One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a framed collection of pictures of myself and the kids from this past year. Madeline wrote a poem to go along with it, which for obvious reasons, I love:
Our daddy is nice
Our daddy is strong
Our daddy is fun
Our daddy is never wrong
He likes his kids
He plays with them too
We all love him
Merry Christmas to you!

I just posted the pictures from Christmas online here:
Lebbon Christmas
Kurt Christmas

These are probably only of interest to my family.

This is either:
a. My mom displaying her new Christmas present from her kids.
b. My Mom taunting PETA enthusiasts around the world to throw red paint on her.
c. My mom modeling a coat that we found in the back of her closet that was cool 20 years ago.

Every year at Christmas we do our family photos. At just about every family get together we do these grandparent/grandchildren picture, and every year they get a little more chaotic as the crew grows. Notice that out of nine grandkids (and grandparents) how many are actually looking at the camera. I'm just trying to figure out what words of wisdom my dad was about to say before this picture was snapped.

The picture in this frame was taken at Jason and Jess's wedding and given to me as a Christmas gift by them. They thought that if I didn't want it, my Mom surely would....and they were right. Probably the best Christmas gift she's ever received.

This is going to be a great week... Last week was crazy between trying to finish up everything for Christmas, wrapping things up at work before vacation and my computer dying. It took reloading my system 6 different times to finally get the issue resolved... resulting in me doing a complete reformat of my system. Luckily, no data was lost. Keeping the four systems in my home up and running is becoming a full-time job.

Santa visited us Thursday morning - Christmas Eve-Eve. We did it then to try and space things out and give us some more breathing room in a time that's typically pretty hectic. We woke up, opened presents and the kids had all day to play with their presents. In the evening we had our annual 'Birthday party for Jesus' and then our church had their Christmas eve-eve service (Not having a building makes doing a christmas eve service tough to schedule). It was a great day overall.

On Friday, we woke up, pulled things together and headed to my parent's house for Christmas #2. I love getting together with my family - but between my 3 siblings, spouses and eight nieces and nephews, it's so high energy the whole time. My mom cooks amazing meals for lunch, dinner and the following breakfast - each meal consisting of at least ten different things, not including dessert. We had something to eat, got dressed for church and took our annual family pictures -which are no small ordeal, especially with my brother jon antagonizing everyone possible. I made the mistake of giving Jon my camera to take picture during parts of it and I ended up with a collection of people's butts and crotches. Thanks Jon.

We went to church that night at my Mom's church, which is a traditional Lutheran church. We've been doing this since I can remember. We take up 3 rows between all of us and it's pretty comical watching all of the kids who range from age 1 - 9. We sing all of the great christmas hymns and have a candle light song at the end, which is awesome. It's so different from Crossroads, but I love it just the same. I have so many great memories of going to church, especially going and sitting with my Uncle Bill (deceased). We'd sing and laugh, all while trying to stay under the radar of my mom and grandma's watchful eyes.

We came home, had a huge meal and the opened some of the presents from the aunts and uncles to the kids, and to our parents. The girls had gone through all of our families pictures and put together a scrapbook chronicling our family all the way from my parent's childhood through now. My mom loved it. I mixed up some of the hurricane mix that I brought back from New Orleans, which threw Dan, Kevin and I for a loop. We hung out, played with the presents and laughed a lot. Dan, Kris and family headed home and the rest of us finally crashed sometime after midnight, ready for an early morning.

We woke up Christmas morning early, with Madeline and Gabe running around and signing some obnoxious Christmas song, but it beat them ringing the bells my Mom's given them in the past years. The kids and grandkids opened presents from my parents and played until about noon. I got to go pick up my Grandma from her aparentment in Haslett. She's old (not sure how old - she'll never tell, but I think it's in the mid 80's). She moves at a snail's pace and is really fragile, but she amazes me at how sharp she is. We had a great conversation on the car ride back about Christmas in the past, my grandpa, my uncle, my kids an my job. It was one of the best parts of my Christmas. Around noon, we loaded up and headed for Christmas #3.

