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That yellow spot on Susan's shirt isn't mustard. Little Bender let loose on Susan during the latest picnic stop.

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We pulled into Iowa about 2p, CST after missing our 5:30am alarms and getting up at 7 instead. We caughr up with the rest of the family caravan outside of Rockford, IL. We stopped a while later to picnic before we got the Great Wolf Lodge. The kids were good for the 9 hour drive.

I went in today to Triad to have Kirk take a look at my rotator cuff and see what I'd done to it. It's nothing too bad and he gave me some exercises to work on it. On a whim, I thought I'd have do a Body Mass Index (BMI) reading on me, since I'd dropped weight recently. In the spirit of Will's full disclosure, I normally hover right around 203 and I've been eating like crap over the last 8 weeks. Recently, I've dropped down to 201, so I figured I was doing something right. I'm at a BMI of about 25 right now. When I'm working out hard and eating right, I'm normally around 17, with my lowest ever being 12.5.

We went to Island Lake State Park last night for a picnic and brought Riley with us. There's a lake off the beaten path that you have to hike out to, which we did, picnic lunch and all. The kids and dog played in the water for a while chasing minnows, having a great time. There were these beautiful, huge clouds rolling in from the distance that eventually turned into a big thunderstorm, but were awesome to watch in the distance.

Check out this elvis mosaic someone did using sticky notes on flickr.com

Check out these these pictures of my Beth's sister's house after a tree went through it. Ouch. Right through the middle of the bed.

Madeline's is having her brithday party tonight, having 4 of her 7 year old friends over for a sleep-over. Cathie started the party at 2:00 this afternoon because they thought they'd be at the beach all day. It rained. Instead they Cathie took the girls to the Hand's On Museum in Ann Arbor and then a couple of our babysitters came over and did makeovers on the girls. The girls are just settling into a movie - I'm sure it'll be a late night. They're getting picked up at 10AM tomorrow. I manage Nate's birthday parties, Cathie manages Madeline and Emily's birthday parties. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Check out this list of American Film Institute's list of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies. It's a pretty exahaustive list across all movies from 1900's on.

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Everytime we go to 7-11 for slurpees, we pass by this granite ststue company with these huge, gaudy statues out front. The kids tell us how badly they want one for our front yard and we laugh. This time, we stopped. For $3,000 you too can have your own lion statue for your house. What a deal!

This is one of the coolest flash games I've seen out there.

I listened to a great message from Mars Hill church by Rob Bell today entitled "The Theology of the Clicks" It's an interesting message where he talks very openly on behalf of the church about their driving forces and their finances. He discusses Mars Hill's philosphy on giving and how for the longest time his belief was that the topic of giving should be avoided because of people's baggage from other churches. Their belief was that as people are transformed by following Jesus, people would just naturally give. He then shares some pretty ugly numbers in terms of giving in West Michigna. Based on the 14 largest churches in the area, the average giving is around $1,500/per person. Mars Hill is at about $500/person. Interesting. The rest of the message deals with what it looks like to be transformed as you follow Jesus, click by click.

You can download MP3 here: Money Sunday: A Theology of the Clicks or click here to listen to it online. You can see a list of all of the messages here.

We had our annual Kurt Family July 4th party at my parents yesterday. It was a little sad without Jon and Beth there, but we had fun none-the-less. My mom dressed the grandkids for their annual grandkid picture - you can see the newest edition, little bender, on the end of the picture, belted in place so he doesn't fall out. The best part of these pictures is my mom standing in the background, making the craziest faces and sounds to get the kids to pay attention long enough to snap the picture. The weather went between sun and rain for a while, finishing off with a big thunderstorm. My Dad had just come back from a conference and gave each of the grandkids these all-purpose tools that had a siren, flashlight, alarm clock and radio all-in-one. One common denominator was the naps that all of the guys were able to take at one time or another. The key is finding a good spot to hide - under a bed, behind a couch - regardless of how comfortable it is, just so one of the other siblings or my dad can't find you and send the kids after you. I didn't hide well enough, and my Dad sent all of the kids into the room with the dumb all-in-one tools on siren mode to wake me up. It poured for a while in the evening, and we figured the township fireworks were going to be cancelled and left around 8.

You can see the pictures for the Kurt Family July 4th Picnic here.

When I got back from camp, I was whupped. Cath suggested I nap for a while and I woke up rearing to go. Nate and his buddy Austin thought we should get the potato cannon out. The cannon is about 6 feet long with a chamber about 18 inches of that, the rest being the barrel. You shove a potato down the barrel and you fill the chamber up with hairspray, close it and ignite it. It shoots a potato almost a quarter mile.


On Sunday we woke up and went to a church picnic at Island Lake Recreation area. Being the weekend of the 4th, I figured no one would show. We had a big group there, all ages. Jason and Jess brought their dog Indiana, and Emiliy spent most of her time hanging with them. We had a big game of intergenerational dodge-ball, which was fun. We had everyone from little kids all the way up to some of the older folk playing. Even though a lot of my closest either aren't at the church anymore or didn't make it, it still had this overwhelming feeling of family. It was good to see all of the kids from camp again, even though I'd just gotten done spending a week with them.

You can see the pictures of the Crossroads July 3rd Picnic here.



Right afterwards, we headed over to Brad's cottage for a going away party for Ted and Sheri Haase. Ted took a new role in his company and is moving back out to California. It was a beautiful day and we grilled out and went tubing. Brad got these giant new tubes to go with his giant new boat. Last year when he tried to pull all of the big-boys, the boat wanted nothing to do with it. His new boat did it without hestitating. Brad took the little kids tubing and managed to submerge the tube and the little kids, which went over huge. I dove in and between Eli and I, we had kids strapped to us as brad towed the raft back into shore. As they swam in, my kids declared it was the scarying thing in the world and vowed never to do it again. Another scarring from uncle Brad. When the fellas went out, king of the mountain started right away. We beat the crap out of each other. No-holds-barred - whatever it took to get the guy off the boat. There was one point where I had Ted's head hanging off the raft, pushing it in the water and letting him back up, until I dumped him. Seemed like something out of a mafia movie. One of the last times out, we started talking trash and Brad went all out. I landed in the water, not really being able to feel my left arm from the shoulder down. I thought, "that's bad". I got a message from Brad the next day explaining that the number was 18. 18? 18 unexplained bruises.

