I have not moved all my old posts over there yet.  Should I really take the time to do that?

Did you all watch Flywheel and Facing the Giants already?  Don’t you just love the films that Sherwood Pictures puts out?  They are not the stereotypical "Christian movie," are they?  Back in the day someone would tell me about a Christian movie and I would have to prepare myself for poor acting.  These Kendrick brothers sure know what they are doing.

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FIREPROOF - The Book

This is the only picture you get for now.  Sorry.

We have something else in the works and will let you know if/when it happens.

Okay.  I will give you a little hint.  It has something to do with Terra Firma… the Latin phrase, not the band.

Today Katie and I have been married for 14 years!  I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe she has stayed married to me this long.  I am thinking back to all the other girls I could have married and I am sure that each and every one of them would have left me by now.  Believe it or not - I have not always been the nicest husband.  And, I regret to say, there have been times that I have actually been mean.  To prove it, I will show you an apology letter from the earliest days in our marriage.

Desperate times call for desperate measures!  You can always make a girl forget how much of a jerk you are by being silly or drawing silly pictures of sheep.  Well, it has always worked for me anyway.  This little apology note may have actually been from before we got married… but, I guarantee you there were more notes like this after we got married.  I think this one may be from the time I got mad at her because she wouldn’t eat the Reese’s Pieces I bought especially for her.

Katie’s favorite candy was Reese’s Pieces and I knew that because I am observant like that.  I wanted to do something nice for her because you are supposed to be nice to your bride-to-be, right?  Actually, I think I may have been trying to get back on her good side from being a jerk the day before… I don’t recall at the moment, but that is pretty likely.

So, anyway… I buy the candy and present it to her after work, thinking she would be happy about it.  She didn’t want them.  Uh oh.  Now what?  What would you have done?  Of course I did what any other childish boy would have done.  I got mad at her for not wanting the peace offering I presented to her.  Our evening together ended shortly after that with her throwing the bag of candy at me and leaving the dorm.  She said some things too - I don’t remember exactly what, but I am sure it was nice.  Katie is always nice.

Lest you think I am the most horrid husband on the face of this earth, I have to share with you a couple positive things I have done.  Like the time I agreed to marry her so she could have kids with blue eyes… and the time I agreed to marry her so she could live overseas.  I think she really wanted to live in a Spanish-speaking country.  We moved to Turkey - not exactly a Spanish-speaking country, but it was closer to Spain than Phoenix was.  Now that I think about it, I think the reason she wanted to live in a Spanish-speaking country was to be immersed in the language and culture.  We would have been better off staying in Phoenix! Oh well,  I thought I was doing her a favor at the time.

This picture was taken August 13th, 1994 - eight days after we got married.  We drove up to my parents’ house to celebrate!  It was a nice, relaxing weekend.  We just hung around the house and did what every other newlywed couple does.  I love you, honey!

theconservativelife.com is working again. Everything should be fine now. Hopefully there will not be any more login problems.

I am so happy with my new host. It is so much faster than where I was before. Our blogs are still at the old host. I wanted to get everything figured out with the board before moving the blogs over. :)

If you take a look over to your right you will see an RSS feed from the board.  It has the five most recent posts.

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You can access it from HERE until the domain names above are working correctly again.

In case you missed that, you can access the board from HERE.

So, the domain names aren’t working right now… but the good news is, the new server is fast, fast, fast!

So, for those of you who didn’t know Katie’s maiden name - now you do.   Lucky you. And Lucky Katie - at least now she has a more normal name.   Bettendorf is a normal name, right?  More normal than webb anyway.  I do know her self-esteem has went up by leaps and bounds when she realized her new last name would be Bettendorf!  Katie Bettendorf.  That just sounds good, doesn’t it?

Here are a couple pictures of my wonderful wife back in Middle School.

How do you like those bangs?  I think there is a story about them.. You will have to ask Katie.

You all know I could go on and on and on and on about Katie.  And normally I would.  But, you know that board I started?  There are some pretty exciting conversations going on over there and I hate to be away for too long.  You know how it is.  We average about 200 post per day and I have to read each and every one.  At least I feel like I need to. 

We have also been having moments of s.l.o.w.n.e.s.s on the board.  I am on a shared server and you know how that goes sometimes.  Maybe you don’t.  Shared servers are like… shared.  You share them with others.  A lot of others.  Hence the slowness at times.  That is why I am currently working on getting our own server -  so we can be fast.  I like to have conversations fast.  Fast conversations are what I like. 