We got to Cathie's parents in Dewitt in the afternoon and were able to exhale after a crazy 24 hours. It's such a different atmosphere than my parents and I really look forward to it. There are only our three kids, my brother-in-law Ed and his wife Stacy, and of course Cathie's Mom and Dad. We opened a ton of presents and had a huge meal with at least 10 desserts. It's such a nice, slow-paced time, We hang out, eat and eat some more. The kids have so much fun, just loving hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and their Aunt and Uncle. By the end of the night, we were beat and headed home. Loading the van becomes an interesting exercise in packing, but I got it done.

I'm thrilled to see that it's looking like airlines will NOT allow cell phone usage on planes: Phones in flight

Top 10 Cheesiest Movie Lines Ever:
1. “Titanic”: Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!”
2. “Dirty Dancing”: Patrick Swayze’s “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
3. “Four Weddings And A Funeral”: Andie McDowell’s “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”
4. “Ghost”: Demi Moore’s “Ditto,” to Patrick Swayze’s “I love you.”
5. “Top Gun”: Val Kilmer to Tom Cruise: “You can be my wingman anytime”
6. “Notting Hill”: Julia Roberts’ “I’m just a girl... standing in front of a boy... asking him to love her.”
7. “Independence Day”: Bill Pullman’s “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
8. “Braveheart”: Mel Gibson’s “They may take our lives, but they will not take our freedom!”
9. “Jerry Maguire”: Renee Zellweger to Tom Cruise: “You had me at hello.”
10. “The Postman”: A blind woman says to Kevin Costner: “You’re a godsend, a savior.” He replies: “No, I’m a postman.”

Jon sent me this. Gotta love public speaking. Nice save by the news woman at the end... Check this video clip out.

If you haven't already, download MSN Messenger v7 Beta. It has a much improved interface and some great new interactive features.

I'm in my hotel room getting ready to go into a big presentation and noticed that I had about a three inch hole in my pants. Great news. Luckily the thread had come out on the seam, so I sewed it back up. I grabbed the sewing kit, sewed it up, and it looks pretty decent, not great, but decent.

Emily brought home an ornament from pre-school that she'd made as a gift in pre-school. She told Cathie "Ms. Barb told me to give these presents to you, but I'm only letting you hang it on the tree until I want it back - because it's so beautiful."

I flew in to Galveston, TX (just outside of Houston) yesterday and it's not quite what I expected. I think Texas, you think warm and dry. It's in the mid-40's and rainy - but I can see palm trees and the ocean from my hotel room window. I once read that there are more churches and more strip clubs per capita than any other city in America. Driving to Galveston through Houston I must have seen 50 strip clubs along the expressway. I saw an interesting example of this dichotemy (good word, eh?) as I drove by a huge billboard for a strip club called "Heartbreakers" and behind it was another billboard that read "Jesus Heals the broken hearted".

image001.jpg

Very interesting article entitled Eminem Is Right out of Policy Review that looks at music today and why it resonates with kids:

In a nutshell, the ongoing adult preoccupation with current music goes something like this: What is the overall influence of this deafening, foul, and often vicious-sounding stuff on children and teenagers? Nonetheless, this is not my focus here. Instead, I would like to turn that logic about influence upside down and ask this question: What is it about today’s music, violent and disgusting though it may be, that resonates with so many American kids?

As it turns out, such an exercise yields a fascinating and little understood fact about today’s adolescent scene. If yesterday’s rock was the music of abandon, today’s is that of abandonment. The odd truth about contemporary teenage music — the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before — is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers...........

Check this out. It's the entire It's a Wonderful a Life movie in 30 seconds re-enacted by rabbits. The next question is... Why?

I'm a huge Donkey Kong fan! This is fun.

Why Jesus Likes Kids:
I think I know what it takes to be socially acceptable, and for some reason I’ve tried to be like that in my relationship with God—prim and proper. Forgetting that before Him I really am just a kid (no matter how old I may dress), in need of His loving help and grace, to the point that maybe I should be quicker and more persistent to ask for it. I’m not pretending to really understand prayer or what it does, but I think it probably involves being more kid-like, even if it annoys me.

