What a wonderful last week or so it’s been! Mark and I took some time off of work to just plain get away. We spent 4 days with our good friends Tim and Jeni in a cabin near Fenton Lake. The boys played a good deal of XBOX and 3-wheeled while Jeni and I finished up some sewing projects we started earlier this summer. We ate some yummy food and enjoyed the nice weather and just being in the outdoors.

From there, Mark and I drove on to Durango, CO to celebrate 2 things: our upcoming 3rd anniversary, and one last road trip without little ones. It was a great time! We stayed at the historic Strater Hotel, built in 1887.

It was incredibly beautiful, with a huge selection of fine walnut antiques in every room. We rode the train to Silverton and enjoyed the awesome views of nature from over 10,000 feet up the mountain! We’re definitely going to go back and do that again someday. The rest of the time we ate great food and walked around their beautiful downtown area.

It’s like we stepped back in time and slowed down, it was great. After our trip, we came back to the desert and enjoyed four more days of pure chillin’ bliss. It was wonderful to just be together, sleep in, do stuff around the house, and of course go for breakfast at the Flying Star while we’re at it! It was hard going to work after such a wonderful week together.

Now we’re just doing the final preparations before Baby Horlbeck comes next month. I’m going in weekly for my doctor visits now and our anticipation is really growing. Things are moving along just fine, thank you to all of our friends who’ve been praying for this pregnancy!

And speaking of, two shout-outs for ya: Congrats to my cousin Lorie and her fiancé (now husband) Adam on their wedding last weekend, and another congrats to Tessa and Zach on their new bundle of joy, Cora, born yesterday morning. We love you guys!

So I thought I’d tell you my funny story of the day: Joash was stuck in town last night and needed a place to crash, so he came over around 10:30pm. He was on his way to Taos when his jalopy urban beast of a station wagon broke down, so he headed to the rental car agency to get a car. Well, about five minutes out of town, he blew a tire! So he called the rental car crew (after being picked up by another friend) and got an exchange vehicle. By this time, however, it was stinkin’ late and he didn’t really feel like driving to Taos, so he decided to hang out at the Horlbeck Hotel.

After having a great time sharing his story this morning, we all got ready to leave. Mark left for work, so Joash and I ate breakfast, packed up, and started to head out the door.

I told him I’d say goodbye to him outside because I had to set the house alarm.

So I locked the front door, set the alarm, grabbed my purse and lunch, locked the back door, and slam! As soon as the back door shut I realized I left my keys inside! AGH!!!! I was now officially locked out of the house. With no hide-a-key. So I opened the garage door, and thankfully Joash was there so he said he could give me a ride to work, and Mark would pick me up later today.

Now here’s where my morning really gets nutty! I put my purse and lunch out on the lawn, go back in the garage to shut the garage door (which means I have to run and jump over the “line” so it closes all the way behind me). So I hit the button, run as fast as I can, jump, and make it to the other side of the driveway…. which is when I realize that in the process of all this one of my shoes flew off my foot and is now in the garage! And the door is closing!!! And I can’t go to work barefoot! AGH!!!! So Joash and I are screaming “NOOOO!!!” and I say “What do I do!?” and Joash yells, “Pull an Indiana Jones! Roll under!!!” (And I’m thinking, has he SEEN my belly!? I can hardly bend over nevermind roll under the door)!

So there I am helpless and waving goodbye to my shoe for the day, when Joash runs as fast as he can and manages to get his foot under the door. And hallelujah, the door goes back up! At this point we’re both laughing like nuts. So I grab my shoes, put them out on the other side of the driveway, and do it all again. This time I jump barefoot, make it over, and the door closes just fine. Phew! Now with all my goodies, we can finally hit the road. So here I am without a car or keys today, but at least my sweetie is coming to get me later on–and I have shoes!

