I've been offering my nieces and nephews $5 to eat one. No takers so far. Gab said he'd do it for $20.
We left the house at 5:30AM to meet up with most of the family. Cathie and I don't have the best track record for showing up on time to these things. Last time we overslept by about two hours and due to my travel woes in New York, we were about five hours late arriving at Mackinac Island last week. My Dad had bet $5 with Dan and Jon that we would be on time, and my Dad won the bet. Dan and Kris were actually 11 minutes late.
Mid-way through the trip we pulled off the expressway into some random neighborhood to stop at a park. I asked Cathie why and her answer was, "Your family has a history of odd pit stops." It's true. In the past we stopped repeated in industrial parks and other strange places. We don't need no stinkin rest stop. We met up with Jon and Beth and got to see my new niece for the first time ever. My family seems to really love my Hulk Hogan 'stache. They express that love through repeatedly telling me just how bad it looks on me. Odd family, I know.
We had custom shirts printed for our family reunion to go along with the custom beer-coozies. In Iowa, when you go to a wedding, there are no fancy center pieces - just custom beer coozies. Nice, huh? In addition to the t-shirts, Dan ordered Cathie a custom thong with the family reunion logo printed on the front and back. My wife loves thongs, what can I say? I'm a lucky man.
We got to Dubuque around 3 to the hotel we're at, which is a very nice water park as well. Dubuque is right on the Mississippi - the 'ol Miss, the 'ol lady - and with that we get Mayflies. These things are huge and they are everywhere. They live for a day and die. They end up in piles three inches deep everywhere. Each one is about two inches long and can carry off a small child, or at least you would of thought so from the screaming the girls did. It turns out that my sister Sooze is AS scared of these flies as she is of sea-gulls.
We spent the day swimming and then my brothers and I headed out on a beer run. As is tradition, we got lost again. Even with our GPS systems. We did this last time every stinkin time we went out without my Dad.
The hotel we're at has an arcade, and while the boys competed in the air-hockey championship (Nate came in 2nd) and we ended up torturing Jon on this crazy machine.
Tomorrow morning we're heading to the field where Field of Dreams was filmed (probably even less exciting than it sounds) and then we're heading over to my Aunt's farm for the family reunion. We've got hay rides and even a bus to shuttle us around to all of the different stops at my cousins. My cousins love Busch Lite beer, which we learned last year is basically water and on a hot day you can drink about 20 of these things. We brought Bud to try and be the beer snobs in Iowa.
I just licked the kitten, because that's what his Mom would do. The kitten probably thinks I'm his Mom. I didn't lick my finger first and then touch the kitten. I just licked the kitten with my tongue. --Emily
I got to know Ken Buck about ten years ago here at camp. I'd seen him around and somehow we ended up staying all night and talking. The following night he invited me out with the leaders to play a great game they'd invented. It involved two golf carts with at least eight people crammed on each. Each team had a about 50 boxes of whipper-snappers and we drove throughout the college campus chucking these at each other's heads, trying to crash the other cart. What can I say, we were young, dumb and didn't understand lawsuits.
At that time, Ken was a Youth Pastor in Xenia, Ohio where he pastored a fantastic band of misfits that reminded me a lot of the kids in my youth group at the time. Ken was a philosophy major at Cedarville and thinks deeply about things, but at the same time has a sense of humor that rides dangerously close to mine. Ken has a passion and vision for what the church is supposed to be and has been a huge influence on me in this area and my understanding of the oppressed. Although Ken is a Calvinist, (and one of the few that is actually not pre-destined according to my own prophetic word), he approaches his beliefs with humility and respect and doesn't act like the tool that many of a similar Calvinistic bent seem to enjoy. Ken has a this great ability to humbly listen to others points of view and discuss tough topics, without feeling the need to make their view his. Ken savors learning from others and going deep in relationships. Ken also has a pretty similar sense of humor to me and all of the other youth pastors at camp - sarcastic and at about a sixth grade level. Unfortunately, he also has no problem walking around naked, especially if it makes others uncomfortable. Ken has a man-crush on Noel (who he is more than just camp-friends with) and likes the band Wilco because he thinks Noel does too.
Ken was recently able to give his entire youth group (30 or so people) food poisoning that was traced back to the beef at the Burger King they stopped at on the way to camp. Five years ago Ken and I once emceed the last talent show (there's a reason it was the last) at camp. We spent the entire two hours up on stage saying things that were hilarious to Ken and I while everyone else stared blankly at us. Jason Shinn and Mike Dicurci sat in the back of the auditorium and heckled us with a bullhorn.
Ken recently moved out to Jersey where he's going to seminary and youth pastoring. We get to spend a week together each year at camp, visit as we're in each other's area and we talk on the phone pretty frequently. Since Ken's parents are reading this, it's very important that you know that Ken is in fact heterosexual.
This is Phil. As you can see, Phil has a giant paint ball wound on the side of his neck. He's a Youth Pastor out in Livonia. Phil has dyslexia, but most people would have no idea. I always figured this meant that you see a couple letters backwards and it's a little tougher to read. Phil has a very extreme case of dyslexia and can't read at all and never will be able to. When you and I see a stop sign, we think the words stop. Phil sees four letters that don't correspond to anything in his brain. Everything has to be read to him. Stop and think about how many things you read in a day and what the world. This really blew me away. I seriously couldn't imagine never being able to read a book. I read a book a week. I read menus. I surf the internet. I read newspapers. I read directional signs. I don't know what I'd do.
The amazing thing is that Phil runs a construction company, has his Bachelor's degree in Youth Ministry and knows the bible inside and out. He doesn't look for pity and he's able to laugh about it.
I'm leaving today. It's bittersweet. I can't wait to get home and see my family, but to leave early blows. The best part of camp is the last two days. By today, our group has gelled and the kids have softened, connected and are really thinking big thoughts on their faith based on what they've experienced all week.