You can see the Hasse Going Away Praty pictures here.


We played hard until about 8 and then took off to our next party at the Kohne's. We hung out there for a few hours while the kids played, the adults had a few drinks and then we shot off a bunch of fireworks. I'd stopped in Ohio on the way from camp and picked up some mortars, and the other guys had made a run to Ohio and picked up a bunch of these $100 bricks of rockets that went on forever. It was a pretty impressive display. We headed home and I was beat, pretty much 'peopled' out.

Day 6 - Saturday

I went to bed at 2:30 and got up at 7AM to get things ready. The kids were great about packing up, cleaning up and loading up. I think we all just wanted to get home. I'm home now. I was greeted hugs and kisses. I'm a dad and husband again, and I'm rady to collapse.

I posted the Day 6 Pictures here and some additional, random video here. I somehow lost the video of James Raitz ralphing up the gallon of milk. I'll get it back and post it shortly.

Day 5 - Friday

The last day of camp. On Monday it feels like Friday will never come and the kids won't get it and before you know it, we're almost at the end. Everyone was dragging this morning, but I feel like I'm doing alright so far today, especially for averaging less than 6 hours of sleep a night and being on the go non-stop from 7 - 1 every day.

We had breakfast and session this morning at camp, and then John, Mark and I met with the school to discuss next year's contract. Kenyon College treats us great, and the guy in charge, Fred really values our attendance from a business and a spiritual perspective. It's another super-muggy day, every second the sun is out, you instantly sweat. After the team games, Bob and Anne Rays had setup a barbecue and grilled out for Crossroads, the band and some of the other leaders at camp. One of the urinals in the guys bathroom next to my room got a paper towel stuck in it, flooded over and kept running. The drain was the high point in the room so all of the water ran into one of the guy's rooms and then down into a couple of rooms below. Oops. Nothing malicious, just a combination of a dumb action, a broken toilet and a bad drain.

The Battle of Helms Deep is an annual event that is tough to desribe. The kids are divided into two teams of about 80 and 320, the 80 person team at the top of a hill and the larger team at the bottom. Each team is equipped with a a ton of cut-in-half water noodles ,a few thousand water balloons and flour bombs, a piece of pantyhose with flour in it, tied at the end - roughly the size of a baseball. The teams at the bottom of his huge hill try and attack the team at the top and take their flag. Kids love it, wacking people with the water noodles (they don't really hurt), hurling water ballons and tossing these flour bombs. If you get out, you go back to your base. The water and the flour combine into a nasty paste on your skin that dries into a nasty mess. You end up with flour boogers for a week. Add a little yeast and some heat, and you've got yourself a nice little bread booger. Tasty.

Some of the guys came up with an ingenius contraption, taking their mattresses (very slippery) and laying them all the way down the steps and then sliding down on top of them on another mattress, with a big pad at the end to crash into. Safe? More-so than you'd think.

People are pretty low on energy and done most of the stuff once, so it's lot's of hanging out and talking, which is great with me. A bunch of guys and I hung out and went down to get some ice cream in town and picked up a gallon of milk. Why a gallon of milk you may ask? It's a little known fact that you cannot drink a gallon of milk within an hour and hold it down. The milk curdles in your stomach and expands, giving you projectile vomiting to the tune of the exocist - literally about 15 feet. I told James Raitz (Guitaurist in the 311 Worship Band) that if he could do it, I'd give him $50. He had 1:15 left in the hour and about 1/5 of the think left to drink when he blew chunks. I got it all on video and almost ralphed myself watching him do this. There was a huge crowd gathered around him cheering him on.

I had a proud moment today when hanging out with our guys. One of the guys in our group made an inappropriate remark about one of the girls in our group, trying to be funny. It got quiet. I said nothing, waiting to see how the other guys would respond. The guys in the group explained to him that by making a remark about our girls was like saying that about my sister, and that I'm very protective of my sisters. The guy apologized and learned a good lesson.

I went to the session that Jess Shinn taught about prayer. It was mostly our kids and we had a great discussion and we all learned some good stuff. I like the way Jess's brain processes stuff. She's a pure intellect and she's really learned how to bring it down to my level.

We closed up tonight with and an afro contest followed by worship and sessions. I'm so going to miss all of these people at this camp. I'm going to be at meetings in the next few weeks and not know quite how to act. Someone's going to make a quick movement and I'm going to immediately cover up my crotch, assuming someone's going to try and tip me. I loved doing the announcements this week in front of all 400+ people, getting to know so many different types of leaders and kids, hanging with our leaders and kids, and hanging with Shinn for long periods of time, which we don't get to do as often as I'd like. I'm so proud of how he leads this youth group, how he is such a great leader within the Evangelical Youth Fellowship Group, and what a great teacher and youth pastor he's become.

I finished up the evening hanging out with Shawn and Brad, going through my iPod, listening to tunes and talking about music. I was pulling out some old stuff, The Clash, The Who's Quadrophenia, Jethro Tull, and they knew it. Good to see that good rock is not dead. I then had a great conversation with a guy about where he's at in life and where he stands with Jesus. We talked for about an hour on what it means to trust him, where's he at in the process and what he's going to do to make sure that he doesn't walk away from camp forgetting where he's at right now. Another guy came in right after and shared with me some of the decisions he'd made this week about his girlfriend and in life. He's going to start coming to a breakfast small group that another guy and I have been doing, going through the book Wild at Heart together.

I'm going to be sad leaving all this, but I can't wait to see Cathie and the kids. When I let myself think about it, I miss them like crazy. It's always a tough transition from camp to Dad and husband, much tougher than from business traveler to Dad and husband.

We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM. I can't wait.

You can see the Day 5 Velocity Pictures here.

Day 4 - Thursday
Wear the same shirt once, and it's a funny accident. Wear the same shirt on the next day accidentally and people start looking at you funny.

