steve-o
Introduction To The House of Carr
Introduction To The House of Carr

Family

The Center of the Universe

My mother's family is from Maysville, Kentucky. I was last there just after Kaelyn was born. The sleepy old tobacco town just down the Ohio River doesn't see much excitement. Well, until recently, that is.

  • On Saturday, the local high school basketball team won the state title.
  • On Sunday, native son Chris Lofton helped guide the Tennessee Volunteers into the Sweet Sixteen.
  • On Monday, George Clooney was in town [with Renee Zellweger] to screen his new movie.
  • On Tuesday, Bill Clinton was in town campaigning for his wife.

I bet the editor of the Maysville Ledger Independent peed himself. His paper usually covers people saving downing puppies.

24, 24 Hours Ago [Part Two]

So before our Easter worship gathering, I returned home to pick up Kelly and Kaelyn. On the way to the church building I decided to stop at the post office to see if there was any mail in our PO box. I hopped in the car and started to say something to Kelly when this teenage kid started running down the middle of the street. He was carrying something that looked like a sleeping bag. "Peculiar," I thought, but I've seen more bizarre things. I then looked over my shoulder and saw two other guys. They were walking after the teenage kid, but one of the men was restraining the other. If you've ever seen a street fight, it was the obligatory guy-holding-the-other-guy-back scene. But after doing a double take, I noticed that the guy being restrained, who was wearing a white, long-sleeved thermal shirt, had blood all over his shoulder and upper arm. And when realizing that this was not, in fact, an ordinary street fight, I looked again at the bleeding guy to see he was brandishing a seven-inch knife.

It was then that I thought that it would be a good idea to drive away.

It took me a few seconds to realize that I should probably call the police. I wasn't sure who wronged whom, but one of my beliefs is that a guy shouldn't be walking down the middle of the street in our community while holding a knife, looking like he's ready to kill someone. I'm sure that by the time the cops showed up he was long gone.

This incident, combined with the fact that our neighbors had their house robbed this week, reminds me that this is still a far from perfect place. But even with these events, we're even more settled here, and it feels so much like home.

Speaking of home, my parents are on vacation this week, so we're staying with my grandmother at night [she has a caregiver who is with her during the day]. After church we headed over to the westside and spent last night there. And Kaelyn seemed to enjoy it; she loves the ranch-layout over there as she can run all over the place without stopping. We woke up this morning and headed back to Walnut Hills where we'll be spending our days. We'll be right back there again tonight. So our home-office now feels more like a real office.

All that to say that the past twenty-four hours have been crazy.

But at least our lives aren't boring.

24, 24 Hours Ago [Part One]

I've had a crazy day or so. Thought I'd get it written down so I don't forget it. Apologies if this isn't the most riveting recap, but I promise it'll get interesting in Part Two. I'll preface this by noting that since Thursday I've been battling some sort of virus I can't quite get over. I might have to see the doctor soon. So all of the following happened while I've been functioning at less than 100 percent.

Kaelyn and Kelly were in Lexington over the weekend so I spent some considerable time on the couch watching basketball. I woke up early yesterday morning to drive out to New Richmond for a little Sunrise Service action. It was an interesting drive out as I travel along the Ohio River which was flooded. The fields where I've played soccer the past couple of summers were submerged under a few feet of water.

I haven't written much about the little church I've been preaching at on Sunday mornings, though eventually I will. The 150+ year old church consists of about seven people now who were excited at the thought of their first Sunrise Service in years. For those who have never been to one of these, it's a Protestant chance to get up at the butt-crack of dawn [when the empty tomb of Jesus would've been discovered] and then continue the celebration through the consumption of breakfast. Attendance swelled for this service, with fifteen people in attendance, highlighted by the guest singer who was American Idol-reject worthy. More interesting was the fact that the singer and her family were Seventh-Day Adventists, who believe that the Jewish Sabbath is the true day of worship and Sunday Christian worship is of the devil. I guess those rules fall by the wayside if there are pancakes being served.

I spent almost five hours at that little church yesterday and actually enjoyed myself. I returned home in the afternoon, still not feeling good, and fell asleep on the couch. Kelly and a very-sleep-deprived-Kaelyn made it back later, so I went off to church without them. Tim, Dale and I made sure things were set up for the service and I went home to pick up the girls.

Switching up the time-line for a second, we had a good Easter service. Since we're a church that meets on Sunday nights, the emphasis on the major holidays at Echo is less than at most churches. Attendance is usually lower. Still, we had a great worship gathering. Tye and Andrea played/sang together and the musically worship was amazing. I wasn't very good, but I enjoyed the message I prepared and had a great night worshipping with our community.