After session, we played volleyball. We were
n't very good, but the game was so representative of our group. We laughed and had a blast and encouraged each other, no matter how well or badly people did. The only exception was one of the leaders (whose name rhymes with Kave Durt) that was a little overly competitive, but only because he wanted the best out of his people, or so he says.
We all felt bad for Kasey, pictured on the right, because she had played volleyball in high school and had lost so much of her ability in her old age.
Most of our group went canoing today and just skirted past the rain. This is the last update from me, so be sure and be at church next Sunday to see the slideshow of all of the pictures taken.
You can see the rest of my pictures from Thursday here.
These are our two revered speakers - Scott and Noel. Both are mega-church pastors (Scott at Willow Creek in Chicago and Noel at Riverview in Lansing). Scott runs Willow's Junior High Youth Ministry, Elevate, and Noel is the Senior Lead-Co-Pastor at Riverview. They have a secret mega-church hand-shake that they won't share with me. The two are inseparable, spending every waking minute together. It's been a great time hanging out with them this week.
The best part of camp for me is hanging with the group of leaders, many of whom I've developed close friendships with over the past 10 years. We've seen each grow, mature (only slightly), get married and have kids over time.
The group has grown as leaders have been raised up from within the group and added other leaders into the relationship. It is such a fantastic group of people, all with a similar sarcastic sense of humor, love for kids and love for God. I love having the new leaders coming out of high school in our group get to see this group of leaders and how they relate.
Mark Butler, on the left, raised up a slew of leaders here as a youth pastor. He's a junior high youth pastor who has done and seen everything out there in youth ministry. He raised up guys like Tim and Jason and he's the COO of our camp.
(Note the water spot on Paul's pants in the picture on the right. For the record, Paul said he DID NOT pee himself here and claims he spilled water on his pants)
We got to bed last night around 12:30 after sitting around in the hallway with some of the high school kids and leaders from other churches telling great stories of the adventures of the leaders over the past 10 years at camp. We were laughing so hard as we talked about some of the different screw ups and debacles. We told the kids that the real reason we come to this camp is to hang out with the leaders from other youth group. We come from all different denominations, but we have all have the common passion for kids and God and love to see what the two combined can do.
It's still hot and we're still sweaty, unless we're in the air conditioned dorms. The only real downside to air conditioned dorms is that nothing dries in the room. My towel is still wet from Monday. Our youth group game consisted of trying to do a large group jump rope. Last year we were amazing and did 30 in a row. This year we tried to get 3. The band was participating with us, and I'm pretty sure they were the anchors.
Jess coordinated a gig today in the cafeteria to clean-up afterward lunch. It was nothing the kids had to do, but they did it to serve the cafeteria workers. The workers really didn't know what to do with it, but were pretty surprised and pleased. Almost all of the kids from our group participated, including all the kids you would think wouldn't really want to serve others.
The guys and I played football today in the Kenyon stadium. It was 90+ and humid and we were roasting, but we had a blast. The coolest part was when the older guys picked teams. They started with the youngest, smallest guys. They just lit up when they were chosen first. The big guys went out of their way to make sure the middle school guys got the ball and got to make the big plays. We had no major injuries except for Michael (Kasey's fiancee) getting a bloody nose. The group of guys is so great. Watching the older guys talk to and hang with the middle schoolers tells me we're doing something right.
The kids are settling into the rhythm of camp and starting to open up more and more. As part of the middle school session, we break out into small groups and talk through what we just heard, going through three questions that spark great discussion. It's great to see some of our college students leading these group. Mike and Tiffany led the groups today and did a great job with it. Our small groups tonight were a little different. We were talking about how God is there in the midst of our sadness and tough times and the small group questions were on the same topics. The first question dealt with what the saddest movie they'd ever seen. One kid started off talking about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how sad it was. Other kids joined in and shared more details. Let's just say that junior high boys don't watch too many sad movies. The next question was on a time where they'd been sad because of something in their life and how they responded. Most of them had some kind of experience, but when asked how they'd dealt with it, the common answer was, "I don't know. I was 6."
There is a ton of walking and Jason and I have been shuttling kids around the campus. Only 18 year old leaders are allowed in the trunk. (Parents. I'm kidding. Not really.)
Our guys got smoked in a Halo 3 tournament tonight and we continued to play our new racquetball court game - four wall. We've got this down to an art form and no one got hurt. It's so cool to see the way the kids in general and the guys specifically have bonded. The older guys have really taken the junior high guys under their wing. The Rays boys do a great job of modeling this for the other high school guys, and they've started doing the same.
We're starting to wear down a bit, but the group is bonding and the kids are opening up more and more. Keep praying for us.
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
"The Church is like Noah's Ark. It may be full of crap but it's the best thing floating."
Happy Birthday Madeline!
My beautiful little girl is nine today! Here are nine things you might not know about Madeline:
1. Madeline loves to read. She will often read through a decent size chapter book in one night.
2. Maddie is scared of worms. She'll hold snakes, she will ride any rollercoaster you can find, but worms terrify her.
3. Madeline loves to be the center of attention. Not sure where she got that trait from.
4. Madeline's favorite pop in the whole world is Dr. Pepper.
5. Madeline is very generous. She loves to help others out with what she's got, whether it's with her allowance or her toys. She was given an award at Spring Hill for her generosity.
6. Maddie has her own style. It's usually a pretty one and the parts that aren't, we attribute to Jess living with us for a year.
7. Madeline is a minimalist. She stores nothing and when cleaning her room would sooner give something away or throw the stuff out.
8. When I wear ugly sunglasses in public, I embarrass her from her "head all the way down to her toes."
9. Maddie has a pen-pal that she met while Cathie and I were on our time-share spiel in Florida. The two been corresponding for almost a year, a few times a month.
Our first full day of camp went off without too much of a problem. One of the church's (Ken Buck's) came down with mass food poisoning. After doing an intense House on the group, the best they can figure is that they all ate a bunch of cherries that Ken purchased at a farmer's market and didn't wash. Could be something else, but this is too good of a story to remind Ken year after year.