On Friday the 13th (of all days), my last remaining grandparent, Grandpa Earl, departed this world for eternity with Jesus. That Friday was pretty emotional for me, and I had a hard day at work. This past weekend, Renée and I said goodbye to my grandfather. My parents, Scott, and us drove to Mesa, Arizona, for the funeral service. We stayed at my Uncle Neil and Aunt Esther’s house and Saturday morning, went to the service.

The service was Saturday morning and I met a lot of people I didn’t know. Scott and I played one of Grandpa’s favorite songs, “With Someone Like You”, and the rest of our cousins sang. My cousin April read an essay that she wrote 10 years ago for a school project and lightened the mood quite a bit as we all remembered the quirks of Grandpa, as well as the wonderful qualities. My aunt Nancy read a letter that she wrote to Grandpa last Christmas and introduced the family, conveniently forgetting Renée, Scott, and I, and then introducing us backwards (”Scott and Renée–and they’re expecting!”). The service was very respectful, honoring, and sweet as we remembered my grandfather. Most of all, it was centered around Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, and my grandfather’s.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with family and eating lots of food. It was a great time to spend with them, reminiscing and remembering Grandpa. It was also fun to spend time with my cousins that I barely get to see the rest of the year. They might even be coming to Albuquerque for Memorial Day weekend!

The second goodbye was yesterday. Renée and I had to bid farewell to some friends of our’s that have become very special over the last couple years. Our friends, Greg and Kirsten Dunn (and the seven children: Tommy, Jackson, Montana, Emese, Jodi, Isaiah, Keziah), are moving to New York to become farmers. So, both Renée and I took a day off of work to spend the day with them.

We started off with breakfast at the Flying Star: a huge breakfast burrito for me, a breakfast burrito and blueberry muffin for Ren. Afterwards, Renée took Kirsten to Not Just Pots and Pans right next to Flying Star to pick out birthday present (meanwhile, I was picking up some birthday goodies for Kirsten, of which she was unaware). We then went over to Explora! to play with the kids. They have a bunch of neat things to do while learning about things like physics, optics, audio, water flow, civil engineering, and more! As you might guess, I had more fun there than a lot of the kids.

Afterwards, we went back to our house to surprise Kirsten with a cake and decorations. The kids had some quiet time while Kirsten did laundry and we visited with them both. We ordered some pizza for dinner, played some Boccé ball with the kids (and Phase 10), and ate some of our honeysuckle bush (that was a sweet experience). Renée and I bid a tearful fareful to the family around midnight and, after praying for our dear friends, they left for the next adventure of their lives.

The Dunns are so special to us because they are a family of God! They love Jesus so much and it is so evident in the way that they live their lives, and not only Greg and Kirsten, but their children too. They have given up of their precious family time to welcome us into their families. We’ve had awesome meals with them, an incredible Christmas Eve, and great times just laughing and singing. They are precious to us because they have taught us so much about being godly parents and loving the Lord our God first of all. We will miss them greatly.

In other news, it was quite the exciting weekend because Renée felt the baby kick for the first time! It was most active in the wee hours of the morning, and she said it felt like popcorn popping. (It still can’t be felt from the outside, but she is so excited to feel movement finally)! Only a few more weeks until I feel it myself!

I’m sitting in my hotel room right now thinking about the awesome, fun night I had with two friends from project. I’m currently in Dallas, TX, on a business trip, taking a class from Mark Minasi on Active Directory for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (fascinating stuff, by the way). But of course, that pails in comparison to the good time I had with Andy and Jody.

Andy and Jody were friends that Renée and I met while in Orlando. At the time, they hardly knew each other, even though they both went to the same school. However, shortly after project finished, they began dating and eventually got married on the same day that Renée and I got married. They are now expecting their first child. It has been four years since I’ve seen either of them, and a reunion was long-past due. Thankfully, they were available for some hang-out time.

We started off at an awesome burrito place that I’ve already forgotten the name of, but it reminds me a lot of Chipotle’s in Denver–kind of a make-your-own-burrito place. We enjoyed catching up and laughing while eating our huge burritos and some chips and queso (which were quite tasty, Ren). Andy and Jody took me over to his office to pick up their other car and show me around the office, which was a lot of fun (Andy and I had some geek talk–good stuff).