This is Elvis... and my nephew Matthew. They both have a lot in common. Except Matthew is not an honorary member of the FBI. And Matthew's not dead. Other than that, lots in common.

These are the masks I brought back from New Orleans for the kids. The tough party was explaining to Emily why she couldn't wear her mask to her pre-school Christmas party Thursday night.

I've been trying out a new photo service called Flickr. It's not your typical picture site, most of which center around selling you photos. This site is around the storage and tagging of pictures for sharing, especially for blogs and e-mail sharing. It integrates in with all of the blog services, hosts the pictures, organizes them and lets you upload them via e-mail - including from cell phones. You can create various style-sheet templates that allow for a very customized look and feel to your blog post.

Here's a good article in Wired Magazine about flickr..

2004_maddie_xmas_tree

2004_maddie_xmas_tree,
originally uploaded by fusionmonkey.

We worked on getting the tree up yesterday. Okay, Cathie worked on getting the tree up, I carried some boxes and a tree into the room. Once Cathie got the lights on, the kids all helped decorate it. Every year they pull out the ugly ornaments that I made when I was a kid and ask why we've got it on the tree. This year was no exception. Emily had a stool and put every ornament within a one foot radius.

Lesson for the day: Just because Nate's seven, doesn't mean he can't hurt me with boxing gloves. A blow to the head with 16oz gloves hurts. In order to make it fair, I get on my knees as we box. Mom's still "helping" us come up with the ground rules for when the guys can use their gloves.

Mike, my son Nate and I went to the Novi Expo Center for the annual computer show. Half the fun of this thing is people watching. You get all kinds at this thing. I needed to pick up some stuff for our home system that kept randomly locking up. I'd tried everything and I finally broke down and bought a new board and CPU. I got a great deal. Mike and I installed it this afternoon and it all worked... well almost... the power light on the front is on when the computer is off and vice versa. But the thing clocks in at 3.3 GHz, all for $99, including the onboard video.

Half of the show was wall to wall computer junk, in the most literal sense. The other half was typical flea market type stuff - fake purses, cheap shoes, stereo systems and more knives and swords than you can imagine. We spent more time messing around with all of the knives and swords than we did looking at computer gear. They had a great deal on boxing gloves, so Nate and I picked up a pair and we've been boxing around the house all day long. I've got a longer reach, but he's at the exact wrong height - so it's even in the end.

One of the people I was with this week had one of these 20 Q games in their car and I played with it non-stop. This thing was borderline creepy. You think of something and it proceeds to ask you 20 questions to which you answer "Yes, No, Sometimes or Unknown". It was almost always right. I guessed stuff like: Soccer Ball, Jaguar, Tree and it nailed it.

Alright, this is something my dad sent me. It's a little corny, but I like the point:

I CORINTHIANS 13 - A CHRISTMAS VERSION a
If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another
cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home and give all
that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me
nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes,
attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata but do
not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.


Love stops the cooking to hug the child. Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband. Love is kind, though harried and tired. Love doesn't envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens. Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way. Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can't. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of love will endure.

I thought this was a great quote:
"The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured."
-C. S. Lewis

I'm in Baton Rogue and I'm still full. After our workshop yesterday, we took our customer out to dinner at Juban's, a famous Creole resturant out here. The people down here are very hospitable to us Yankees and wanted to make sure I tried all of their cuisine. I sat at dinner with my plate of food, surrounded by 8 other smaller plates from our customers who wanted to make sure I had a taste of what they'd ordered. Really tremendous people down here, not quite as laid back as New Orleans, not quite as much debauchery, but a great place. I'm flying back this afternoon.

I got up, worked out, had some meetings and then headed down to the French Market Area to go to Cafe Du Monde. It's a great area with some amazing architecture.

