New Digital Camera

A couple years ago I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XTS. At the time, I bought the extended warranty for $99. It seemed like a good idea at the time based on it being a $1,000 camera. The camera seemed to die every time I would go on vacation. I brought it in four times and on the fifth time, they replaced it. They gave me a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XSi.

The new camera is great with a number of great new features. The downside is that I had to buy new memory cards (it takes SD memory cards instead of Compact Flash), new spare batteries and $199 on the new service protection plan. The nice thing about the plan is that it covers accidental (and maybe intentional damage) for four years from today, but it'll probably be worth it in the end. Hey, my $400 plan on a $5000 TV got me a brand new TV a few months ago.

You can tell the mood is gone when....

The last words you want to hear your wife say after coming in from a date:

"Ewww! I thought I was picking up a leaf and just picked up a #$#@ piece of Lola's poop!"

Also, the wrong response to the situation is to bust into laughter. Apparently that makes your wife chase your around with poop on her finger. Not good.

Eli loves his girly drinks

Anne Mulcahy on the Obama Economic Team

Two of my idols (some would say crushes) are on Obama's economic team: Anne Mulcahy (Xerox's CEO) and Warren Buffett. (Hopefully they offset the lunacy of Michigan's Govenor and her failed policies, who is also on the team) I'd heard Anne Mulcahy talk about her personal politics at a Business Week symposium I attended in Manhattan. Regardless of her political views, I hold her in the highest esteem in terms of her ability to lead thorugh economic crisis, as she's done multiple times at Xerox. She understands culture, leadership and transition better than any leader I've seen.

Warren Buffett is an interesting bird. On one hand, he's the wealthiest man in the world with a wealth ranked earlier this year at $62 billion. He's brilliant, humble and frugal. On the flip side, he plans on giving away all of his wealth, with the majority of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He believes the rich should pay more to help those less fortunate. I've read and watched everything I can on the man because his simplification of the business world fascinates me. I also like his view on philantrophy:

I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.

Paul and Jon may hate both of these people, but I respect them both greatly.

Dan and I

My Uncle took this picture when we were kids. Kind of encapsulates our relationship growing up. Much improved now.

Wrestling

Nate started wrestling practice last night. It's his first year and he was a little nervous going into it. He decided that this year instead of playing basketball in the fall he'd wrestle. I wrestled in 7th grade (82lb weight class) on the middle school wrestling team (along with Matt Tomlinson, whose not in this picture).

Nate is one of four kids out of 40 that haven't wrestled before, plus he's one of the smaller guys (73 lbs). I'm so proud of the way Nate is willing to try new stuff like this, even knowing that's it's going to be tough going in the beginning. Wrestling runs a little different than Panthers. It's a team sport where people compete as individuals. Starting in January, they have meets during weekend that they go to. The coaches are there to support them, along with the rest of the team when they're not competing in their own events. Practices are 3 days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for two hours per night. It's great for Nate because it keeps him busy and active, not to mention what he learns from wrestling.

Somewhere over Florida

Best Garbage Arrangement in the Neighborhood

This morning's family service at church

I found this on my pillow tonight

Tiffany's Parking Job on my lawn

Eli and Mini-me at church

Soooo Hyper

Emily (to her friend Kirstin) about our dog Lola:

"Lola is sooo hyper. She's even hyper-alergenic"

Emily Sleeping Over at a the Lanam's

MSU vs. Wisconsin - Interpretive Dance

My brother Jon had seats to the game and every time they played music during time-outs, Jon would get up and dance:

Michigan State vs. Wisconsin

Nate and I went to the MSU vs. Wisconsin game yesterday with one of his football coaches and his son. It was a perfect day for college football. The colors at MSU had turned, it was just cool enough to feel like fall yet sunny enough to not have to wear a jacket.

We had great seats on the North End of the end-zone about the 20th row up. We were right up front to watch Javon Ringer run this one in.

MSU's offense was hurting a bit with Ringer recovering from the flu and Mark Dell injured, but it was still an amazing game to be Nate's first MSU football game ever. The crowd was on it's feet the whole fourth quarter going nuts, causing Wisconsin to take a couple of penalties due to the noise. The place went nuts when Wisconsin's coach drew penalties for his sideline behavior.

Winning the game with seven seconds left put the crowd over the top. There were high-fives and conversations with total strangers.

Beth is Famous!

My sister-in-law Beth is famous. The local news did a clip on her as a working Mom. For the record, Beth does not actually do her own children's hair. She has people to do that. Skip to about 1:30 in the video and you'll see Beth (and Jon in the background).

