My first deep-fried turkey sucked. I followed the instructions, and it came out looking golden brown on the outside, raw on the inside. My best guess is that it wasn't completely thawed. We had pizza.

I was in the middle of assemling my turkey deep fryer when two Mormon guys came to the door to share their faith. One of my neighbors had referred them to me, either as a joke or to get them off their doorstep. I invited them in and we sat down and talked to them for about an hour. We had a great conversation, one where we both talked about our faith, our beliefs and how we live them out. Of the whole conversation, the part that fascinated me the most was the details of their two year mission. These guys take two years out of their life and for two years, just about every day, canvass neighborhoods looking for people to share their faith with. It's got to be a pretty thankless job, and I'm not sure it's the most effective way for them to do it - but it shows a real comittment to what they believe, even if most of it is wrong. We had a great conversation about about the Christian Church, God's revelation of truth and the Bible. They had flip charts, I had no pictures. (Jess suggested that I should have broken out a flannel-graph or taught them the bridge diagram). It was interesting to watch how they responded to questions, and how everytime I asked them a question that fit into their spiel, they were very excited to answer it - sometimes responding with "That fits in really well with what I want to tell you." There was a time where I'd of tried to convince them of how wrong they are and show them the holes in their belief system. I'd of determined how well the conversation went based on how many holes I poked in what they had to say, and how much of "My Stuff" I made them listen to. I'm not not sure that really accomplished much. Instead we had a good conversation where we listened to each other, and I invited them to have a turkey dinner with us. I figure I'll change more people by loving them first and talking second.

I'd read up on LDS (Latter-Day-Saints) a while back, but I'd forgotten some of the wild stuff they believe. They told me the story of God telling Joe Smith that all of the current christian churches were wrong and that he should start his own, and then revealing to him the golden egyptian plates for him to translate The Book of Mormon from. I innocently asked if they'd ever seen these plates, and they explained that the plates had taken back by God at some point. At this point, one of the guys shared with me that if this didn't happen, all of his faith was totally wrong. Interesting. We then started talking about polygamy and why it had been okay at one point, but not now. They shared with me that someone in the church had a revelation at some point that overrode what the Book of Mormon had to say about it, so we talked about that with respect to truth, the bible and Christianity.

Will and i went to see the new Ben Affleck movie Paycheck last night. It was a good movie from the same guy who wrote Minority Report and Blade Runner. Without giving the story away, it had to do with the ability to be able to predict the future. Overall, it was a good story, good action and not overly predictable.

On ride back, Will and I were talking about some of the holes in the movie with respect to Einstein's ideas of relativity and the future. In a nutshell, Eistein believed that you could glimpse into the future, but that there were an infinite number of futures, each permutation defined by every combination of potential outcomes in every given situations. This results in an infinite number of futures. Will shared with me a really interesting idea he'd had tying this idea to understanding God's sovernity and our free-will coexisting - possibly the smartest thing I've heard come out of Will's mouth. God knows the future, every infinite purmutation of the future that can exist, however we decide which path we will take - hence our free-will. God is infinite enough to understand the impact of our actions, their outcomes and the resulting paths. I'm sure Will and I aren't the first to think about this, but it was good food for thought.

Brad turned me on to a really interesting book on community and connectedness that flies in the face of many contemporary small group connection and community philosopies, called The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups. The idea of the book is that we "belong" at multiple levels, and that small groups are not the only way people can belong to a church or experience intimacy with others. I'm only a few chapters into it, but it's got some great stuff although a lot of it is anecdotal evidence.

My kids and I were over visiting my Grandma last week, when Madeline looked up on the wall and said, "Dad, why is Noel's name on Grandma's wall?" I looked up, and there it was - NOEL (No-el). Noel (Noe-l) appeals to the masses apparently.

Are you a Metrosexual??

My brother Jon gave my nephew Matthew (who is in Taekwondo) a belated birthday gift - Karate Jesus:

Once we leave my parents house in Dewitt, things begin to wind down a little bit. I was hurting pretty bad, nursing a sinus infection and sore throat, so about five minutes after I got there, I was crashed out on the couch. Cathie's parents house is a nice change, going from eight grand children to three. The kids love the attention and all of the space to run and play. Cathie's brother and wife were there as well, and we exchanged gifts. One of the gifts I got from them was a LoveSac - a giant foam-filled bean-bag chair, about 5 in diameter and about 3 feet high. It's huge, and comfortable. We had a huge meal and a nice relaxing evening while the kids played with their new toys and we watched the DVD we made Mom and Dad with all of the pictures we'd taken of the kids and other events last year.