After this morning's session we had some team games, including this one called blind thwacker. It involved blindfolds, water noodles and poking people. It doesn't get much better than that.
For our "Buck Wild" time, we had the giant slip and slide going. It's a 200 feet long piece of visquene, coated with baby shampoo and constantly hosed down. The kids go flying down this into a giant pool of soap, mud and grass - all while getting sprayed with a hose.
Everyone got into it and we had some quality pile-ups at the bottom as people didn't get out of the way fast enough. No injuries, though.
I took a group canoing today and the river was super low. 80% of the kids I took were junior highers from other schools and NONE of them knew how to canoe. Tim Wright and I flipped 20 capsized canoes and freed up another 50 canoes stuck on rocks.
It's only day two, but it feels like we've been here a while already. As usual, the kids were up early this morning - but as we run 'em hard, they start to get to bed a little early and sleep in a little later. Breakfast is at 7:30, so there's not too much sleeping going on.
We had one guy end up with a bad hair cut and make the choice to go bald instead. I'm not mentioning any names, but his name rhymes with Brad Wheelock. We made our annual Wal-Mart run tonight in another church's van. We took two groups, each ended up with all sorts of quality crap, once again.
My vow to only take the stairs is seeming a little dumber each day. I go up the stairs at least 13 times a day x 16 stairs per flight x 7 flights of stairs x once up+once down. If my math is right, I figure I'm doing about 2912 stairs per day. I'm eating more lettuce in a given day than I do in a month. Two huge salads each day combined with my friend Mr. Gold Bond Medicated Power and I'm a happy guy.
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
We got off to a good start to camp this morning. We only left one kid behind. He was late. He caught up to us when one of the vehicles stopped to get gas. Since I'm leaving on Thursday, I drove separately with three guys in my car. I hadn't even looked at a map and I blindly followed my GPS. Probably not the best idea. It took us on the weirdest, roundabout way over to Sandusky and then back roads from there to Gambier, Ohio. On our way, we got to see some pretty strange small-town church signs - including this. 
We found all sorts of fault with Ohio, including the fact their Arby's don't recognize the coveted 5 for $5.95 deal. Our church has our own floor this year, which is nice. The downside, is that it's on the 7th floor. I'm trying to not take the elevator at all. That may become a much dumber idea as the week wears on. Our air-conditioned dorms are nice, but they're a loooong ways away from the temporary cafeteria we're using, while the old one is being rebuilt. It's at least a mile walk across campus to get there and it's probably not designed to deal with this big of a group.
We get a lot of time to meet in our youth group, so we hung out today, got to know each other and shared what we're looking forward to this week. Lots of kids looking forward to getting to know each other and connecting with God.
The first day is always an interesting one with kids transitioning into "camp-mode", burning off excess energy and getting out from under Mom and Dad. Michael and I took three seventh graders to Wal-Mart today to get stuff. It's awesome to watch junior-highers flush with cash going shopping on their own. They bought candy, mountain dew, legos, a remote control car and a rip-cord motorcycle. Awesome.
I get the chance to do some of the up front announcement-type stuff at the beginnings of session, which I have a blast with and have to make a real effort to keep them short-ish. 400+ people in the auditorium makes it feel very full with lots of energy. The worship band this year rocks. Our speakers are both great. I'm hanging with the junior high kids and get to listen to Scott Rubin, who is great. I introduced him and explained how he got his nickname "El Matador" and other fun facts. Last year, our speaker memorized all 200 junior high kids names in the room. I shared that Scott wouldn't have to go through the pain, because he had been studying their yearbooks for the past two weeks and knew each and every one of their names. The caveat was that he wouldn't use their names and embarrass his protege Jason Raitz, so he will only share the names one-on-one.
We all hit the gym tonight and came up with a great game played in racquetball court, involving chucking a racquetball around the court, catching it and trying not to get hit. Fun stuff.
You can see the rest of Monday's pictures here.
I'm heading out tomorrow morning to Camp Velocity. This is my 10th year or so of doing camp with our church's youth group, all with the same churches - with some additions over the years. Noel is the High School speaker and the junior high speaker is Raitz's boss at Willow Creek, Scott Rubin, their Junior High Youth Pastor.
For the fifth year (i think) we're at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH (the middle of nowhere). The good news is that we're staying in air conditioned dorms this year. The bad news is that they're on the other side of campus from everything else we're doing. We've got about 400+ kids going overall from a bunch of different churches around Michigan and Ohio. We're from all sorts of denominations and none of us believes the exact same thing, but we all love kids and believe that Jesus loves them too, so we work to teach the kids to know and follow Jesus. We've got 30+ kids going from Crossroads, with a great group of leaders, many of who've grown up through our youth group from junior high to high school and now help as leaders as they're in college.
I look forward to this week every year. It's an amazing, life changing, draining week. I'm going into it this year already kind of worn down with a couple of crazy weeks leading up to this one. Hanging with this group of youth pastors, hearing the speakers and the worship is a great way for me to reconnect with God. Having the great conversations with kids about their life and faith that happen so often in these kind of settings where you're together 24x7 also fill me up.
If you have a sec, please pray for me, the other leaders and the kids we're taking this week.
Cathie thought she'd be nice and get me a hose. It's the worst hose ever. It's constantly getting twisted and it's really flimsy. Here's what we learned out of this situation:
- Cathie does not know good hose from bad hose.
- Cathie thinks that $20 is a lot for hose.
- Cheap hose are twisted.
- Cathie is good at straightening out cheap hose.
Anytime my family gets together, we have four people taking lots of pictures of the same thing. My sister took the picture on the left, which she was very amused by because of the old woman on the scooter zooming by on the left. Dan was kind enough to take this picture up on the right. I'm not sure what he was going for.
