Bahama Bob's 2008

We attended the fourth (I think) annual Bahama Bob's party at the Ray's. My memory stinks, but I think the whole thing started after Bob put a pool in his back yard and built a cabana next to it. I remember standing around Bob's pool, chucking in pennies and watching his robotic pool cleaner, while the guys gambled on which penny it would pick up first. Bob has slow built his cabana into something that rivals the ocean-side bars in the Caribbean. It's pretty much the best club-house ever. We hang out there and watch play off games no matter what the weather, as Bob has added multiple TVs, fireplaces and propane heaters. As a side note, the cabana is a close rival to Bob's basement, which has a bunch of casino slot machines, arcade pinball machines and stand up video game systems, not to mention a slurpee machine. For the record, when I say Bob, I should be saying Bob and Anne (whom I have no pictures of from the party), both of whom know how to put on a big party. (Anne is the youngest of ten kids and the Rays have five boys themselves, so their average family gatherings rival the biggest party I've ever thrown).

To add to the Bahama Bob's carribean feel, they had a steel drum band and tons of food and Caribbean style drinks. Not to mention a viking helmet.

Ok, it was me that brought the Willapalooza horns, which made for some great pictures.

Brad kind of reminds me of Hagar the Horrible in this picture, or rather Hagar the Horrible on his death bad.

The Rays were kind enough to allow a slew of Kurt's to come to the party.

Concert

We went last night with some of our neighbors, the Kohnes, to DTE Music Theatre to see Finger 11, Staind and 3 Doors Down. It was a last minute thing with someone backing out and it sounded like fun. I'm not a huge fan of any of the three bands, but it turned out to be a good time.

The concert was the ultimate in people watching (including Diane, with her WRIF tattoo). I think the picture of the woman in the pink boots and the guy in the guy in the wife-beater say sit all. I had no idea there were this many fans of 3 Doors down, or any of these bands really. The place was packed with people of all ages, sizes and shapes.

I knew a few songs from Finger 11 and Staind and more from 3 Doors Down. At one point, Mark and I figured out a way to bet on it, by picking the over-under on how many songs I knew. I've been to a lot of concerts, and in terms of sheer number of people smoking pot, this far outweighed Pink Floy, Rush, The Who or the Rolling Stones.

It's Hot

I pulled into he driveway and saw Em sitting there her feet in pans of
water. I asked her why and she explaned:
'It was hot so I thought I'd cool my feet off'
Thankfully, the containers were filled with water and not from the gas
can behind her.

--
Dave Kurt

Don't stand so close to me

Nate and I re still ddoing his preseason workout in preparation for
football season starting on Monday. We were doing these medicine ball
workouts and apparent I was standing a bit to close. I figures this
out AFTER the ball was fires into my crotch. Ouch.

I continue to be amazed at how Nate pushes himself and how hard he is
willing to work.

--
Dave Kurt

Discipleship

I just started reading The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship by Dallas Willard. I'm a huge fan of everything Dallas has written, the level of fan-dom comparable to Jon's love of Martha Stewart.

The idea of Discipleship is something that I've had a new take on this year as I've tried to incorporate spiritual disciplines into my life and have been seeing transformation that I've never seen before. At our youth group camp this summer, one of the big theme's was discipleship, and as a result, I'm leading a small group of high school/college guys around discipleship and spiritual formation. We started out looking at Peter's journey as a disciple, and we've recently been digging into spiritual disciplines. It's one thing to be trying to learn and do some of this, it's a whole other thing to try and lead a small group like this. I feel like I'm one step ahead of the kids in figuring some of this out.

Anyways, back to the book. The book is a collection of his writings on the subject of being a disciple of Jesus. In my opinion, Dallas is one of the smartest and ballsiest guys in the world. He says it like it is:

There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus's expense and having nothing more to do with him.

Dallas calls this a "Vampire Christianity"

One in effect says to Jesus, "I'd like a little of your blood, please. But I don't care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven."

And when you stop to think about it, how could one actually trust him for forgiveness of sins while not trust him for much more than that? You can't trust him without believing that he was right about everything, and that he alone has the key to every aspect of our lives here on earth. But if you believe that, you will naturally want to stay just as close to him as you can, in every aspect of your life.

I'm thinking a lot about this, trying to understand just how much of my life I really trust Jesus with, and why I don't. I made a big 'ol list yesterday of those areas and spent some time reflecting on them. I've got a long way to go, but I've seen some cool progress recently.

Jim and Judy Kurt's Wedding

A week ago last Friday my Dad got re-married. For those of you who don't know, my Mom died almost two years ago of pancreatic cancer. Around the beginning of this year, he announced to the family that he was going steady (complete with "going steady rings" from the TV show "Happy Days"). The whole thing took a lot of getting used to. The woman he started dating had been a friend of my Mom's, Judy Prelsnick. At first this seemed weird to me, but as my Dad and I talked, he explained how cool it was to have someone in his life like this that knew my Mom, loved my Mom and it wasn't weird to talk about my Mom with. That made sense. It also helped that it was someone my Mom was friends with in that I know she liked her, and that means a lot. My Mom had tough standards in terms of friends and from what I know of her so far, she seems like a great person as does her family, which consists of three kids, their wives and four grand kids.