So I went to the original Emril's resturant tonight down here in New Orleans. The service was the best I've ever had and the food was phenomenal. Across the street, they were filming a movie - I can't remember which ones, but it was starring Kevin Spacey. I was with one of our local sales reps, Dee, who grew up in this area and knows everyone. She knows everyone down here, even spends Christmas with the Manning family (ie. Payton, Eli, Archie, etc). On the way out of the resturant, we ran into Wayne Huizenga, founder of Blockbuster video, who said hi to Dee by name. She used to date the guy.

Tomorrow, before we head to Baton Rouge for customer meetings, I'm going to stop by the infamous Cafe du Mond for a Beignets and Cafe o'lait. It's in every movie that takes place in New Orleans - I just can't remember which.

I'm in New Orleans today, Baton Rogue tomorrow. My hotel is right off of Bourbon Street. I had lunch today at one of the best oyster places around, Acme Oyster. I had a po-boy. Check out the menu. They actually have something called a poopa. We're heading to the original Emril's tonight for dinner. Should be good.

My brother Dan turned me on to a great new author, Lee Child. The books have the same character through out all of the - a really cool guy named Jack Reacher. I think there are seven books in all so far. These are books that you cannot put down once you pick them up. The guy reminds me of John Clark in Tom Clancy's novels, but a little more down-to-earth and a little less serious and less psycho. Anyways, very well worth checking them out.

My brother Jon and I were both amazed that Dan would actually reccomend a book, seeing how he barely reads. If you loan Dan a book, you'll get it back in 6 months - maybe. The only time he claims to read is if he's on a plane ride to Korea, and then he supposedly reads 9 books each way. I think he's getting the cliff notes to try and impress Jon and I.

We had our big Dodgeball playoffs tonight and we went from third place to last by losing all but one game! The last game, Will Brown and Jason Monstrola caught everything thrown our way so that we went out big! I think I've finally figured out how to throw the ball so that my arm is usable in the week that follows. Dodgeball starts up again in January, and the movie comes out on DVD tomorrow. Dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge!

I just got a new Uniden TRU8885 cordless phone for about $20. About 10 years ago I bought my cordless phone at Sears for about $150. For some reason, I bought the product protection plan, which was about $25 and is good for 2 years. In my house, the average cordless phone is lucky to make it that long. I bring it back, get a full credit towards a new phone, pay another $20 for the new product protection plan and get the latest, greatest phone. It's one of the few times that the product protection plan has ever really worked for me.

Here are technologies I'm still using after a few weeks:
X1
DirectTV HD Tivo
Firefox
iTunes/iPod
allofmp3.com
Treo 600 (Although I now want a 650 with Bluetooth capabilities).

Great article about the need to know, which I think I suffer from. As I was reading this, I was thinking about all of the different information sources I digest regularly... I love the newspaper I subscribe to three: Wall Street Journal, Detroit News and the South Lyon Herald - and I try and read them cover-to-cover as often as possible. I subscribe to 7 different magazines (Mens Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Money and a few others I can't remember). On top of that, I my computer and my phone push headlines over to me constantly through various blogs and RSS Feeds.

Check out this video from Jeopardy. Ken Jenning's question to the answer is "What is a Ho, Alex?"

According to this article Jesus was spotted in this dental X-Ray.

I found this on Dan's blog regarding U2's new single Vertigo off of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb:
According to this:

"The counting Bono does in the beginning is uno does tres catorce is spannish for one two three fourteen. According to several sources in the U2-Talk mailing list, the album is U2's 14:th album (including Wide Awake in America) and Lillywhite has been involved with U2's first, second, third and now fourteenth album. There have been some debate to which albums to include to get fourteen albums, if the "Best of" or "Wide Awake in America" should be included etc., but nobody knows for sure what Bono is referencing to yet. It might be so he just thought it sounded cool. "

Other sites list the lyrics as the numbers would be "en espanol" not in french. I wondered about the same thing myself and was just makng jokes to my roomie the other day about that.