If you haven’t made your way over to the board yet, you need to do so.  You need to do so NOW!  Before you miss something.  Something really cool.  Like a $100 Vision Forum giveaway!  So… go sign up!  You won’t regret it one bit.  No, not even a little bit!

So, It has been 9 days since I opened the board.  So far I am happy with the way it is going.  We have a great group of people over there already and they are eager to talk.

I mean look at the stats so far.  142 members, 26 forums, 218 topics and 1975 posts.  Did I tell you the people on the board like to talk?  I mean 1975 posts in 9 days.  Actually, it hasn’t really been 9 full days yet.  But, whatever.  We will divide 1975 posts by 9 days to come up with the average number of post per day.  That is 219.44444444444444444444444 post per day.  Are these people maniacs, or what?  They are posting fools, I tell ya!  If you haven’t joined the board yet, you are surely missing out on something great!

That was math right there.  Did you notice?  It is called division.  I will have Jenna, John, Jacob and Jason read this post.  See, you don’t have to sit in a classroom with a book to learn math.  See how easy that was?  Even I can teach math and I don’t even have a teaching degree. ;)

Okay, Let’s look at the board…

How’s that?

We even have a nifty little shout box.  I turned it on its side, because I can.  The conversation can get a bit crazy and hard to follow.  Debbie H. is talking to herself.  That’s okay, Debbie, I talk to myself too! :)

And we have ads.

Like this one.

And this one. 

If you are smart and nice and loving and nice and caring you will click on our ads.  If you are going to buy it online anyway, you might as well buy it from us, right?  I thought so.  I mean, if we make a little money on this board we will be able to afford to school or kids for more than three days per year.  Or is it three weeks per year?  Besides, who else do you know that has 14 mouths to feed, is getting ready to build a house and has a Club Penguin habit to support?  And if I find out you use Ad Blocking software I will ban you.  Forever.  Just kidding! :)

This is the Alternative Medicine Forum.

Each item in the list is called a thread.  Here is a thread called "Coconut Oil and Cod Liver Oil."

There were 1975 posts when I started to write this post.  Now there are 2006 posts.  Didn’t I tell you the members here like to talk? :)

The board is called The Conservative Life.  Most of us on here are conservative Christians.  Some people describe themselves as so conservative people think they are liberal.  Now, how’s that work?  Come find out.  Then go tell all your friends and have them sign up! :)

All of our vehicle at this time were from the 80’s.  We had the 1984 VW Rabbit. A 1985 VW Vanagon and a 1984 or 85 Mitsubishi Mighty Max.  Notice we had two Volkswagens?  Volkswagens are cool.  I wouldn’t mind having a couple right now.  My first car was a 1973 VW Super Beetle.

Anyway,  have you ever seen a purple Rabbit?  Remember the 1984 VW Rabbit I bought?  The silver one?  The one with the diesel engine?  It was cool!  But it was silver.  Faded silver.  Faded silver did not match our other vehicle at the time - the Mitsubishi Mighty Max.  The Mighty Max was faded silver too - when I bought it.  But since, at that time, we were living in Turkey, land of cheap labor, I decided the faded silver color had to go.  So, the mighty Max was now a nice Kawasaki Green!  It didn’t really look that much like a Might Max anymore because of all the body modifications we had done to it - but, that is a story for another time.  For now, just remember that our other vehicle was Kawasaki Green and the faded silver Rabbit did not look good next to it.

So, being that we were in the land of cheap labor, I took the Rabbit to the local body shop.  We knew the owner of this body shop very well, as it took him over a year to complete our truck.  I forget how much we paid to get the Rabbit painted and have the interior completely redone, but it was cheap.  I am thinking $500 or so.

These are the best pictures I can find right now.  This is in January 1997 in Fairfield, CA.

I love the lines on this car.  Is that Jenna playing in the street by herself?

I had intentions of fixing the bumper.

And changing out the wheels.

The interior was nice.  See the stitched VW logo on the headrests?

I never got around to fixing the bumper or changing the wheels out.  The Rabbit died a horrible death on I-80 one evening.  Something about oil - the lack of oil!  it was not my fault - really!  It wasn’t.  I don’t remember what ever happened to this car after the oil incident.  I am sure Katie remembers.

Here is a picture of me and Jenna the same day I took the pictures of the Rabbit.

I guess Jenna wasn’t playing in the street by herself - here is Katie.

A closer look at my fabulous wife!  Isn’t she a cutie?  That is back when she was still enamored with me and had to watch everything I did.  ;)