About three months ago he announced that he and Judy were getting married. We expected it, but again, it took a lot of getting used to, to think that my Dad would have another wife, who was not my Mom. Last week was the wedding ceremony. They got married at my Dad's church in Dewitt and Dan, Jon and I all stood up for my Dad as his groomsman. My Dad didn't want to tell the other kids this, but since I am his favorite child, he asked me to be the best man and not tell the other kids until after the wedding. We had the rehearsal on Friday afternoon and then the wedding later in the afternoon.

The guys wore suits (even though we volunteered to wear our tuxedos) and Susan and Judy's daughter Kristen were matrons of honor and stood up for Judy. Some of the grandkids did readings during the service, including Shabadu who did the responsorial reading, complete with an outstretched arm to make sure everyone knew that they were supposed to respond. We made sure he knew that the arm should be outstretched at the side, and not in front, which can often be confused as a nazi-hand-gesture.

The wedding ceremony was very nice. Although none of his children were asked to sing in the wedding, Dan was kind of enough to volunteer to sing the Ave Maria. Judy's daughter-in-law sang beautifully, including the longest hour-father-song-prayer ever. The ceremony went off pretty much without a hitch, except for a couple last minute debacles with Jon's corsage and Dan standing up at the wrong time during the ceremony and ruining the wedding.

The reception was held at the same place as Will and Monaca's reception and was very nice. My Dad had threatened to give his son's drink tickets to keep the cost of the bar tab down, but he decided to cut loose in the end. My Dad decided he could shorten the reception by having me do the prayer instead of the toast. I was able to finagle a dinner prayer into a few introductions and an emcee position over the night. I was able to introduce my prayer, pray, and then talk about the prayer afterward, including references to the Meet the Parents prayer. I think I showed great maturity in not making any references to Talladaga Nights "8lb 6oz baby Jesus". I'm sure my whole piece was well under a half hour.

Although she arrived very late to the wedding ceremony, one of the other highlights was our very dear friend and extended family member Sherry. The initial outfit had a "malfunction" (a certain part of her anatomy kept being exposed) that forced her to do some high end clothing shopping (Meijers) between the wedding ceremony and the reception.

We're very excited about the merger of the two families and we are very happy for my Dad and Judy. This is not an easy family to integrate into and Judy is going out of her way to be kind, humble and gracious as we try and figure out how all of the parts of the family fit together.

Oh, and one more picture of my wife looking hot.


Again, Susan tells the story very well in her blog....

Like I said, my dad and Judy got married on July 18th. I didn't have any pictures, until now.

For your viewing pleasure, I'm going to do this whole entry in as many pictures as possible (with as little rambling as I can.)

The Rehearsal....

I was a little nervous about walking down the aisle by myself. So to make it a little more fun for me I decided to pretend I was a model on a run way. Hm. I don't think I am going to quit my day job (not that I technically get paid for it.)

Dave told me that if I did that during the wedding, he would pay me $1000. (Little did he know that my dad offered to pay $1100 not to do it.)

Dave has a real short attention span. Therefore during the entire rehearsal, he was either.....

.....playing with his phone or.....

......trying to stick his finger in Dan's ear.

I think my dad's reaction here.....

....sums up his feelings on Dave.

Now, the real deal.....

The Wedding Ceremony

Judy's sons, Mark and Mike walked her down the aisle.

Apparently Jon thought they said, "hold up a shoe", when really they said, "look super happy and stick up your thumbs like you are shooting Kate (the photographer)"

The groomsmen and the groom.
Hm. Which one is the best man??

The ol' Matrons of Honor (that makes us sound really old)

Judy and Jim Kurt.

Kristin and Dan.

Dave. Me. Jon.
Finally, the reception.....

We did it!!! We have our first Kurt-Prelesnik Family picture. Between my dad and Judy, they now have 14 kids and 16.5 grandchildren. You can call them Mike and Carol.

Matthew, Andrew, Nate, Stephen (what is he doing??) and Gabe.

Cathie and Emily.

Sherry was a little better behaved at this wedding, compared to the other one. She did come to the wedding dressed a little funny, but luckily she stopped at a store before the reception and got something a little less, um....revealing.

My dad thought that since he had asked Dave to say the prayer before dinner, that he would be safe from Dave "being Dave." You'll be shocked to know, that Dave managed to have everyone rolling on the floor laughing in the middle of the prayer. He even managed to get a quote from "Meet the Parents" in the prayer. It was awesome!!!

Dan gave the toast.....
......guess this answers the question as to whom the best man was.

My dad and Judy had a few words to say too. My dad probably wished he would have stopped short when he messed up his words and said, "We all know that she [Judy] got the better end of this deal." Whoopsie.

The kids had a blast running around on the dance floor (and the rest of the reception hall.) There wasn't any music, but that didn't stop them from doing a chorus line.

Congrats Dad and Judy!!!