Em and Grandma, asleep by the fire

Tuesday Night Lights

Nate's team had a playoff game on Tuesday night. It was freezing cold, snowing at one point, but the best game of the year. They played one of the other teams in the Panther organization in their division (3 divisions - Fresman, JV, Varsity x 5 Teams per division). They played great, but lost 13-14, really giving it away with a couple of turn-overs and a pretty bad call by a ref.

I am normally the guy taking pictures, but it was really too dark, so I brought out my video camera. I happened to capture this video of Nate making a touch-down saving tackle. He's #20 in this video coming up the sideline to make the tackle after the guy in front of him misses.

This was a great season. Nate grew and learned a ton. He improved his knowledge and skills in football and learned more and more about what it means to be a part of a team, something larger than himself. He learned about commitment, learned to love the game of football even more, he learned about leadership and helping the younger guys on the team. I'm so proud of Nate and the effort and talent he showed this year.

Emily amusing herself

Emily rearranged things on our fridge and thought this was the
funniest thing she'd ever seen.

Choclates on our Pillows

Over the past couple of weeks, Maddie has been secretly leaving
choclates and notes on mine and Cathie's pillows. Last night we struck
gold with me getting a full size Hershey Bar and Cathie gettig a full
size Twix. She never called attention to it, just doing it quietly
behind-the-scenes.

My Mom used to leave mints on Cathies pillow from the Grand Hotel when
we would stay at their house.

Panther Banquet

We had Nate's Football banquet on Sunday. There were a zillion people there with such a huge team. The coaches spoke and they handed out trophies to kids.

This was such a cool year for Nate in football. Last year was learning everything from scratch. Being a new guy last year and one of younger guys, he would play rarely, and even then only at cornerback. This year, Nate went in to the season in fantastic shape with a lot of the skills already down, including blocking and tackling. He played with such a great intensity and we even saw a positive impact from his ADD meds on him from a team sports standpoint.

He moves up to Varsity next year, with the 7th and 8th graders. I think the running back weight limit was 140 and the lineman limit was 160 lb in the JV league Nate plays in. (Nate weighs 73 lbs). Next year, the guys are huge. Seriously, huge and fast. Nate's just hoping he hits a growth spurt. I remember wrestling in the 82 lb weight class in 7th grade, so hopefully it's not dependent on my genes.

Nate's Big Game!

Nate's team had their last regular season game on Saturday evening. The game was during the MSU/U of M game, which stunk, not to mention the fact that it started an hour late. I was able to sit in my car listening to the game on the radio while trying to figure out how to listen to the game live via my iPhone. I ended up not listening to the 2nd half of the game and plugged my ears every time they announced the score.

Nate had a huge game this week. He had some huge tackles and blocks (as you can see #20 in the above two pictures) not to mention his big reception in the 4th quarter. To understand why making a big catch is a big deal in this league, you have to understand that the passing game is almost non-existent, much like field goals and kicked PATs (point after touchdown). Most of the completions are quick slants without too many big passes or many YACs (yards after catch). Nate caught a huge catch with a great run afterwards which just made the game for him. When they annoucned his name for the reception, all of the parents sitting with me went nuts, not to mention his coaches and teammates ont he sidelines afterwards. I was beaming!

I'm proud of Nate and his contribution on the team no matter what, but this was just one of those big, beaming, proud Dad moments that I savored. Did I get any pictures of it? Unfortunately, no. The lighting stunk in the Hartland stadium so I didn't get any pictures in the second half.

Nate's team finished the season with only one win. Not good by any means, but not as horrible when you think that they had 31 kids (a huge team to manage), 11 of whom had never played before and 20 of the 31 are in 5th grade. It'll be a great team next year as Nate moves up into Varsity.

Maddie's cheer/pom squad did a great job, with their last game of the year. In the picture on the right, they were doing a cheer and go the crowd into it, which they loved. They're never quite sure what to do when the crowd starts cheering back, so typically they stay on with the same cheer over and over, until the play starts again. In the whole season, Maddie never complaiend about practice, cheering or the games. She really loved it, which might be explained by her love of performing in front of any group of people.

Ebony and Ivory

Flying Pumpkin Guts

We carved the pumpkins tonight that my Dad and Judy brought us. Nate decided that he really wanted nothing to do with the whole slimy process, so Maddie, Em, Cathie and I dug in. Maddie and Em cleaned out the pumpkin seeds and then Cathie scraped the pumpkins clean enough so you could perform surgery on them.