But it was when I picked up Kelly and Kaelyn that things got interesting. I'll pick that up in the next post.

Snow Recovery

I didn't much like the snowstorm that hit during the past few days. Even though my office is out of the home, and we weren't caught out in the blizzard, I felt as if my productivity declined. Nary a blog post was produced as I just didn't feel like it. We only had about nine inches on the ground. Unfortunately the wind caused some drifts of close to two feet outside on our deck, so I spent the past few days shoveling. Still, it's pretty amazing to look outside now, as all the snow is melted, and realize our deck was fully covered just 72 hours ago.

By yesterday afternoon the roads were fine. One of the benefits of having church on Sunday nights is you have plenty of time to decide what you're going to do.

I'm so ready for spring.

Two, Four, Six, Eight

Doing taxes sure is great. For ten years now, I've been doing my own taxes [before then I actually had an accountant do it]. Minister's taxes are particularly difficult, which is why few do their own. But I took the challenge and have yet to be audited. I'm not that great with numbers, unless there's a "$" attached to it. Then, I give my undivided attention.

It always takes me a few weeks before I feel motivated to do them, but I've always gotten them finished before April. And we're getting some money back which makes it all even nicer.

I own the 1040.

She Spells Too

Every night before she goes to bed, Kaelyn prays. Probably for many of you. She says, in her two-year old, broken English, "Thanks . . . God . . . for . . . " and lists names of people: family, friends, people she knows. And she rounds it off with an enthusiastic "Amen!" Sure, she might not understand prayer yet [admittedly, there are still times I don't] but she knows the people in her life, and she loves saying their names before she goes to sleep. This prayer time was born out of song time. For months now, we've been singing songs before she goes to bed as well. It started out with "Jesus Loves Me," and as she picked up the words, we continued to add a song. The latest one is an old Sunday School kids favorite called, "The B-I-B-L-E." The pay-off for kids is that they get to yell "Bible!" at the end. But twice in the song, you spell out the word "Bible."

Like the other songs, Kaelyn picked up some words here and there and started to sing it on her own. Just a few days ago, she started to sing and spell out, "B . . . I . . .B . . . L . . . E."

And at that, our daughter spelled her first word.

Of course, as a minister, I demanded that it be a spiritual one. I'm already teaching her to spell, "Semipelagianism."

Fun times . . .

Kelly Update

So far, so good . . . well, mostly. I think the combination of antibiotics and painkillers have messed with Kelly, so while she's feeling/breathing better, the effects of the drugs are making her sick. She's sleeping a lot and getting some good rest. Looks like she'll be at the hospital through the weekend. Her spirits are good.

Many of you have asked about helping out and seeing Kelly. Kaelyn and I are fine, and eating healthy believe it or not. And if you're thinking of visiting the hospital, please don't show up unannounced; the phone in her room isn't on so you'd have to reach her on the cell.

You can always drop her an email here. She'd love to hear from you.

Life Interrupted

This morning Kelly awoke complaining about some discomfort in her back. This is her office day so she popped a few Advil and decided to anyway [it should be noted that I encouraged her not to go]. She called around noon saying she was still feeling pain so I told her to call her doctor to get checked out. Her doctor sent her to Pro-Scan Imaging who told her that she would have to go to the hospital. She had a partially collapsed lung.

Spontaneous Pnuemothorax, to be exact. It's when air develops in the space between the lung and the rib, causing the lung to collapse. Kelly's was about 35% collapsed.

Sheryl stopped by to watch Kaelyn and I headed over to Christ Hospital's ER to be with Kelly. I wasn't too bothered until I walked into her room where about six medical personnel were getting things ready to do a procedure; that's when I got a little nervous. The doctor was excellent, explaining that he would insert a chest tube and it would relieve that air. They basically knocked her out for the procedure and it only lasted about 30 minutes. When I came back in, Kelly was pretty spacey but everything went fine. The tube will remain in her for five days until they take it out and evaluate its success.

Another extended hospital stay for Kel.

As of 10:20 tonight they have yet to get her into a room, but they were planning on getting her on the new cardiovascular wing of the hospital.

Life might be crazy for a couple of days, so please keep us in your prayers.

UPDATE: Read Kelly's perspective here. She had a pretty good night.

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Announcements

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Yes, a terrible way to die. I've had a couple busy days but I wanted to note:

1) I've had some email issues, so if I haven't gotten back to you, it might be because of that.

