Mudbowl makes the Herald

Our mudbowl last weekend made the front page of the pretigious South Lyon Herald. Shinn's picture made the front page while Nate's buddy Austin was a part of the half page spread with pictures. The photographer has been to these events over the past five years taking pictures for the paper, even winning a national award one year with them. He's really an amazing photographer -if not only because he got a picture Jason of Jason smiling during the event while crawling through the feezing cold mud with a big kid on his back.

My newphew Ben is not naturally cross-eyed, contrary to what this picture shows. I think this is the craziest picture of a baby ever.... Not to mention he's wearing a turtle neck. The kid fits into the family well.

These four SNL Sketches on Nick Burns - Your Company's Computer Guy are hilarious.

I've been playing around with a potential flickr killer called Shutterbook.com. It's new, in beta and sitll has some rough edges. It's got a great interface, can be accessed via RSS feed and by a simple url (davekurt.shutterbook.com). I put a sample album out there to check it out. Whereas flickr is great for individual pictures, Shutterbook seems to do entire albums best. The album viewer is very fast and slick.

I've been using this fre iTunes Art Importer to add album cover art to all of the tunes in my iTunes library. As you're listening to a song, it will go out and grab the clip art and apply it to the album for you, which iTunes will display as you play the tune, plus it will display it on the iPod as well. I guess I'm doing this in anticipation of migrating to a color/video iPod at some point in the future. Plus, I'm pretty anal about keeping my MP3 library tagged and orderly. Everything else in my life may be a mess, but at least my computer, my document taxonomy and MP3's are well organized.

The best part about this motorcycle jumping video is his buddy's comment after the crash.

100 Oldest .COM Names

Thanks to Erik L for this interesting article. Notice how far in front Xerox was from everyone else?

1.   15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2.   24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3.   24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4.   11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5.   30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6.   07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7.   09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8.   17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9.   03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10.   05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM
11=   19-Mar-1986 IBM.COM
11=   19-Mar-1986 SUN.COM
13=   25-Mar-1986 INTEL.COM
13=   25-Mar-1986 TI.COM
15.   25-Apr-1986 ATT.COM

How can you not help singing along to this Family Guy clip?

We went to my parent's house in Dewitt yesterday afternoon to hang out for a while. It was a beautiful day out, so the kids and Grandma went for a walk in the woods. It was an especially exciting day for my Dad, who had a really epihany around grilling.

I'll be the first to admit that in the past, I've been no expert in grilling. My old grill had so many hot spots in it that I'd cook chicken half burned and half rare. My dad will also badmouth anything but a charcol grill any chance he gets (although he owns a gas grill now). We'd brought shish-ka-bob's for dinner, so my Dad got his charcol grill ready. Once all the coals were lit up, he figured it was ready to go. The temperature above the grill itself was hot enough to melt metal. If you're actually melting metal, this is great! If you're trying to cook chicken over it, the result, aside from burning the hair off the back of your hands and arms, is to have very dry, charred chicken. Once I explained this to my Dad, he was thrilled at learning something new, and swore that going forward he would do things differently, resulting in moist, tender meat from now on. The whole family is thrilled about this one. To prove the point, I cooked the chicken at the near super-nova temperatures, the result being some high quality, dry and burnt chicken, which my Dad has learned to love.

Part of Noel's "thing" is to go to the hospital, use the really close pastoral parking spots, visit random people in the hospital and leave pictures in their room. My Mom then took the picture home and placed it in an honored position in the den.

Since then, my parents have tried a number of other spots in the house since then:


I can completely understand this one, covering up Jon's picture:

With my Mom's favorite bell collection:

This seemed most appropriate, yet the strangest, because his eyes seem to follow you:

Productivity

It always amazes me how much I can get done when I unplug my phone, IM and e-mail.  I sat down at Starbucks without internet connectivity and cranked through a long list of things that had to be done that I’d had to push to the back burner for weeks.  I’m horrible at dealing with the tyranny of the urgent.  I don’t have the self control to avoid reading new e-mails as they come in, which pulls me down a nasty spiral of non-productivity.  The sad thing is what a feeling of satisfaction I achieve when I’m able to empty my e-mail box from 200 to 10.  That feeling is quickly quelled as soon as I reconnect and find it fills right back up as people reply to everything I just sent out from those original 200.

