Cat has to Wii

Odd little Emily

I came into Em's room last night to find her sitting in a doll crib, wearing this odd hat and reading a book. She keeps it interesting, I guess.

5 Reasons

Emily went to school yesterday wearing her "Top 5 reasons why my Mom is the best". She came home wearing it a little differently. Her teacher (and our family friend) added her own top 5 list. The Top 5 Reasons why My Teacher is the best:

1. She lets me do lots of reading and writing.
2. She lets me play with Nutty the Squirrel (a squirrel that comes to their classroom window, and according to Sheri, must play in Emily's hair at recess based how it looks coming back into class.)
3. She comes over for dinner
4. She loves my piggytails
5. She always makes me laugh
   

I guess I haven't seen Emily wear a "Top 5 reasons my Dad is the best" shirt yet, but then again, I don't do the shopping. Seems a little narcissistic of Cathie. Does she really expect people to believe that Em picked this shirt out? Seems more like a cry for help.

Scancafe

I'm very meticulous about my digital pictures - how I store them, categorize them and back them up. I've got them stored on three separate systems within my home, and then backed up off-site using the online backup tool Mozy Backup. With my digital pictures, we're able to look at them all the time via my Mac Mini connected to my HDTV in a rotating slide-show. We've got a million film pictures that we never really look at and that I would have to save in the event of a fire (way before my cat). I went through about 19 months and extracted the negatives from the pictures (about 500 negative sheets @ 5 pictures each) and I'm going to have them scanned in by this service. It works like this: You send them the pictures, they clean them, scan them and them put them online for review. You select the pictures online, only paying for the pictures you want (minimum 50% of the pictures) and they send you a DVD with the pictures and the negatives back. Hopefully this works. I'd looked into buying a slide scanner, but the the idea of scanning thousands of slides isn't as much fun as it sounds. This ends up costing about the same amount, without much work on my side.

Red Wings Game with the Rays and Schultzs

The Rays invited the Schultz's and Cathie and I out to the Wings game. Aside from Cathie jumping turnstiles in front of the police in her effort to get on the People Mover and Dana and Eli taking off ahead of us, it was a great night. Bob's company shared a suite with the retired Red Wings enforcer Joey Kocur. It was packed, so we spent a lot of time at a friend of Bob's suite which had a very nice fully stocked bar and a huge spread of food. It was a fun group of people and we laughed a lot and really didn't end up watching that much of the game. The Wings got up 2-0 in the first couple of minutes, but couldn't hold on, losing 3-2 against Chicago. A huge thanks to Tiffany for babysitting at the last second and watching all six kids so we could go out and have a great time.

Great Saturday

On Friday Nate and his team rode in the Homecoming Parade. While not quite as eclectic as the South Lyon Pumpkinfest parade, it consisted of every club at the high school except the computer club.

It started off a cold day at 41 degrees when Nate and I left for his football game against Hartland. It warmed up a little and the team ended up playing great today, winning the game 32-18. For the first time, our passing game really worked, which changed everything and opened up the running game for us. Our offensive line did a great job protecting our QB, giving him plenty of time to throw.

After the game, Nate, my Dad and I headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. I caught a great two hour nap and then got ready to be productive. The girls ended up having sleep-overs, so Nate and I made it a guys night. We played Halo 3 on Xbox Live remotely with some of the guys on his team and his Dad. We played Dads vs. kids in team slayer and just barely won. We made pizza rolls and ended up watching the last movie in our "Guy's Football Flicks" with the movie The Replacements.

Tomorrow we're getting together at the garage with a bunch of guys from Nate's team for a video game tournament. Should be fun.

What time is it?

Whenever I travel, I go through unnatural acts to stay at a Hilton property. I've got diamond status and they treat me well. One of the things I love about Hilton's are there alarm clocks. They're big, they're easy to see and almost impossible to screw up. They're so good that you can actually buy them online, and I probably would consider it - until today.

Apparently, you can't change the time on these without a screwdriver and a PHd. I was heading to bed, looked over and noticed the time was wrong. I went to set it and couldn't figure it out. I called the front desk with a dumb question, and they told me they'd have to send maintenance down to set my clock. I explained that I was in bed and it might be easier to just share with the secret code with me to change the time. The maintenance guy explained that you need a screwdriver. He came down and it took him almost ten minutes to change the time. Guess I'm not buying one of these.