This was our first time getting the Mystery Box at church. The idea is that our Pastor has no idea what's in it and has to teach a quick message on it's contents. The kids have fun trying to stump the pastor and it's always amusing for the adults to watch Joe try and dig his way out of tough spots. Our kids couldn't agree for the longest time non what to put in the box, coming up with everything from a bottle of plant fertilizer to a dead raccoon carcass - the more obscure and harder to teach on, the better. We thought long and hard and finally filled the box with a giant alligator head with a hot dog stuck in it's teeth.
We just returned from our final trip to Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel. For the past 15 years my dad has been in charge of the Michigan Bankers convention up there and he's kind of a big deal (our description, not his). It's a five-star hotel and after 6pm men have to wear a coat and tie. It was one of my Mom's favorite places and she always loved the conference, the people, the food, the hotel and island. We must have mentioned a million times how much my Mom would have loved this or that aspect of the time together. We had so much fun hanging out as a family. We laughed, ate and drank pretty much non-stop. This is my Dad's last year up here as he is retiring this year, and he treated us to a first class time up there to be with him and celebrate with him - and wow did we celebrate.
Due to my flight debacle, instead of leaving at 5AM, we left at 11:30. We got to Mackinac city in time to make the 3:30 Dan. When the Ferry arrived, we were greeted by a huge group of people (Susan claims they were waiting in line, I'm pretty sure they were there to see me.)
We had the most amazing rooms at the hotel - some of the best (it helps to have your Dad know the owner and organize the shindig), right at the front, overlooking the property and the lake. We had an amazing view with balconies that were perfect for sitting out and reading as you heard the horse hoofs clomp on the sidewalk below. If you look at the picture above, we're dead center in the top of the hotel.
As a retirement gift, the owner of the Grand Hotel took my Dad for a ride on his high stepper horses. All of the girls went with my Dad (including Dan). Kevin and I decided instead to ride our bikes around the island. It seemed like a good idea until we hit the gale-force winds on the back half of the island. We decided to cut through the middle of the island which was 90% up-hill, and 10% down hill.
We were able to get lots of free swag at the conference, including these nice sunglass holders. Dan took the instructions seriously that suggested he could wear these on his belt clip. Most of the staff at the hotel is brought up from the Jamaica to work for the summer. My Mom and Dad had gotten to know the maitre'd at the Grand Hotel, who leads the midnight Jamaican worship service at the catholic church on the island. Susan and my Dad headed over to see that while Dan, Kevin, Cathie and I hung out on the porch of the Grand Hotel, drank expensive scotch and smoked cigars.
Wednesday night's entertainment was the music group The Letterman. There were no top-ten lists or stupid-human tricks - instead it was 3 pretty old guys singing even older songs. I had low expectations, to say the least. I had no idea who these guys were or what they sang, but I could not believe all of the songs they have. Check out this list of singles. Ok, I wouldn't have recognized many from this list either, but as they sang, it turns out they wrote just about every song from the 60's and 70's. I recognized at least 30 of the songs they sang, including Unchained Melody from Jon's favorite movie, Ghost. At one point in the concert, they said we could come up on stage and get a picture. We did.
My personal highlight for the whole trip was when we all went on a bike ride with boxed-lunches for a picnic. As we sat and ate our lunches the seagulls came around like scavengers. I knew my sister didn't like birds, but I didn't know she was afraid of them. As the seagulls came closer, she ran screaming and hiding behind the person furthest from the bird. My brother-in-law Kevin impressed me by continuing to throw potato chips at her, which would draw the seagulls right to her and send her screaming in another direction. I laughed so hard I just about wet myself.
One of the best parts of the event was hearing Dan Dierdorf speak as the keynote. Dan played for U of M, the St. Louis Cardinals, is in the Hall of Fame and is an announcer for ABC. He talked for almost an hour and half, and every guy in the room was hanging on his every word. We could have stayed another hour easily listening to stories about the NFL, his career, and about coach Bo Schembechler. When we saw Dan walk into the room, he could barely walk. He has two new knees, two fake hips and his body shows the beating he took.
We had to leave early and took the 9pm Ferry off the island. We stayed at my friend Bill's cottage in Gaylord before heading to Spring Hill to pick up the kids.
You can see the rest of my pics here, and other pics here and here. You have to read my sister Sooze's rendition of the whole event, which you'll find here.
Last Sunday we took Nate and Maddie to Spring Hill Camp for the week up in Evart, Michigan. I'd been there before with the junior high kids from our church on a winter retreat and Cathie and Maddie had gone on a Mother/Daughter weekend retreat, but this was the first time for Nate and Maddie to ever go away for an extended time like this.
I've got to say, from the first interaction with their web site to register the kids, I was impressed with how Spring Hill operates. When we checked in, it got even better. Waiting at the entrance to each of the kids camps were 10 staffers, some on horses, some not, waving and cheering. They took us through each part of the camp - from luggage drop-off to registration check-in, with a staff member every few feet, talking to you and welcoming you. Once we checked in, the kids climbed on a fire-engine and were taken back to their camp-site to meet their leader. Cathie and I jumped on another shuttle which took us on a tour of the camp and told us about the camp and it's mission. We got to meet the cabin leaders and area directors and see where the kids stayed.
You have to check out this map of the camp. It's unbelievable . Pay special attention to the multiple, gigantic zip lines, ropes courses, skate parks, paint-ball courses, climbing walls, swimming pools and lakes. There are three separate camps in Spring Hill, one for each of the age groups. Nate was in Copper Country and Maddie was in Storybrook. The cabins are pretty awesome: things like tree-houses, rail road train cards, tee-pees and an old fashioned fort.
Being the first time away for an extended period of time, we weren't sure how they'd do. They were both pretty excited to be there and ready for us to leave. We were able to write the kids via the web site or drop them a note in the mail (thanks those of you who love the kids enough to drop them a quick note. My brother Jon did not feel that the kids were important enough to write them.)