Fantasy Football Standings

I know these Fantasy Football updates are eagerly awaited by none, but here it is anyways. After 6 weeks, there's a four way tie for first place between Jim Jeffrey, Eli Schultz, Matt Gielow and I while the Rays Boys are sucking it at last place, even being beaten by Ted. Ouch. Next week is the big week for me when I play Jim, who has dominated the league for the past few years. If I can beat Jim, I can end up in last place and still be happy.

We got the final date of my Mom's surgery, which will be next Friday at the Mayo clinic in Minnesota. The procedure that they have to do is pretty intense reconstruction of your intestines, lymph nodes and gall bladder, called The Whipple Procedure:

The Whipple procedure today is very similar to Whipple's original procedure. It consists of removal of the distal half of the stomach (antrectomy), the gall bladder (cholecystectomy), the distal portion of the common bile duct (choledochectomy), the head of the pancreas, duodenum, proximal jejunum, and regional lymph nodes. Reconstruction consists of attaching the pancreas to the jejunum (pancreaticojejunostomy) and attaching the common bile duct to the jejunum (choledochojejunostomy) to allow digestive juices and bile to flow into the gastrointestinal tract and attaching the stomach to the jejunum (gastrojejunostomy) to allow food to pass through.

Contrary to popular belief, this was not created by Mr. Whipple from the Charmin toilet paper commercials.

Dan and I are heading out there to hang out with my Mom and Dad Thursday - Saturday and then Jon is coming down later in the week with Libby. Sooze is hanging back to help take care of my Grandma. Impressively, Jon is bringing Libby, their 2 month old baby, which for a new Dad with a new baby is a pretty impressive solo trick for most, but not for Jon, who is a stay-at-home-Dad, or as he likes to call it a "Man Mom".

Cathie found these at the store today and almost bought them for a friend of ours. I'm sure Ken would like them:

General Blog Disclaimer

As you read this blog, chances are at some point or another you may have been offended. There are times where my statements are intentionally offensive. If that's the case, it's your call to read it or not and disagree with me or not. I'm okay with healthy disagreement. Ultimately, I post the stuff for a very small group of people to read (who for the most part "get me", my sense of humor and my heart) everyone else has the choice to look at this stuff or not. Ocasionally I may post something that is unintentionally offensive to you. Being human, I make bad decisions sometimes and can hurt someone's feelings. Suprisingly enough, it's fairly rare that I set out to offend anyone intentionally - especially the marginalized of the world, other than my younger brother Jon. But of course those of you know me well, know that about me. At this point, you have a choice. You can either:

1. Assume the best about me and lovingly share with me where I've missed it in the hopes that I hear you and learn from my mistake.
   
2. Assume that I'm an ass and blast me with harsh words, flinging a heaping pile of self-righteous crap my way.
   

Since I've been guilty of doing the second way more times than I care to admit, I really don't have much place to talk here, except to say that I strive towards the first. I'm learning how to balance the truth I think that I have with an additude of love and assuming the best about others before I beat them over the head with my truth. I'm a big fan of what Paul says about how we're supposed to work together in Ephesians 4:

¹⁴Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. ¹⁶From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Bottom line is that I somtimes have a tough time receiving a flaming pile of crap being chucked my way. All I'm asking is that if you have a problem with something I wrote, be nice and remember that you're equally imperfect and should be humble and assume the best about me and I'll try and do the same with you. I mistakes all the time, and my friends will tell you that I"m pretty open to admitting when I'm wrong, when approached in the right way.

Footnote: I'm sure someone will be offended by this post.

The kids were making get well cards for their Grandma tonight as Cathie and I watched. Emily looked up and asked why we weren't drawing. "Don't you want Grandma to get better?" she asked. Cathie and I started coloring immediately.

The Saga Continues

My brother Dan was at my parent's house on Saturday and disovered that Noel's picture has migrated to the place of honor next to the cordless phone in their Den. This is a place of honor where my mother used to keep her army of stuffed squirrels (Click here to see a complete photo gallery of Mom's stuffed squirrel pictures).