I was dumping the pictures from the digital camera today and ran across this picture. Occasionally, Emily likes to grab the camera and take all sorts of crazy pictures. You can make up your own story on what Cathie's doing here.

Emily had been telling us about a boy in her pre-school class that she'd been playing with. Apparently the boy's name is cardboard. We got to class and she pointed out cardboard. Apparently, his name is Carter. Having a kid named cardboard seems funny to me.

As I lay sleeping on Saturday morning I heard the kids up and running around. I heard the door open and the kids proclaim "Hey, where did these come from? Let's play manger!" I heard the girls singing Away in a Manger as I faded in and out of conciousness. When I woke up, I found this collection of 2 foot tall figurines. I called the Niemi's and Girard's to find out which it had been. Turns out it was Dan Reynolds.

The three couples got babysitters at 9PM last night and exacted our revenge. It was really pretty elaborate. We decided to decorate Dan's house, in a bad way. We had pink christmas tree lights, huge strands of gaudy pearls and an entire nativity scene linked together by rope which we put up in their pine tree. The lights went over their doorway and bushes. I took part of the manger scene and used Liquid Nail to glue it to one of Dan's landscaping rocks. I'm just not sure that's ever coming off. The costumes? They just seemed funny at the time. Except the clown. The clown always seemed scary. Not funny. Can you guess who that is in the clown? One hint: It's not me.

Ya know, Justin looks pretty creepy here as well. Dan is probably the wrong person to start something like this with. I'm sure he'll have no problem escalating this out of control very quickly.

I went with a friend of mine in my neighborhood, Mark, to the Lions game yesterday. He has great seats. We were about 15 rows back from the field. It was interesting that at the beginning of the game they don't even announce a number of players to avoid the booing. Joey Harrington for one. John Navvarae (ex-U of M Quarterback) was in for Arizona. Did my heart good to see him fail miserably. How many U of M quarterbacks do we really need in the NFL right now anyways?

On Friday night, Brad, Ted and I took Will out for his birthday... At least that was the idea. For whatever reason, he ended up having to work until 9, which got him back to this area closer to 10. We ended up meetnig Will at Ted's house around 10 after the whaler's game and sat around watching Old School.

I just added a cool iTunes plugin that allows my blog to dynamically show what I've been listening to in iTunes. It's called Now Playing and it outputs my iTunes info to XML to which I've got a PHP script that puts both the song name, the image and a link to Amazon to buy the track. Heck, I'm just impressed that I was able to pull all of the pieces together to get this to work.

I've been messing with Audioscrobbler lately. It has plug-ins for both Mac and PC that work with every music player out there. The plug-in uploads a list of the tunes you listen to, compiles it with everyone elses and gives you some very good reccomendations.

A friend of mine, Kirk Vickers, was on the news on Monday night talking about the exercise aspect of the Dance, Dance revolution game. You can read more about it here. He was telling me that at one point during the kid's playing, his heart rate got up to 250/beats per minute... which is a lot.

I was listening to this message by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church on Suffering. There was a part of 2 Corinthians 6 that he read that hit me between the eyes, particularly in light of the stuff my church has been going through for a while now. I sometimes get so discouraged about our church, about where we're at, the people that are being impacted - focused on everything we're not doing instead of what we are doing. This verse just resonated with my heart in such a huge way when I read it.

⁴Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; ⁵when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; ⁶with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; ⁷when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right; ⁸when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ⁹ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; ¹⁰immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

The second part reminded me of a conversation I'd had with a friend of mine on Sunday night. We were talking about how easy it is to get wrapped up in our own worlds, and the best way to get out of our funks can be to focus outside of ourselves. Paul continues on in 2 Corinthians 6:

12We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. ¹³I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Noel's message last week talked about the concept of Open Theism which is basically the. According to this, I'm a Freewill Theist. The first I'd heard of the idea of Open Theism was when I read the book, Letters from a Skeptic by Gregory Boyd
. Great book, but the part that didn't sit with me was the part where he explained his perspective on God's fore-knowledge of the future and free will.