Vacation - Wednesday

We got up early and made our way to Universal Studios theme park. We got there when it opened, but it didn't really matter, as the park was pretty much deserted the entire time we were there. Cathie and I had been there fourteen years ago on our honeymoon, and not much had changed. They had some decent rides and shows, like The Mummy roller-coaster and the T2/3D show. When Nate and I had talked yesterday about the ideal roller-coaster, he told me it would be to have a roller-coaster that let you play video games on it. He found it in the M.I.B. (Men in Black) ride where you have a laser gun and get to shoot aliens as you play.

By one we had pretty much seen the park and we were able to find the first Starbucks we'd seen anywhere, which tasted just like home.

In the afternoon we came back to the condo and went swimming. The weather was perfect and we couldn't tear the kids away from the pool.

For dinner, we went to Medieval Times for a dinner show. When you arrive to this giant castle, you can first tour the old village around it and watch craftsmen do their work. For dinner, you're seated at tiered tables around the arena and you're assigned a Knight to root for. We rooted for the red knight. The waitresses (self proclaimed, "wenches") bring you food without any eating utensils, which Nate loved. From the time we entered, they referred to each of the girls as Princesses and to Nate and I as "My Lord". The girls loved this, and it got old for Nate after a while. As dinner is served, the knights compete in different competitions with the highlight being a joust and fight to the death.

Each knight picks a fair maiden who he is fighting for in battle by presenting a red scarf to her on the end of his lance. When our Red Knight came over to Madeline and presented the scarf to her over everyone, she was in heaven. She had the biggest smile on her face throughout the rest of the knight and walked around on cloud nine.



We finished up the night heading over to Disney Village and checking out the shops, including some life-size lego creations at the lego store and a giant McDonalds.

Tags: Universal Studios, Medieval Times

Vacation - Tuesday

Today was a lazy, sleep-in vacation day. We slept in until about 9:30 and took it easy. Nate and Maddie were excited about being able to run up to the resort general store by themselves to get me a paper and some donuts. Cathie and I then sat through a 90 minute spiel from the Starwood time-share group. It was funny watching the guy do the soft-sell on us - starting with some bonding and report building, lots of negative reversals and pattern-interrupt stuff. We told him we'd think about it, at which time they sent out the used car "sales manager" who brought out the high power sales cheese, which I had fun with, trying not to be too much of a tool back to the guy. It reminded us of a time when Cathie and I went to Bally's Fitness and at the end of the sale, the guy tried to close it with, "So you don't want to be healthy then?" We ended up getting some great discounted tickets and cash out of the whole deal and it was interesting to learn about how the whole thing worked.

It was record cold for this time of year down here, in the 50's this morning, so there wasn't much in terms of swimming time.

We hung out during the day and then checked in over at the Nickelodeon Hotel, but the water wasn't much warmer as you can see from the picture above. The hotel was designed for kids, as you can see from this part of the water park. They had a giant water contraption with slides, a basketball court, a mini-golf course and periodic shows poolside. Every so often the bucket at the top of the water park would be filled with green slime and dumped on the kids below.

We went out for pizza and then came back and saw some of the Nick Shows that night, and Maddie was picked for one of the games (that's her on the far left).

They had a giant arcade situated right next to the bar, so the parents could drink while the kids play. We came back to the room, ate some popcorn and the girls made watched their show while Nate and I watched the World Series, which we turned off after the 8th inning. Nate and I both giggled every time they said Albert Pujols name (pronounced poo-hole).