We've joined the club!

We are now members of the "Families with kids who've gotten stuff stuck up their nose" club. Emily stuck this tiny little conch shell up her nose today and after several unsuccessful tries with tweezers, we resorted to the infamous "snot rocket" technique. After a few good blows, it rocketed it's way out into the tissue. I asked her why she did stuck the shell in her nose and her response was, "I don't know."

Austin and Nate are finally old enough to have airsoft gun fights. If you're not familiar with Airsoft guns, they shoot plastic pellets hard enough to hurt, but won't make you bleed like a BB gun would. These guns shoot about 5 or 6 pellets per second, fast enough to hurt. The glasses are about the only real protection you need. The two of them run around the house lighting each other up, and I hear an occasional scream, but nothing too bad.

Here are the pictures from the Comic Convention, Pumpkin Patch and Mudbowl.

Mudbowl 2005

It was cold. Around 50 degrees and really windy. Did that stop us from having Crossroad's 6th annual Mudbowl? No. We'd just closed on our new property so our first big event was a church wide Mudfest. All things considered, it was a blast. As many years as I've done this, the kids have never wanted to get in. This year, instead of it just being the kids in Junior High and High School, Joe had the great idea to open it up to being a church wide event. Nate and I competed together in a couple of his events, along with Nate's buddy Austin.

We had a big weekend, full of fun stuff. Will came down to hang with us all day on Saturday, starting with Nate's football game. One of the coaches didn't show, so I got to go in and coach the defense, which was a blast and my defense held the other team to two touchdowns.


From there, we went to the pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins. The same rules applied this year as they did last year - you can pick the biggest pumpkin in the word - you just need to carry it out. We hit the corn maze as well, while Nate and I amused ourselves nailing each other with kernels of corn. We walked out of there with three pumpkins and $45 less money than I came in with. Ouch.

The day moved on and Will and I went to the local Comic Book Convention. Just to clarify, neither Will or I collect Comics, trading cards or figurines. This was all about people watching. I made it my goal to go up to every person I could find in a costume and get my picture taken with them. There were a bunch of "famous" people, including the girl from back to the future, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson (Starsky and Hutch) and Levar Burton (Star Trek). There were also a bunch of washed up Playboy playmates and a bunch of nasty porn stars signing autographs.

I'm all for having a cool costume, but these guys all took it too far and thought they really were their characters, to the point that grown men would dual with each other because of grudges from what their characters had done to each other in the movies. During the big costume contest finale, BobaFet's piece-de-resistance was pushing a button and having air shoot out the back of his costume, as if it were real. People applauded. Will made the brilliant observation on how closely the worlds of comic books and porn are tied together. How true. Lots of weird booths of weird stuff that creeped me out. I had the opportunity to buy an aquaman costume for $800. What a deal.


When I accidently referred to the guy on the right as a Jedi, he got really pissed off. The guy had contacts in his eyes to make them look like Darth Maul's creep orange eyes. Wow.

This was a dude. Freaked me out.


A stormtrooper's life is never easy. This one needed a nap, just not in full costume.

Will and I then went to see the movie Waiting which was hilarious and has completely changed how I'll treat waiters and waitresses for the rest of my life. Aftewards, we went over to Brad's and watched the Tivo'd MSU v Ohio State game. Brad had already seen the game, so he amused himself giving out hints as to what would happen.

Freakin Travel

It just keeps getting better... Not only was my flight deplayed by two hours but I couldn't get to my car. A van had caught fire right outside the airport and shut the shuttle busses down for a half hour while we waited.

This is getting out of hand. It's not just my siblings vying for ranking in my family, my friends are doing it as well. Check out these links where Noel, Will and Mike have all tried to usurp me as the number one child, along with my brothers. It's sad, really. More of a cry for help than anything.

In all seriousness, I think it speaks volumes of the kind of person my Mom is that my buddies would all go visit her like this (and it says a lot about my friends as well) ...and put creepy pictures of themselves in a Christ like pose in her room.

Kiawah Ocean Course

I'm on my way back from Charleston South Carolina this morning on a 6AM flight, after getting to bed at 2:30. I was down there on a reward trip and one of hte days we got a chance to golf at the Kiawah Ocean Course, outside of Charleston.