We picked the kids up Friday morning, and it was equally well-done. There was a giant rally for each of the camps where they talked about what they'd learned throughout the week and each cabin area got up and did a song. They then took you back to a medium-size group with your kids cabin group to hear more about the week, and then to a smaller group with just your kids leaders where they talked about each kid and gave them an award for one of their great character traits they'd seen throughout the week.
Nate and Maddie loved it. Nate was in a sports camp, where they tried different sports throughout the week: Roller Hockey, Lacrosse, Skating, Rifiles, Archery and a bunch more - all combined with the blob, the zip-lines and the flying squirrel. Nate's cabin would get up each day at 6:45 and not get back to their cabins until 9 or 10pm. They were going all day long. Maddie was in a camp that did crafts and an assortment of activities - zip-line (on a smaller scale) and tons of other fun stuff. Maddie talked non-stop about it from the time we picked her up to the time we got home. The songs they learned were hilarious, some of the same songs I'd learned at camp, however-many years ago that was. Her and Nate were in the back-seat singing these songs and sharing stories with us.
Spring Hill emphasizes the spiritual aspect of camp, wanting kids to grow in their relationship with God. The kids were just as excited about this part of camp and what they'd learned as they were about the zip-line and other things. They camp home excited to continue on reading the things in their bibles they'd been learning at camp. The whole thing was a very cool experience for us as parents and for the kids. We'd send them again in a heart-beat.
Emily and Madeline want to get a pool in the backyard. I got this e-mail from them explaining exactly why it's a good idea. I was pretty impressed at Maddie's persuasive abilities. Wonder where she got that.
Dear Dad,
Emily and I really want a pool so we will try to convince you to want one too. I will write an essay on why we want a pool and you will read it. Got it? good? Than lets start reading now.
Have there ever been days where you are hot and just dying to cool off? Yes? No? Maybe? Well than I have a great idea! go chill in the pool. Wait that won't work we don't have a pool. Wait! Lets buy one then! Here are a few reasons why we should buy a pool.
Reason number 1. It will cool you off!
Reason number 2. You can have fun in it!
Reason number 3. You can relax in it.
Have you ever been super hot? Well if so, buy a pool! If you get too hot you could get way too hot,pass out and have to go to the hospital. That really would not be good. See a pool would cool you off and that would not happen this summer at all. Also you could cool off in it and feel a whole lot better when you get hot.
Are you sitting around board at all? Well have some fun get in the pool and play! Have some fun don't just sit on your butt watching T.V. or playing video games all day. Have some fun get in the pool and get active. Make waves, splash, have contests. That would be fun.
Hey are your children away or in there rooms? Well if so grab a book or something get in the pool and relax. That way you have some time alone with no interruptions. You can sit and chill or grab a great book you are in the middle of and start reading. With no interruptions that would be relaxing.
Do you want a pool now? Well just reading this makes me want one. Lets get one and we will all be happy. Those were a few reasons why we (as in me and em want a pool.
Love,
Maddie and Emily
Good news is that I'm on a plane with a nice seat in first class. The bad news is that they need to change the tire, so another 30 minute delay. Hopefully that's all it is.
I had a pretty decent sleep in the airport. I popped an Ambien, bought a traveler pillow and stretched out on the nice, hard, linoleum floor. I slept from about 11 - 4am and then got up and went through security. Five hours of sleep on linoleum with a woman announcing every 10 minutes that you can only have one carry-on bag of luggage is better than no sleep at all. When I went to sleep, I thought I'd carved out my own area. When I woke up, I found about 20 others had found the same area to sleep. The Northwest World Club Lounge opened at 5:30, so I'm hanging out in here until my flight leaves, hopefully, at 7ish.
After sitting on the tarmac for two hours, they canceled the flight. I jumped on the phone with Northwest and everything was booked out of Laguardia for tomorrow. They found me a flight out of Newark for Wednesday morning. I jumped in a cab and headed over to Newark, on the phone trying to find a hotel meanwhile. Because flights out of JFK, Newark and LaGuardia were cancelled, everything was booked. When the cabbie got me to the airport, he tried to charge me double what's listed on the rate sheet. I wasn't going to pay and I had him find a cop. It was pretty impressive listening to the Jersey cop tear this guy a new one. While all this was going on, my corporate travel agent had found me the only room nearby at a Knights Inn. I jumped in another cab and headed to this place, which was in a really bad party of town. The place was nasty - as the cab driver described it in broken english, "I would not stay here. It not safe." I had him taken me back to the airport, where I'm spending the night in baggage claim.
I'm sitting in the Newark airport right now, camped out near a power outlet waiting for a flight tomorrow morning - recharging my phone and trying to get comfortable. I guess it could be worse. I could have all this going on while having uncontrollable diarrhea.
Cathie and I are heading up to Mackinac Island tomorrow after I get home for my Dad's retirement gathering at the MBA's annual conference. We were planning on leaving at 5:30AM, but I'm guessing we're going to have to push that back for a few minutes. We're meeting Kevin, Sooze, Dan and Kris up there to hang on the island and to be there with my Dad.
I arrived at the Laguardia where I found a Northwest gate agent who was clueless. This seems to be the norm with NWA these days (not including my dear friend Marge, who constantly bails me out of tight spots). I smiled while she stumbled on the computer and kindly sugested she ask for help. She had booked me on coach on a late flight but couldn't figure out how to get me into first class. The other agent not only put me on an earlier flight, but got me into first class as well. We're now sitting on the runway waiting for weather to clear. At least I'm not in back in coach.
The upside of being accesible is that I got a text message from Northwest while in my taxi telling me my flight was cancelled. They'd re-booked me on a flight leaving tomorrow. I was able to call NWA and re-route myself and get on the last flight out tonight. I guess getting home at 11pm beats getting in tomorrow morning.
My DSL service is through AT&T/Yahoo and I've been pretty happy with it so far. They have a great web-based e-mail interface, which is all I use. They recently upgraded the mail service and along with the new features came a load of advertising all over the interface. If I'm getting the DSL service for free, I'm okay with a few ads. I pay for my DSL and the associated e-mail (well, my company does, anyway), so keep it ad-free.
