Up All Night- The Growing Prysocks

Steph's still in recovery, and this is a photo-heavy blog. You've been warned.

Last night was the big show. The venue was a historic synagogue in downtown D.C. The place was really kind of small (think: Beltway's chapel plus a balcony). I was worried at first because it was so small and I thought there might not be enough room for MuteMath's usual shenanigans. I was very wrong, and they blew the roof off that synagogue.

The opening band was As Tall As Lions. They were quite good, they had a unique sound and a lot of energy. They were unique but clearly talented. They put on a good show and I think they were an ideal warm-up act for MuteMath. If you're interested, they are now available on my Simplify Media account.

Some of the pictures are a little blurry and/or low quality. The low quality I attribute to the camera and lack of light, the blurriness is all the band's fault, they rarely slow down enough to get a clear picture.

Waiting in line outside the synagogue.
It was kinda cold.... (she crocheted that beanie herself, btw)


So Darren King, the drummer, walked out of the bus which we were waiting in line next to, and saw Stephanie in the cold rain. So he said, "Here, you're drenched, you should take my umbrella."
So that's Stephanie holding Darren King's umbrella. I was gonna get a picture, but he was on a phone call and I didn't want to seem rude or intrusive. I mean the guy already loaned my wife his umbrella!

Inside the venue.
The dome.

As Tall As Lions.
Darren doing some audience participation.


When you're crazy talented, you just build your own instruments.

There's Paul doing his thing.
See what I mean with the blurryness??
Yeah right after this pic he jumped onto the audience and they crowd surfed him to the stage.

Preface: Stephanie really does intent to post on this blog too, but she is currently engaged in a whole slew of craft projects. She will post again once her gnarled, arthritic hands recover enough to type.

As many may know from experience, searching for a new church home can be very difficult. Of course our ideal was to find somewhere as great as Beltway. We started with a church that we had heard about from a friend. It was very big with multiple campuses, tons of ministries and classes, and various worship styles and age groups. We tried it a couple times and liked it, but weren't thrilled about it. Obviously they were doing great work there, but something didn't feel quite right and it seemed like we were just settling for the first thing we found. And who could blame us? As we realized, moving to a completely new area means having no useful information about churches. So we tried looking around online. Using only websites to look for a church was difficult since you only get a little information and no real sense of what the people are like. So since we weren't satisfied with our original option we started looking around online and formed a list of potentials to try in the coming weeks.
Our first try took us to New Hope Church (see link above), a smaller church about 15min. drive from us. The drive itself is quite gorgeous, like most of Virginia.

We were quite pleased the first Sunday. The worship was great and the church was small. Steph commented that it felt like what a church would be if a few families got together to build a church. Because we liked it so much, we signed up for one of their new member meetings. During the week in between we received both an email and a card from them thanking us for visiting them. Yeah, we're easily impressed. So on our second visit, today, we went to the meeting after morning services (free lunch!) and learned a lot more about their ministries and history. Here's a pic of the building so, you know, you can get a visual:

They have a particular desire to remain culturally relevant and to serve the community. They've only been in this building since last year and they designed it to be a meeting place where the neighborhood could feel welcome. We feel pulled towards this church, but we're still checking it out and thinking and praying about it.

Oh, and as one sign of confirmation, this is the intersection where the church is located:




It's missing some E's, but it's close enough.

Today was my birthday! I turned a whopping 26 today, and that makes me feel old. At least I can finally say that I'm out of school! The big festivities started on Friday when Stephanie surprised me with an AMAZING hand-decorated birthday cake.

We've been working on eating that sucker all weekend. That cake is the product of her first attempt to work with fondant and she did a fabulous job. The symbol is a reference to Halo, one of my fave video games. I love how she indulges my nerdiness, and she nailed the artwork. The work that went into that piece of awesome has it's own adventure that she'll talk about soon.
For my birthday dinner today, we had a Mexican feast! Steph made chicken enchiladas (recipe courtesy of Lacey Steele) as the main dish, which I was pretty excited about.
My birthday has been quite fantastic. We had a great meal and we may have found our new church home this morning (stay tuned for more). Thanks to everyone who sent along birthday wishes.
In closing, here is a picture of me with my best gift ever.