I'm sure that I'll never play a course again this nice in my lifetime again. As the name suggests, it was right on the ocean and my jaw was hanging down most of the time looking at the scenery and these $10M homes all around the course. At $300 a person for 18 holes, we at least got our own caddie, which was I'd never had before. The course hosted the Ryder Cup back in 1991 to give you an idea of how tough it was. I didn't golf well, I lost a ton of balls, but the scenery was breathtaking.

So that I wouldn't have to fly through Lansing, I ended flying US Air and now I'm stuck in Dulles on a connecting flight. This is a bittergroup of passengers right now after the 4th delay was just announced.

Apparently my Mom loves Mike Thompson more than me. Damn.

650 Holster

A guy at work turned me on to this Treo 650 Holster from TreoCentral.com. I've been carrying my phone around in my pocket for a long time because all of the holsters out there sucked. This one is awesome (there's a similar one for the Treo 600) and if you were in a competitive cell phone quick draw competition, I'm confident I could win. Well, I'd make it to the regional semi-finals and end up tying for third place, but not after giving it my all.

We received confirmation today that my Mom has pancreatic cancer. This sucks. I'm sad. The whole family is sad, balanced by the fact that there's this odd trust that God is in control of this whole thing, that God loves my Mom more than we could ever imagine and wants what's best for her. I haven't really asked the "Why?" question, because I'm not sure it's worth asking. It sucks, I accept that. On the flip side, my Mom is an amazing woman, with an amazing faith. She's the kind of woman who says "I'll pray for you" and really does - for weeks on end. She prays for total strangers and has a huge compassion and a huge heart for others that blows me away. Now it's her turn for people to pray like crazy for her. She has so many people that care about her.... How many people have an entire Dentists's office care deeply about them? My Mom does.

We've been talking a lot to the kids about prayer over the past few days - how God answers prayer. Sometimes he answers yes, sometimes no, sometimes wait. The kids prayers for Mom have been great to hear. Emily's was a little strange. She prayed that Grandma's leg not get cut off with a saw, because then she couldn't walk and it would take 25 people to carry her. Thanks Em. Maybe she was speaking tounges.

The next step is surgery - hopefully going to the Mayo clinic to have the Whipple Procedure performed.

In her own handwriting

I found this on the whiteboard of Mom's hospital room. It's interesting the kind of clarity difficult times can bring to people.

Fashion Faux Pas

You wouldn't know it from this picture, but my Dad is wearing black pants with his blue blazer. He explained to me that old people can pull this off, much like they can pull of plaid golf pants. Incidently, I took this picture while trying to demonstrate to my Dad how to take a picture with my phone.

Mom and her two favorite kids

Dan and I came down to hang out at the hospital with my Mom during her biopsy. I'm pretty sure I've read up enough on the subject to be able to help on the procedure, but suprisingly they never asked. We originally asked my Dad to take this picture, which was a similar experience to trying to explain to my 89 year old Grandma how to program her VCR. Mom spent most of the time telling us how we're her favorite children now.

I love this picture of my nephew Gabe at a recent soccer game:

My mom is in the hospital. She'd been having liver problems and went into the emergency room last night, where they did a cat scan and admitted her immediately into oncology after finding a growth on her pancreas. They're going to do a preliminary ERCP Scoping procedure tomorrow to figure out if it's cancerous and then a big surgery following that to remove the growth. Pretty scary. Everything I'm reading about Pancreatic Cancer sucks. Please pray for my Mom.

For a bunch of reasons that don't seem really good right now, I flew out of Lansing last Wednesday instead of straight out of Detroit. When I got back into Detroit last night, my flight into Lansing had been cancelled. My choice was to either wait until 10:30 PM and get home well after midnight, or to rent a car, drive home, and pick up my car on Monday. I rented one of the nice new impalas. The kids have been loving it.

File this in the category of weird, yet awkward. My sister Susan wears hand-me-down bras from my Mom. My brothers and I will occasionally borrow (and never give back) socks or a t-shirt, but never of his intimate apparel. I don't think that should change any time soon.

