concert, I wasn’t going to go last night. I just had so much to do and I was going to be gone for at least 6 hours and I hadn’t seen the girls very much. But then my nephew wanted to go and we figure out a way I could drop the kids off at choir and meet the youth group up there instead of spending time going on the church bus and then riding the light rail up there. And I figured Scott could pick the girls up and spend the last hour or two before bedtime with them since he had been working all weekend.

The place was absolutely packed. Bobcats arena can hold 20K or so I suppose and it was full all the way to the parts where you couldn’t see the stage up at the top. Thankfully two of our youth had gotten there FOUR hours early and had seats saved for us on the floor.

When we walked in I heard Group 1 Crew playing and I was certain they must have been playing their CD while everyone waited. NO! The one group I was intent on seeing went on before 6 when I was told the concert started so we completely missed them. We DID see Mandisa, Skillet, NewSong, BarlowGirl, Connersvine and MercyMe.

Just a short recap of each:

Mandisa – She is every ounce of wonderful she was on American Idol and ten times more. That girl can SANG. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with her songs on the radio but hearing some of them live just gave them a whole new meaning. She sings with heart and meaning and it was wonderful.

Skillet – I don’t consider myself a rocker by any means but Skillet was AWESOME. I was jumping, head banging (ok, only for a few seconds) and singing with the rest of them. Yes, I was acting like a teenybopper last night. But they were really good. I’m figuring out rock bands are so much better live than they ever could be recorded. It just doesn’t do it justice.

NewSong – They started out with Little Drummerboy and although the drums at the end were really, really cool I just thought it was weird they played a Christmas song. We stepped out to eat at this point since I saw NewSong twice last year but they are a fabulous group and I love Nate Sallie.

BarlowGirl – Honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of BarlowGirl and while they are very talented, I wasn’t jumping for joy over them. They were ok. It’s just after you see Skillet, it’s hard to compare the live show.

Connersvine – This is a duo and a guy from The Colts are in this group. He wasn’t there yesterday because they were playing a sort-of important game. Only one of them sang and I’ll just say I’d like to say I’d like to see them singing together before I make any judgment.

MercyMe – OK, honestly I was going to leave during MercyMe. I know, I know they are a fabulous band but they are just so less exciting in person than some of the others and really, haven’t we all heard MercyMe played to death on the radio? But after each song, I’d say, let me just see what they’re playing next and every time, it was a great song I didn’t want to miss. I thought I couldn’t hear I Can Only Imagine one more time but it turned into the best praise song of the night. And the lead singer was totally soaking it in. He sat there with a smile and the microphone out to the audience obviously loving it 20,000 people were singing the words. And I don’t mean to say he was being prideful, he seemed humbled by it. They put on a great show and really, they have had a TON of radio hits that were great to sing along with since we HAVE heard them a hundred times over.

Without further ado, here are some pictures. I stupidly left my dad’s lens at his house Saturday night instead of keeping it so the quality of the pictures are not nearly what they could have been.

Skillet:

MercyMe:

Mandisa:

BarlowGirl:

Julian Drive Concert

January 13, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

The concert turned out great last night. We had about 300 people turn out. There were several that responded at the end, one that I personally got to lead to Christ. A great night indeed.

If you’ve never heard of the band, they sing Hoobastank’s song The Reason so that should give you an idea. Check them out on myspace.

They were all very nice as we ate lunch with them, help them set up (well, many of us watched them set up), perform and then meet and greet with the people afterwards.

Lysa TerKeurst – Proverbs 31 Ministries

January 13, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

This morning our church was very privileged to have Lysa TerKeurst speak. She set out to show that not only does Jesus exist but he works and she didn’t do it with a bunch of verses and theology. She simply gave her testimony. It was powerful and convincing and I highly encourage anyone to read her blog or books or simply get her testimony on DVD.

