Serve Austin Sunday: Extreme Makeover Martin

As you know by now, if there is a month with a fifth Sunday, our church serves our community and city. Yesterday, we spent the afternoon with friends from Austin New Church serving Communities in Schools (CIS) at Martin Middle School. We made over the CIS counselors offices and group therapy room. It was so much fun and the results were amazing. You can see pictures by clicking on the image to the left. You can also read a recap of Serve Austin Sunday here.

Busy Thanksgiving

We had one busy Thanksgiving weekend. It started on Thanksgiving morning. I ran the Austin Turkey Trot which benefits Caritas of Austin. It was five miles of fun. It was really a good run. I enjoyed every minute of it. Okay, not the last hill, but the rest was great. And I am really happy with my running time. I ran the entire five miles in one hour which means 12 minute miles. Not bad for a slow poke. I took a lot of pictures during the run. Yes, I ran with my camera. I do it in most races except triathlons. But my camera started acting funky during the middle of the race and didn't start acting right until the end. So I would have taken more pictures but I couldn't. I missed pictures of a lot of interesting costumes. You can check out the pictures by clicking on the picture to the left or here.

Then after getting home, showering and packing up, we went to Roger's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Roger fried two turkeys and they were delicious. The guys watched all the football games outside and then in the garage while the rest of us got all the rest of the food ready inside. There was a full house of family and friends. You can see pictures by clicking on the picture to the left or here.

Then on Friday, after we slept in late because we didn't get home until 3:00 a.m., we went with the Mommaerts' family to see the movie A Christmas Carol in 3D at the IMAX. Then we had a great dinner of Indian food at the Clay Pit down town. No pictures from that because we were too busy stuffing our faces with delicious food!

Saturday we spent most of the day putting up the rest of the interior Christmas decorations and the Christmas tree. We don't decorate the inside very much, mainly because I'm lazy and don't want to have to take it all down at the end of the season. But we are very excited about our new Christmas tree. We can finally have a full size Christmas tree. So we donated our old Christmas tree and all the decorations to a family last year. Which meant we had to get all new Christmas decorations. But you know me, I'm frugal. So we made Christmas ornaments out of holiday cookie cutters and only had to get a few other items. You can see pictures of the Christmas decor by clicking on the picture above or here. We also took our Christmas card picture. But you can't see a picture of that until you get our infamous Christmas card in the mail.

And finally on Sunday, we helped renovate the Soli Deo Gloria building with fellow brothers and sisters from our church for Serve Austin Sunday. We had a great time working on the building getting it ready to serve East Austin better and getting to know people from our Restore Community (community group) and our church more. You can see pictures from Serve Austin Sunday by clicking on the picture to the left or here.

See, I told you we had a busy Thanksgiving weekend. ~ Holly

Serve Austin Sunday (Nov 29th)

It's that time again, a month with a fifth Sunday. Our church, Austin New Church, will not be having a morning service this Sunday, November 29th. Instead we will be serving and loving our city at six different projects. Roger and I will be joining our community group to continue the renovation of the Soli Deo Gloria building so we can better serve the poor and marginalized of East Austin from 3-5pm (4th/Pedernales). This project is full but if you would like to join another project you can see the others at the church website by clicking on Restore Austin then Serve Austin Sunday or read a post from our church's blog about Serve Austin Sunday. Both locations have instructions for how to sign up for a project. Thanks!

So Much Fun Today

Oh my gosh, we have had such a fun Sunday. First we started at Lanier High School helping makeover a room for Communities in School. It turned out great. It was really a lot of fun. Roger's big project for the classroom was cutting molding for a frame around a bulletin board. He had to miter the corners with a hand saw and a miter box. He loved it. Okay, that's exaggerating but the end result he was happy with. I spent most of the time hemming fabric for curtains and sewing a table cloth. You can see pictures from today at the link to the right or here. I didn't take as many as I wanted because my camera battery died. So I didn't get any final pictures. But you can get the gist of the project.

Then we hustled home to host a fantasy football draft party with Roger's coworkers. Talk about fun. We laughed, talked smack, ate lots of appetizers, drank lots of beer and laughed some more. It was a lot of fun. I only took a few pictures during the event since I was the keeper of the picks. Roger found a great spreadsheet online that had all the current NFL players and you could choose a player for each person or manager every round. And if a player was already picked, they would show up in red so it was easy to keep up with who had been picked already. One of the sheets in the spreadsheet was linked to the picks and you could see the picks by manager to make sure you could had all the positions you wanted. It made the draft super easy for me especially since I have never done any thing with fantasy football before. But sports to me are about socializing and fellowshipping and we certainly did that tonight.

Serve Austin Sunday

This Sunday, August 30th is Serve Austin Sunday. We are not having regular worship service at 5:00 p.m. but helping others. There are five choices for serving our community this Sunday. More information can be found on the Austin New Church blog. Roger and I are helping at the Extreme Classroom Makeover at Lanier High School for Communities in Schools. If you would like to join us, please let me know. You don't have to do the project we are working on. You can do anything your heart desires. So come on out and help us serve our city!

Serve Austin Sunday

This past Sunday, May 30, 2009, was the fifth Sunday of the month. So you know what our church does... we serve the community. This Serve Austin Sunday (SAS) there were four choices as usual: downtown grill out, an illegal dump site cleanup, block party at our East Austin church plant and an extreme classroom makeover. Roger and I decided to beat the heat by serving indoors this time. We helped perform an extreme makeover for a Communities In Schools classroom at Rodriguez Elementary School to create a more conducive environment for learning. And it was out of this world! We had a lot of fun doing the work and hanging out with our brothers and sisters. We have some really creative people at our church. Sorry we didn't post about this one ahead of time to be able to give you an opportunity to join us. I promise next SAS we'll give you advance notice in case you might want to join the fun and serve Austin. Check out the pictures by clicking on the picture above.

Serve Austin Sunday

If there is a fifth Sunday in any month of the year our church, Austin New Church, does not have church at 5:00 p.m. in the Fine Arts Facility of Akins High School as usual. Instead we have church out in our community by serving others. There are usually three or four choices to choose from to volunteer. Roger and I have helped serve burgers to the homeless at a grill out downtown and helped landscape a butterfly garden at Houston Elementary in East Austin. This Sunday, March 29th, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. we will again be helping landscape but this time it will be the back yard of a training center and transitional home for Foundation for the Homeless. The Restore Community (aka community group) Roger and I are members of hosts a birthday party every month for the children of families who are being served by Foundation for the Homeless while their parents attend trainings on transitioning to self-sufficiency. The back yard of the home is very steep and full of rocks. It's not a safe place for children and not as usable as it could be. We utilize the parking lot of the church next door to play games with the children at our monthly birthday parties. So our community group has a personal connection to this Serve Austin Sunday project and we can't wait to make the back yard great for them. And we could use your help. If you are interested in joining us, just let us know and we'll give you all the details. We would love to have you help us. And we're supposed to get a "cold front" this weekend so the weather will be great for landscaping. Come join us!