Fashion Statement

Nothing says style like white tube socks with a suit. Note to self: pack dress socks when I travel next.

Wow, this really struck me this morning - it kept pulling me back to it, thinking on what this means:

1 Peter 1:
¹⁵As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. ¹⁶God said, "I am holy; you be holy."

I've read the same verse a bunch of times in other translations and it always seemed pretty heavy, not necessarily in a bad way, but just heavy and not always that compelling. I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm in North Carolina until Friday. Not overly impressed with the place so far. There's a storm system that might mess up my flight plans on Friday. I'm in South Carolina for a few days next week. I've never visited any of the Carolina family and now, lucky me, i get to visit both in a week. At least it's not the East and West Virginia family.

Full Circle

The circle is now complete. First me, then Jon, then Sooze and now Dan (the one next to me in the skeletor costume). All of the Kurt kids have blogs. We will now have nothing to talk about when we get together and no reason to call each other, except to tell someone to get on the ball with updating their blog.

Much in the same way all of the kids in my family agreed to tell each other if their baby was ugly, we have the same pact to tell each other if someone's blog becomes intolerably boring.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
- Robert Wilensky

Fantasy Football Update

I'm sure many of you were waiting on pins and needles for this fantasy football update, so here it is. I'm now in first place. Peyton Manning decided to finally win a game with the fantasy football fans in mind. He had a huge week, which gave me a victory of Rays family team and propelled me past Jim Jeffrey, the guru of game. I know we're only 4 weeks into the season, but as long as nothing happens to Donovon McNabb and Peyton Manning, I've got a shot. (Of course I've now just jixed the whole thing).

Future Fashion Designer

When we check on Emily at night, we have no idea where we'll find her in her bedroom and what she'll be wearing. We've found her sleeping in her closet, her window seat and under her bed. She wears everything from dress up clothes, to new outfits to her PJs to bed, and change 2 or 3 times in between.

In a moment of ego, I googled myself and came across a couple of quotes and a white paper I'd written on our corporate web site that I didn't know was out there, including this goofy picture of me.

Weekend without Mom

With Cathie gone this weekend, Nate and I had a psuedo-guy's weekend. On Friday night, Emily and I made a fire on the deck and roasted marshmellows and played around outside for a while. After Emily went to bed on Friday night, Nate and I hung out, ate whatever we wanted and watched the movie Mystery Men (which I just realized Tom Waits is in) and soaked in the hot tub for a while. On Saturday we hung out in the morning and then watched the Michigan v. Michigan State, which was disappointing to say the least. We went over to Pumpkin Fest, a big festival deal with inflatable stuff, pony rides and a big craft show. (They used to have actual carnival rides until the carney's were caught practicing lewd behavior at the school where this is held).

We hung out there for a while and headed home. We had a continuation of our guys weekend, while we watched some HD Ultimate Fighting, which if you've never seen this before, is amazing no-holds barred fighting with no-holds barred. During the world heavy-weight match, they did a brief bio on one of the guys, Ron Waterman, who happened to be an pastor of a church out in Colorado. The dude was huge and ended up beating the tar out of the other guy. Guess if Jesus were a cage fighter, he'd be the best and most loving cagefighter he could be... The best part of his bio is this:

Inside the ring or Octagon I am a competitor you don't want to face. I will not stop until victory is mine and my opponent has broken. The Ultimate victory comes when you break your opponents will to continue. It’s then you know victory is yours.

On Sunday we rode our bikes to church and then came home and watched the Lions game for a while before Emily, Nate, Austin and Kasey headed back to the Pumpkin Fest to see some friends from Church band play and for the big "dog show" (I use this term loosely because it's simply a chance for people to dress their dog up in a crazy costume and walk it in a circle while an old lady in a crazy hat makes odd comments about the dogs). Emily was in heaven with this, since her life-goal is to pet every single dog in the world. She got a chance to pet a million dogs before we headed over the petting zoo area, where she got to pet a million more. We went back and finished watching a very disappointing Lions game. My timing was way off, though. I finished watching the game/napping around 4, thinking Cathie would be home at 5, giving me an hour to get the house back in order. Oops. She got home at 4.