Mom and Dad live in a semi-rural area and in the evening Emily started yelling that there were Kangaroos in the back yard. We all stood and watched as ten deer paraded out of the woods into Mom and Dad's yard. Cath's parents is such a contrast to my parents house with all of my siblings, spouses and grandkids, but it's a lot more relaxing.

Take a look at the pictures here.

On Christmas Morning, we wake up. My mom has staretd a freakin wonderful new tradition where she has the kids run around with bells and wake everyone up. The kids were up at 5:30 AM and my mom held them off until 6:30 AM. None of the adults were too jolly, and Emily didn't really appreciate it either.

Remeber the pickle air-freshener that wound up in our home. Well, it surfaced again. It started out with my Dad putting it in the bedroom we were staying at, hidden behind a desk. From there, I put it in Susan's room, who then put it in Jon's room, who eventually put it back in my room. I hate the smell of pickels.

Jon's daschund (not prounounced dash-hound, but dock-sin) stretch is annoying and likes to bite kids. We remind him of this often and poor Beth is caught in the middle of it all. Jon likes to taunt and tease all of his nieces and nephews in the way only an uncle can do it. He has no kids for us to torment, so we torment his dog, which he brings everywhere with him. Jon wants my parents to afford stretch the same status as the grandchildren, per the following picture (jon was hiding behind my dad's chair, propping up the dog so he could be in the grandchildren picture):


Christmas morning at my parent's house is HUGE. My Mom literally starts shopping for Christmas the day after, and puts a ton of thought into what she gets everyone, and for 18 people, that's no small task - I can barely buy for Cathie. After that, we have a huge breakfast, and spend the next two hours trying to pull everything together to get ready to move on to Cathie's parents house.

Take a look at the pictures here.

After opening presents, we loaded up the van with enough gear, presents and food to furnish a small army. We got to my parents where the tradition begins. Christmas eve consists of our family, my parents, my Grandma, my brothers/sister & brother-in-law/sisters-in-laws, and eight kids from age 8 to 6 months. My mom kicks the whole thing off with an amazing meal - with an occasional odd thing or two. When someone asks what's in it, one of the kids responds (with their best Mom impersonation) "Oh, it's made of everything you love".

Willy Brown is considered family, and with that comes the need to make himself look better than the rest of us, to be the favored son. Will came by for dessert and brought my parents a really nice wine and cheese basket from an upscale store in town. While he was scoring points with the 'rents, my brothers and I were rooting through the basket trying to come up with an estimate of the cost of the thing - which we guess to be around $65 - $75. Brown noser.

My dad went out and picked out a tree on his own this year, and even decorated it himself. He's got this fancy tilting tree-stand that allows you to rotate it any way you can imagine. Somehow, it's still crooked:


After eating a huge meal, we all get dressed for church and take family pictures. From there we head out to my Mom's church, St. Luke in Haslett. For as many years as I can remember, part of my Christmas tradition consists of going to a Lutheran Christmas Eve service, singing Christmas Carols and ending it all with a candle light service. I really enjoy the tradition, the hymns, dressing up and being there with my whole family. My best Christmas memories are of me sitting next to my Uncle Bill (My favorite uncle and Godfather) wearing my brown corduroy suit and clip on tie while singing my loudest, as my Grandma passed out her beech-nut candies (What is a beechnut anyways??). If one of us notices that the other is not singing, someone is kind enough hold out a hymnal in front of the and point to the words for them - a tradition my father started when we were young. During the candle light service at the end, my brothers and I attempt to set each other's programs on fire and blow out each other's candles. My siblings and I always have a good time at church and (most of the time) my mom looks on proudly as she shows off her whole family.