I'm trying out Google's Gmail interface to see how I like it. Will has already made the switch, but I'm a little more cautious. I'm pretty attached to my e-mail address and don't want to be like Will and have 19 different addresses pointing all over the place. What is everyone else using for web-based e-mail clients?
I flew into NYC this afternoon. Flying into LGA I had the most amazing view of the city. I love this play. I love the buildings, the sounds, the people watching, the architecture, the cultures and the overall energy of the place.
I'm flying home tomorrow evening.
Our presentation to Ursula Burns, the President of Xerox went well. I was really impressed by her understanding of the business and the technology at Xerox. She came up through the ranks as a Mechanical Engineer yet she gets the big picture business ramifications where we need to be and how to get there.
Prior to the meeting, my team picked the word trifurcation to try and work into the conversation. I won $5 from my team by using it appropriately: "We need to trifurcate the value proposition of the offering across the three business units to maximize the value." The hard part was not laughing or looking at my team after I'd said the word.
It was a long week and I'm beat. I'm looking forward to day of relaxing tomorrow. I'm glad to be home.
I love video games. In high school and college we'd head out to the arcade in East Lansing and play video games. It was a classic, dungy arcade in a basement where you could get a giant pop for a quarter. One of the guys I used to do computer stuff in high school with, Mark Lachniet, put this video together on Pinball Pete's, Fatherhood and the Zen of Pinball.
I get home tomorrow night from New York and on Sunday morning (Father's Day) we're heading up to Spring Hill to drop Nate and Maddie off at camp for the week. I'm in the Big Apple next Monday and Tuesday and then on Wednesday, Cathie and I head up to Mackinaw Island for my Dad's retirement and then pick up the kids on the way back on Friday from camp. The following Monday I leave for camp for the week, leaving my family behind once again. I come back on Thursday night from camp and on Friday morning we leave for Iowa for our family reunion. I will see my kids for roughly 2 days out of the next 3 weeks. Sigh.
Much to my team's chagrin, we finished third in our simulation. We had the right strategy but another team had a very similar strategy and executed better. We blew the first year and played catch up the rest of the time. We tried to come up with a disruptive slingshot strategy to take down the other team at the end, but we couldn't catch up. I'm okay with losing as long as we lost to a team that did a better job than us. As long as the team didn't win through dumb luck or an inferior strategy, I'm good. They won by taking our strategy and just plain doing it better.
The simulation was fantastic and it was a huge learning experience. We learned how to manage a company like Xerox from the top top and how all of the pieces fit together in terms of investment,, revenue, margin and cash flow fit together.
We started the business simulation in class today. The six guys on my team are basically running a two billion dollar company based on some of the corporate strategies and directions we've been working through all week as a team. In the simulation we are managing cash flow, resources, head count, costs, the supply chain, pricing and strategic direction over the course of three years. We make all the appropriate investments in each area based on market trends, strategy, strengths and weaknesses in competition against four other teams. In the first year, each team starts off with 20% of the market - and we grow from there as the market matures and our competition makes a run at different market segments and strategies.
The teams are measured based on Compounded Annual Growth Rate, Return on Invested Capital and Net Gross Profit. We've got wagers with all of the other teams, planning on winning this hands down.
My team had dinner tonight with one of our senior executives. The particular leader we met is one that I've met with before and a guy I've been continually impressed with. Russ is a Christian who has done amazing things in the world with what he has. Russ went to Romania with a missionary group about 15 years ago and was taken aback by the number of orphans on the street. Russ and his group of friends started by trying to find families for the orphans, and then began to look at the systemic issues that created the orphans. They leveraged their consulting and entrepreneurial abilities to create a manufacturing company that made bricks and a sister company to build houses from those bricks, both of whom would employ the parents that were putting the children on the streets. They went from hundreds of orphans at five orphanages in this particular area, to a single orphanage with only 21 kids.
I love working in a company where people use their abilities for Xerox and for the Kingdom of God.
I'm in New York in training all week. Class goes from 8am to 6pm with working lunches. It's an interesting class with a very broad cross-section of people from my company of 50,000 people. The class is half leadership development and have business training, but from a very right-brain approach. We look at the idea of questions and conversations, the creation of new solutions and Blue Ocean Strategies, instead of just focusing on left-brain problem solving. The goal is to get a broad-cross section of people working together on various issues within the company in order to cross-pollinate and deal with some of the silos. and barriers we have organizationally. Midway through the week we conduct a two day business simulation, competing against the other four groups. I'm pretty sure I can get some side-bets going on this thing. We get to interact quite a bit with very high level Senior Management throughout the week, with the 5 of us on my team sitting down with the President of Xerox, Ursula Burns, on Friday to walk through some of what we've accomplished throughout the class.
Xerox is a company that prides itself in diversity, and looking around the class it's very representative of that core value. In an industry filed with white males, we are only a small segment of this class. It's also interesting having about 25% of the class is from outside the US.
Nicknames in our family are a huge deal and we've all been working over time trying to figure out the best nicknames for our new niece/cousin/granddaughter - Reagan. Here's what we've got so far. Keep in mind, that it's OK to have as many as six degrees of separation to come up with the nickname. In my family as soon as my parents would outlaw a given nickname for one of us, we could derive a new one slightly different from the original, but hadn't been officially outlawed yet.
Here's what we've got so far for Reagan Violet. Feel free to add your own:
- Ronny
- Ray-Gun
- Gunner or Gunnie
- Dutch (Reagan's nickname).