After re-reading this, I'm thinking this could have been one of my least-interesting posts ever.

Pasta Bar

I'm in New Jersey for a couple of days, and for dinner we went to the Mahwah Bar and Grill for dinner. On Tuesdays they have a Pasta Bar. The Pasta Bar consists of one guy and a zillion ingredients. This fella has ADD and uses it to it's full potential. The pasta bar starts with 30 different ingredients you can choose from, combined with 30 different sauces and five different kinds of pasta. He has 12 different custom pasta pans cooking at once and moves them all over as he goes, keeping each one straight with the exact right sauce and topping. The place is kind of like a Mongolian Barbecue, but with pasta. Apparently, New Jersey does have something good to offer the world.

Why I love working with junior high kids

What you're seeing here is the result of one junior high boy thowing a a grapefruit size ball of hitchhiker prickers in another guys hair. The thrower is in the background of the picture doing the victory dance.

Painful Monday Morning

This morning's Triad workout started off pretty normal. We warmed up and then did some boxing - hitting the heavy bag for a while. We then moved in to a new exercise, apparently based on playing with dogs. The drill goes like this. One guy stands in the front of the field and chucks tennis balls just far enough out of reach that you have to sprint for it. The goal is to grab it one bounce and throw it back, just as another launches in the air. It's a great workout and you're running and sprinting non-stop, but it feels like your doing it with a purpose. After the second round, one of the other guys who was working out with us ended up on all fours. This kind of a rite-of-passage at the morning workout - we've all pushed ourselves to the point of throwing up and passing out. It was a great cardio workout and a nice change of pace, until we changed it up a little bit. The final round was about trying to jump and dive and move in order to grab the tennis ball before it hit the ground. I moved, but my ankle didn't. I'm sitting at my desk with a bag of ice on my ankle, trying to figure out how I'm going to travel to New York tomorrow with a significant limp.

Update: Kirk's shared with me that the latest theory behind healing an ankle injury is to immediately walk on it and exercise it. I spent the day doing ice soaks (which hurt like nothing else) and walking around on it. I was amazed at how much better it's feeling already. Based on how I performed in today's exercise, I'm pretty sure I'll never be a wide-receiver in the NFL.

One Year

It seems like just yesterday and a long time ago that my Mom died. Even going through and looking at these pictures I sit back and smile at the memories I have locked away. The first picture is where Dan and I were visiting Mom in the hospital during one of her first stays there. The second is after I gave my Mom a very ugly picture of me with the same facial expression I've got. The picture below is where the girls made a wonderful scrapbook for my Mom of her whole life and my brothers and I posed with her as if it were ours. The "rabbit ears" is such a great example of how much fun my Mom was and how as much as she would roll her eyes at our sense of humor, she still got it and was the source of some it. The rabbit fur jacket goes back almost thirty years when her and Susan had these matching jackets. She still was willing to laugh at her self. The Christmas picture is such a great example of how important traditions were to my Mom. During every get together, she would make sure we got some kind of picture showing the progression of the family, always one with the grandkids. She had no shame in getting a picture. She would bribe, but never raise her voice at the grandkids, no matter how obtuse they were being.

We talk about my Mom all the time. The sharpest pain is gone, focused mostly with great memories, but I miss her a ton. We talk a lot about what Mom would think of a given situation or how much she would enjoy a certain food. My heart is heavy today thinking back to last year, in the last week with my Mom. I video-taped my Mom telling stories and my Mom spending the last days talking to each of her kids, grandkids and friends as she said goodbye. Even a year later, I haven't been able to bring myself around to watching the video.

I'm Back

I was able to get back on Thursday night from New York instead of Friday. Northwestwanted to charge me about $500 for the change of ticket and then I explained to the agent how Northwest had stuck it to me me pretty regularly over the past month, stranding me and making me late for various meetings. He got me the ticket. Unfortunately, all of the other guys I work with out of Michigan weren't able to negotiate the same kind of deal and ended up staying over one more night.