Once we get home we immediately change out of our clothes and break out the appetizers and cocktails. Everyone brings their own drink to pass (except my brother Dan and sister Susan apparently) - this year we had martinis, sangria and Bailey's. From there we exchagne gifts - the aunts and uncles give the kids their gifts and we each exchange gifts with the person who's name we drew. Tough to describe, but imagine 19 people in the same room (the oldest of the kids being 8) all excited about opening gifts, simultaneously. The kids then spend the next few hours playing with their toys. One notable gift that Cathie got everyone was soccer-boppers, the big inflatable punching gloves. Imagine 5 boys running around whaling on each other with these. Exactly Cathie's intent. It's extra fun for Dan and Kris's three boys, and for Dan, who will probably pop them all within a day - on purpose.

For both sets of parents, we made them a DVD of pictures using Ulead's DVD PictureShow software. It lets you take your digital photos (in 2003 I took 5,200) and display them to music, with a cool menu driven system to navigate the photo albums. It creates digital videos with slick transitions, annotations and narrations that allow you to do a lot with them, including having music play while they're being shown. We sat around that evening for about an hour watching the pictures and laughing.

It was a fun evening that I always look forward to. My mom works her tail off for months leading up to Christmas - shopping, cooking, cleaning (although I'm not sure how her house really gets dirty, other than when we visit) to make Christmas a really amazing time.

Take a look at the pictures here.

We had our family Christmas this morning, since we're at my parents on Christmas morning. Cathie and I were woken up by Madeline this morning at 8am, which isn't too shabby as far as sleeping in goes around Christmas time. We woke Emily and Nate up and then headed downstairs to see if Santa Claus had come - lo and behold, he had. When it was Emily's turn to open her present, she wanted to play with it immediately, and had no interest in opening anything else. She sat there playing with her Discovery Toys "Little People" Noah's Ark, in her own little world. How's that for contentment? Ten minutes later, after the kids finished opening their gifts, Emily decided she would take a turn. The kids loved their gifts, and it was fun watching them scream with excitement at what they'd gotten. Maddie and Nate were both really excited about what they'd gotten each other, and described in detail to each other how they came to the decision of what to buy for the other.

Cathie always gets me the most thoughtful gifts, which can be tough to buy for someone like me, who picks up what he wants, when he wants it. One of the coolest was a turkey deep fryer - imagine having boiling oil, propane fuel and fire all involved in cooking! It doesn't get more dangerous than that. Selfishly, I got Cathie a new Alarm Clock that sets itself automatically. This means no more AM/PM confusion when setting it and no more setting it ahead by 15 minutes so you can hit the snooze alarm twice; that logic never made sense to me. I also took ten pictures that I'd taken, touched them up, converted them to black and white and framed them as part of a display I made for Cathie. Out of all the gifts I got her, this one probalby meant the most to me as the giver because it was something I'd created instead of bought.

On Sunday, we had some friends over after church for brunch. Cathie made a great meal and we gorged ourselves, and afterwards played reindeer games.

On Saturday, I took the kids to Lansing to get us all out of Cathie's hair as she cleaned and cooked for the brunch we had yesterday. We went to see my Grandma, my parents and then some friends of ours we haven't seen in a while - Mike and Micky and their three kids.

I've known Mike for about fifteen years. When I was 19, I volunteered for Youth for Christ out at Everett High school, where Mike and worked together for three years. While involved in YFC, we had a great time - coming up with some amazing ideas and following through on them (and only having the police involved in a few), because neither of us was overly strong in the area of discernment. Mike I became great friends and our famalies have grown up together even though they're in Lansing and we're out here in South Lyon. Mike had a vision about 8 or 9 years ago to create a place (now called Visions) where high school, college and young adults could come, hang out, hear God's truth and be discipled. To really get the picture of how he took it from this vision to reality, you have to understand Mike's personality. Mike is a passionate guy and he loves to get others excited about what he's excited about. He's also got a really "dumb" faith. At the core of Mike is this belief that God will provide, no matter what. It defies logic, it defies common sense, but it works. God has met Mike's needs, his family's needs, and his ministries needs in an amazing way. Mike has stuck with this through thick and thin. Mike and I sharpen each other, and occasionally piss each other off. In the end, he's one of those guys who you know I'll be friends with to the end.

Madeline came down with the flu last night, Nate this morning. This sucks. I'm sure the rest of us will have it soon. I'm now haunted by visions of Madeline and Emily swapping suckers on Saturday.

It's funny how when you tell another parent that your kids have the flu that their first thoughts go to - "When was my child in contact with their child" and "Crap, now my kids gonna get it.". I'm no differnet.

Very interesting article on XXXChurch.com's visit to a church. Read the comments at the end.

I saw this bumper sticker on the back of a car. What does this mean? Is Sucks an Adjective or a Verb? Any ideas?

WIll, Jason, Brad, Jim and I went to see the Return of the King and was blown away. It was the greatest movie I've ever seen. It was as good as the first two movies combined. The story, the cinematics, special effects pacing were just right. The only akward moment was when Aragorn bust into a solo during his coronation as the King of Gondor. I'm considering trying to take Nate to go see it.

I've been working on migrating my blog over to movabletype. Mike Rays helped me get all of the components installed on my system (Apache, mySQL, PERL, Movabletype) that are required, and from there I'v been trying to migrate my templates and stylesheets. So far, this is what I've got. I still need to migrate my archival sheets, set up some of the RSS blog linking and trackback stuff.

TIME.com: Search And Destroy -- Dec. 22, 2003 Good article on Google's impact on your life.

I went to bed early last night, and woke up around 5:30 AM wide awake. I worked for a while and then I went to the gym. I had a great time of worship working out - I was listening to some music that really spoke to where I'm at in the moment. Between sets, I was able to spend some time praying and meditating on where I'm at with God right now. I had an 8am breakfast meeting with Joe, and then came back to get some work done. While cleaning up some junk on my desktop, I came across Psalm 18. In it, David is talking about how God delivered him from Saul when he says ...He rescued me because he delighted in me. I love the image of God delighting in me, the way I delight in my kids. I can picture God sitting back watching me, with the same smile I have when I go check on my sleeping kids or watching them play or sing. The Psalm continues with talking about how God gives us everything we need in our powerlessness. Then, in true King David style, he finishes with a great line like I beat them as fine as dust borne on the wind - kinda the modern version of Stomp my enemies like a Narc at a biker rally.

I love this picture of the church:
"The power of the church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The church is not made up of whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholness in a Christ who was broken for us." -Mike Yaconelli

Maddie and I sat down last night and read through the Christmas story together. We talked about why Christmas is worth celebrating, and Maddie responded that's it's because we get to go to heaven and have our sins taken away. This got me thinking about something Mark mentioned on Sunday about how much effort the church has put into making sure people are aware that God can save us from our sin, while virtually neglecting the fact that God wants to redeem us completely - to help us live up to the full potential he's given us. What a compelling idea - that Christianity isn't just about "fire insurance", but being redeemed as a whole - every part of who I am - not just my sinfulness! Later that night after Madeline and I read through some more
of the Christmas story, we had a great talk about who God has created her to be and that THAT's part of why baby Jesus was born.

Per Noel's message on Saturday, I turned off the TV last night, made a fire (in the fireplace) and sat down and read through the Christmas Story. If you've never read The Book of God, it does a great job meshing history, the bible and great storytelling to turn parts of the bible into more of a narrative. I think I've read the Luke account so many times, that it's easy for me to gloss over it. In The Book of God, The Christmas story starts way back with Zachariah, Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary and then weaves all of the stories together. It puts a great historical and political framework around the story in terms of what was happening in the Roman government. The book does an amazing job describing some of the Jewish religious rituals, their symbolism and how the story of Christ's birth, life and death tie into them. Enough about the book.
For the first time in a while, I had some quiet to sit and listen to God and try and connect with the larger story of Christmas. I spent some time thinking and listening - something that's tough for me to do - I don't do quiet well.

If you've read The DaVinci Code, this is a fairly balanced article entitled Jesus in America. It deals with where some of the holes in Dale Brown's theories on which he's based his writings, including misinterpretation of the Gnostic gospels.

Check out the trailer and site for Mel Gibson's new movie The Passion of Christ.

Check out this awesome Mike Yaconelli Tribute video from his memorial page. If you're not familiar with Mike, he is one of the father's of radical youth ministry and one of grace's greatest advocates.

We were in a big hurry yesterday afteroon, running late on the way to Crossroad's baptism party in Hamburg. I got out to my van and lo and behold, this message was painted on my rear window. I was in too much of a hurry to clean it off, so I ended up driving around with this on my van the rest of the evening. Don't get me wrong, I love Jesus, I believe that Christ should be at the center of Christmas, but I'm not a big fan of the cliche, or stupid rhyming bumper stickers. What made it worse was that as I drove down the express way, cars were looking over and giving me the "thumbs-up" and some of the older folk at the baptism party were complementing me on the "Bold Message" I put on my van. You may be wondering who actually pulled this off? Jen Niemi, as part of our ongoing practical jokes battle. This was by far her best work yet because it hit me at the core of my hatred of cheesy christian cliche.

Will and I went with Jason, Jess, Meghan, Tim and Jess's parents down to Riverview this past Saturday night to check out their Saturday night service. The theme was Xmas unplugged. I did a lot of reflecting on what Christmas is about for me, and came to the uncomfortable conclusion it's not about Jesus for me this year - but more about Gifts, Tradition, Family, Food and busyness. Not where I want it to be. Cath and I were talking about this yesterday, and as a family we change this. Starting tonight, we're sitting down as a family after dinner each night to read about the Christmas Story, and Cathie and I are setting aside some evenings without the TV to read and reflect on Christ's arrival in the world. I've started reading the latter half of Walter Wangerin's The Book of God which deals with Christ's arrival, starting with Zachariah and Herod, and paints a broad canvas around the Christmas storoy that goes way outside a manger. I have no idea if any of this will help, but it's a start.

On Saturday, we celebrated my nephew Matthew's birthday. Attendance at these is not optional, unless you've got a reeeaaally good reason or severe diahreha. My brother Jon had neither. Instead, Will filled in for him.

At last! Swimwear for my daughters!

Went and worked out with Brad "Blue" Jeffrey today. After deer and pheasant hunting over the past few weeks, Brad grew a beard, and Will coined the name of "Ol' Blue" (From the movie Old School) for Brad.

In the past I've mentioned before the ongoing practical joke battle we've had with the Niemi's. One of the things they did was stick a pickle-smelling (the manufacturer claims it's "Harvest Spice") air freshner in our houre. For a couple of days we couldn't figure out what the horrible smell was until Cathie discovered it and the Niemi's fessed up to it. We thought it would be funny to stash this in my parent's house, so on Thanksgiving, I hid this behind their dresser and we waited. And waited. After only a couple of hours, the upstairs smelled awful. My parents went out of town for about a week, so I called my sister for an update. She said that she walked into their house and it smelled like someone was canning Pickles. She asked my Mom what the smell was and she said she didn't know, but wasn't it wonderful? A nice buttery popcorn smell (?!?). She didn't know where it was coming from, but figured it was her popuri bowl (which happened to be situated right next to the air freshener). My sister eventually removed it, and I think my Mom is blaming my brother.

I sat in a meeting yesterday with a guy who could of been Chris Farley's twin brother. I didn't see it at first until he got really animated, and I had a tough time not laughing.

Monday night Cathie and I went to the Triad for the circuit training program they offer. There are twenty stations setup where you exercise at each station for a minute, rest for thirty seconds, and then move on to the next station. The entire workout consists of cycling through everything twice. It was a killer. There were times going through the workout that I felt like I was going to ralph. I felt good at the end, but wasn't really enjoying it all that much meanwhile.

J turned me on to the new My Immortal video from Evanesence. Slightly different than the album version.

Check out Dan's 12/08/03 Post - good story.

Remember the whole thing I mentioned earlier about the tradition in my family of calling each other on our birthdays? We were ragging on my sister Susan pretty hard about forgetting to call Will, and next thing you know she sent these pictures to Will. Sure this points to the power power of shame, but it also shows just how much my family loves Will.

