As many people know.  I am not just the Microsoft Practice Director at ConsultUSA, but I am an Associate Pastor at Family Fellowship Christian Center.  I've been serving in this position for about 8 years now.  I've been sitting under Pastor Rick Pulido for around 11 years. 

Well, things they are a changin', as they must from time to time.  Family Fellowship was not set up to be a singular entity from the start.  It was intended to be a training ground out of which many congregations would flow.  Well, the first of these church plants is scheduled to take place in 14 months in Miami, FL, with the second scheduled about 1-4 years after that point.  That second one, will be in Sarasot, FL and it will be pastored by none other than... me.

I'm not sure how this is going to effect my remaining time in Pittsburgh, but I know that I'm going to start dedicating myself to preperation for this next step in my life.  

I'm actually kind of torn in this.  I've been prepared for this step for years.  However, I've never wanted to be the senior pastor anywhere.  I've always been comfortable with my position as a #2.  I actually kind of relish that spot.

For those of you who think that being a pastor would be easy, let me inform you, it's not.  Your life becomes a fishbowl and you're not the only fish in the bowl, every member of your family is there with you.  Can you imagine being an 8 year old boy with the whole world watching your every move?  I can tell you, it's hard.  I will say this, if anyone who ever attends one of the churches that I Pastor and they ever say to one of my kids, "...but you're the Pastor's son..." followed by anything, I will read them the riot act and probably show them the door.  My first job is still to protect my family, and I will do it with prejudice.

Other than that, I am in the process of making plans on what type of church I'm looking to create.  What do I want the environment to be like?  What type of music do we want to bring to the people?  What will be the major message to people? At this point, everything is vague, but I have some ideas.  I guess that is what I have to determine in the next few years.

Well, until that time.  I'll see you soon enough Sarasota.

Here are the photos of our little muchkin and the rest of the clan.

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Today, Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 5:30AM, the Eutsey household added a new member, a new 8lb, 10oz, 22in. baby boy named Rilian Thane.  

This little man has been a tough cookie.  We thought originally that he was going to come on Feb. 12.  Jen was having some pretty consistent contractions in the morning, but by mid afternoon they had all but died away.  That made for a nervous work week for me coming up, knowing that it could literally be any minute that I could get the call. 

I didn’t get any more warning until Thursday.  Once again, I stayed home from work thinking that the baby was on it’s way.  Once again everything fizzled for that day.  However, Jen was convinced that Friday was the day and insisted I stay home again, which, considering the circumstances, I was all gung-ho to do.

Jen and I took advantage of the two days that I had off of work.  My mom had come over Thursday morning to look after the other three kids while we were at the hospital.  Since we were waiting for the baby to make his move we decided to go out to lunch and walk the Monroeville Mall, which was immortalized in the original George Romero classic Dawn of the Dead.  However, for Thursday, the mall walk didn’t do the trick, but our lunch at Corino’s was rather nice.

Friday was more of the same, eating lunch at Primanti Brothers in Monroeville and going to Target, Marshalls and Circuit City (it’s a shame that they are going out of business, but considering that I can still get a Panisonic 42” plasma cheaper on NewEgg,com goes to show you why that happened) to do our walking.

When we got home we had a nice dinner with the family, I don’t recall the meal, but it wasn’t some high falutin’ thing, just something simple, but nice.  We settled down for the evening waiting for our shows to come on, Dollhouse at 9 and Battlestar Galactica at 10.  We then settled in for sleep, knowing that it wasn’t going to last the night.

Jen woke me up at 2am to get prepared to take her to the hospital.  She had been in the shower since Midnight and was starting to have contractions closer and closer together.  So we packed up, let my mom know we were going and took off for the hospital.

A couple of hours and some details that are best left out later, we have Rilian!

Later that morning I go home and pick up the kids and take them to meet their brother.  For the time being I only have a couple pictures of Thorin which are very entertaining, well, because that is what he is.  Entertaining or distracting. 

My next post is going to be a photo gallery of sorts, so look forward to that…

This weekend was a mix of emotions for me. First the good. The Pittsburgh Steelers (Pixburg Stillers in Pittsburgh-eese) won the Super Bowl! Yea, I'm from the 'burgh and I'm a Steelers fan, so, I'm happy to say it, Pittsburgh Sixburgh, baby!

The second thing, and one that is far more sobering, one of my neighbors was killed in a house fire on Saturday.

Here's my experience with the fire: As the wife, kids and I were sitting down to eat, the power went out in our house. They quickly came back on, so I thought nothing of it until the power went back off a few seconds later. We scampered for some candles and flash lights and I hunkered the wife and kids into the master bedroom, where they could keep warm and safe. I then went outside to see what was happening. I thought that perhaps there was an accident outside and wanted to make sure that everything was being taken care of.