Tags: Nickelodeon Hotel, Albert Pujols

Vacation - Monday

Today was Disney's Animal Kingdom. Em & Maddie had bought Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts yesterday from Universal's Dr. Suess Park, and decided to go today in matching outfits after their morning modeling shoot:

We met up with Sherri's friend Charlotte and her son Spencer and went through the park with them. Charlotte helped us navigate the park and as a Disney employee, even helped us jump the line to get in through the back door of the Bug's Life show. The Park was about 80% shows and animals with very few big activity rides. Emily was in heaven with the animals. They had a very cool Safari and you wouldn't know you weren't in a jungle. We saw Lions, Giraffe, Hippos, Crocodiles up close. While Cathie and the kids went on the big roller coaster, Emily and I went to their petting zoo, which was pretty lame, but we got to take a train ride to get there. The Maharajah Jungle Trek takes you through an Asian village where you see Komodo Dragons and Tigers in a cool setting. We went to a Lion King show that was pretty amazing as well. Looking at the picture of the kids with their fingers in the monkey nose, you're probably wondering what they have in common? All we can figure out is that they both had the same kindergarten teacher (Sheri's childhood friend Charlotte made this observation):

There was this giant (read 100 feet tall) tree at the center of the park called the Tree of Life. When you looked up close it had all of these intricate carvings of intertwining animals with waterfalls and other things all over. We also were walking down the path and saw this giant moving tree, which turned out to be a Cirque-de-Sole person on tree-stilts, dressed like a tree.

Throughout the park there were animals everywhere. You'd look up and there'd be monkeys climbing over your head. The atmosphere of the whole place was so impressive. As you moved from Africa to Asia, the music, the smells, the villages seemed so real. This baby squirrel found my shoulder and rode around me for part of the day, eating snacks that I fed him:



We got to the park around 9:30 and left around 4:30, making it a pretty complete day. As we left, there was a whole line up of yellow cabs. Emily thought that since all of those people had bought the same color cars, they must have a tough time picking out their own car when the leave.

After the parks, we came back, hung out for a while, hit the pool and then went to dinner. We headed into Disney Downtown and walked around for a while. Once again, the girls were out cold five minutes after we left.

Tags: Downtown Disney, Animal Kingdom, Tree of Life

Vacation - Sunday

We spent the day today at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure Park. We got there before the park opened to try and get a jump on the crowds, and beat the crowds we did. All day long we simply walked in on any ride we went on. The longest part of waiting was having to wind your way through all of the roped in areas that are normally filled with people. We started off with the the Spiderman Ride, the Dr. Doom Free Fall and the Hulk Roller coaster, which were amazing. Unfortunately, Maddie was not quite big enough for the last two, short by a couple of inches. Cathie and I switched off taking Nate on the roller coasters, while the other took the kids on other rides. We were all able to go on the Spiderman ride - which is this cool 3D ride that completly disorients you to the point that you have no idea which is way is up. We all liked it except Emily, who was a little freaked out by it.

Cath had the forsight to fill a backpack full of water, snacks and everything else we could ever want, which saved us a fortune in $5 waters.


We then went to Dr. Suess Land, which was done up exactly like the stories. The whole city was builton the Dr. Suess books with all of the characters and stories. The kids are standing in front of the Lorax set. Going through this area, I was reminded how my Mom used to read these books to us, and most of them she'd read enough that she didn't have to even look at the pages.

Throughtout the park,t hey had great signs, including this one on the battling dragon roller coaster, which I'd never seen before.


In the super hero area, Nate and I tried to get our picture taken with as many cheesy characters as possible. They meant well, but the costumes were a little corny, especially wolverine, who apparently rides a four-wheeler.

We left the park around 1:30 and headed back to the hotel for lunch and to go swimming. The nice thing about the unlimited pass is that you don't feel like you have to fit everything in at once. We came back, and had some downtime (hour long nap for Cathie and I) and then hit one of the pools with a cool water slide.

We went out to a Japanese Steakhouse tonight, which the kids had never been to. They had fun with the chopsticks, seeing it all cooked in front of them and a little fire mixed into it all. The kids fell asleep on the five minute car ride back to the resort.


You can see the pictures for the vacation so far here at the Kurt Family Photo Album. Tomorrow we head to Disney's Animal Kingdom to go on a safari.