Andy then took me over to their house and showed me around. They’ve got a great house that will house a new addition quite fine! Heidi, their dog, was quite glad to see a visitor but was annoyed at Andy’s response of moving her outside while the guest was around. It’s quite amazing how much grass they have and how big the yard is! Wow, if my lawn/yard was like that, I’d be paying a lot to a) live there b) water it! But it sure would be nice to have something that big to play games in!

Andy and Jody drove me back to my hotel room after quite the fun night and now I am packing to go back to Albuquerque. I have to call the shuttle service in the morning to arrange to pick me up to get to the airport on time, but thankfully my flight isn’t until later evening, which should give me plenty of time to hang out at the aeropuerto.

Andy and Jody, thanks again for dinner and the awesome time tonight. I really enjoyed seeing you both and wish you the best with your baby! Both Renée and I are so excited for you and hope that you decide to move to Albuquerque soon. (Pictures coming soon, by the way.)

“Oh no, not the brothers’ Horlbeck!” shouted Randall as we both teamed up against him. In all, Scott and I pretty much cleaned up the competition Saturday night. Yup, Tim, Scott, Randall, Mark E., and Mark’s brother Noah and his wife Nicole all came over and played Halo 2 for about five hours. We had quite the good time playing all different types of variations of the game (ranging from straight-up “slayer” to playing team games of capture-the-flag) on three different TVs.

I do have a word of rebuke, though, for Tim’s wife. It all began with an email I received from Tim early last week when I announced the Halo “party”:

No thanks. I am learning from my very wise wife that killing is wrong. I don't think I'll be playing halo ever again.
Tim

Assuredly this was not from the Tim I knew! Later that same afternoon, I received the following:

It has just come to my attention that somebody very close to me, has impersonated me in a very deceitful way! That person wrongfully expressed a sorrow and disdain for killing on my behalf! May this not be! In fact, Killing in Halo 2 is one of life's greatest and most simple pleasures! Needless to say, the impersonator has been severely chastised, and/or locked in a closet! Therefore, disregard the past correspondence, and bring on the Halo Party!

Ah yes, this was my true friend. And we celebrated heartily on Saturday night. Halo was the perfect way to end the day.

You see, the day started off real early with some fertilizer for the lawn. It’s about that time here in the good ol’ Land of Enchantment. In fact, I mowed the lawn Thursday night to prepare for today. Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly prepare the way I wanted to–although I prepared the grass for fertilizer, I accidentally broke a sprinkler head while mowing. And it didn’t just pop off, either–it actually broke the PVC pipe in the ground.

So after fertilizing the lawn, Tim and I took to the task of digging up the pipe (being ever so careful with the patch of grass), unscrewing the pipe, and going to the Depot to find a replacement (who knew there were so many different types of sprinkler-heads). A sprinkler-head, pipe, and several other tools later (not to fix the sprinkler, mind you, but just…you know, tools and stuff), we got back home and fixed everything right up, good as new. This homeowner is learning new things everyday!

My next project is going to be to do some network wiring in the house. I want to run some Ethernet cabling throughout my office and our other bedroom to alleviate the need for cables to run along the floor. I’ve never done it before but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

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Renee’s part:
While the guys were playing Halo at their nerd-fest (keep in mind, girls, these are the cutest nerds around), I had a girls’ day out with Jeni! We went to this great quilt store and signed up for some beginning quilting classes. My two sewing projects this summer are to make some crib bedding for the baby and a big… quilt. Cool, cool, very cool, as Scott would say!

Then we had a wonderful meal at Olive Garden, where Jeni was a slave to her alfredo sauce. Good times.

We’ve interviewed two people to take over my position at work, and that has been strange, imagining myself not coming to work at the office everyday, but I’m looking forward to the joy that’s coming! In the meantime, I’m realizing that the days are going by quickly, and I’m really excited to go home in July to see my family for Mary’s wedding. God’s country–there ain’t no place like it!

