Nicknames for Reagan

Nicknames in our family are a huge deal and we've all been working over time trying to figure out the best nicknames for our new niece/cousin/granddaughter - Reagan. Here's what we've got so far. Keep in mind, that it's OK to have as many as six degrees of separation to come up with the nickname. In my family as soon as my parents would outlaw a given nickname for one of us, we could derive a new one slightly different from the original, but hadn't been officially outlawed yet.

Here's what we've got so far for Reagan Violet. Feel free to add your own:

1. Ronny
2. Ray-Gun
   
3. Gunner or Gunnie
   
4. Dutch (Reagan's nickname).
   
5. The Duchess
   
6. Fergie (aka as The Duchess)
7. R.V. (Reagan Violet)
8. The Gipper (from the Knute Rockne movie starring Reagan)
9. Guppy
10. Viola
11. Purple (similar color to violet)

One of my proudest nicknames was derived in the hospital parking lot on my way up to see the first nephew - Matthew. His nickname sticks with him today - as Shabadu.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

This started as a joke, and ended the same way. We have an amazing electric violin player at church named Kintaro and a great worship leader who can sound a lot like Charlie Daniels. Put those two together and you naturally get the song, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I suggested it and Shanan, our worship leader suggested right back that I do it. As anyone who knows me will attest, I'm tone deaf - but there's minimal singing in this, so I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try. I'm great with being up in front of a group of people speaking, but doing this was super awkward for me (and everyone else listening). I'm clearly no Newton Peters.



In the end, it went off alright and was fun to do, even though I look pretty and odd through most of it. The song symbolizes so much about what I love in my church. We're a group of people who love to do life together and are even up for doing the out of the ordinary in a fun, family way, like this. It doesn't have to be perfect, just our best.

Grandma and Grandpa Lebbon's Pool

It was too perfect of a day today, so we went over to Cathie's parents to go swimming. Cathie's brother Ed and wife Stacy were in town and we had a ball playing around. Maddie and I worked on her doing back flips. She got up almost ten feet in the air and was able to do it perfectly, along with her front flip.

Ed and I worked up the liquid courage to try a front one and half flip. I was able to do the "one and a face", which involved me landing the entire force of my forward-rotating body on my right eye socket. It hurt. Badly.





Everyone was in the pool swimming. Emily got to the point where she's jumping off the diving board without any assistance and swimming across the length of the pool. She asked me how far it was, I told her a mile. By the end of the night she was running around telling everyone she'd swam five miles.
It couldn't have been a more perfect day. We were so proud of Cathie's Dad as he's getting to the point where he can swim without his floaties, but as you can see from the picture below, he wasn't quite comfortable swimming in the deep end without them.


You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Golfing with Chauncey

I got to golf with Bob on Thursday. Doing well for us on a hole was one over, but we had a blast golfing. It was a perfect day to golf and bring along our friend Mr. Bud Weiser.

Buck's Tooth

How do you chip your front tooth eating pulled pork?

Sherry and Ethan Visit

We got to see Sherry and Ethan Haase this weekend while they were in town. Little E is getting huge and is 3. Since Ted decided that we weren't important enough to come into town, I had to try and teach little Ethan how to be a man. I taught him how to eat pizza with a sharp stick, which he seemed to catch on to pretty quickly. We had a chance to wrestle so I could hear Ethan's catch phrase "Stay down, sucka".

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

David's Back from Iraq

Saturday afternoon we headed to Grand Ledge to go see Cathie's Uncle David who had gotten in from Iraq on Friday night, home on leave for a couple of weeks after an eleven month deployment. Cathie's whole family was there to celebrate, including her grandparents who'd come all the way up from Texas.

David had some amazing stories, but the one depicted by this piece of glass below was wild. The piece of glass on his mantle was the same piece in the picture in the lower left hand corner. He'd been in this vehicle with two others when they were hit. Only he and one other guy survived. The glass in this picture is about 4 inches thick and saved him.

We got see the kids old Great Aunt Maureen, Cathie's Mom's sister. Having raised a red-head pretty similar to Maddie, Maureen knew exactly how to keep Maddie in check. We let Maureen pretend our kids were her grand children, because her daughter, sigh, didn't come into town to visit for this event. We were there for her though and tried to set a good example for Jenny and Brian. I'm not sure exactly what the girls are doing in this picture. I think it's supposed to be showing a little attitude, but I'm not quite sure.

You can see the rest of the pictures from the party here.

I am an Uncle!!!

My niece, Reagan Violet (seriously), was born today was born at 12:28 p.m. She weighs 6 lbs 12 oz and is 19 in long. Mother and baby are doing great. Jon only passed out twice. Congratulations, Beth!

I guarantee that my Mom would have LOVED the name. Violet was my Mom's middle name and if you didn't know, Reagan was the greatest president of our time. I'm just glad they didn't name the baby after the greatest comedic genius of our time, Will Farrell.

Bill Gates Harvard Commencement

I was reading an article in the WSJ about Bill Gates' Harvard Commencement Speech yesterday. While not as funny as Will Farrell's commencement speech (worth reading again) it was still good. The article talked about how Bill Gates spent six months pulling his speech together and the time, effort and reflection he took on the message he wanted to leave. As you probably know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving over a $100 billion dollars to help eradicate disease, hunger, improve education and eradicate poverty. This line struck me in his speech:

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

Now don't go running off and accusing Bill Gates of being a socialist. His $60 billion should be enough to convince you that he's a full blown capitalist who cares about the poor and hurting to at least some degree. The fact that he plans to give it all away before he dies fascinates me.

