Baptist Children of the 80s

If you know Psalty, raise your hand. Raise it higher if you've been in one of his musicals. I can't begin to list the memories I have of doing these at my church. But I distinctly remember that they involved wearing jams. I know someone else reading this had to have worn jams too.

50 points if you know Psalty's wife and children's names.

I love the blue lycra.

The Incredible Honking Dog

So there we were going to bed last Wednesday night. We had lovingly lured little Penny Lane into her crate with a puppy treat, and she complied with minimal crying. We went to bed. She'd been waking us up every night around the middle of the night crying to go outside. That was cool--she's a puppy so we were dealing with it. It comes with the territory, or so we've been told.

All of a sudden, about the time I drifted off to sleep, I heard a "HONK, HONK, HONK" noise from the crate, like the sound a goose makes. Then it got quiet again. We decided maybe she was coughing.

About 45 minutes later (and about every 5 minutes after that for the REST OF THE NIGHT, or so it seemed) I kept hearing the honking. "HONK, HONK, HONK!"

We got up about midnight with her because it sounded so horrible (and we had had enough.) I googled "kennel cough symptoms" since our vet had mentioned that she might get it (apparently pretty common in pound puppies), and sure enough, HONKING was mentioned as a symptom. So after we decided that the all-night emergency vet clinic might be a little drastic for our dog's sore throat, we gave her a drink of water and put her back to bed.

Immediately the next morning I made Penny Lane an appointment to see the vet that afternoon. I could not take another night of interrupted sleep on top of the fact that she sounded quite pitiful.

All that to say: our dog has been to the doc more times in the past 2 weeks than I have been in all of 2008 so far, and she is currently on an antibiotic and a cough suppressant. Yes. I have a dog that is taking a cough suppressant.

High maintenance, perhaps?

That would be my dog.

Celebrate Good Times, Come On.

Friday morning started very early--like 3 am early because I had to work from 3-5:30. Yikes! I went back to bed for about 30 more minutes, then got up to get ready for work and pack for a girls' trip to San Antonio.

After noon, I hopped a flight to San Antonio and caught a cab to our hotel on the Riverwalk to start my weekend off with a NAP. It was wonderful and got me totally prepared for the night's festivities--the opening session of Living Proof Live (a Beth Moore conference) and fajitas at one of my favorite Mexican food restaurants, Mi Tierra, at almost midnight.

I met up with these ladies! They are some dear college friends of mine. I actually did my very first Beth Moore Bible study with them back in the day. It was A Heart Like His, about the life of David.



Amber, Mikalah, and Sherry
I'm still going over my notes from the conference. Beth has such an anointing from the Lord to teach the Bible. The conference was a time of refreshing. She spoke on the inheritance we have as daughters of the King. I have to post more on that later.



Here we are eating Mexican food again on Saturday. What else do you do in San Antonio?

Saturday night after I got home, I hung out with a couple of my absolute favorites, Brad and my brother Drew. We ate at Mellow Mushroom and watched the finished of the Olympic Marathon.

I have had a fantastic weekend. I am so blessed! Thanks so much to everyone who sent cards, texted, and called. I especially love it when people sing on my voicemail. It makes my year!

AARP Membership

AARP Membership, originally uploaded by emgentry02.

This week alone I have received 3 offers via e-mail inviting me to join AARP. The first time it was funny.

This surprise came for me this morning. They have completely brightened up a gray and dreary day!

Puppy Tales

So we've now had Penny for 5 nights. She is just the cutest little thing, and we are loving playing with her. However, we are not enjoying house training her. No sirree.

For some reason, when I take her outside, she does fine. When Brad takes her outside, she just sits and looks at him most of the time. Or wants to play.

I'm not sure if we upgraded our carpet with some kind of scotch guard protection or if it has an annointing from a Higher Power, but either way--praise the Lord for how it is responding to our new friend. So far, so good.

Here's what we've been pre-occupied with this week:

Dog Day of Summer

Ladies and Gentleman,

Making her very first online appearance,
please give a rousing round of applause for

Miss Penelope Lane Gentry

also known as Penny Lane or just plain Penny (said with Desmond's accent.)

We adopted a puppy from the animal shelter today. We're not really sure how old she is, but she appears to be a beagle mix. She is sweet, and now that we're back from buying out PetSmart, we are having fun playing with her.

(P.S.  Twenty points if you know where the Desmond reference comes from!)

Olympic Dreams

I was sitting at lunch yesterday recounting to Brad and friends about how watching the Olympic swimmers and gymnasts succeed brings tears to my eyes, knowing they are living their dreams. They are living in the one moment that they have trained for almost their entire lives. My heart swells with national pride.

