Christmas Eve, Part 1

This was an interesting year for the Kurt family in terms of our traditions. Our holiday traditions have always been a cornerstone of our family. My Mom, who died a little over two years ago, loved tradition more than anyone I knew and she instilled that love for tradition in her those around her.

Since my Mom's death and my Dad's re-marriage, we've been figuring out about a whole new set of changes as we blend the two families together. My Dad's wife has three kids, each with their own kids and we're trying to figure out how to make things work together. