JV Gold vs. Hartland

Nate's team played Hartland today and lost 0-15. The team played really well, but got off to a slow start in the first few minutes when Hartland had a couple of big plays and scored quickly. The team played well after the first five minutes but had a tight time scoring due to a few turn-overs. At least they played better than University of Michigan (but then again, so did the 3rd and 4th graders who played before Nate's team). (This picture resulted in an incomplete catch, and the pass-interference on Nate wasn't called).


Nate had strained his achilles tendon in a scrimmage on Thursday and I didn't think he was going to better by today. After a ton of ice and steady ibuprofen for a couple of days, I was pretty impressed that he was ready to play today. He's got two guys out right now with busted ankles, so keeping everyone healthy is the challenge right now.Nate keeps getting more and more comfortable out there and continues to love it. He's still playing mostly at cornerback but got a chance to play on offense today as well for the first time, playing tight-end.

You can see the rest of the pictures here from the team blog.

National Coming Out Day

I received a large packet in the mail label abeled "Human Rights Campaign - Talk About It". I opened it up to find a collection of balloons, pamphlets, stickers and posters for National Coming Out Day. One of my wonderful friends must know something I don't know and was kind enough to sign up me up for a whole set of resource materials to help celebrate this day. What thoughtful friends I have. I should be on all sorts of great mailing lists now. On the positive side, I have a ton of stickers I can post on my friends cars.

Anyone want to fess up to this?

Update: Surprise, surprise. It was Jon. Wonder what sites he was surfing to come across the order form for this stuff.

Quotation Marks

There is now officially a site for everything in the world. This is a fascinating site devoted to things the world that use "quotation marks" incorrectly.

The Sausage King

In some circles, my friend Bill is known as The Sausage King of Chicago. The man loves sausage. Bill was adamant that I try his sausage dish last night. My friend Greg loves the sausage as well and was also trying to force feed me.


The three of us went out to dinner last night with a group of co-workers as a going away party last night for Greg. (He's not leaving the company, just the account that we're on). Bill, Greg and I have worked together for a good part of the past ten years and have a blast together whenever we travel.

Amanda Eileen Haase

Amanda Eileen Haase was born at 8:48 am September 5, 2007 to our good friends Ted and Sherry Haase. She is 7 lbs 13 oz and 19 inches long. Thankfully she only has her father's hair, yet her mother's looks, personality, demeanor and temper. Ted will not let her date until after she has graduated from college. Her big brother Ethan is thrilled to have a baby sister to look after. He'll be bossing her around in no time, if he's anything like his Dad (which we're praying he isn't).

I asked Ted if he'd thought through all of the nicknames with Amanda (I'm looking for Amanda Hug-n-kiss) and he hadn't. Sad.

Gearing up for delivery!

Our friend Sherry Haase is delivering their baby today. Ted, her husband, I'm sure, has been harassing the doctors to no end. If they're smart, they'll drug him.

Teod

This is kind of cool. One of my friends brother, Todd (now Toed) is an artist out in LA. I haven't seen him since my friends and I road tripped out to LA via Arizona State University 17 years ago. My brother Dan turned me on to his web site, which I was surfing around this evening.

He has some pretty amazing animation, including this work he did for the movie Donnie Darko, the animation for the Tool video Sober and some other 3D Animation for Jon's favorite kids show Jay Jay the Jet

The Fab Four

We went out with the Niemis, Schult's and Girards for Cathie's birthday. These three girls are some of Cathie's closest friends. They were kind enough to get her a valour-blue jump suit that smelled like old people along with a matching set of clip-on earrings. We went to the Zuki Lake tavern and then to Barnstormers and then over to the Rhino Pub. The latter two were deserted. You can see from the picture below that we had a lot of fun. The girls danced while the guys played Golden Tee and talked about our love for dance. Eli some how made his way into 80%of the pictures. Kind of an odd one of him standing behind Mark.

Making History

My brother-in-law Ed is a huge Michigan fan. For a while, he'd even lured my son over the dark side. Prior to the Michigan game on Saturday, he sent me this video from his cell phone. He must have known that he was about to make history and witness what is now being called The Greatest Upset in History. Living in Ohio, I'm sure Ed will hear a lot about this. I pity the Michigan fans like Ed who had to be there and watch their team's season crumble before their eyes. Being the loyal fans that they are, everyone around here is asking for Coach Lloyd Carr's head on a platter already.

I was flipping between games, watching Michigan State up 42-0 in the first quarter. My alma-mater is expected to finish 10th in the Big Ten, yet already we're up on Michigan in the standings.

Best line EVER

My did a fantastic job cooking the pork tenderloin today. Instead of cooking the moisture out, he took it off at the right time and it was delicious.

On her way out, Monaca thanked my Dad;
"Thank you for the best pork ever."

He's a little teapot

My mom collected teapots from around the world with almost 405 total. As much as my dad loves teapots, he was redistributing them with the family today. All of the girls, and Stephen and Gabe chose teapots for themselves. Stephen chose this one because of his love for vegtables. Gabe chose his because of his love for tea parties.

Apparently, Matthew loves wedding planning too...

Fun for all

The girls (and my Dad) sat around looking through Monaca's wedding scrapbook. This is a book of pictures of pictures of ideas she wants for her wedding. Will LOVES looking at this book. The men chose instead to shove firecrackers up our butts and squat over an hibachi.

Will and Monaca were late

Will and Monaca were very, very late today to my Dad's labor day party. Will very much appreciated the 27 calls he received on the way, including the one telling him that my dad required a bottle of 18 year old single malt scotch to make up for it (pictured here).

President of the Committee

Letter from Clarance Thomas to my Mom

We were going through a collection of papers my Mom had saved over the years. We came across this letter from Supreme Court Judge Clarance Thomas. I'm pretty sure it had a pubic hair on it. (I thought this was so funny I told this same joke 5 times)

Domo Arigato Mrs. Roboto

Cathie's Mom was selected as part of a joint MSU/LCC overseas teaching program in Japan. She's in her second week and she's setup a blog to capture some of her thoughts as she's learning the culture. What a cool thing to live in another country, immersed in another culture for three months. Cathie's Dad is heading over in for a 2 week visit as well.

You can find her blog here.

Em's Spanking

Em and Maddie kept coming down tonight after they'd already been tucked in. They were told that the next time they came down they'd get a spanking. 20 minutes later Em came down with a big 'ol grin on her face and a book shoved down the back of her pants.

I'd told the kids the story of how I'd done something similar to my Dad when I was a kid, except my Dad didn't know about the book before he'd given the spanking - and he used his bare hand. I probably shouldn't share the stories of how I tried to rappel out my window as a kid using a rope attached to my dresser.

Fusion

Our Church's Junior High youth group stuff started up today. We've got a bunch of new sixth graders coming in, which is a blast. I think sixth grade is one of my favorite ages because they're so ackward at that age and so diverse int heir maturity and so honest about things. There such an easy group hang out with because a lot of what they want is simply to know that they're valued. (By the way, I think Noel designed the logo on the left about 12 years ago... Or maybe it was a friend of his)

On Sundays we have a pretty informal time. During Joe's message we break out and meet in a medium size group. We spend time checking in on what's going on, what movies we've seen and often have a question of the day (today's was an easy one: "What's your favorite cereal") and give the kids a chance to introduce themselves. We do a lot of laughing, connecting and occasionally learn some stuff - not all bible related. Today we got on the subject of how soy products give you really bad gas and talked about the time where John F. Kennedy told Germany that they are all Jelly Donuts. We also touched on the story where the prophet Elisha had God maul a bunch of kids for making fun of his bald head. (Seriously, it's in the bible in 2 Kings 2). The composition of this group is so cool. Two of the kids in the group I've known since the day they were born and a couple others since they were a few years old. Some of the kids who sat in this same circle with me in sixth grade come back and hang as well. The high schoolers come with us periodically and are so cool to the junior high kids, which seems to be such a rarity in the real world and such a cool thing to witness first hand.

You may sense my excitement as you're reading this. I just noticed it. Frankly, it took me by surprise. I've been so busy in life with work stuff and family stuff that Fusion starting up took me by surprise. I've been doing junior high youth ministry for about 12 years. I started doing it with a group of parents: Brad, Sue and Nicki - all who became very close friends of mine. Our leaders now consist of our old youth group kids, which I love. They still come to church and sit in the circle. Today we spent a few minutes laughing about what they were like in sixth grade, which was funny for the new sixth graders to hear about these college students being equally weird way back when.

My big worry when I turned 30 was that I wouldn't be relevant to kids any more because I'd be old. I'm 36 and finding that it's much more about liking them then it is about being cool and having the right facial hair. I don't have the same time for it that I used to, but I still love doing junior high youth ministry as much or more than I ever have. It's a very cool thing to be in that zone where you know that God has created you for, and you just sense it and get excited about it.

Perfect Moment

Have you ever had one of those where all of the elements are just right and you want to lock it in your brain like a snapshot? This was one of those moments. We went out last night to celebrate Cathie's 37th birthday with the Girards, Niemis and Schultzs. We went to the Zuki Lake Tavern for dinner and setup on the upper deck. The weather was prefect, it smelled like the lake, we were laughing and having a great time, Eli and I were splitting a bucket of ice cold Corona beers and Jimmy Buffett's Son of a Son of a Sailor was playing. It was a perfect summer day.