And, naturally, this has led me to decide that I should train for an Olympic sport.

Seeing as how I'm getting a pretty late start on this idea, I feel as though I should pick a sport that I could compete in well into my later years. That eliminates gymnastics, since obviously I would already be considered elderly in comparison to the other young ladies. (But I know you secretly would be interested in seeing me do a double-round-off backflip triple lutz. Just kidding on the lutz part.) And I'm going to go ahead and cross off BMX racing since I swore off riding bicycles back in the 8th grade for knee injury reasons. I have not ridden one since.

My first thought was shooting, but Brad laughed at me. (I do not know why that is so funny. I think I could be an Annie Oakley-type for sure.) But then I remembered the ultimate Oympic sport--badminton! And I even have the other half of my dream team picked out: the red-headed pharmacist herself, Alisia.

It would be the stuff that Olympic legends are made of. Here's the ESPN: Beyond the Glory. (This is actually mostly a true story.) They were college roommates who took Beginning Badminton as a kinesiology their sophomore year . They practiced alot in their dorm rooms and at times even ventured out to the Rec Center, in the face of intimidation at being the only non-international students on the badminton courts. After being relegated to the 'C' league in their kinesiology class and switching their grades to Pass/Fail, they both took several years off from "the sport." Emily pursued her dreams of becoming a software engineer and wife to Brad, while Alisia was conquering the world of pharmacy. After ending up back in the same town, the passion for badminton was again ignited by the 2008 Summer Games and their patriotic obligation to represent the United States at the next summer games.

I'm not really sure how one begins to train for a gold in badminton. I guess I will start by investing in one of those Franklin $20 sets at Wal-mart. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

By the way, we both passed the class.

Interesting Item of the Day

Apparently my previous post about the Brad Paisley concert (and in particular, my mention of one of his opening acts) has piqued the attention of several Dancing With the Stars message boards, and they have linked to that post. It has created a slight bump in traffic to this site over the past couple of days.

I find that hysterically funny/oddly flattering and wanted to share it with you.

If you're visiting here from one of those sites, you will find this blog to be incredibly boring, but you are welcome just the same. I hope they are saying nice things about me on the message board.

Jewel Yodels

Here is a video of Jewel yodelling the other night during the concert.

I really don't know what to say about that.

A Paisley Party

Last night we saw Brad Paisley in concert. It was quite incredible. The next sentence will probably make me sound like a senior citizen, but that's okay. The man can pick a guitar. He's probably the best I've ever seen in person.

The day started off with a trip to Northpark for some shopping. Usually any day that includes a trip to NP is a good day. We stopped for dinner at McCormick & Schmick, which was, as usual, delicious. And that was the start of our really great date day. I would venture to say that Brad planned it strategically since he was taking me to an outdoor concert in 100 degree weather.

The concert was at the SuperPages.com center (outdoors on Aug. 2nd, no less--I'll let you imagine the weather forecast) and began with Julianne Hough (of DWTS fame) singing songs from her album. In concert, she sounded just like she does on the radio, which is the mark of a good performer. Either that or she lipsyncs. (I would hope after Ashlee Simpson, no one would take that chance.) Anyway, I am a fan, and my favorite song is "My Hallelujah Song."


Next up was Chuck Wicks. The only song I knew of his was "Stealing Cinderella." It might've made me cry the first time I heard it, but then the radio stations played it a million times, and I got over it. But it was a bonus to hear him.

Then the third opening act was Jewel. Ok, I have to admit I am not a big fan of Jewel's, so I was not excited about having to sit through her set, but it was great! Her performance on "Who Will Save Your Soul" blew me away. She is incredibly talented, and not only that, she lives right down the road in Stephenville. I would say that makes her Good People. She played most of her late 90s hits, and of course, a couple of songs from her country album.


Then, out came Brad Paisley. What I find most interesting about BP is that he's married to Kimberly Williams--you know, Annie from Father of the Bride. I think I could be a fan based on that alone because I love that movie. But I digress.

He is a highly entertaining performer. I think even if you don't particularly care for country music, if you are just a fan of music in general, you would be impressed with his talent on the guitar. He played most of his hits (but not the Andy Griffith song). I can't go on enough about how much fun we had! Hands down, the best concert I've been to in several years.


At one point, he sang his duet with Allison Krauss, and through the amazing effects of modern day technology, it took several minutes before we finally convinced ourselves that she wasn't really there. It was so cool, and his set and graphics were so sharp.