On Friday morning Cathie and went out to breakfast at Angelos in Ann Arbor, home of the greatest eggs benedict and deep fried french toast. Nate and I went out and picked out Gabe's birthday present while the girls went shopping for Emily's friend's birthday present. It took Nate and I about ten minutes and the girls almost two hours. Gabe's an easy kid to buy for. We just have to think what Nate would like and it pretty much transfers over. We got him a hunting-slingshot, ammo, candy and a Spiderman shirt. Nate and I came back and played some more Halo 3 online and in cooperative mode. We're both hooked on this game. On a regular basis i'm just in awe of the quality of the graphics and gameplay. For the record, I smoked Nate five games to nothing in Slayer mode.

Maddie and Em are marching in the Pumpkinfest parade with their Girl Scout and Brownie troops. We've got the State game on at noon and then Nate's football game later today. My brother Jon and his girls are in town and coming to Nate's game as well. After the game we're heading to Lansing to hang out with my family and remember the one year anniversary of my Mom's death.

Table Hockey

Between meetings we came up with a game involving sliding a water bottle across the table into the cable holes in the table. It ended with us all throwing money into a pot and taking turns trying to win the whole kitty. We had people cheering and yelling, even the Canadians.

Tony is the man

As our flight last week out of Little Rock was delayed due to a mechanical problem, Bill and I hung out in the bar waiting. The bar
was filled with people bummed out about the fact that they weren't
getting home. Tony the bartender was the happiest guy you've ever
seen. The guy was a light in a dark room, bringing a smile to the face
of every customer he talked to. He was a great example to me of what
Jesus meant when he called his followers to be salt and light. It
reminded me of how people can take whatever job they have and change the world for good.

Dove Evolution

Wow. Cathie forwarded me this powerful message for parents of girls.

Baily the Guinea Pig

Our guinea pig Baily died yesterday as Em was with him. She noticed him breathing very heavily and he died before her eyes. Em is our lover of all animals and she's taking this pretty hard. On another sad note, my brother Dan's dog was put to sleep yesterday.

Grandpa's Visit to the Stylist

My Dad stopped by on Saturday afternoon to hang out for a few. During his visit, he was lucky enough to have Maddie give him a quick make-over, including curlers and brush (it looked like the guinea pig's brush to me, but I didn't have the heart to tell my Dad that). My sister Susan used to do this to him quite a bit when she was younger and I think he's grown to like it. Pay special attention to the mohawk on the right. It's a good look for my Dad.

Big Shooter

This is my nephew Drew's victory pose in front of his lucky tree. He led his team to victory on Saturday with three goals, giving them a 5-1 victory!

JV Gold Panthers vs. Fowlerville

It's a blast to watch Nate keep improving every week at football. He had his best week ever this week with a few big tackles, including the one pictured on the right as he's chasing down a guy heading towards the end-zone. Cathie's Dad was there to capture the moment on video. Cathie's Mom is over in Japan and not able to make the commute back for his games, so I wanted to put it online for her (and to brag about my son as I'm a very proud Dad). They lost the game by a touchdown and had one kid taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

Kevin, Sooze and the kids made it up for the game as well. Maddie and Em are proud of their brother, but only have so much tolerance for football. Coloring is a nice alternative. We had perfect weather for the game. Only three games left until the end of the season.

Paintball

We had a beautiful day for our 15th annual Crossroads Youth Group Paintball outing. What made it even better is that for the second year, Nate's been old enough to play as well with me. After doing this for so many years with other people's kids, it's so much fun being out there with Nate and doing this as a father-son activity. The best part for me is working with the fifth and sixth graders who play. They're all new enough and scared enough that they just need a little coaching and direction. We formed an unstoppable mob. Nate and I ended up with lots of welts, which Nate wears like badges of courage. We had a huge group, around 40, and did the event with two other youth groups in the area, giving us over 70 people total in our group.

Cathie was over at the Girards making Apple Cider, so I helped Nate pick out his clothes for paintball - trying to find some thick enough pants and shirt that might minimize the pain. Apparently I picked out his brand-new school shirt and only pair of dress pants. Nate was kind enough to try and take all the blame for me, but Cathie somehow re-directed it back to me. Oops.

My brother Jon is odd

Just like in US Weekly, Jon is asking you:

"Who wore it best?"

Is this animal cruelty or just the beginning of raising a kid just like Jon?

Stuck in Little Rock

Northwest finally cancelled our flight and we headed to downtown Little Rock to our hotel. It's a nice downtown and they've just gotten done celebrating the Little Rock Nine's fiftieth anniversary. We found this sign at the resturant where we ate.