Cathie and Madeline went on a Mother/Daughter retreat up at Spring Hill camp. It's a great place with a lot to do. We've taken out youth group up there for the winter camps and are doing it again this winter. They've got a father/son retreat in the Spring that I want to take Nate to.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal

101 Things you didn't know about Rock and Roll

#33. Smoke On The Water" refers to a Frank Zappa show in Montreux in 1971, where someone lit a flaregun and "burned the place to the ground". This song is also being learned by 750 guitarists as you are reading this (just kidding but...hey have you ever met a guitarist who didn't know it?).

At our company-wide Global Communication meeting yesterday, our CEO Anne Mulcahy (6th most powerful woman in the world) was emphasizing great customer experiences, a theme within our company this year. She went through a couple of letters she'd received, and then proceeded to play the video from one of our customers, which included myself and one of my co-workers, Matt. I was on a plane during this and I hadn't been watching the web simulcast. I got back to my e-mail, having received a bunch of notes mocking me for having my mug up on the screen during the telecast. I've now gone global. Time to start referring to myself in third person. The.Dave.

I bought the latest David Crowder Band CD, A Collision, on iTunes yesterday. I've listened to it a couple times so far and I really like it. Very different from anything else they've done, musically it's a lot more complex then their previous albums. I think the lyrics have some amazing layers to them, some great, deep stuff.

Cool thing with getting this thing on iTunes - it included the video for the CD as well, which iTunes can now manage, all along with the booklet for the CD.

Jon, Beth and Libby came over for dinner before they go back to Memphis later this week. The kids dug seeing Jon and Beth, and had fun with Baby Libby, or as Emily calls her "Baby Liver".

Beth continually referred to herself in third person as Madeline and I did this, telling us "Aunt Bethie is scared that you're going to hurt yourself." Not sure if this is a doctor thing, or what.

Fashion Fauxpas

Ever accidently wear the same outfit as someone else to an event? Ok, this was on purpose.

Park Golf Outing

I just got back from Kansas where I had a chance to particpate in Park University's Golf Outing, which my company was the lead sponsor of. The event was at The National, a Tom Watson golf course and the greatest course I've ever played. The picture above is taken on a hole that's about 150 feet above the fairway below, with water on the right. In the outing, we had the option to pay the Club Pro $20 to hit it on our behalf. We were doing badly enough already that we figured we'd do it. I stepped up and hit the best shot of my life. Almost 300 yards into the wind.

The course was ridiculously wet. This was on the hole in one competition, a par 3 with water on the right. I hit a beautiful shot right at the tee, and the ball didn't bounce at all, instead it suck 2/3rds of the way into the ground. Overall, the weather was perfect, we laughed a lot, and lost a ton of golf balls. You can check out the pictures here.

Pitch Your Tents

Raitz sent me the audio for this, Noel video for this. Seems like the kind of mistake I'd make. Like saying I'm a big Ron Jeremy fan up on stage at camp last summer.

I'm probably the last person to discover this, but Yahoo's People Search engine is pretty amazing. Put in a name and it gives their name, address and phone number. Easy with great results. It's at people.yahoo.com

My brother Jon loves his dogs. A lot. To the point that it's a little uncomfortable for the rest of the family and his wife Beth. Jon also is a member of the Willie Wonka fan club because he loves the Oompa-Loompas. Check out the costume he's created for his dog for holloween. He sent pictures to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton:

Not quite sure what Jon is pointing at here.

Yesterday, Emily and I went up to the store to return a bunch of cans and bottles. In order to put a bottle in the machine, you have to turn it horizontal and feed it onto a conveyor belt. The first bottle she put in had about a quarter inch of very, very stale beer in it. As she tilted it back to put it on the belt, the beer spilled over onto her face. Her response was "I smell like throw-up". I leaned down, smelled her and had to agree. She did in fact smell like puke. As we walked through the store to get our bottle-return slips cashed, she held her nose. She got a bath when she got home.

Gabe's 5 Year Birthday Party

We headed to Lansing on Sunday to Susan and Kevin's house for Gabe's 5th birthday. My brother Jon and his wife Beth were up from Memphis, so the kids and I got to see my tiny new niece Libby for the first time. You'll notice that she's wearing mittens, which my brother Jon convinced Emily were because she was born with lobster claws for hands.