- The Duchess
- Fergie (aka as The Duchess)
- R.V. (Reagan Violet)
- The Gipper (from the Knute Rockne movie starring Reagan)
- Guppy
- Viola
- Purple (similar color to violet)
This started as a joke, and ended the same way. We have an amazing electric violin player at church named Kintaro and a great worship leader who can sound a lot like Charlie Daniels. Put those two together and you naturally get the song, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I suggested it and Shanan, our worship leader suggested right back that I do it. As anyone who knows me will attest, I'm tone deaf - but there's minimal singing in this, so I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try. I'm great with being up in front of a group of people speaking, but doing this was super awkward for me (and everyone else listening). I'm clearly no Newton Peters.
In the end, it went off alright and was fun to do, even though I look pretty and odd through most of it. The song symbolizes so much about what I love in my church. We're a group of people who love to do life together and are even up for doing the out of the ordinary in a fun, family way, like this. It doesn't have to be perfect, just our best.
It was too perfect of a day today, so we went over to Cathie's parents to go swimming. Cathie's brother Ed and wife Stacy were in town and we had a ball playing around. Maddie and I worked on her doing back flips. She got up almost ten feet in the air and was able to do it perfectly, along with her front flip.
Ed and I worked up the liquid courage to try a front one and half flip. I was able to do the "one and a face", which involved me landing the entire force of my forward-rotating body on my right eye socket. It hurt. Badly.
Everyone was in the pool swimming. Emily got to the point where she's jumping off the diving board without any assistance and swimming across the length of the pool. She asked me how far it was, I told her a mile. By the end of the night she was running around telling everyone she'd swam five miles.
It couldn't have been a more perfect day. We were so proud of Cathie's Dad as he's getting to the point where he can swim without his floaties, but as you can see from the picture below, he wasn't quite comfortable swimming in the deep end without them.
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
I got to golf with Bob on Thursday. Doing well for us on a hole was one over, but we had a blast golfing. It was a perfect day to golf and bring along our friend Mr. Bud Weiser.
We got to see Sherry and Ethan Haase this weekend while they were in town. Little E is getting huge and is 3. Since Ted decided that we weren't important enough to come into town, I had to try and teach little Ethan how to be a man. I taught him how to eat pizza with a sharp stick, which he seemed to catch on to pretty quickly. We had a chance to wrestle so I could hear Ethan's catch phrase "Stay down, sucka".
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
Saturday afternoon we headed to Grand Ledge to go see Cathie's Uncle David who had gotten in from Iraq on Friday night, home on leave for a couple of weeks after an eleven month deployment. Cathie's whole family was there to celebrate, including her grandparents who'd come all the way up from Texas.
David had some amazing stories, but the one depicted by this piece of glass below was wild. The piece of glass on his mantle was the same piece in the picture in the lower left hand corner. He'd been in this vehicle with two others when they were hit. Only he and one other guy survived. The glass in this picture is about 4 inches thick and saved him.
We got see the kids old Great Aunt Maureen, Cathie's Mom's sister. Having raised a red-head pretty similar to Maddie, Maureen knew exactly how to keep Maddie in check. We let Maureen pretend our kids were her grand children, because her daughter, sigh, didn't come into town to visit for this event. We were there for her though and tried to set a good example for Jenny and Brian. I'm not sure exactly what the girls are doing in this picture. I think it's supposed to be showing a little attitude, but I'm not quite sure.
You can see the rest of the pictures from the party here.
My niece, Reagan Violet (seriously), was born today was born at 12:28 p.m. She weighs 6 lbs 12 oz and is 19 in long. Mother and baby are doing great. Jon only passed out twice. Congratulations, Beth!
I guarantee that my Mom would have LOVED the name. Violet was my Mom's middle name and if you didn't know, Reagan was the greatest president of our time. I'm just glad they didn't name the baby after the greatest comedic genius of our time, Will Farrell.
I was reading an article in the WSJ about Bill Gates' Harvard Commencement Speech yesterday. While not as funny as Will Farrell's commencement speech (worth reading again) it was still good. The article talked about how Bill Gates spent six months pulling his speech together and the time, effort and reflection he took on the message he wanted to leave. As you probably know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving over a $100 billion dollars to help eradicate disease, hunger, improve education and eradicate poverty. This line struck me in his speech:
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.Now don't go running off and accusing Bill Gates of being a socialist. His $60 billion should be enough to convince you that he's a full blown capitalist who cares about the poor and hurting to at least some degree. The fact that he plans to give it all away before he dies fascinates me.
I've heard a lot of Christians and pro-life people complain about the fact that guys like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a fraction of their went towards "family planning groups", specifically around researching the birth-control RU-486. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that, but I agree with the 99.99% of what they're doing with the rest of it. Should I write them off completely because of the .01%? I dig what James says about our faith being measured by how we're living our life:
14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. - James 2:14-17Like or dis-like Bill Gates, he puts his money where his mouth is on feeding the poor, healing the sick and clothing the naked. I like the way Tony Campolo paraphrases Jesus words in Matthew 25:
On judgment day, He’s not going to ask you Theological questions … its not going to be “Virgin Birth … strongly agree, somewhat agree, no opinion …” …Its gonna be “I was hungry, did you feed me? I was naked, did you clothe me? I was sick, did you care for me? I was an alien, did you take me in? … because I’m not up in the sky somewhere, I’m waiting to be loved in people who hurt.”I've by no means got this figured out. I'm still trying to figure out what it looks like to simplify my life by getting rid of stuff, let alone being out there feeding the hungry and helping the poor in a significant way. The whole deal seems so overwhelming, which is why I like Bill Gate's message - to focus on one small piece, and go after it full-bore.
Cathie and I went to Em's school yesterday for her end-of-the-year picnic and concert. We ate and watched the kids play a bunch of games.
Some of the parents (ok, me) decided that wagering on the outcome of the kids events would make it more fun. I won $1 from my neighbor as she picked the girls to win in this shoe-kicking contest.
I also got the chance to meet Cathie's nemesis. Well, maybe nemesis is a strong word, but this story cracked me up. Cathie helps out all the time in Em's class. One day, one of the little girls walked up to Cathie and out of nowhere told her:
My Mom is prettier than you. She's a hip-hop Mom.I got to finally meet the girl's Mom. I wanted badly to ask her what it means that she's a "hip-hop Mom", but it was probably one of those things that would have been funny to me and awkward to everyone else.