I had a pretty uneventful weekend. Cathie and I hung around on Friday night, had a nice fire - read for a while and watched Drumline. It wasn't a bad movie, but it's tough to see Orlando Jones as anything but the Seven Up guy. Saturday afternoon Madeline had a dance recital in Brighton and that night we had a kids birthday party at the Niemi's. This was actually a pretty fun time, where the adults hung out while the kids played. Afterwards, Will, Justin, Mark and I all went out to the South Lyon Hotel for a beer. Last night we had a gal we've gotten to know in our neighborhood come over along with her daughter, who's Nate's age. She's a single Mom whose life is pretty hetic. She's pretty young - only 25 or 26 and she doesn't have a lot of friends with kids. We've gotten to know her over the past year as Cathie and I both go to her to get our hair cut (Yes world, I go to a Salon to get my hair cut). We're doing a brunch thing at our house after Crossroad's Christmas Service on December 21st, and she and her daughter are coming to btoh, which is cool. We've also got a couple other friends coming who don't do church unless it's coming with us, which is a good place to start.

Jason turned me on to these dubbed Jesus Videos.... Sacriligious - maybe... Funny. Yep.


Jesus - Part One

Jesus - Part Two


Jesus - Part Three


Jesus - Part Four

Looking to buy me something? Look no further.... Click here to see my wish list.

I am the smartest man alive.


Take the survey here.

My brother Jon nominates this as the best Survivor quote ever:
"Promises are like wicker furniture and fat women - easily broken by Johnny Fairplay"
-Johnny "Fairplay" Dalton

THE RELEVANCY OF RELATIVITY :: RELEVANT magazine :: GOD.LIFE.PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.: "There will always be people who cause you to question your opinions, people that will shatter the rigid rules you prepared and cause you to really explore why you believe what you do. "

For the lady who has everything. You can support the ministry via Betty Bowers site.

Did I mention that I got my new cell phone? It's amazing. I went with the Samsung i600 through Verizon. The phone has complete PDA capabilitiy, full browser, e-mail, contact and calendar functions. I can syncronize everything wirelessly with my laptop so all of my e-mails, meetings and contacts are always completely up-to-date. I'm pretty sure I was this proud of each of my kids when I was born...

I went out to dinner last night in Kansas City with my mentor, Mack McCormick. Mack is the Vice President over the North American Document and Content Imaging group within Xerox. Mack is a really amazing guy and one of the finest leaders I've ever worked for. He was in the Army Special Forces for 22 years and retired as a Colonel - you can imagine that he's got some great stories. He's lived all over the world, and has a very unique and informed perspective from both political and economic standpoints. I get the chance to replay differente scnarious with him and get his feedback on my performance, dig into the thought process that went behind his decisions and those of his superiors. He's the kind of guy you want in the trenches with you when things hit the fan. In the book From Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about people who have Level 5 Leadership:
"Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leadres have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious - but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves." If this level 5 crap interests you, read more about the role of humility and will here.

Unfortunately, like Bill, Mack also created a video, which you can watch here. It's no less akward than Bill Belanger's video.

Will updated his blog! Looks like Jesus must be coming back soon, or else hell has frozen over. This is something Will only does every few months, so it's a special time for all of us.

Noel is famous. He's in the paper. Because the paper is on the internet, you know that what he says is true. Noel uses words like synthesize and hyperindividualism. Noel has a beard like an amish man.

I'm in Kansas City until Thursday. We've got a Christmas Party tonight with both the customer and our project team, which should be a good time. I'm not feeing much like hanging out with people today, though, so we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday was Will’s birthday. Cathie cooked a big dinner, complete with a birthday cheesecakes and we sang happy birthday to him. In my family we have this odd tradition of phone calls on your birthday. There’s all sorts of intricate rules to this, and if you miss out, you’ll never hear the end of it. You get special bonus points for being the first to call on a given day – and for most of the people in our family, Will normally wins that one, and typically reminds me to call my nephews. Will has been pretty much unanimously adopted into our family, and has to abide by all of the rules of the family – including these.
Anyways, we had a small surprise deal for Will up at the South Lyon Hotel (the only drinking establishment in town) where about 20 friends showed up from as far away as Lansing to wish Will a happy birthday. I’m not sure if he was surprised, but it was a good time. Jason Shinn, Jessica Richeid, Noel Heikkinen, Bill Belanger, Mark Freier, Joe & Joann Muzzi, Bill Jarratt, Matt & Anne Calabretta, Sue Rankin, Mike Cornell, Ron Reyhl, Desi Defelice, and Katie Freier all showed up. The party wound down around 11:30 PM.