Not really sure what Maddie's doing here. We debated for a while whether Maddie looked more like Gollum (from Lord of the Rings) or Darby the House Elf (from Harry Potter) in the picture on the right.

Things got dirty after a bit as we started playing with the pumpkin guts. Cathie and Maddie started tossing them around and it turned into a full-on pumpkin gut throwing contest.

I'm not sure if anyone really wins in one of these battles - except for me, who took the pictures. This one is worth a thousand words.

This made my week

I got a message on Facebook from a kid in a youth group I worked with Mike Thompson at Everett High School in Lansing back in 1993 from a kid named Shane. The message read:

Do you remember talking to me with Mike about my Christian walk? You told me I needed to get things straight with God or I was going to have a difficult time in college....well, you were right Dave. Now, I am a middle school teacher, and lead a Christian youth group before school. I give talks like the one you gave me all the time. Thanks for making a difference in my life. I know, you probably thought I wasn't really listening. but I got your message, sometimes, it just takes a long time to sink in.

The talk he's referring to was one that my friend Mike and I gave him one night on one of our Florida trips. It was a very frank (to put it lightly) talk that I was pretty sure went right over his head. It was three chairs and a bright light, kind of a mafia style interrogation.

Working in youth ministry I've come to learn that it's all about taking a big picture view, especially with junior high kids. I'm constantly amazed at the impact that stuff we did 10 or 12 years ago has had on kids today. You never know, one of those kids who griped about going to your youth group may just end up the wife of the youth pastor at your church (Kasey).

The Great Poker Beat-Down

We did something tonight that we haven't done in a while. We went over to Bob's to play cards. Bob's basement is nick-named the club-house, because it's the greatest basement known to man. He's got full-size arcade games, actual vegas slot-machines, beautiful big-screen TV, a full-service tequila bar and a fully stocked cabana outside for when we get bored.

We hung out and played cards, and at one point we all tried on Joe's Halloween costume. If you look at any of the rest of the guys, you'd know immediately that he's going as Slash, the guitarist from Gun's and Roses. If you looked at Will, you'd think he was going as Hagrid from Harry Potter.

We hung out and played cards, listened to music and caught up on life. The illustrious William Brown made the trek from all the way from Lansing to see his posse (Will grew up in Sexton, so everything for him is very much a Boys 'n the Hood movie).

I went on early in the first round of poker so I could catch up with Will, only to DESTROY Eli and Jeff in the second round - taking them BOTH out in one fell swoop. They explained to me that my final hand was the stuff that legends are made of - Chris Moneymaker style. They both committed to writing a ballad about my victory, though I'm doubtful it will ever really happen. Eli and Jeff both play a lot of poker, so to beat them so harshly was kind of awkward for me. They tell me on a regular basis how good they are, so I felt bad to publicly embarrass them both like this. I think I learned a valuable lesson in all of this. Never underestimate how much better I am in cards than Eli.

Last Day of Practice

Yesterday was the last day of Panthers practice. Since the end of June we've been going non-stop and Thursday was the end of practice. We've got a game on Saturday and the league tournament next week. If we win Tuesday, we keep playing.

Tomorrow's game takes place during the MSU/U of M game. I'm Tivo'ing the game, but I know I'll end up finding out the score somehow. I guess I know that I'm a Dad when I rather be watching my son play football and my daughter cheer than see MSU destroy U of M.


After practice, the guys went out to McDonalds to hang out. I'm impressed with what a great group of guys they are and what a nice set of parents they have. I ended up sitting at the "Mom Table" hanging out and talking Mom talk with the other Panther Moms as the fellas ate their burgers.

Why I Love to See U of M Lose

I read a quote from Mike Hart, Michigan's running back that epitomizes the additude of just about every Michigan grad and Michigan fan I know. Hart's arrogance is representative of the whole Michigan ethos and snobbery. Hart is quoted today as saying about MSU:

"They'll always be second to us whether they beat us or not. They're always going to have to fight that they're not Michigan. They're always going to be in Michigan's shadow. As far as ann Arbor goes, compared to East Lansing, Michigan compared to Michigan State, Michigan is the better school, and that's just not me talking."

This is a large part of the reason I never hire Michigan grads. They all walk around with this chip on their shoulder, believing they are better than anyone else. This is also part of the reason why most state fans I know not only want to see Michigan State win, but see Michigan lose, and humiliate themselves, as they're doing this season.

Maddie and Dave at the photo booth