2) I have some new photos up at Flickr, including a Kaelyn Christmas shoot, shots from Balluminaria [you'll have to see for yourself], as well as a couple of pics of my newest nephew Jack. Wild, wacky stuff.

3) I should have another announcement later tonight [no, Kelly isn't pregnant] that could be cool. You'll have to check back to find out if the suspense was worth it.

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People In My Life

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It seems I'm always catching people up about the life activities of people I know. So I figured I'd take a little time to drop some pertinent information about people in my life.

My older brother Chris and his wife Heather are expecting their fourth child any day now.

Childhood friend Steve Levering, and his wife Beth, just had their first child, a boy named Tyler.

College roommate Aaron Levering [Steve's cousin] and his lovely wife Tia are expecting their fourth child. Additionally college roommate [and Best Man in our wedding] Jason Badami and his lovely wife Dalea [Maid of Honor in our wedding] are expecting their fourth child. All those kids wouldn't fit in the old college dorm room.

Somewhere, right now, someone else we know is most likely getting pregnant. And that's icky.

Our friends, the Burgesses, have some new employment. Aaron is now teaching at Cincinnati Christian University and his wife Dorota started a new accounting job in Northern Kentucky.

Our friends, the Duebbers, finally moved into their rehabbed Price Hill home. It . . . looks . . . awesome.

Friend and Echo leadership team member Tim Tucker is now holding down two jobs and still has time to do stuff for the church.

Friend and Echo-ite Tim Sampson recently lost his father. Please keep him and his family in prayer.

Echo attendees Dan and Angie [soon to be Bielecki] are getting married this weekend and I'm now doing the wedding ceremony. Follow that up with Nate and Julie [soon to be Keyes] and we're in the midst of a season of church weddings.

Echo's first official member, Emily Hill, is now back in the United States, on "holiday" from London. Hopefully she left the accent in Wimbledon. In a related note, her sister in Melissa is ready to be named 2007 MVP at Echo.

Kelly's brother Scott and my future sister-in-law Jessica will be getting married in just a few weeks . . . on Halloween . . . and I have no costume.

League of Justice pastor Russell Smith is excited about his church's homecoming this weekend. Plus he knows all the best downtown restaurants.

College classmate Matt Mehaffey is planting a church in Miami, Florida. Very cool.

College classmate Jake Follis is blogging. Odds are he'll fail at it.

College classmate, and former co-worker, Kelly Butler and her husband Charlie have a beautiful little girl named Brooklyn. You should be reading about her.

College classmate Mike Morehart is a Cleveland fan, but I still like him.

I'm sure there's much more, but I wanted to get some of them down. Feel free to add your own updates. Maybe I should do this more often.

Wanna Bet?

We have two loans out on our house. One is only for about 10% of the value of our home, but splitting the load helped us to avoid some unnecessary mortgage insurance. The smaller loan is a variable rate mortgage, meaning that rising interest rates cost us a little more each month. Really it's not much at all, but it can make you a little angry when any extra money leaves your pocket. I got a call a few months ago from the bank making me an offer to fix the rate. They noted the rising rates and wanted a fee plus a higher rate than we were then paying to lock it in. Basically, they wanted me to gamble that rates would continue to rise and feel that locking it in would save me money over the long haul. It just wasn't worth it, no matter how you looked at it, especially with the small amount of the loan. The loan officer kept forcasting doom and gloom to me but I still said thanks but no thanks.

I hadn't thought of it that much until the loan officer called again on Thursday. She was checking to see if I was still happy with my loan (which is interesting because I've never equated loans with happiness). I remarked, "well, since the interest rates dropped and I'm paying less on my loan, I've been doing pretty good." And that was that.

You see, I would've at least owned up to trying to screw me over. If I had taken her advice I would've watched a lot of money walk out the door.

Hope she stays away from Vegas.

Smackdown

People fearful of city life usually cite the urban hooligans as a reason to steer clear. We woke up this morning at 2:30am to the sounds of loud voices spewing profanities. But instead of ghetto jargon it sounded more like suburban America trying to be hardcore. Sure enough it was the guests of some of the people in the condo complex who were verbally sparring. These girls (yep) apparently had too much to drink out at the bars and felt it was the perfect time/location to make their true feelings known to each other.

Still unsure as to what female dogs and the actions of their mothers had to do with their gripes but the subject kept coming up repeatedly.

I was thinking of calling the police but I didn't want to deal with the hassle. Eventually they shut up.

It was more like an episode of MTV's The Real World than Boyz n The Hood.

But that's life in the dangerous city for you.