Baby Corner with Renée: I am now 11 weeks into the pregnancy! Our fig-sized baby is now fully formed, measuring 1.5 inches long and weighing in at a quarter of an ounce. His skin is still transparent, allowing many of his blood vessels to show through. Some of his bones are beginning to harden, and tiny toothbuds are starting to appear under his gums. His fingers and toes have separated, and he may soon be able to open and close his fists. He’s already busy kicking and stretching, and his tiny movements are so fluid they look like water ballet. (Note: “his” is a generic pronoun, not an indication of the gender of the kiddo!) Another baby picture

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It has been quite the pleasant weekend, and I have been ever-so-grateful since last week was like walking through the pit of despair! Work was totally crazy with the perfectly-placed complete server crash that kept me at work until 1am Thursday morning and teased me with the prospect of having to work on a) my birthday (March 26) and b) Easter (March 27)! But thankfully, God is gracious and allowed me the time (and the sleep) I needed to get things fixed by 5:00pm exactly on Friday afternoon.

Thus, “relaxation” could ensue.

So, to start my birthday off right, I went to the air force base with Scott and Dad and got a nice short haircut, amidst the snowy weather. Pete, my barber, has been cutting my hair for almost 23 years. He was excited to be doing so on my birthday, and he was even more excited at the prospect of Baby H. getting his hair cut with Pete too! Three generations of Horlbecks–yikes, how crazy!

After the haircut, I stopped into the office just to make sure everything was still working. It was. After cleaning up my office a little bit, I headed back home.

Renée and I had lunch at home and she gave me my first birthday gift: a beautiful card and a steering wheel cover for my truck! Sweet. We then quickly headed over to Tim and Jeni’s house, where we were meeting up with Scott before Jeni and Renée went over to a baby-shower. Tim, Scott, and I celebrated my birthday in the best possible way: playing the almighty Halo 2 for many, many hours. Like six. It was great. Of course, Renée and Jeni came back and pried us away from the game long enough to eat. We made our own calzones (courtesy of Jeni and Renée’s fabulous ideas and shopping) and indulged in pure Italian bliss. We then played Apples to Apples (which Jeni won) and nertz together (which Jeni won). A horrible way to treat the birthday boy, if you ask me.

So after a long afternoon of enjoyment, Renée and I headed home to rest up for Easter!

We had a great church service Sunday morning–it was totally celebratory and it was awesome to be with such great friends and family and all rejoice in the common hope we have in Jesus! We are totally unworthy to receive such lavish grace and love from God, but God made the first move, declaring us righteous and forgiven! It’s such an awesome truth that has totally changed my life forever.

After church, we went over to my parents’ house for some awesome Easter tacos and present-opening for my birthday. Well, Dad got me an airhorn for the truck (man, if you had heard what is in there already, you’d laugh), and then I opened a gift totally unexpected. In fact, everyone thought I hated it when I first opened it because I was so stunned. I opened a big box, not knowing what it was, when all of a sudden, a burst of neon green (accompanied by black) hit my eyes, along with the letters “X B O X”. “Could it be? What?? I didn’t even ask for this? Is this really what’s in there? Are you serious? No way!” Indeed, it wasn’t just an X-Box box, but an actually X-Box in an X-Box box! The whole family (and Tim and Jeni) had teamed up to buy that along with Halo 2 for my birthday. How unworthy I felt, but how excited I was! So, the rest of the afternoon was spent playing Halo 2 with Scott while everyone else just slept. How boring for them!

So I had a spectacular birthday despite the trauma of the previous week, but more than that, I am so blessed to be one of God’s children and know that I am going to heaven and that I have a real-life, true relationship with the living God!

God has proven Himself faithful once again. It happened during this past weekend, and while it is still all a blur, I will recount it to give Him the credit.