The whole thing I said yesterday about having lots of energy. That's done. I woke up this morning still pretty tired. I attended the Middle School session and was amazed when the speaker, Jason Raitz, was able to name all 150 kids by name in the session and continue to call on them during some of the interactive parts by name. We had 5 kids oversleep and ended up about 45 minutes late for session, so they ended up getting the chance to clean up one of the buses. Lucky them. After session, we hung out at the inflatable jousting event and I told them if any of our guys could beat me, I'd revoke their punishment. None did. One of them did get a lucky shot off right through the open spot in the helmet that cracked me hard enough in the head to see stars. After that some of the guys and I headed out to get some pictures around some of the odd statues on campus. We then went to the dollar store and got caught in another torrential downpour, returning to a tornado warning. We hung out in the basement for a while until it was over, and then played with all of the crap we bought from the dollar store (and oh, what crap it was). The guy's bought a bunch of plastic ninja swords and amused themselves for hours.

We had a huge group go help out at the Ronald McDonald home today. The guys cleaned and the girls did some administrative work to help out. The group was mostly Crossroads people, which I was very proud of. It was excellent to see such a selfless group from our church go. We need to teach service as a higher value to our kids and this was a great start.

I went to Jason's session today and again, he had a huge crowd. It's cool to see how he's grown as a teacher and how he tackles some of the most complex issues in a simple way. I watched him answer a one-on-one question that was posed to him about why as Christians we need to get out of our own little "Christian Worlds" with a simple object lesson. He took out a lighter and lit it, asking the kid how visible it was to the other people in the room. Not very, he replied. Jason then asked him how visible it would be to everyone if we turned off the lights and it was the only light source in the room. The kid got it. I can imagine Jesus answering the question the same way.

Bob Rays came down with Anne and Joey, hanging out with the kids in a way he does so well. He brought a bunch of barbecue stuff so that we can grill out tomorrow afternoon. I introduced Bob at the session tonight as Chauncy Billups and lots of kids were convinced it was him, or something close.

The worship band did a great acoustic set tonight for about 45 minutes that was awesome. After session all of our group went bowling, which was fun. Shinn came up with ways to bowl on each frame - backwards, laying down, wrong-handed, etc. and the kids had a blast.

It's fun for me to look out over these kids and remember back to when a lot of them were my kids back in 6th, 7th and 8th grade and to see where they're at now. Almost all of our leaders were my kids in 6th grade, and they've either already graduated or are just now graduating from High School and coming back to help at the same camp they went to for years. Kasey, Matt, Zach, Bobby, Drew and Jeff have done an awesome job this year, taking the whole experience to the next level for our church.

I talked to Cathie tonight and the kids are doing great. Having been gone since Saturday, it sucks to be away like this on top of all of the travel I do for work. I have to shut down that side of me to a degree and focus on stuff here at camp, otherwise it's almost too much of a bummer to deal with. I can't wait to see them on Saturday.

You can see the pictures from Day 4 here.

For some reason, the song The Beautiful Letdown by Switchfoot has been stuck in my brain this week. I keep coming back to the words in the song as I think about life, church and friendships - but in a good way - not resentful, but resigned to a degree that life isn't perfect and I'm blessed and content to a degree right where I'm at, disappointments and all. Kinda goes back to the brilliant words of my sage friend Brad who once said, "Expectations are resentments waiting to happen."

It was a beautiful letdown
When You found me here
Yeah, for once in a rare blue moon
I see everything clear
I'll be a beautiful letdown
That's what I'll forever be
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free

We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Hey, let us sing one true tune

Day 3 - Wednesday
Ever figure out too late that you're wearing the same outfit as someone else? Ever hang out with that person for half a day and not notice it until someone points it out to you? Yeah, me neither.

The kids are starting to get into the rythm of camp, understanding what's happening where and when, finding their friends and figuring out what they like to do here. Same schedule today as yesterday, except no Buck Wild. I sat in on Brett Ray's session today and was blown away by his story telling abilities. He ties these stories back to the message so well, leaving you with some huge questions you need to resolve in your brain.

I played paintball today and got lit up. It was middle school and leaders vs. high school and we smoked them. I tried to play pretty agressively, and paid dearly for it. I have scrapes and bruises all over my body, not to mention these quarter size bloody welts from the paintballs.

Tonight in Brett's session, he told us his story, and challanged us to figure out who's God of our world. A group of guys and I just got done hanging out tonight talking about how often we're the center of our universe and how we become less self-centered. We all agreed that serving others was one way to do it, and then asked ourselves the questions around why if we know that, we don't do it. Just stuff to chew on this week as we're out doing the stuff we're doing.

Our prayer team has been praying all week for us and we've seen the results, at least I'm not sure what else to attribute them to. We've had no serious injuries (which we've had in the past, and most of the other groups have had in a big way this week) and I have an energy level that I just shouldn't have at this point, based on past trips. Normally by this time, I'm beat. I've been getting up early on my own, giving me a great chance to have some quiet time of my own. Normally, I'm craving every second of sleep, rolling out of bed right to breakfast.

I've had a great week this week. I've come to remember just how much I love hanging out with middle school guys, something a part of me had forgotten over the past few years. It started a couple weeks back after a conversation I've had with my friend, and it's been bubbling to the surface ever since. I've had a blast hanging out with the middle school guys here this week and just remembered all of the stuff about them that make them my kind of people. When I first started doing youth stuff at Crossroads, it was with the high school kids, because I thought middle schoolers were too much of a pain. Freier encouraged me to give middle school a try and I've never looked back since. We started our first youth group meeting with 4 people and the team grew it into over a hundred at some points. Being a Dad and traveling started taking it's toll, plus I started getting burned out. I started taking over more and more of the high school stuff as my kids left middle school, and the two groups merged into one. Shinn and I started talking about what starting a middle school youth group at Crossroads would look like. I've started to dream (the awake kind) again about it and what it could be like. Anyways, I'm rambling.

If you've got kids at this thing, call them and make sure they spend the $10 to buy a copy of the camp DVD, which has all of the video footage of what's gone on here. Most of them will be too focused on buying midnight pizzas to remember to buy the DVD.

You can see copies of today's pictures here.