Tags: Universal Studios, Spiderman Ride, Hulk Ride, Orlando, Florida

Nice and Hot in Orlando

95 outside, but it doesn't feel that bad.

Jurassic River Ride

Beautiful day, empty park.

Vacation - Saturday

The flight here was great and the kids loved it. I fly all the time but it was so much fun being able to see the whole experience through their eyes. Everything from the airport and watching the planes to the take off and landing. The kids were great and switched off with the window seats so they could see outside. During the landing on our first landing, Emily explained to Cathie that her ears were "puckering". Emily's favorite part of the flight was getting two straws in her apple juice. On the second flight, the attendant came up to us and asked us if we all needed wheelchairs. We all looked at each other oddly, looked back at her and told her no. She told us she had us all listed as needing wheelchairs. Go figure.

We got to the condo this evening, the Sheraton Vistana Resort, and couldn't believe how beautiful our room is. It's a two bedroom suite with a jacuzzi, screened in porch over looking the lake and full kitchen. The place we're at is amazing. It has seven pools and is completely built for families. We just got pizza and we're heading swimming while Cathie heads up to Wal-Mart to stock up on food and drinks for the week. Tomorrow we're heading to Universal. Let the fun begin.

Tags: Sheraton Vistana Resort

Dinner and Extensions of Grace

We've got such an amazing group of friends. We've had people bringing us dinner over the past two weeks and it really amazes me how generous and wonderful our friends our and how they come around us during tough times. We had the Warroway's, Muzzi's, Workman's, Niemi's, Clark's, Hannigan's, Lanam's and Sheri Brainard all brought us meals and Jess Shinn and Delaney DeFelice and Katie Green came over to watch our kids and clean our house for us while Cathie and I went on a date. We've got such an amazing group of friends and such a great church that have come around us. I have learned so much about how to extend love and grace to others through all of this and what it means to be there for other people in tough times by how others have demonstrated it to us.

Vacation

We leave for vacation tomorrow. We've been planning it since January and we're finally ready to go. This is our first big family vacation out of state. We've been to Memphis and Iowa, but this is the first time we're flying somewhere and doing 8 days away. We were originally scheduled to leave a couple of weeks ago, but sutff wtih my Mom forced us to push it out. Luckily we were able to reschedule things.

In true Kurt fashion, I was able to use frequent flyer miles for the airfare via Northwest, frequent rental credits with National for the rental car, Cathie's parents hooked us up with their timeshare right outside of Disney and our friend Sheri hooked us up with a friend who works at Disney for discounted tickets.

We're heading to Universal and Disney parks and the Ocean in between. Universal has this amazing deal where you get a week long pass to both parks for only $80. We're spending one night during the week at the Nickelodeon Hotel outside of Universal, which should be a blast. It's got themed rooms (we're in the Fairly Oddparents room) a great pool and water silde, and kids shows and movies night.

The kids are at an age where they're all able to enjoy and appreciated the whole experience. It's also the first vacation where we've doing on an all cash basis - saving up since January as a part of our budgeting process (thanks to Dave Ramsey's FPU).

Tags: Nickelodeon Hotel, Universal Studios, Disney, Northwest, Frequent Flier Miles

Lesson Learned

When people clean out fish tanks, they should not do it over the sink.  Tiny little rocks are bad for garbage disposals.  Really bad.  It's tough to clean out 100 rocks that get jammed up.

Time Waster

This line art sledding is a blast, but a big time waster.

New Car

This is my new car. After four years of driving cars that I couldn't stand, I've got one that I love again. About four years ago when my lease on my Chevy Impala was up, I went car shopping and bought a car that I hated for three years. It was a dumb decision in a lot of ways:

1. I bought a two door car. Try fitting three kids and three car seats in a two door car. I also found out the hard way that Nate got car sick in the small back seat easily. Nothing like vomit to kill the new car smell off right away.
2. The car was gray. That's not really a color, is it?
   
3. It was a 3 year lease. After hating the car at day 2, I was stuck with it for a long time. Not to mention that leases (or Fleeces, as Dave Ramsey calls them) are a sucker move financially.
   
4. I didn't include Cathie in the decision. She was gracious and after talking about it on day one, never rubbed it in. My kids on the other hand would tell me daily how they hated my car.
   

As penance more than anything, when my lease was up, I got Cathie a new car and drove our other mini-van around until now. The van was slowly dying, but it was paid off. The power steer was leaking like a sieve, but it worked for the most part. I was able to deal with it because it at least had a nice stereo, and somewhere along the way driving was instilling some spec of humility in me.

So a few weeks ago, I looked at the budget and figured we were at a point where we could make the move and I'd buy the car. Who's the first guy I call? Bob. Bob Rays is what Malcolm Gladwell calls a Connector:

What makes someone a Connector? The first--and most obvious--criterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people. I'm not even sure that most of us really believe that the kind of person who knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do.

Bob knows everyone and has a guy for everything. Everything. He has a slurpee machine guy, a video game repair guy and I'm sure he's got a left handed unicyclist guy somewhere in his Rolodex. On top of all that, Bob is a sexican - half Mexican, half Syrian. Bob loves to negotiate. Everything is negotiable. Brad tells this great story of one time when they were on vacation and they went out to get firewood. They found this little old lady selling it on her front lawn for a couple dollars a bundle. Much to Brad's embarrassment, Bob proceeded to negotiate with her, trying to get the best deal, cutting her prices in half, as Brad tried to disappear. We refer to the art of the deal as "Bobbing" someone down on price.

So I called Bob and he had a guy to hook me up with the car. He called his friend Dave at Livonia Chrysler, whose team took great care of me. You'll hear people say that all the time, and then give you the same deal they give everyone else. Not so here. Being a friend of Dave's got me treated like royalty at the dealership and everyone went out of their way to help me out with every aspect of the deal.

Anyways, I've got the car. I'm sure it will make me happy forever. Just like "stuff" always does for me.

Football Practice

We had football practice last night, trying to teach the kid show to do a double and triple-reversal (similar to the triple lindy). This involves some somewhat complicated in-motion action from the kids, the completion of multiple hand-offs on the fly and actually getting them to move before the quarterback hikes the ball. There's a million things that can go wrong in the play, but if it works, the mis-direction makes for a pretty significant gain. Practice was like herding cats getting the kids to put all of the elements together, but we eventually got it and when they did, the kids were pretty proud of themselves.

London Pictures

I posted my scenic pictures London online here in the Kurt Family Photo Gallery.

David Kuo

Buck sent me this very interesting article from TIME.com: Why a Christian in the White House Felt Betrayed by David Kuo. I think it shows how tough it is to do good on such a large scale in such a political system.

Small World

What a small world. One of the my co-workers in in Europe used to live in the states, working in Ann Arbor, living about 10 minutes away from where we live. One of the companies we met with from India has a large facility right down the street from where Cathie and I lived in Livonia.

I picked up souvenirs for the kids at Heathrow airport and hung out for a while in the KLM World Club lounge. I flew into Amsterdam, hit the duty free liquor store (20 Euro for a 12 year bottle of Jamesons), bought some more souvenirs and the boarded my plane. I watched movies (Lucky number Slevin, A Scanner Darkly and Click) while I sat next to Anastasia, an 80 year old woman from the Ukraine. Anastasia spoke almost no English and it took me about 30 minutes to help her fill out her customs information and immigration forms. Questions that seem pretty simple, like "What city did you fly out of" or "What's your middle name?" don't translate well into English. Just saying the words slower doesn't really work either. Eight hours straight on an airplane in coach is painful, especially after you burn through both laptop batteries. The seat back had these cool little interactive computer systems you could select movies and play games on, but mine seemed to be the only one on the airplane that kept crashing (it was Linux based, and not Microsoft based as you might guess).

Lessons Learned

Random things I learned this week in London:

• The British love gossip as much as the US does, maybe more. The newspapers and TV are filled with the stuff.
• Maybe I just don't notice it in the US. Madonna's baby adoption was the biggest piece of news all week here.
• British newspapers are a lot more risque. Going through the Detroit News, I don't typically expect to find pictures of naked women.
• You can only bring one bag through security at Heathrow. No carry on luggage plus suitcase stuff here.
• My Northwest Gold Elite status gets me into the KLM World Club without any additional membership.
• You can say just about anything with a British accent and it sounds polite.
• You need to look the opposite way when crossing the street over here than you do in the US British food is pretty horrible.
• Calling someone a Numpty is similar to calling them a numb-skull, which is scottish in origin (that sounded very Willish.
• On average, the Brits don't have the same kind of dental hygene that we do in the states (not including West Virgina, Arkansas and Alabama).
• The US is not all that beloved outside of the US. Sometimes being the top dog is tough.
• Make a copy of your passport and keep it separate from your actual passport (thanks Dan for this tip AFTER the fact. Losing your passport can put you in a world of hurt, but you can book an appointment at the U.S. Embassy online.
• A five hour time zone change is tough coming this way, but not as bad going back.
• I'm barely functional with european currency: quid, pence, pound and euro - especially the change. There were times when I would just hold a handful of random change out and let them pick out the right denominations for me.
• When riding in the passenger side of a European car, get in on the right otherwise they'll think you want to drive.
• There are a million pubs over here.
• TV over here is pretty horrible.
• Budweiser is an import here, and lots of people drink it. It is the king of beers after all.
• England uses the metric system, except for miles (the measurement system, not the guy).

Tuesday

Wow, it seems like a really long week so far. We had another long day of meetings today, finishing up around 7pm. My company happens to be a Ducati racing sponsor and they were out in the London office that week selling gear. We got to check out the racing bikes:


and the executive team that was out here this week (you'd be surprised at how much mockery I got from my orange shirt):

We headed to the pub from there for dinner, where I got the chance to try Bubble and Squeak (mash potatoes deep and cabbage patties deep fried and topped with egg and a holindase sauce) and bangers and mash (weiners and mashed potatoes) along with lamb with apple mint jelly. The food over here is pretty much horrid.

Each time we've gone out to eat, the people we're with have explained to us the crime problems in London and told us we should always bring our bags into the resturant with us. Apparently it's a fairly common occurance to have someone jimmy the boot and nik'd his gear (break into your trunk and steal your stuff). All of us brought our gear into the pub except for one in our group. About half way through our dinner, someone came in asking "Who owns the Grey Mercedes wagon right out front?" Innocuous question, right? They went out and here's what they found:


Normally, this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, right? A stolen work laptop is bad, but not the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, the briefcase had my colleague's passport in it along with his travel itinerary. We spent the rest of the night helping them get an appointment setup with the U.S. Embassy to get a replacement. What a crummy way to end a good trip. We all learned a great lesson about what to do if your passport is nik'd. Bottom line, put it in the hotel safe.

I fly back tomorrow through Amsterdam, getting in tomorrow evening.

London, cont.

We went last night we went out to dinner to an Indian resturant. Apparently, Indian cuisine has surpassed traditional British food as the most popular food in the U.K. I learned that there's nothing I like about Indian food except the giant potato chips they give you as an appetizer.
Walking between the buildings, we walked by a guy with a Falcon mounted on his glove. Apparently, they use these to keep the pigeons at bay. They fly them around the building, take down a few pigeons here and there and the word gets around in the bird community to stay away.
I've been learning even more great phrases that I'm hoping to come back and incorporate into my everyday conversation until it gets annoying:

• Cheers - Thanks
• Cheerio - Hello/Goodbye
• Nick/Pinch - To Take
• Boot- Car Trunk (Jimmy the Boot - Break into your trunk)
• Hops are Beckoning - I need a beer
• Lift - Elevator

I went to bed about midnight last night, fell asleep right away and woke up 15 minutes later. I laid there wide awake until about 3:30 AM. Getting up at 2AM EST for 12 hour meetings is a killer.

Downtown London

My co-workers and I met up at 2pm to head into downtown London to do some sightseeing. Andy, the husband of one of our UK co-workers is a cab driver and he and his wife took us downtown. Imagine a big, bald man with a thick British accent and you've got Andy. Andy used to work security for rock bands back in the 70's and we were able to pry some amazing stories out of him. He told us about being responsible for Keith Moon (now dead drummer for The Who) and having to try and get him on stage while he was pounding pills and drinking heavily. He told us a story about running security a club where the Sex Pistols played before they got big and spending time with Sid Vicious's girlfriend Nancy Spungen (who the movie Sid & Nancy was made about). We kept asking about bands, and he kept sharing stories - ranging from Led Zeppelin to Cream. One of the best stories was about how he ended up punching out Ginger Baker of Cream fame.

Andy was also telling us about the camera systems all over London. The freeways have a set of average speed cameras which photograph all of the cars over a stretch of road and if you were speeding, they send you a picture of you driving the car, your average speed, and a ticket. The cameras are all over London to film the cars making any traffic violations. It's possible to come home after a bad day and have lost your license. There are cameras everyone around London filming people and doing facial recognition as well. The whole thing is a little scary.

We got to London and started off by going up in the London Eye, a giant ferris wheel that takes you hundreds of feet above the city and gives you an amazing view of the city.

From there, we walked around and saw place after place: Hyde Park, Picadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace to name a few. I wanted my picture taken somewhere, and learned that there are few things more ackward than the "single guy having a picture taken by another guy" picture - both during, and after the picture:

You couldn't get close to the guard at Buckingham palace, but I did run into this guy downtown. Up close, this guy was really intimidating. I didn't want to get too close, as you can see by the picture:

We ended the night down in the Picadilly area, hitting a bunch of cool pubs before we got picked up and stuck in traffic downtown for an hour. I'll never complain about Detroit traffic again.

Tags: London, Ginger Baker, Sid and Nancy, Buckingham Palace, Keith Moon, London Eye

Butt Crack of Dawn

This time change this is crazy. I'm heading to bed right now, and our first meetings are tomorrow at 8am (3am EST). Ouch. Five hours difference.

Londong Calling

I made it to London. I slept about 5 hours on the flight to Amsterdam and I keep trying to convince my body that it's noon right now, even though it's pretty sure that it's 6am. I wandered around the Amsterdam airport for a while browsing the shops and then flew into London. I made my way through customs and found my driver waiting for me. It's crazy seeing everyone drive on the wrong side of the road. My hotel is about 20 minutes outside of London. Myself and some of co-workers from the states are going downtown to go sightseeing this afternoon and then meet up with some of our European colleagues for drinks. I figure if I can make it through the day without sleeping and get a good night sleep tonight, I should be alright.

Amusing language heard so far:
Lift - Elevator
Queue - Line
Loo/W.C. - Bathroom
Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey - The French

Tiger's Game

I figured I'd be able to get to the airport in Boston, find a bar and settle down to watch the Tiger's game. There's not a single TV in this airport except for the flight monitors. ESPN has a pretty sweet setup for watching MLB online. It shows you where every pitch was, exactly the path the ball followed after it was hit as it's moving and virtually every detail you can imagine on what's happening with the game. (My brother Dan gets all the credit for showing me this.)

The Bama

I got Jimmy Buffett's new album, Take the Weather with You. This is the album that Eli, Brad, Bob and I saw him tour on a few weeks back. His first song on there is called Bama Breeze, a tune about a place that I've been to - The Florabama (called so because it sits on the border of Florida and Alabama) I was down in Mobile, AL a few years ago working on a project with two good friends Greg Kandra and Glenn Anderson. Glenn's a native southern boy who takes a fair amount of flak for his love of NASCAR and roadkill, and he took Greg and I on a tour of the finest parts of Alabama. We drove for a while and pulled into this dive on the ocean that looked like a liquor store. We went in, both Greg and I pretty skeptical of where we were at, in the middle of nowhere. Behind the liquor store was a crazy set of disjointed bars, all of the looking like they'd been cobbled together in someone's spare time, complete with women's undergarments stapled to the ceiling. Greg and I still weren't convinced, but Glenn told us to trust him. On my way to the bathroom, I was looking at the memorabilia on the walls and it finally clicked where I was at. There were picture of Jimmy Buffett and a bunch of other famous people along with lyrics of all sorts of Buffett songs involving the Florabama. This was one of the bars where Jimmy Buffett had made it big and still comes pretty frequently to play and hang out. We hung out, had a few beers, and watched some great Carribean style musicians. The place was destroyed a couple of years ago during a hurricane and has since been re-built, but I'm not sure how it can have the same kind of character it originally did.

Tags: Jimmy Buffett, Take the Weather with You

Boston

I'm in the Boston airport with a ridiculously long layover before my flight to Amsterdam. I rarely talk to the people sitting next to me on the plane but for some reason I asked him the simple question, "Is Boston home for you?" He proceeded to talk... and talk.. about himself....and I kept asking him questions. It got amusing after a half hour, so I kept asking him questions mostly to see how long he would go without him going outside of himself in the conversation. After about 45 minutes, I was able to get my iPod on and read. Gosh, I hope I don't do that to people when I get talking - just talk about myself over and over.

Tags: Boston, Amsterdam

Undefeated!

We won again today. The other team's first play was a three-way reversal that really confused our Defense and ended up in a touchdown. The kids played great and we took the lead early in the 4th quarter and won the game. My Grandma needs to hear about this. She laughed pretty hard when she heard I was coaching Nate's football team. I only wish I'd of thought ahead of time to put some money on the game with her.

I'm heading to the airport in a few to London Heathrow via Boston and Amsterdam. I get to London at 10am tomorrow morning. To make things even sweeter, I'm in coach for the nine hour flight to Amsterdam.

Bathroom's in Heaven

Eli, Mark Kohne, my Dad and I met up at BW3's in Brighton to watch the Tiger's game. I hit the head and found the most perfect toilet in the world. I started talking with the guy in the urinal next to me about how wonderful this is and he made a great point. The only way it could get better is if there was a TV in the crapper.

Thursday

Jess Shinn, Delaney Defelice and Katie Green were kind enough to watch our kids and clean our house last night while Cathie and I went on a date. To top it off, the Warroway's brought over an amazing dinner. We went to see a movie, Employee of the Month, which we both liked. A little predictable, but a good, mindless laugh.

Dwight Quote

"When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found she was hjaving twins. When they did an ultrasound a few weeks later they discoverd that I had resorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissue has made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby."
--Dwight Schrute, The Office

Thanksgiving (Not the Turkey kind)

I responded to over 100 different e-mails yesterday of people expressing their sorry and prayers for my Mom. We came home to a fruit basket and lots of flowers. We've had friends from church volunteer to bring dinner this week and Jess and some of the girls from her bible study are coming over tonight to watch the kids while Cathie and I go out and get some time together and received a bunch of cards and phone calls from friends just to check and see how we're doing.

Maybe everyone gets this, but I continue to be blown away at the way our friends have supported us in all of this. It makes me feel pretty selfish when I think back to what I haven't offered up in the past when people around me have been hurting in the past. I had no idea that some of these small things could offer so much joy.

I'm also so thankful for my beautiful wife, Cathie. She gave me the opportunity to drop everything last week so I could spend the week with my Mom (Thank you Lori for that wonderful advice!). Cath dealt with everything in the peripheral so I could focus on spending time with my Mom and did it all with such a kindness and joy. Meanwhile, she made five trips back and forth to Dewitt to make runs for clothes, kids and to be there for me and to visit with my Mom.