Late Thursday night while Renée was busy working, I was doing a little web surfing, checking out used trucks. I’ve been looking for a Toyota Tacoma for nearly eight months, so this was getting to be pretty routine (I was getting frustrated that websites couldn’t remember my searches). I’ve been searching in Albuquerque, Houston, and Phoenix, and haven’t been too successful. Thursday evening, however, I saw the very last entry which seemed promising. It was located in Phoenix, so I emailed my Uncle and Aunt near the location of the truck and asked them to ask Grandpa to check it out if he wasn’t too busy, figuring he’d like something to do.

Well, I wasn’t prepared to hear that my uncle and aunt were going to check it out for me! They set up an appointment to test drive it and check it out and were quite pleased with the vehicle. My cousin, Sean, went along and was able to talk the dealer down considerably and check out the vehicle mechanically.

So, Saturday afternoon, I get a call from my uncle about the truck. They gave me the telephone number of the fleet manager and gave me their feelings on the truck, which were quite positive. After talking to the fleet manager and securing financing, I booked a flight out to Phoenix for the following day. My friend Tim even decided to go with me! It was so awesome.

After not sleeping at all Saturday night, I got up Sunday morning and got ready to go to the airport, just one carry-on bag and that was it. Of course, that meant that I was going to be searched since I had no luggage and a one-way ticket. Sigh–so I get to the airport about an hour-and-a-half early to be greeted by Tim. He quickly says that our flight has been cancelled and that the airline is going to try and get us on an earlier flight–but it leaves in ten minutes! So I race up to the counter to get a boarding pass then run all the way to security. We get to go straight to the front of the “frisking line” and have the employees do their thing. They even seemed somewhat annoyed that they had to frisk us, just for going to Phoenix! Oh well.

When they were finished, we booked it to the gate to find out that our plane… was still there! In fact, the airline was having difficulty communicating with the tower in Phoenix so they delayed the flight for about 20 minutes. I think it was just God giving Tim and me a little grace.

So we got to Phoenix, were picked up by my uncle and aunt, drove over to the dealer, and bought the truck. After spending some good time with my grandfather, Tim and I headed back to Albuquerque, to return exactly 12 hours after we left that morning! It was quite the adventure.

The best part about all of this, though, is that it is totally God’s provision. Renée and I committed our search of a truck to God when we first started, decided on a price that would be a wise use of the money God had given us, and prayed, waited, and looked. Nothing fit inside of what we were looking for, so we decided with some hesitancy to increase our looking price. But this truck was inside our original price range and came packed with a lot more features than we expected, as well as being in excellent condition and having low mileage.

God is a good Father. I don’t deserve this gift by any means. But He is definitely worthy to be praised!

I also have to thank my wonderful wife for being so supportive of me. When I was fearful, she was strong and still believed in me, covering me in prayer the whole time. I am the most fortunate, blessed man in the world to have her by my side. I love you, sweetheart!

Last night I was to meet Tim, Jeni, and Renée at Chili’s for a quick bite to eat before heading to Bible study. I had just finished having some electrical work done in my office, and I needed to physically change the circuits our servers were on to a new circuit we had just installed. So I powered both servers down, unplugged them, moved them over to the new circuit, organized all my cords, and powered them back up.

The main server came up just fine.

The secondary server started beeping incessantly at me, but strangely, it was still booting just fine.

I didn’t know that it was the second server that was beeping–I thought it was another piece of equipment we have that beeps occasionally. Finally, piercing the eardrum, the beep identified itself. So I powered down, tried again, still the same thing.

It was 6:00pm (I was supposed to eat dinner at 5:30pm) before I figured out a hard drive went bad in our server. Bad news. Thus, I left frazzled and went to Bible study exhausted; this morning, I was at the office about 6:50am and finally got things fixed. All to the tune of an hour of incessant, loud, beeping. But praise God, it’s all taken care of.

I keep times like this in perspective with the wonderful experiences awaiting you in the men’s bathroom here. There is one man that my coworker and I affectionately call “Captain Loogie.” Every time, without fail. You can fill in the rest (just imagine the grossest loogie-ing you can).