One more random thought before I go to bed. Shinn and I were talking tonight about what an amazing representation of the Church this camp is. Not a church, but the Church, with a capital 'C'. Where else can you have this many different denominations get together and do something so great. We believe so many different things about predestination and baptism, but we all agree that God loves kids and so should we. Totally different personalities with all of the leaders here, but everyone connects and values each other in a way that floors me. There's this common theme with the leaders that connect us, because we know how much each other lov e the kids God's given them, and that creates this weird bond amongst us. Over the past couple of years, I've been shown just how nieve I am about this kind of stuff. I assumed this is just the way it was with all youth groups and churches working together. Sadly enough, this is not the way most churches operate. Many like to live in little vacums, staying within their own little cliques. At this camp, kids have the chance to bump up against other christians who different on the small stuff, but agree on the main things: loving god and loving people. I gotta believe that God smiles down on this thing and thinks to himself, "Yes! They get it! This is my bride, this is my church. These kids are the future of my church!"

Now I'm really heading to bed. I had just cleared my room of the poker gang and one of the quieter guys walked in and we started having a great conversation about where he's at with this week, what he's learning and how it relates to some other stuff going on in his family right now. Those are the kind of conversations that make this week what is, so even half asleep, I'll stay awake for that.

What a great group of kids we've got with us this year. My favorite are still the middle schoolers. They're my people, but all of our kids are great. Some a wild, diverse mix of humanity.

Two quick things that impress me, and may impress you:
1. I've been able to do all of the web stuff for the site via my cell phone's internet connection, getting about 12k/sec on downloads, 5k/sec uploading. Just one more reason I love my phone.
2. Jason Shinn brought an air conditioner for his dorm room here. I am in awe of his genius. We sleep in the sweltering heat, he sleeps in airconditioned goodness.

This is breakfast this morning. Yum. Today started out hot - the kind of heat and humidity that makes you sweat just standing still. The kids were up early this morning, like 7AM. This happens just about every year on the second ful day of camp, and I don't really get it. The leaders grabbed breakfast this morning at 7:45 and then had a meeting where we recap what's going on during the day and deal with any issues at hand. We then headed over to the morning session, which started with some great worship and then the speakres. It's fun to watch Jason Raitz do his thing. Any man who can hold a group of 150 Middle School kids mesmerized for an hour has what it takes in my book. After the session, we had our team games. The kids are a part of one of 16 teams, which compete in 30 minute games each morning. They're dumb games for the most part - as fun as the leaders make them.

After lunch, we had our first Buck Wild session, a name that's become legend and a mockery more than anything, after the late, great Ken Buck. We had a 100 yard slip and slide, going down a huge hill. This concept started 9 years ago and has grown and been perfected every year since. We have baby shampoo and sprinklers every few feet, lubricating the thing. You get a running start, and slide down the hill. As you can see from the pictures, sleep and bleed might more appropriate, if you end up sliding off the end into the grass below.

After Buck Wild, a bunch of us decided it'd be nice to go canoing. When you're hot and sweaty, what sounds better? 72 of headed out. As we got the last of the boats in the water, the canoe guy informed us that we probably shouldn't "Dilly Dally" because a storm was heading this way. I'm pretty sure he meant hurricane. Jim Jeffrey and I were canoing up with the Kyaks and most of my kids at the front of pack. About half way in it started with a torrential downpour, and then towards the end it was lightning. We were close enough to the end and far away enough from the lightning that we can kept going. The two groups behind us pulled off to keep from getting electrocuted. Smart move. We were drenched when we got back to the canoe livery and waited for the other groups to get picked up. We had a buss full of soaking wet kids, who had great stories to tell by the time they'd got back:



This afternoon, we had our afternoon "Digging Deeper" sessions, taught by differnt Youth Pastors. The kids can choose sessions covering any number of real world, applicable things like: Friends in Crissis, Connecting with God, Loneliness, Music and one called "Take the Fish off your car!" Good stuff.

Between dinner and our next session, I took the middle school guys on a Walmart run. It's tradition. Middle School gets to go first because they always seemed to get pimped in everything else, and it's cool to make them first in things, plus they're my favorite. Sorry High Schoolers. We headed up there and the guys bought lots of stuff they don't need: Red Bull, Candy, Strobe Lights, Poker Chips - you name it. Before the guys went in, I told them to make sure they were on time. Unfortunately, they weren't. They did two-pushups in the parking lot for each minute they were late. The girls went after the session tonight, but probably bought more more intelligent stuff.

Only one small slip tonight.... I was doing announcements following a clip from Anchorman with Will Farrell's character, Ron Burgandy. After the clip, I announced "I love Ron Jeremy". Ummmm... I didn't mean to say that. I didn't realize it until afterwards when Shinn kindly filled me in.

Speakers in the session again were great. We're hanging out tonight in my room playing poker (chips, no money) and talking.

You can see the rest of the pictures for Day 2 here.

Velocity - Day 1
The kids got here around 3 today. They got their keys and checked into their rooms and then picked up their camp T-Shirts. We had a group meeting today where we issued each kid their Totem, a goofy concept from a retreat we did a few years back. We'd picked up an item for each kid at the dollar store that we felt best represented them - everything from weird porcelin dolls and pretend fried chicken to hand puppets. The kids have to carry these things with them at all times. At any time, we leaders can yell "Totem Check!" and they have five seconds to produce the item or else face a consequence - like singing, etc. At the group meeting we went over all the rules, including the rule about mandatory attendance at sessions and youth group meetings. We encouraged the kids to rat our their friends for skipping sessions, promising great prizes for being a stoolie.

After the team meeting we went to dinner and then to our first session. I get to do a lot of the up-front stuff - announcements, introductions and stuff, which is fun for me. We've got two amazing speakers this year - Brett Ray for High School and Jason Raitz for the Middle School kids. I'd say they are two of the best speakers I've ever heard for their respective age groups. Both know how to speak to their target audience so well in their own language, and to really penetrate with the message they've got in a way that's more than just fluff that doesn't stick beyond the week at camp. The worship band we've got is phenomenal as well - great musicians who actually live what they're talking about. The guys in the band are all a part of Project 311 and are are great to hang out with outside of the sessions.