Mud Bowl

Jason and I were trying to demonstrate how to play leap-frog in the mud as one of the games. Instead, it looks like I'm delivering some kind of odd choreographed dance with another man's head up my butt.

Bill Belanger's Shoes

I'm in Hot Springs with Bill and he was sporting an interesting foot wear choice.

Underwear

For 35 years of my life, the tag of my underwear has always been in the
back. My wife bought me new underwear with the tag in the front.
Apparently it's going to take me another 35 years to get used to this as
I've put them on backwards at first every time I've worn them over the
past 6 months.

Bad Dad?

I took Nate out of school early today to go and play Halo 3 with me. Probably not going to earn me the "Good Parent of the Year Award" unless kids are passing them out. We went over to the garage where there were a bunch of other high school kids from our youth group whose parents had done the same thing. Go figure.

Jail Bird

Cathie had to pick Emily up from school to take her to the doctor today. As they were leaving the school, Cathie remembered that she'd left something in the office. She ran inside to get it and came back to find Emily curled up on the floor of the van.

Cathie: "Emily, why are you laying on the floor?"
Emily: "Because I didn't want you to go to jail."
Cathie: "Go to jail?"
Emily: "Yeah. For leaving me in the van by myself."

Halo - the Review

Nigel got here about 12:30 with Halo 3. We hooked it up and played two player for a while. The graphics, textures and shading are amazing. The new features rock. Haven't played the story-mode yet.

Halo 3

I had originally pre-ordered Halo 3 from Amazon, assuming they'd ship it early so that I would receive the game on the day it was released, like they did with Harry Potter.

Instead, I met Jason and Nigel up at Game Stop, took advantage of Jason's Barnes and Nobles discount and pre-ordered it. Nigel's picking it up at midnight and dropping it off at my house. The countdown is on.

Em and Her Teacher

Emily's teacher happens to be a good friend of ours. We had her over for dinner tonight, as we have many times, but this is the first time she was here as Emily's teacher. It was the equivalent of having Barry Sanders come over and have dinner with me. She was pure celebrity. Remember back to what a big deal it was when you saw your teacher in a non-school setting. Em's teacher has known her since she was a baby and it's funny to see how quiet Em is in her class, even though she's known her forever.

As she was enjoying an adult beverage, Emily asked her, "Ms. X, while you're drinking, could you play Go-Fish with me." Later as she was eating, Em said quietly, "Wow Ms. X, you must have been really hungry."

Em and Baily

I came outside yesterday after watching the Lions get destroyed and I found Emily laying on the lawn in front of the house, with Baily the guinea pig on her back. No idea what she was doing, but the girl sure loves her animals.

How long is too long?

Very good article on the question How long do I wait to buy new technology?

Mudbowl 2007

We had an the perfect storm for this year's tenth annual Crossroads Mudbowl. We had perfect weather, a great team of guys that did the leg work and setup, a ton of kids and great mud. We played steal the bacon, link tag, four-corner crossing and caterpillar racing followed by a team painting contest.

I stayed pretty mud-free until the end when the 8th graders tag-teamed me and tried to take me down. Nate started off playing and was joined at the end by Cathie and Maddie. Nate brought his buddy Austin to play.

Cathie, Jess and Jen all got into it - and Maddie took multiple dunkings from Tiff and Jess both. The highlight was watching Jess and Tifff deliver regular beatings to each other in the pit.


Since I was out of town last week, they were kind enough to move it to this week so I could be a part of it. Our Pastor Joe explained in Church today that he had a very, very somber and important family event that he had to be at and could not make the Mud Bowl. I was never aware that your team NHL Fantasy Hockey Draft qualified as a somber family event.

You can see the rest of the pictures on our youth group's site here.

Panthers vs. Brighton Game

Nate's team lost to the Brighton Bulldogs 0-19. These guys were impressive, including the 6'3" sixth grader with a 50" vertical, as pictured on the left. These guys seemed to play dirty, including the giant #54 pictured in both of these shots. How many personal fouls can you see wrong with the picture on the right?

Nate's been getting a lot more playing time and I've been getting out on the field taking more and more pictures, including a couple like this one below where I almost got drilled.

The coach continues to do a great job with these boys, knowing how to motivate them and work on the fundamentals. Brighton traditionally has a very good team and the silver lining in this cloud was that they beat us by less than they'd beaten the other teas.