We celebrated Emily's 4th birthday today at my brother Dan's house in a joint party for Emily and my nephew Andrew (Photos here). I think her favorite gift was a large pickle that my brother Dan got for her. She ate it in the car ride home. Until she fell asleep, happy:


My brothers Jon and Will seemed to have fun:


Madeline explained how the nail polish on one finger came off and had to be redone as a different color. One of those things that's funny to us, and will make a great picture later, out of context.


Here's a picture you won't see often. Will dunking:

Buck has this picture posted as his personal photo on his blog. It's a guy we met at a Youth Specialties conference a few years back, dressed completely in orange with a giant orange ring around his neck. No idea why. I felt it needed a picture.

I did the message today in church. I thought it went pretty well, but I felt like I was staring at my notes quite a bit. It gets a little easier to do each time, but I really enjoy the whole process once I get rolling with it. I talked about Stuff (as in posesions), something I'm an expert in. You can download a mp3 of the message here.

Cathie and I watched the movie After the Sunset tonight with Selma Hayek, Pierce Brosnon and Woody Harelson. The movie takes place in the Bahamas, where we just were, and centers around a diamond heist taking place on the same ship we were just on, the Seven Seas Navigator. It's wild to see all of the places we were just at a few days ago, including the same tables, lounges, hot tubs, etc. Average movie, cool seeing that stuff.

I started watching this new series on the Discovery Channel called Deadliest Catch. It's a documentary on the Alaskan Crab industry. Huge pay for the fisherman (Upwards of $140k person for 5 Days if they're lucky), but it's unbelievably dangerous. The ice, seas, cold, storms. Huge numbers of people die. The show follows the crews of two boats through the season, which can last only days, depending on how much the crews catch. Within the first day, one ship sinks and five people die. Hardcore.

View the Vacation Pictures here.

Cathie and I are back from vacation after having a great week. Not sure that anyone cares, but I'll document it here for my own records:

We left bright and early on Friday morning and our friend Marge helped make sure Cathie and I were able to sit together up in first class on the way down. Cathie's suitcase weighed in at a hefty 65lbs. We cabbed it over to our hotel, which was a beautiful resort right on the ocean, the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort and Spa. As nice as the hotel was, they nickel and dime you to death on everything over and above the room. When we got in, we called the kids and Emily told us that no one had shown up to watch her and that her big sister Madeline was babysitting her. We headed out that night to the Las Olas strip in Ft. Lauderdale, which is a great part of town filled with lots of great shops and resturants. We then headed over to the beach and checked out some of the bars and listened to some pheomenal bands.

We hung out on the beach the next morning. They had a million things you could do there, including a 'Weenie Ride', which it turns out is being pulled on a large inflatable thing in the water. We got to the cruise ship port, and there were people literally every 10 feet greeting us and pointing us to the next person 10 feet away, who also greeted us. As soon as we got on board we were greeted with Champange and began wandering around the ship. Our rooms were beautiful. Our room was were Ritz Carlton quality (check it out here), everything was beautiful. The bathroom was huge, the balcony was huge. We were greeted by a number bottle of champange on ice along with two liters of alcohol of our choosing, along with a fully stocked fridge, replinished daily. The funniest part of the day was the lifeboat musteirng, where we all had to put our life jackets on in the lounge and sit there listening to how to jump off the boat, get into life boats, etc. We were greeted that evening by a huge reception, with waiters bringing fresh rum punches every time our glass got half full.

We discovered the next morning how good room service can be. The night before, I'd filled out my room service card and selected anything that sounded remotely good. That morning we were greeted with a knock and a waiter wheeling a cart full of 15 different covered plates. We gorged ourself on the best of everything. We had a business meeting in the morning, which, for tax purposes, is basically a 2 hour recognition event for awards and what not. Cathie and I headed into Key West and did the standard tourist stuff: Frozen Choclate Covered Key Lime Pie, Picture at the southern-most-point, Hit the standard bars: Hog's Breath, Captain Tony's and Sloppy Joe's. After lunch, we took a chartered Catamaran out to go snorkeling in the reef. It was beautiful, just like a Jacque Cousteau episode. We saw millions of beautiful fish, including barracuda and shark. I got talking to the Captain of the boat, who was a 26 year old guy who'd lived down in Key West for four years after graduating from College in Cleveland and never left. His parents have pretty much given up on him doing anything meaningful, but he felt pretty content doing what he did, captaining a boat year round, doing what he loves. We went back, took a nap and got ready for dinner. The only downside for the whole ship was the dress code. My idea of relaxing is not getting dressed up. After 6, you had to have slacks and a collared shirt or sports coat. Sitting at dinner, hanging out with a couple of friends of ours, sipping wine and watching the sunset, I had this great feeling of contentment. We finished the night at the casino, Cathie won $100 at the slot machines and I lost hard at the blackjack and craps tables.

We started the next day off with another huge breakfast in bed and had a great day at sea. We hung out at the pool, I played ping-pong, hung out in the pool and enjoyed a few drinks. We had our big gala event that night where we got all dressed up, took pictures, had a big dinner and called it an early night, I think.

The next day we hit the Bahamas and I had a blast a the Straw Market, a collection of hundreds of native vendors selling crap. I loved the negotiation part of things, getting them down as cheap as possible. I bought a couple of fake rolexes, a necklace and some stuff for the kids. We went over to a bar, Senor Frog's, for drinks where we ran into a bunch of people from the cruise (as if we weren't getting enough booze on the cruise ship). I got roped into a beer drinking content, which turned into a monkey imitation contest, which I proudly won. One of my co-workers was kind enough to take video of the event and show it around at a cocktail reception that night to a number of our Senior VP's. We finished the evening off with another big dinner and after losing again the blackjack table, we called it an early night. We had to have our suitcases packed and ready to go at 11:00 that night, so we packed and went to bed.

The next day, we flew home. Pretty uneventful. We got home about the same that my brother Jon and Emily did. In good uncle fashion, he had taken Emily to the Detroit Zoo and Build-a-Bear.

Special thanks to Diana Kohne, Kathy Hannigan, Kasey Harmon, Mom and Dad Lebbon, Susan Mayes and Jon Kurt for all of their help with the kids while we were out of town! The kids had a blast with all of you and we couldn't have gone without you!

Any article that ends with the line "Court documents said the suspect allegedly talked of using the man's head as a bong or a pipe for smoking marijuana."

Good news - looks like Verizon is going to be carrying the Treo 650 at the end of the month. Article.

I'm teaching in church a week from this Sunday. The message is on Stuff and how attached we get to it. The basic premise is that God doesn't want your stuff, he wants your freedom. I'm teaching around the story of Zaccheus, you know, the wee-little man. I really love all the aspects of teaching, from the research, to writing it and delivering it. Being a rookie, for a 30 - 40 minute message, it takes me about 30 - 40 hours of time to pull it all together - about a minute per hour. I'm using a televangelist video that Noel put together a few years ago of his alter ego, Jimmy Lee.

Cathie and I are heading out tomorrow for our President's Club cruise that I received as an award from work. We're staying tomorrow night in Fort Lauderdale at the Harbor Beach Resort & Spa with the cruise ship departing on Saturday. We'll be gone for 5 days, hitting Key West and the Bahamas as Ports of Call. We've got eight different people watching our kids at different times. A friend pointed out to me what an amazing thing it is to have that many friends and family that are willing to help out to make something like this happen for us. What an awesome thing. I probably won't be touching my blog for a week, but check back then for pictures.

Good article on Pope John Paul II and his love of Pop Culture, who Bob dubbed "The first Funky Pontiff".
mtv.com - News - Pope John Paul II: Friend Of Bono, Fan Of Pop Culture

I have a tough time believing that prayer works. Before you brand me a heathen, hear me out. At a heart level, I know prayer works. I've seen it work. The logical party of me just doesn't get it. There's a part of me that wonders if I can really impact the infinite God of the universe. I always wonder if God's just doing what he was going to do anyways. Would everything happen exactly as it does regardless of whether I pray or not? This makes prayer tough for me.

I was reading the book The Divine Conspiracy this morning about prayer, which goes through prayer from every angle imaginable. The book gave some examples of how God changed his mind in examples with Hezekiah and Moses. Ok. The idea was that God is a God that can be prevailed upon by those who faithfully stand before him. Ok. Heard that before. And then I started thinking about my three year old Emily. Emily can ask me for something, even if my first inkling is to say no or do it a different way, I'm amazed at how often I end up saying yes. It's not because she presents me with the most logical or convincing argument, not because she phrases it a certain way. It's because I love her. Sometimes, I change my mind, just because I love her. I'm not saying I let her play with knives (most of the time) or let her do really short-sited stuff, but a lot of times when I do what she asks, it's simply out of love. I guess this is the best example that my brain can fathom as to why God answers my prayers, when I know he's infinite, all-knowing and way more logical and understanding of what's going on than I am. Not a deep philisophic reason, but I think I finally get it.

Project 311's Blitzfest site has been updated with more detail about the skate teams, bands and other events going on at the festival. This is going to be huge. Again, let me know if you want to volunteer. Jon and Dan are going to.

After my Cannon SD-50 Camera was dropped by one of my kids, I ended up having to buy a new camera, the Sony DSC-T1. I'd been looking at this camera for a long time, but couldn't justify getting it when I had a perfectly good one already (I must be slipping in my old age, because in the past I'd of figured out a way to justify it). This camera's phenomenal. It's got a huge screen, tiny profile, great optics, a USB 2.0 interface for fast tran sfer and best of all, it does 640x480 video, so it can double as a light-use video camera. The downside is that it uses Sony's funky memory sticks, which are expensive and proprietary. By far the best camera for the money.

I finally got caught up this weekend on about two months of Tivo'd episodes of Arrested Development. This isone of the funniest shows on Television, in an odd way. It's got cameos by everyone out there, and the strange, twisting plot lines that tie back together in the end. Just bizzarre stuff

Mr. Burn's line from last night's Simpsons, after Homer's drug test was switched with Otto's:

I haven't seen this many drugs in a Wang since I ran a Chinese Opium den.

I said in my earlier post that I wouldn't name names on this, but this picture should say it all:

The namless individual on the left has volunteered to help Brad as he rehabs his shoulder in any way he can. His only stipulation: he won't help Brad wipe, but apparently spongebaths haven't been ruled out.

I watched the State Game with the World Championship Detroit Piston's Chauncey Billups.

We all went over to Ted's to watch Michigan State play UNC in the final four on Saturday night. The first half was great, State went into the locker room up by 5. The second half - not so good. In more ways than one. During the halfitme we started watching some of our favorite scenes from the movie Old School, and then things went south. During the wedding scene, Brad made a funny comment about one of the other guy's (who will remain nameless) chances of being in a wedding, and the next thing you know, Brad was being tossed around like a rag doll, all in fun. Next thing you know, this is happening:

Not good. He didn't get up for a while. When he finally did, this is what had happened (note the differences in the shoulder):

We suggested that he slam his shoulder into the wall like Mel Gibson did in Lethal Weapon, but he wasn't up for it. After the game, Brad headed to the emergency room to get it taken look at. He ended up with a Grade 3 Acromioclavicular Joint Separation. That's not good. He's going in for surgery on Monday.

It's even worse if it happens to you when you're 51. Way worse if you're looking forward to a big season of riding behind your brand new mastercraft Wakeboarding boat:

This is a cool flash app that allows you to browse Flickr image search results as a hyperbolic tree.