Post session consisted of Dodge Ball and basketball for most of our kids, some hanging out and talking, followed my a midnight pizza run. The first day of camp is pretty high energy where the kids need to blow off a fair amount of steam. After a couple days of the kids getting into their groove and spending some time with them, they tend to listen pretty well and for the most part, it's pretty smooth at that point.

You can see the pictures for Day 1 here.

Sunday was a long day in the car. The four of us were packed in with a long 13 hour drive ahead of us. We left around 9 and soon after stopped at cracker barrel to gorge ourselves. Minutes later, we were stuck in two hours of traffic at a standstill as an overturned semi was hauled off the road. We drove a long, long ways, and around 9PM, I met up with Ken Buck and he took me the rest of the way to camp. I got to camp around 10PM and got a chance to see a bunch of people that I only see one week a year, but about 18 hours a day for that week, which causes a fair amount of bonding after 9 years. We spent last night and tonight getting the rooms situated and getting the fans mounted in the rooms for optimal cooling power. Any way you cut it, it's hot and humid here. You can't walk down the stairs without breaking a sweat. We went on a Walmart run this morning and picked up the necessities and then headed over to the dollar store to do the real shopping. The Dolla Tree store out here is the best dollar store ever. We picked up an item for each kid in our group, which they in turn have to carry around for the entire week. If they're caught without the item, some kind of dire consequence applies - like singing "I'm a little teapot" in front of a large group of people. The items range from dolls, to pieces of articifical fruit and sock puppets. The kids get here around 3. I'm taking a nap right now to get rested up.

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Sleeping 8 people in an unpacked house was fun. Dan and I shared a twin bed, Nate slept on the dog bed, Kevin on the loveseat, Paul in a chair and Will on the couch. For some reason, Jon slept in the big bed with his pregnant wife. Will's snoring (or death rattle) was so loud, it woke everyone up repeatedly. Kevin, Will, Nate and I left Memphis around 9 this morning heading North.

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Beale Street was great last night. It was packed, smelled like BBQ with fantastic blues music coming out of all the bars for block after block. We ate like kings at one of the barbecue places while listening to the blues band in there. I found out the hard way that you shouldn't yell 'Freebird' in a blues bar. We headed back around 1am.

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We headed out for Memphis at 7am, with 5 of us stuck in my two door Monte Carlo. We bottomed out at the bottom of my driveway. We met with the truck up about 3 hours later. We got into Memphis at Jon's house around 8 and unloaded the truck. Dan had come in Friday and helped Jon pack the 26 foot truck.. Dan worked as a mover one summer and no one packs crap like dan. Dan was styling wearing his bandana and Walmart moving belt. We're on our way to Beal St for beer and BBQ. We're heading back tomorrow AM where I'm getting dropped off at camp for the week.

Thanks to Erik for this cool site on the Gigapixel camera. These pictures are so taken at such a high resolution that it would take a video wall of 10,000 television screens or 600 prints from a professional digital SLR camera to capture as much information as that contained in a single Gigapxl™ exposure. The Project's near-term goal is to compile a coast-to-coast Portrait of America; photographing her cities, parks and monuments in exquisite detail.

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The car stereo saga contines... I'm back at Circuit City getting my stereo fixed AGAIN. One speaker is out and the car makes an annoying dinging sound for 5 minutes when I start it. It's worked for a total of 3 days in the 9 months I've had it. I figure I've invested over 12 hours of my time to get a car stereo installed and working. All for what? A little better sound quality and an iPOD interface.

Tom Cruise got squirted with water from a joke microphone by an interviewer playing a practical joke. Did cruise laugh? Nope. He threatened to sue, after reaming the guy:

He angrily rounded on the man, saying: "Why would you do that...why would you do that...why would you do that? That's incredibly rude. I'm here giving you an interview and you do that...it's incredibly rude." He added forcibly: "You're a jerk ... you're a jerk."

Here's the article.

I watched the documentary tonight Dogtown and Z-Boys, which the movie Lords of Dogtown is based. Really good documentary, great soundtrack, footage and interviews. It covers the advent of skateboarding, specifically around a group of hardcore outcasts who defined the sport in the 70s. I really want to see the movie, Lords of Dogtown - I've heard great things about it.

A Rabbi talks about why Billy Graham is a giant among preachers in this article.

Ok, this is just as funny. It's Tyra Banks going crazy on the show Next Top Model.

You have to watch this. It's Dane Cook impersonating Tom Cruise on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Wow. Damn Funny.

I submitted a recent blog entry to Relevant Magazine, never thinking they'd really publish it, feeling silly after even sending it in. Looks like they published it, with lots of follow-up comments by people. Luckily for them there were no mean comments, or Will and I would have to go door-to-door Jay and Silent Bob style and kick the crap out of them.

This guy was on Drew and Mike this morning, talking about how Jim Morrison (formerly of the Doors) is alive and now works for and hangs out with him in the rodeo business. You can see the pictures (and buy the video) on his site. The guy's a nut job.

Cool Billy Graham tribute, intro'd by Bono, featuring LeAnn Rimes, James Brown and Kenny Rogers. Ok, the song's not great, but any kind of tribute to Billy Graham is cool in my book. This guy's a hero of mine and reflects Jesus to me in a lot of ways.

I'm not what you'd call a runner. I don't really like to run. I rarely run, except for maybe 10 minutes of warmup each day at the gym. I went running this morning with a guy from work down in Kansas City. He lives near a lake and the 4.5 mile run sounded nice and doable . I was wrong. It wasn't that much fun. We had some good conversations in between me catching my breath, but that's about it.

I just noticed this pattern today. Everytime we get together, my brother's drink wine coolers. My Dad doens't drink wine coolers, but my Mom does. Wonder if there's some dark family secret that I'm not being told about (other than the fact that I'm probably adopted).

I'm flying out to Kansas City tomorrow morning, early. I should be in bed, but I'm in the beginning of the 4th quarter of a close playoff Pistons game. I can sleep on the plane. Cathie's been out cold on the couch next to me since 9 when we started watching the game. Watching the game in HDTV is so amazing, I feel dirty. The color, contrast, detail and clarity are just so good, words can't describe it. I guess I'd need 1,000 words to describe the picture. Hmm.