I've heard a lot of Christians and pro-life people complain about the fact that guys like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a fraction of their went towards "family planning groups", specifically around researching the birth-control RU-486. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that, but I agree with the 99.99% of what they're doing with the rest of it. Should I write them off completely because of the .01%? I dig what James says about our faith being measured by how we're living our life:

14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. - James 2:14-17

Like or dis-like Bill Gates, he puts his money where his mouth is on feeding the poor, healing the sick and clothing the naked. I like the way Tony Campolo paraphrases Jesus words in Matthew 25:

On judgment day, He’s not going to ask you Theological questions … its not going to be “Virgin Birth … strongly agree, somewhat agree, no opinion …” …Its gonna be “I was hungry, did you feed me? I was naked, did you clothe me? I was sick, did you care for me? I was an alien, did you take me in? … because I’m not up in the sky somewhere, I’m waiting to be loved in people who hurt.”

I've by no means got this figured out. I'm still trying to figure out what it looks like to simplify my life by getting rid of stuff, let alone being out there feeding the hungry and helping the poor in a significant way. The whole deal seems so overwhelming, which is why I like Bill Gate's message - to focus on one small piece, and go after it full-bore.

Em's Picnic

Cathie and I went to Em's school yesterday for her end-of-the-year picnic and concert. We ate and watched the kids play a bunch of games.

Some of the parents (ok, me) decided that wagering on the outcome of the kids events would make it more fun. I won $1 from my neighbor as she picked the girls to win in this shoe-kicking contest.

I also got the chance to meet Cathie's nemesis. Well, maybe nemesis is a strong word, but this story cracked me up. Cathie helps out all the time in Em's class. One day, one of the little girls walked up to Cathie and out of nowhere told her:

My Mom is prettier than you. She's a hip-hop Mom.

I got to finally meet the girl's Mom. I wanted badly to ask her what it means that she's a "hip-hop Mom", but it was probably one of those things that would have been funny to me and awkward to everyone else.

They had a pie eating contest involving Em's music teacher, the janitor - Mr. Steve and their music teacher. The janitor (in the middle, winning) is an amazing guy who the kids just love. You can see why.

We finished it up with a concert, to the Mom's. Here's my beef: All year long, the kids make great gifts for the Mom's for mother's day - 2 or 3 each: Poems, pictures, flowers, hand-bags. You name it. For the concert they could have done a nice tribute to Dad's to make up for the pimping we take. Did they? Nope. See if I vote on the next millage.

Em had a great teacher this year, Mrs. Robinson. We're hoping she gets our friend Sheri next year for first grade, since Nate and Maddie both had her as their kindergarten teacher.

Blogbackuponline.com

This seems to be a cool, free service. It's an automated block backup service, complete with images. It pulls the data from your RSS feed on a regular basis and grabs the images and content automatically into it's system.

Monster Cables

Interesting article about Monster cables. The premise is what I've believed for a long time (and my brother Jon has not and spent thousands in cables for his home entertainment system):

I say, since everything is digital, and since HDMI is a spec, the cheap cable will get the data from point A to point B as well as any other cable. Additionally I say that if there are subtle (i.e. videophile-grade) differences in cables, the average consumer isn't going to spot them on the TV.

Google Search

Interesting article on Google's search algorithms.

I hope Will is never executed, but....

If Will were ever executed, I believe these would be his last words as well.

Freaky Tiger

This picture is gonna give me nightmares. You can see more of the weird tiger pictures here.

Camera Phones: Ten Ways to Use Them

Good Article: Camera Phones: Ten Ways to Use Them

Rocky is Dead

That was quick. In Emily's words:

First Grandma, now Rocky. He was just a baby.

Phone Service

I'm paying about $70+ for my local phone service right now through AT&T. I'm thinking of switching to Vonage for Voice Over IP. I haven't in the past just because of some of the poor quality and connection issues (when I call my Dad or brother Jon, you can't hear anything for the first second they pick up the phone).

Vonage's VOIP plan is $14.99 a month for the same features and more minutes. What am I missing here?

If you use VOIP, I'd appreciate hearing how you like it. Please let me know what you think.

Rocky the Bird

This is Rocky Duke. He's a bird that the kids brought home as a part of the animal shelter we've apparently created. It fell from a nest somewhere and will probably die, but my kids don't believe in lost causes. It doesn't look injured, just not quite old enough or strong enough to fly. It can fly small distances upward, but not enough to be out of harm's way. The kids love it, and they're smart enough not to touch it without wearing rubber gloves.

Update: After reading online, it seems that some mother birds will raise the birds from the ground. We put him back in a nearby tree this morning (after Emily had a chance to say goodbye). If he dies, hopefully a cat gets him before Emily finds the body.

Update on the Update: Cathie talked to Dana and apparently we're keeping the bird for a while. It's old enough to hang with us and be fed and in a week or two will be old enough to fly on it's own. I'm going to make it mandatory that the kids feed the bird worms from their mouths, just it's mother would. This is much cheaper than buying a bird for the kids, which I've never really gotten as a pet. If it dies, it will make birds and even worse option for them.

Maddie's Art Exhibit

Maddie's artwork was chosen from her class to be shown in the community art show. It is much better than the stick figure pictures I drew Cathie for Mother's Day.