As I exited the house one of the fire workers passed my house (it wasn't one of the firetrucks, but they did have flashing lights.) I followed them up the street until I saw some of my other neighbors standing up on the hill, the next block up. I went up and saw the house burning, smoke pouring out of the roof and chimney. Soon after I got up the hill the fire trucks started to arrive. It was then that I discovered a weakness in my neighborhoods infrastructure. We have one fire hydrant at the end of my block. We had a good 6 fire trucks show up to help with the fire. Unfortunately, only one of the trucks could attach to the hydrant. This brought into stark contrast. If I have a fire at my house, only one truck will be able to be used to supply water to my home.

Anyway, the neighbors and I watched the firemen do their work. It's more impressive watching it than you would think. These brave men, came to the house, knocked out all of the windows, which filled the night sky with billowing smoke, and three of them climbed up on the roof with chain saws and opened up the roof to give the smoke even more places to escape the house. Several of these brave men entered into the house, made their way to the basement and extracted the body of the owner out, racing her to the awaiting ambulance. Alas, it was was too late and she was already dead.

Several things occurred to me as I watched the proceedings:

1. When an power line transformer blows up it creates a lot of ash.  The transformer that was right by the burning house blew a pretty impressive fireball out the top, accourding to one of the neighbors who lives on the same block as the burning house.
2. When it's 17 degrees out, it doesn't take long for a house to go from 70 degrees to 59 degrees.
3. Allegheny Power has our neighborhood wired up pretty good, they redirected power from another block to return power to my block before the fire trucks even cleared my street.
4. The sadest part of this whole ordeal is that I didn't even know her name or the names of most of the people that were up on the hill watching the fire.  I've lived in my house for 8 years and I didn't know most of the people in my neighborhood.  I guess it primarily because those people don't have kids that are near my kids age.  I think I will have to remedy that.  Unfortunately, for one of my neighbors it is too late.

Like I said, this was a very emotional weekend.  It really put things into perspective.  More than the Super Bowl, which was a great game, but still, just a game, the fire will change the way I live my life.  In the long run, this will be a banner weekend for me.  If I can get to know my neighbors and cherish my family even more, I think this was a good thing, at least in my life.  Do I think it's a good thing in total?  No.  But anything that forces a person to grow is good in the long run.

To my readers.  When you see your family tonight, give them an extra big hug and let them know that you love them.  You never know when it will be the last time you get the chance to do that, so take every opportunity you have.  You will never regret puring too much love onto your family, but you will regret it mightily if you don't.

Be well and God Bless.

To those who've read my other blog in the past know that I have 3 children (One on the way will make 4 in a couple of weeks.)  I've never used their real names, but I have nicknames that I've used for them.  My oldest (8) is the Hurricane, Middle (5) is the Tornado and my littlest (2.10) is known as Godzilla.

From the title of this post, this a tale of destruction perpetrated by my little Godzilla.  

First, a quick rehash of why he is known as big G.  Well, he's big for his age, loud and destructive... 'Nuff said?

Well, a couple of days ago, while I was working, my poor, prego wife was met by Godzilla and he said, "Spiderman toothbrush in potty."  Well, if it were just in the potty, that is easy enough to fix, reach, pick, throw away, explain the error of his ways.

If only it were that easy.  Not only had he placed the toothbrush in the toilet, he flushed.  Now a little history, I've lost 2... count them, 2, Gillette Fusion razors (the greatest razor under the sun) to the destructive nature of Godzilla and his propensity to flush things down the toilet.  We've also lost a sippy cup lid and God only knows what else that actually went down and didn't get stuck.

So, my daily, often hourly, task the last 3 days has been to try and get this thing out of the toilet.  Between the plunger and a sewer snake I was able to get everything to go down, but not without an extreme amount of work.  I wasn't able to get the brush to get past the barrier of the curve in the toilet flow.  Last night I finally had it.  If I wasn't able to get the obstruction cleared we were going to call the plumber today and have him come out and take care of the problem (at a premium price of @ $120... ugh!)

So, I brought the snake up from the basement, one more time, and went to work.  Pounding, shoving, twisting, screaming, almost ralphing, wash, rinse, repeat.  Finally, I got to the end of my senses and threw myself down, almost crying from frustration and gave it one more shot.  One more round of the above and I was ready to give up, take a shower (I was fealling quite gross by this point) and go to bed, defeated.  As I pulled the snake out of the toilet, what to my wondering eyes would appear, but the Spiderman toothbrush.  Fortunately by the time this happened all of the "stuff" in the toilet was already down and I was able to get it out without having to go through a pile of "stuff" to get it.

Eureka, I was able to flush the toilet and it went straight down.  No problems, no concerns.  I took a shower, saved $120 in our budget and took $60 and went and bought  Fable II for my Xbox 360.