Ever since marrying my sister, my brother-in-law Kevin has been trying to bond with my dad. I think it finally worked. Kevin figured that by wearing old man shorts, similar to my dad's, the two of them would grow even closer. I think it worked.


We were all trying to figure this out. Jon was digging underneath Kevin and Susan's bed and came across this little "toy". Not sure where you put the batteries. You can click here to see the rest of the pictures from Gabe's 5 year old party. They're pretty much pictures of everyone holding Libby. Nothing real interesting there.

Kasey's 21st Suprise Party

We hosted a suprise party for Kasey, an extended member of our family, on Saturday night. She came over thinking we were going to barbecue for her birthday and instead was greeted with 30 of her closest friends and family. Click here to see Kasey's 21's Birthday Pictures

My baby sister Susan (aka Ursula, Boom, Parade, etc.) now has a blog. Dan's the only sibling without one.

I took Nate and his buddy Austin to the South Lyon Football game last night. Great game. SL lost in the last minute. I came back and Cathei and I watched the movie Crash. What a movie. Totally unpredictable and it really made me think hard throughout the movie about my own predjudices.

I watched MSU destroy Illinois this afternoon with some astounding offense. Cathie was out running errands for our party tonight so I was left to do Emily's hair and take her to a friend's birthday party. I should have taken a picture of her hair. You'd think with two of my three kids being girls I'd have a clue how to do hair. Typically, I rely on Madeline or one of the kids in my youth group to do her hair. I got out a brush, a head band and some water and wallah! She thought it was great.

I'm back into the book Searching for God Know's What. One of the big themes that's resonated with me in this book is how I tend to validate and redeem myself by comparing and stack-ranking myself with others based on what I have, what I can do, what I look like, etc. He puts it pretty weel in this piece, even using the metaphor of monkeys, which I can really connect with - (especially a monkey dressed up in armor trained to fight you):

It feels like we all have these little acts, these stupid things we do that we all hang our hats on. The Fall has made monkeys of us, for crying out loud. Some of us are athletes and others of us are physicists, and some of us are good-looking and some of us are rich, and we all are running around, in a way, trying to get a bunch of people to clap for us, trying to get a bunch of people to say we are normal, we are healthy, we are good. And there is nothing wrong with being beautiful or being athletic or being smart, but those are some of the pleasures of life, not life's redemption.

The thing about being a monkey is that it affects all our relationships. One writer said that what we commonly think of as love is really the desire to be loved. I know that is true for me, and it has been true for years, that often when I want somebody to like me, I am really wanting them to say that I am redeemed, that I am not a loser, that I can stay in the boat, stay in the circus, that my act redeems me.

After posting below on this article, i sent the author a note and got a response. I'm now actually dumber than I was before thanks to her response:

To: cmickels@wavecable.com
Subject: Youth Specialties

Cathy,
I've gotta tell this in the nicest way possible, but I'm dumber for having read the Youth Ministry Update around Youth Specialties. It is ill informed, ignorant and full of half truths. I encourage you to take a real look at Youth Specialties and actually attend one of the conference instead of bad mouthing it. Talk to youth pastors who leverage YS's great resources, training and encouragement and see if your opinions hold true.

Thanks,
Dave

Cathy Mickels wrote:

Dave,

Are you saying that you are willing to overlook error and false teachings such as yoga, contemplative prayer, and labyrinth walks introduced to the Body of Christ?

These spiritual practices are all contrary to the Word of God and they are rooted in eastern religions. Have you read the articles written in Youth Specialties material endorsing many of these eastern spiritual practices?

See for more information: http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/index.html

Out of love for the brethren and God's word, believers have a responsibility to warn others.

English preacher, J.C. Ryle, wrote in the 1800's, "...controversy in religion is a hateful thing...But there is one thing which is even worse that controversy and that is false doctrine tolerated, allowed and permitted without protest or molestation...I believe to maintain pure truth in the church men should be ready to make any sacrifice, to hazard peace, to risk dissension, and run the chance of division. They should no more tolerate false doctrine than they would tolerate sin."