My iPhone

I finally did it. I bought an iPhone. After the announcement of the 3G iPhone, I'd been debating it, meditating on it, evaluating my options and honestly spending way to much time thinking about it. I've been with Verizon Wireless since the beginning and I think they have the best customer service and the best coverage around - just no iPhone. It really didn't make sense for me to make the move. I've still got 9 months to go in my contract, Nate and Cathie's phones are both on Verizon, as are a lot of people I know. As it stood, the plan would have been much more expensive than what I was paying with Verizon. If I were to do the 'ol Ben Franklin pros/cons chart, this should have been a no-brainer.
The problem is I live and die by my phone. When I travel, I need my world at my finger tips, and my current Motorola Q9m just didn't really cut it. It seemed like I was always carrying multiple devices with me everywhere I went - my iPod, my laptop and cell phone. The iPhone gives me the ability to narrow that down to one in many circumstances. Who am I trying to kid? I've got the phone, I don't need to justify it.

In order to get over the cost barrier, Jon, Beth and I went in on a family plan for the phone. It brought the price down to about half of what it would of been per person. Two more people would fully optimize the price point. Kevin?

Anyways, the phone rocks. It's everything I dreamed it would be and it has the potential to be the one purchase that really does make me happy for the rest of my life, even though every other purchase I've ever made has let me down. The interface is awesome, the Microsoft Exchange e-mail/calendar/contact integration rocks, the new apps are mind blowing. I'll blog more about how I'm using it later, but for now, I've got it, and it rocks.

The downside is, I'll have an even worse case of continuous partial attention and been even more annoying about constantly looking at my phone for e-mail, facebook, google reader, etc. Maybe being completely connected to my music, video, calendar, e-mail and internet at every moment isn't a good thing? Nah. I'd get a chip implanted in my head if I could.

Our Vacation, Part II

We had a great week at the cottage. Am I surprised? A little. To be honest, I thought we'd all be ready to kill each other by the third day. Everyone got along really well and genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. My Dad was generous enough to treat the family to this get-away and we are all very thankful.

Kevin and I got out running quite a bit and Dan and Jon were very interested to hear about it. We mapped out a five mile course with some giant hills, and we posted our best times ever. We ran the five mile course at a 7:12 pace, which was the best for both of us. We ran three days of vacation and biked one day.

Apparently Higgins Lake has a nasty case of Swimmer's Itch which Kevin and I ended up getting the worst cases of. It looks like chicken pox and itches like poison ivy. I've been itching the snot out of these until my legs are all chewed up.

It sounds odd, but one of the coolest parts of the cottage was this amazing swing they had between these two giant trees. At it's peak, you could swing someone fifteen feet in the air and if you did it right, you could spin someone seven or eight feet in the air and let 'em wind down until they threw up. It was funny to see the adults playing on the swing as much as the kids.

My sister Susan did a far better job recapping the vacation on her blogthat I will, but I had some pictures that amused me for some reason or sparked a memory that needed to be shared.

I thought my wife looked especially hot in this picture.

This is Kevin trying to duplicate my feat of lighting my cigar Clint Eastwood style off of a burning ember in the camp fire. Kevin's bald head happened to be very sunburned, hence the shirt pulled up over his very, very large head.

At one point I saw Nate outside with this fire-place air-breathing-thingy, using it to play tether ball. I never thought I'd need to tell my son, "Don't use a fireplace thingy to play tether ball", but I did. The picture on the right is what Nate and Jon would look like if they started a towel gang.

I had this giant mug that Cathie got me that was perfect for beverages throughout the week. They went well with my pink shirt, which I inadvertently wore up to the local grocery store. It went well with my vacation 'stache. Susan made Kevin carry her around like this most of the week.

This picture made me think that in six years, Maddie will be driving a car. Cripes.

The boys played lots of poker. We had a tournament one night involving the boys and Kevin and I. My nephew Drew won. Not to take anything away from the boys, but my brother-in-law Kevin put it best when he called it a "button-mashing" game of poker. The boys would bet huge and go all in all the time, making it really tough to bet against. That's my excuse, anyways. Emily and Allie had their own high stakes card tournament.

The Great Mustache Race

Again, my brother Jon put it best... My fabulous mustache has since been shaved.

Last week my entire family went up to Higgins Lake for a week of fun in the sun. My Dad rented two cabins for us and we all had a ball, even though the weather didn't always cooperate. You can read more about the week here. But the most important thing that happened was my brother Dave and I decided to grow mustaches. It was dubbed the "Dirty, Dirty, Mustache Race".

My brother connected his mustache to his sideburns while I went for more of an old fashion zapata.

Here are a few things I learned about having a mustache:

• It never hurts to ask for a mustache discount. We got extra laps while go-carting and 2-for-1 miniature golfing.
• I tend to wear more denim when sporting a 'stache.
• My wife was sorta able to fulfill her teenage dream of making out with Burt Reynolds by kissing me.
• Women don't like it when you offer them free mustache rides.

All in all having a mustache was a great experience. I look forward to next years race, we are considering doing it for charity.