I did load up this morning at church. One of nameless people who read this blog didn't show, so I did it solo, which blows. Loading up and carting around these 200lb cases with another person is bearable, doing it by myself sucked. My only satisfaction was calling Matt (oops, I slipped) every fifteen minutes, starting at 6:45AM and leaving him voicemails. My goal was for him to turn on his phone and have 20 messages waiting for him.

Not sure if it was because of father's day, school just getting out, or the fact that it was the giving campaign Sunday - but there were a lot of empty seats at 10AM when church started. By a lot, I mean less than 10 seats were full. Now it's amazing how many people show up between 10:00 and 10:05, but even well into the service, it was pretty empty. I sat there pretty pissed off at God, trying to figure out what He was thinking, hosing us like this on a pretty important Sunday, and in general with our church. I've been focusing a lot on Isaiah 40 lately, having it up on my fridge, going back to it pretty frequently:

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob,
and complain, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God"?

²⁸ Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

I wasn't really interested in thinking about that this morning though, I was kind of enjoying the self-pity and going at it with God. Both songs in the worship seemed to go back to the Isaiah stuff I'd been thinking about. The first was a song called Unfailing Love by Chris Tomlin:

You have my heart
And I am Yours forever
You are my strength
God of grace and power

And everything You hold in Your hand
Still You make time for me
I can't understand
Praise You God of Earth and sky
How beautiful is Your unfailing love
Unfailing love

And You never change God You remain
The Holy One
My unfailing love
Unfailing love

The song then changed to another one, Shout to the Lord, which has a part that struck me:

Hold me close,
Let Your love surround me
Bring me near,
Draw me to Your side
And as I wait,
I'll rise up like the eagle
And I will soar with You,
Your Spirit leads me on
In the power of Your Love

I sensed a theme here. Jason then did the message on Psalm 37, specifically around this part:

³ Trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

⁴ Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:

It was an awesome message, and Jason was able to work in plenty of clips from Ground Hogs Day and Happy Gilmore. I love hearing J each, and he nailed this message as usual. I sat right behind a couple who had just buried their son the day before after he'd died in a motor-cycle accident, trying to figure out what these word could really mean to them, what these words would mean to me if I were in there shoes. Even they laughed at the Ground Hog's Day clips.
Before the message, they passed a basket out for people to submit their pledges and checks for the property. We ended the service wtih an annoucement on where we're at with the fund drive for the property at that moment. The fund-raising consultants basically told us that in this short window of time, basically 45 days, we'd be able to raise about $60-$90k, but pretty much that we should be prepared to be disappointed. We've got $114k from 27 people, needing another only $26k for the downpayment on our property before the end of July. I'm excited about this property. We've been in a high school for 12 years, at least since I've been going to church here, without ever having a glimmer on the horizon for property. We're close. We're going to make it. I can taste it.

I like the fact that it shows that we're still alive and kicking to all of the people who left because the thought after all of this crap we'd wither up and die. One of the last women who left sent out a mean note chastizing the church for a lack of "vision, leadership and focus" along with wanting her daughter to be a part of a vibrant youth ministry. (Joke's on her, we've got 40 kids going to camp and her daughter decided to continue going to our church.) Everything's not perfect, but at least we're moving forward, not wallowing in our crap (except for me this morning) and healing. As I said before, I'm in it for the long haul at this church.

We got together today at Cathie's parents house for a combination father's day and Madeline's birthday party. The women waited on us hand and foot, bringing all of us dads fresh beers as we floated in the pool. I don't think the kids ever got out of the pool.


As you can see, John revealed a strange new side to himself today. Ok, not really new. Between the winecoolers, the vouging-poses with Dan and the sun-tan lotion application, he seemed to be very in touch with his femine side.

You can view all of the pictures from the event here.


On a sadder note, this is the last time the kids and wives would be seeing their Uncle Jon and Aunt Beth as they get ready to move to Memphis. Beth starts her fellowship at St. Jude's Hospital for pediatric hematology and oncology, I think. Dan, Will, Kevin, Jon and I are heading down to Memphis on Saturday to help Jon move and coming back on Sunday. The guys are going to drop me off on the way back for camp at Kenyon College. I get back the following Saturday.

My brother-in-law Kevin go on regular father and son outings with his 5 year old son Gabe. One of their favorite things to do is go to Starbuck's, get something to drink and then walk through the local sporting goods store called "Dick's Sporting Goods." Nice, right? Only problem is that Gabe goes around telling people, "I like looking at Dick's with my dad."

I feel like a new man. I spent about 6 hours last night reloading my work laptop from scratch. I copied off everything I needed, reformatted, reloaded and it's working great. I think this is one of the first times I've reloaded where I haven't forgotten anything. It had gotten so full of crap that it had been chugging along pretty painfully for a while. Stuff wasn't running right and it took forever to start up and shut down. It's back running smoothly again and I feel like a new man. Odd, I know, but it feels good.

I'm a die-hard firefox fan, and i've slowly moved over to using Yahoo's web based mail client as my primary interface. The downside to using firefox is that you don't get the Rich Text editing capabilities that you get with Internet Explorer. I finally found a plug-in for Firefox that does it for you: eMailWeb. Works great, simple and free.

I went over to Bob last night to watch the Piston's game. Bob has 5 boys, and typically has about 25 kids at his house at any given time. He's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, with a huge heart, willing to help anyone out at the drop of a hat. He throws a mean party and just happens to look just like Chauncy Billups. Raitz, Will, Joe and Gielow were there, amongst others.

Bob just built a huge cabana next to his pool. By cabana, I meana a huge 20x20 cedar shingle roof structure, complete with flat-screen tv mounted into the ceiling, bar, and outdoor heating system. We hung out outside, next to the pool last night, and watched the game, which ended up being a complete blow-out, the Pistons winning by 31 points.