Snow

I woke up this morning to snow. Snow? It seems way to soon. Even for Michigan.

Work

After being out of pocket last week and part of this week, I jumped back into work full bore starting Tuesday night. I cranked through about 300 e-mails and started Wednesday morning with a day filled with back to back conference calls start at 8 and ending around 6, non-stop with no breaks. The focused work has been a good distraction for me after having such an intense week with my family. It makes for an easier transition into the real world.

I'm working late tonight to try get things ready for a meeting in I've got in Europe next week. I leave Saturday for London via Amsterdam and come back Wednesday night. We were supposed to be on vacation this week and we were able to reschedule our vacation to the week of October 21st so I'm trying to get all sorts of things prior to this time out of the office. The good news is, I'm catching up on the past couple weeks of episodes of the show Lost and other shows while I'm getting things done.

Mom's Impact

I ran across this blog post that of someone I've never met that my Mom's life impacted in a good way.

One Awesome Sangwich

Cathie and I went to Amer's Mediterranean Deli in Brighton for lunch. I'd heard great things about the locations in Ann Arbor and when we stopped in there were at least 100 different sandwiches to choose from. I asked the guy behind the counter was great and he told me all about Flafel (Deep Fried Chick-Peas). I'd never had it, but figured I'd give it a shot. He told me to trust him and he'd make me an awesome sandwich. He brought me out a #77 Flafel on an onion role with Avacado. It was the greatest sangwich ever. Wars could be fought over this sandwich. I am in love (with the sandwich, not the deli guy) and will be back frequently.

My Blog - Getting Closure

I've been using my blog over the past week or so as a journal on what's gone on with my Mom. I've probably shared more information that people care to hear, but I did it primarily so I could remember the whole situation - my thoughts, our laughter, our sorry, our stories with a clarity that my memory doesn't always give me. I took pictures of my Mom and my family as we hung out together by her bed-side. Again, this might seem weird to some and others would say, "Why remember her in such a weakened state?" It sounds strange, but my Mom radiated this amazing beauty as she lay there, and i don't want to forget that. Her body was wasting away, but she had something deep inside that showed.

Blogging was cathartic for me. I was able to take a step back from everything going on, process it, write it down and sit in it for a while. It also saved me from having to tell everyone outside of the situation what was going on. They were able to read what was going on and be a part of it to the degree they wanted to. As I said before, the Kurt family is inclusive, even in our sorrow. There's lots of detail I held back, but for the most part, it's enough of a picture that I can re-read it and re-live the experience when I need help remembering.

Throughout this whole process, thousands of people prayed for my mom. Literally thousands. I know God is sovereign. I get that for the most part. What I didn't get was how he could ignore so many prayers and not be moved by their sheer multitude. On Saturday night while talking to my cousins Jodi and Connie, I think I started to understand. They told me the story of my Uncle Jack, their Dad, and his battle with pancreatic cancer. They discovered his cancer in the beginning of October and he was gone by the end of the month. My cousins shared with me the excruciating pain my uncle was in at the end because of his cancer. What a contrast to the eleven months we had with my Mom and the peaceful way she passed, spending the hours and hours together by her bedside laughing and telling stories. We wanted a huge miracle for my Mom. I always thought we didn't get it. Maybe we did. Just different miracles than we'd hoped for.

Our Savior Link

Last Sunday, Sherry's Pastor's sermon talked about my Mom in terms of her relationship with Jesus and the peace in which she died because of that relationship. Next week at their church is "Bring a friend to church Sunday" and he summed the message up by saying something to the effect of "Who do you know that doesn't know what Lynn knew?"

We met Pastor Maier at the Relay for Life where he walked with my Mom and Dad and family. He visited her on one of the last days of her life as well.

My blog and Susan's blog even made Our Savior Lutheran's web site (in a good way) as we journaled through the events of this past week.