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth...but you be watchful in all things..." 2 Tim.4

In Christ,

Cathy

Cathy,

Thanks for your note. Have you ever seen Christian Writers who bash movies, music and books which they've never actually seen? When I see it happen, I feel embarssed for how that person is ignorantly representing our faith to the world around us, fufilling a lot of the stereotypes that people have about Christians. I would encourage you to actually check out a Youth Specialties conference and talk to some of the people involved, like their president, Mark Ostreicher.

On a side note, I'd love to hear your explain how things like Yoga, Contemplative Prayer and Labyrinth Walks are contrary to the word of God. Are you familiar with some of the ancient practices of our faith like Lectio Divina?

I hope as you dig deeper into these things, you'll clarify some of your misconceptions.

Thanks,
Dave

I'm probably the last person to do this, but I finally installed Skype on my system. If you're not familiar with Skype, it's a PC based voice conferencing system. It works like an instant messaging client, but it lets you talk live with one or more people instead of typing. A trained monkey can set it up. Will and i were messing around with it tonight and the quality is amazing. I've installed Google Talk, which has an excellent voice client, but limits you to one conversation at a time. If you install the client, my user name is dave_kurt. Check it out. It seems pretty cool.

Yesterday morning I was at the gym lifting, doing standing curls, when I felt something pop in my upper back. It hurt badly. I couldn't turn my head in any direction without pain. I figured I'd strained a muscle. I iced it all day and then finally called Kirk at Triad. He told me to come in and he'd take a look at it. He laid me down on a table and cranked on my back, torquing me around in some pretty painful ways until he did something and all of the sudden it was back, about 90% better.

He then proceeded to ream me out for all of the things that he's been telling me all along that I'm doing wrong with my workout - too much upper body focused on my shoulders, chest and traps, not enough lower back, not enough range of motion stuff, too many heavy weights. He's got me on one of his funky workout routines with bands and some other stuff. I've learned that he knows best. Best I can figure it's the equivalent of someone bringing me a computer full of viruses after I've been telling them all along to install a firewall and anti-virus software. If Kirk's advice is good enough for the Red Wings when he was their trainer, I guess it's good enough for me.

I am dumber for having read this "alert" on Youth Specialties. If you're not familiar with YS, it's an organization devoted to helping youth pastor's love kids by providing them with encouragement, training and resources. As the Post Modern movement has moved through the Church, YS has introduced some cool stuff that dates back centuries from the early church and monks in terms of meditation and prayer labyrinths. YS has had a huge impact on me and most of the youth pastors I know. Apparently, they're evil.

I finally got my roof-mounted HDTV antenna installed today. I had someone come do it to make sure some of the grounding was done right. I was using a TV mounted antenna which was rally inconsistent in terms of the quality of the signal. This antenna is getting me channels all the way to Lansing.

Emily and I took Nate to basketball practice tonight and struck up a conversation with one of the other Dad's who it turns out is a cop. He looked nothing like a copy, more like a skater - tatoos and piercings, about my age, with four little kids. He works undercover with drug cases and SWAT and was a great guy and fascinating to talk to. It turns out he's the brother-in-law of one of our babysitters, Xtina.

Nate and I came home and made a big 'ol fire in the chimena and figure we needed to take some pictures for posterity's sake. We then went out to lay on the lawn together and look up at the stars and talk. As we talked, we noticed all of the bats flying overhead, one in particular that kept going back and forth over us. It seemed to keep getting lower and lower until it it actually came right on top of us and actually ran into Nate. We both screamed and headed inside.

These Napoleon Dynamite State Fair commercials are hilarious.

The vast majority of you are probably wondering just how I'm doing in my fantasy football league. You were all very excited when I destroyed Eli two weeks ago and are probably all curious as to how I did against big Ted. I crushed him this past weekend. I'm number two in our league in overall points, playing Bradly this coming weekend.

Watch this video from a recent Microsoft developer's conference. It's Napoleon Dynamite and Bill Gates acting together. Funny.

G-Luv Me Glasses

When Cathie, Kris and Susan went down to visit my brother Jon, they repossesed a set of family heirlooms that Jon had stolen from the family. We're now sharing these throughout the family. You can read the whole story here on Jon's blog.