Ok, this is a really impressive office prank. Makes me wish I didn't work virtual. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

I just found out that another friend of mine is quitting their job. He's going back to school to study linguistics, so that he can become a bible translator. His goal is to go into remote parts of the world, learn the local language, and translate the bible for them. His family's not too thrilled about the whole thing, which sucks. It's cool to see people wanting to follow their heart to the point that they'd do something that looks so silly to the people around them.

Within the past week, I caught up with to two good friends who I hadn't talked to in a while. They knew pretty much everything going on with me, and I knew next to nothing about what was going on with them. Strange. Except they both read my blog. Makes it an odd conversation. They've already heard the funniest things that have gone on in my life, so I'm pretty much left without anything to say. My thought is that I make sure that every friend of mine that I don't talk to regularly have their own blogs. Mack, Mike - Start blogs.

After a lot of searching, I think I've found a bluetooth headset for my phone. I'd bought one before, and it didn't work well. I borrowed Jon's Motorola HS-820 and didn't like the volume, the way it fit on my ear or the way it paired up with my cell phone. Every headset that I've been happy with has been made by plantronics. In my office, I have the Plantronics CS50, I've had the Plantronics MX150 for a couple of years for my cell, and now I'm trying the Plantronics M3500. Plantronics is known for their noise cancellation technology, and I haven't found a bluetooth headset that has great sound quality yet and fit well. I'll let you know how this one progresses once I get it. Check out a review of it here.

Now upon reflection, this may sound like a lot of talk about headsets, to the point of obsession. In my job, I'm on the phone at least 4 hours a day - between my cell phone and office phone. A good headset makes all the difference in the world, especially when you use your hands to talk (as in gestures, not sign language. that doesn't work on the phone, unless it's a fancy sign-language phone)

I think I had a post yesterday about happy meals? Well, Steve, this headset really will bring me true happiness.

I was listening to a message by Steve @ Riverview on Contentment this morning. In his message, he talks about Happy Meals, and how they never really make kids happy. Very true. I hate Happy Meals, and not just because my parents wouldn't buy them for us as kids (My parents would get one large pop, 4 small glasses and share the large pop with all of us. My wife makes fun of me when I now do the same). My theory on the happy meal toys is to throw them out as soon as my kids leave them laying around, and they're rarely noticed.My kids think Happy Meals are the greatest thing in the world, yet what's in them never brings them much happiness for more than five minutes. Gosh, what kind of fool would pursue something, thinking it will bring them happiness, only to be discontent with it five minutes later? I'm glad I don't do that with stuff in my life. Oh wait. I do.

This is a cool new technology that I'm trying out call Grouper. The idea with this is a Peer-to-Peer file sharing technolgy that lets you setup groups to share files, music, pictures and software. I'm setting up a few groups to see how it works.

This is a very service called Youtube.com that lets you share video, much like Flickr lets you share pictures. The viewing is all done online, so no funky plug-ins or codecs - very nice. I put the video of Nate and Austin dancing at Blitzfest online as an example.You can view it by clicking here.

I had a bunch of work stuff to do tonight so I put on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and watched it as I worked. I had more to do, so I put the movie back on with the Commentary on and laughed twice as hard listening to Scott Mosier, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes talk about the flick. Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.

We had our baptism service yesterday at church, which is my favorigte one of the year. We had 9 kids dedicated and 6 teenagers/adults baptized. I love hearing the stories of people's journey with God. I don't think I've been to one of the baptism services where I haven't gotten teared up at least once. We did the dunking part of the baptism service in the high school pool, which required us to have a life guard. Shinn considered paying off some of the kids in the youth group to throw me in. He claims he reconsidered because of the potential of damaging my precious phone. I like to think that the kids know that they'd face my wrath.

On a side note, we have a big group going to camp this summer, the last week of the month, around 40 of us! I look so forward to the week of camp - hanging out with the group of leaders who I've gotten to know over the past 9 years we've done this, hanging with the kids, the teaching and the worship.

Wow. T-Mobile has moven to the top of J.D. Power's cellular customer service rankings, which Verizon has held for a long time.

This is cool. Riverview has setup a Podcast for their Sunday messages.

The girls decided it would be a good day to give Cathie a makeover after Cathie gave the dog a makeover with a blue highlighter.

Cathie had a baby shower for my sister-in-law Beth today and we had an open house, so I took Nate, Emily and Nate's buddy Austin to see the movie Shark Boy and Lava Girl. For what it's worth, I liked Robert Rodriguez's other flicks, but Spy Kids 3-D was a bit much. Apparently, all of these movies are based on stories from his 8 year old son. Well, his kid's finally lost it. My kids loved the movie, but I thought it blew. The 3-D was horrible and the story line was wacked out. Again, my kids enjoyed it and I guess that's what counted.

Nate's recovered from yesterday, so we broke out the boxing gloves and went a few rounds. It was great until Emily needed something in the other room. I turned around for a second to see what she wanted and was greeted by a nice roundhouse to the side of my head by Nate whil I was distracted. I saw stars.

I've placed the Blitzfest photos online. There are a bunch of them out there, edited down from the 2GB worth of pictures I received. A lot of the skating ones from Day 2 were taken with a very cool fish eye lense, which created a great effect.

Blitzfest 2005 Day 1
Blitzfest 2005 Day 2

Last night we had about 30 people over from the core Blitzfest team over to connect, hang out and celebrate all of the good stuff that went on at Blitzfest. Kinda like camping, it's amazing how an event like that can connect a group of people. We grilled out, looked at the pictures from Blitzfest via my HDTV/Mac setup (there were hundreds of these things. I'll post them online shortly). We ended the evening with celebratory cigars and some reminiscing about the event. It's a great group of people, younger (mean age is around 25) for the most part, with some of the team's parents thrown in the mix. I'd forgotten how much I'd missed this kind of community. Cathie and I's friends at Crossroads have been such a dysfunctional mess with people coming and going from the church and sleeping around with each other that it helped me appreciate the moment that much more. I hadn't hung out with a group of people like this in a while and enjoyed myself this much.

The picture above is James Raitz, showing off his pink cast, autographed by Tait. I'd met James last year when he played in the worship band at camp. He's the Jon Kurt equivalent. Sames sense of humor, same movie knowledge, works in a video store. He actually kinda looks up to Jon as a hero, since Jon no longr lives with his parents and has gotten married to a woman.