Sunday Scripture

January 13, 2008 by Amy 3 Comments

Numbers 6:24-26

24 ” ‘ “The LORD bless you
and keep you;

25 the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;

26 the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.” ‘

That’s my prayer for you today.

So how about you? To participate, simply post a verse, a set of verses or even just a reference to a verse that means something to you now or maybe even in the past. Explain why it’s important or don’t. It’s up to you. Go now and post and then come back. Post your name and then a direct link to you blog entry. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave yours in the comments. Here is the code for the graphic above.

Going to be a busy weekend

January 11, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Well, we have a full weekend ahead of ourselves.

Tonight I have an Arbonne party to attend at D’s house. The guys are all planning to show up at the end to eat and play games. Should be a good time. And this is assuming the girls are going to MIL’s to spend the night tonight.

Tomorrow is the big Julian Drive concert. We are supposed to eat lunch with the band at our church then spend the afternoon helping them set up at a local high school and then of course spend the evening at the concert.

Sunday is of course church but Sunday evening the youth is going to the Winterjam concert featuring Mercy Me, BarlowGirl, Mandisa from American Idol, Group 1 Crew and some others I can’t recall. I’m not sure if I’ll go or not. The girls are supposed to start preschool choir and I missed choir last week and I’m not sure about someone keeping the girls that long so I may just have Scott go. Who knows.

Then Monday we’re supposed to go to another concert at church in the next town with the youth. It’s like the weekend of concerts.

Hopefully in there somewhere I’ll clean the house, work on some side projects, relax and enjoy some family time. You know, because the weekend is like 8 days long.

Grey’s Anatomy January 10, 2008

January 11, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

OK, last episode for quite some time and what’d we think? I thought this was one of Grey’s more serious episodes. They’ve done a few like this in the past I think and while I wouldn’t want every episode to be like it was tonight, I thought it was good.

I really thought Meredith and Derek were going to be good. Meredith really irritated me tonight. I mean, come ON! He was with her and then decided that he wanted to be with Meredith and WAS GOING TO BUILD HER A HOUSE. I don’t know, maybe she’s right. He didn’t come clean about Addison or Rose and the whole fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me thing..I get it. She doesn’t trust him. He should have come to her and said I kissed Rose and realize all I want is you. THAT would have been sweet. But on the other hand, why couldn’t the explanation be enough? I don’t know. I really did like that Derek asked Rose out. It didn’t bother me like I thought it would. I think I’m just ready for something different.

I love Alex. I liked those women who could see he was a hurt little boy in a jerk of a man’s body. But I still love him. That hurt little boy is in there and I love to see when it comes out. Which I guess it doesn’t too much except times like tonight when he goes and gets Izzie and tells her she’s way better that Yang.

I can not get into the Hahn and McSteamy thing. That whole scene where Hahn tells McSteamy they’d be an item if they weren’t coworkers. Well, that just grossed me out.

I do like Hahn and Callie together though. They play well off of each other. I think because Hahn is actually as tall as Callie. lol.

Poor Izzie telling George’s mom about George and Callie. That SO something I would do. And then George goes and does the same thing to Meredith.

I could hardly watch the scenes with Bailey’s son in them. Wow. Watching any child suffer is hard.

I’m just so frustrated that they really had Bailey’s husband leave her. The last remaining marriage splits. I was so hoping they could redeem it somehow but no. AND in the episode that was about faith.

And as for the theme on faith, I thought it was well played out. I like the Chief’s comment about it may not working but it surely wouldn’t hurt.

Christina finally put someone in front of herself in this episode to hold Tucker’s hand and you have to give her points for that. Although if she had left his side, I might have had to write her off my good list for good.

I guess that’s enough babbling about that…any reactions from the peanut gallery on the episode?

Do you need to laugh?

January 10, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

My sister Heather just sent me this video of this baby laugh and I was thinking I really wouldn’t find it that funny but I was crying laughing by the end of it. The baby’s laughing so hard he can barely breathe. Ahhh, I needed that.