They had a pie eating contest involving Em's music teacher, the janitor - Mr. Steve and their music teacher. The janitor (in the middle, winning) is an amazing guy who the kids just love. You can see why.
We finished it up with a concert, to the Mom's. Here's my beef: All year long, the kids make great gifts for the Mom's for mother's day - 2 or 3 each: Poems, pictures, flowers, hand-bags. You name it. For the concert they could have done a nice tribute to Dad's to make up for the pimping we take. Did they? Nope. See if I vote on the next millage.
Em had a great teacher this year, Mrs. Robinson. We're hoping she gets our friend Sheri next year for first grade, since Nate and Maddie both had her as their kindergarten teacher.
This seems to be a cool, free service. It's an automated block backup service, complete with images. It pulls the data from your RSS feed on a regular basis and grabs the images and content automatically into it's system.
Interesting article about Monster cables. The premise is what I've believed for a long time (and my brother Jon has not and spent thousands in cables for his home entertainment system):
I say, since everything is digital, and since HDMI is a spec, the cheap cable will get the data from point A to point B as well as any other cable. Additionally I say that if there are subtle (i.e. videophile-grade) differences in cables, the average consumer isn't going to spot them on the TV.
If Will were ever executed, I believe these would be his last words as well.
This picture is gonna give me nightmares. You can see more of the weird tiger pictures here.
That was quick. In Emily's words:
First Grandma, now Rocky. He was just a baby.
I'm paying about $70+ for my local phone service right now through AT&T. I'm thinking of switching to Vonage for Voice Over IP. I haven't in the past just because of some of the poor quality and connection issues (when I call my Dad or brother Jon, you can't hear anything for the first second they pick up the phone).
Vonage's VOIP plan is $14.99 a month for the same features and more minutes. What am I missing here?
If you use VOIP, I'd appreciate hearing how you like it. Please let me know what you think.
This is Rocky Duke. He's a bird that the kids brought home as a part of the animal shelter we've apparently created. It fell from a nest somewhere and will probably die, but my kids don't believe in lost causes. It doesn't look injured, just not quite old enough or strong enough to fly. It can fly small distances upward, but not enough to be out of harm's way. The kids love it, and they're smart enough not to touch it without wearing rubber gloves.
Update: After reading online, it seems that some mother birds will raise the birds from the ground. We put him back in a nearby tree this morning (after Emily had a chance to say goodbye). If he dies, hopefully a cat gets him before Emily finds the body.Update on the Update: Cathie talked to Dana and apparently we're keeping the bird for a while. It's old enough to hang with us and be fed and in a week or two will be old enough to fly on it's own. I'm going to make it mandatory that the kids feed the bird worms from their mouths, just it's mother would. This is much cheaper than buying a bird for the kids, which I've never really gotten as a pet. If it dies, it will make birds and even worse option for them.
Maddie's artwork was chosen from her class to be shown in the community art show. It is much better than the stick figure pictures I drew Cathie for Mother's Day.
Emily and Madeline caught a couple of frogs yesterday: Hoppy and Professor. They created homes, fed them bugs and played with them all day. Due to past frog tragedies, I normally don't let them keep them for more than a day before letting them go.
Last night Emily came down because she'd forgotten to let them go. Hoppy was still in his box, but Professor had taken off. She'd only had the frogs for part of a day, but she was literally heartbroken that she didn't get a chance to say goodbye. As she lay sobbing in Cathie's arms, she talked about "all the good times" they shared, how he sat on her lap, how she taught him to hop when she said "hop". She wanted us to go out looking for him in the rain, but settled on leaving this note on her door and another on her window.
This little girl loves animals more than anyone I've ever seen. She was actually sobbing at the fact that she didn't get to say goodbye to the frog before it left. She has an amazingly tender little heart.
Bill, Will, Mark, Brad and I went up North for a guys weekend. We met up in Gaylord at Bill's place on Otsego lake and hung out there for the night. We grilled out in a big way. We had these huge Delmonico steaks that we smoked and grilled, some salmon, bread and a bunch of vegetables. We sat around the fire in a food coma afterwards eating, drinking and talking.
The next morning we headed out to Brad's hunting cabin in the Upper Peninsula. Brad's hunting cabin (not to be confused with his cottage in Pickney) is on about 240 acres of land in the middle of nowhere. There's no one for miles around and there are animals everywhere. We saw a ton of wild turkeys and some deer. As you sat there, you heard no ambient noise from the road or the city - just this amazing chorus from the birds and the forest around you. The weather was perfect, so Brad, Mark and Will went golfing while Bill and I went four-wheeling. Brad has miles of trails that go all throughout his property so we went flying around those for a while. The four wheelers are fun, but his Polaris ATV is amazing. this thing can go over and through stuff a Hummer can't get through. It has a top speed of 55mph and can make it up and down just about anything.
There was no cell phone coverage where we were at, so I went through withdrawal as I was completely separated from the outside world without access to the web, cell or even smoke signals. The weather was amazing. It was supposed to rain all day and ended up being about 85.
Once again, we grilled enough for an army. We had a 20lb beef brisket, hot wings, bread and these jalapeños with cream cheese wrapped in bacon and cooked on the grill. I ate 20.
We couldn't get the pistons game on so we hung out out around the fire in another food coma , listening to music and shooting the breeze - mocking each other for any minor transgression of the man code. We headed back on Sunday morning as it stated pouring and made it back by 2:30.
You can see some of the rest of the pictures here.
When I met Bill 14 years ago, he was a fine upstanding citizen. He looked nothing like a bum. Sure the bill of his hat isn't quite straight, he's got what looks like a five day beard growth (about eight hours actually) and he's huddled up on a mattress without sheets, but that's just the way Bill rolls.