Nate's esophagogastroduodenscopy went great yesterday. He was a little nervous, but the doctor's were great. He was only out cold for about 40 minutes total. The doctor met with us right away and showed us the pictures of what they'd found that turned out to be the problem. he had a few small uclers right at the the connecting point of his esophogus and stomach which had been causing him all of the pain. They've got him on some new medication that should heal these and hopefully prevent them in the future.

Nate wants an airsoft gun like mine. Last year when him and I tried to have a battle with them, he got hit pretty hard and cried. He was pretty much done with them. This year, he decided he wanted to give it another go. I told him that if he could take 3 shots at ten feet without crying, I'd get him one so we could have a battle with them. He took the shots, and only mildly flinched. I was sharing this story tonight with some guys from work who live down in Alabama. They agreed that this was what they would have done with their sons in the same situation. They also agreed that their wives probably wouldn't understand this logic any more than Cathie would if I actually shared this story with her. Women. Go figure.

Nasty tornado weather down here in Kansas City. Makes Michigan tornado weather look like a light breeze. Big clouds, big winds (90mph) and hail. The project team got together at Matt's house in Parkville, MO and played poker.

Interesting article on What Drives Your Church, walking through different paradigms of knowledge driven or personality driven churches, the pastoral's role and the congregations perception of success.

Thanks to Erik for this interesting article on Electronic Paper.

We used to play this game called Chubby Bunnies in our youth group all the time. Looks like someone died and is now paying $2M.

Good summary of Tivo Tweaks.

This quote really hit me, so I pimped it from Noel's blog:
From an article in The Christian Examiner, here are some thoughts on and about Erwin McManus from Mosaic in Los Angeles:

Erwin McManus marvels at the majestic creatures he's found at animal parks around the world. Despite efforts to recreate their homes in the wild, the animals no longer instinctively hide and hunt. So pampered they've become, he said, that they couldn't possibly survive out of captivity.

His own instincts tingled with the monotonous sense of familiarity.

"This is so much like what I hear in churches," the pastor and national speaker said. "People are just sitting there waiting to get fed. How many years do you have to be fed until you come to live (the way God intended)?...

"It is true that the enemy will essentially leave you alone if you are domesticated. He will not waste his energy destroying a civilized religion. If anything, he uses his energy to promote such activity. Religion can be one of the surest places to keep us from God. When our faith becomes refined, it is no longer dangerous to the dark kingdom."

The Detroit Pistons are going to the finals! Here's another copy of the picture of Chauncy Billups and I:

Cool new calendar site out there called Trumba. It lets you set up a calendar for sharing. Normally, not a big deal. What makes it cool is the abliity to automatically sync it up with your desktop outlook calendar and merge the two together. I set up and account for both Cathie and I so that she can access my calendar and I can see hers/our family calendar overlaid as I schedule stuff at work. It also lets her schedule things onto my calendar at work, which I live and die by.

Update: The outlook calendar sync is temporarily down while they fix some bugs. That's why the site is in beta.

After doing Blitzfest, the last thing I felt like doing was going to an "Advanced Committment" dinner last night for our church's building project. You may have read my earlier post on where we're at as a church, but if not, things ain't always pretty at Crossroads. I went to this meeting thinking, "Is this the right time to do something like this when we're still reeling from all this crap?" I'd just lost a significant amount of money in another investment and wasn't too thrilled to start to think about what I was going to do with this whole thing. So I went to the meeting. This was the second meeting (the first was last Wednesday), and there were about 30+ people there. We had dinner and then had some dessert before the spiel began. Joe began sharing the story of Crossroads and how it ties into the larger picture, comparing it in places with the isrealites. Steve then went through and shared some of the church's financials and Bob talked about the property and the building plan and financing. The property we've put an offer on is fantastic. It's an old arabian horse farm on Pontiac Trail, across from Irwin's Orchard. It's centrally located, has 5 acres, a house and barn already included, which work great for initial church offices and youth group stuff. We're going through some of our due diligence on the property, but it's awesome. As we went through this, I started to get very excited. I saw a big group of people that were also very excited about this, and suddenly, our goal of $140k for the down payment on the property seemed very doable, with lots of help from God. As a part of this, Joe used the metaphor of how a patient heals. One of the women who was there, Linda, had just come from the hospital. She shared how one of the first things she had to do after a major surgery was to start walking. She thought they were nuts, since she was all hooked to tubes and monitors, but they wanted her to walk, and explained how key it was to the healing process. I think that's where we're at as a church. We need to start walking. I need to move forward, to start walking and assuming that we are going to heal some day. I'm interested in seeing what God does in all of this. Should be interesting.

My Treo 650 went nuts this weekend. The keys would only work sporadically, and touchscreen navigation was painful. I couldn't reset it, because you need to use the directional pad to do a hard-reset on the device. I took it into the Verizon store to swap it out and they had none - none to order and none in stock. They sent me out to Troy (long ways away) to get a new one. Verizon customer support, as usual, was excellent. The guy worked hard to track the phone down and make sure I was taken care of. He spent 15 minutes on the phone calling stores to track one down for me. That's why Verizon is worth the extra money. I never hear any Sprint or Cingular customers raving about their customer service.

Sunday was hot. First time we'd had to turn our air conditioning on. We broke out the slip and slide and enjoyed the heat. For now. Emily didn't want to slide down it, but instead sit at the end in the puddle, which her brother and sister didn't like, and Emily didn't appreciate their crashing into her.

Ok, I mentioned in my last post about finding joy in the moment. Here are two things that made my day. The first is this guy who was walking around the festival. Between the open shirt, the knuckle rings and the hair piece, I dug his look.

The second is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. This is a video of my son and his buddy dancing on the hill during the concert, unaware that I was filming them. I showed this to a bunch of the team that night and some of the bands and it made their day, as well as mine. It's about 11Mb, so it may take a few to download. You can get it here. You won't make any comments about my son's dancing ability coming from me that I haven't already heard from my wife. It's part of the Kurt gene pool. My dad, my brothers, and my sister all have it.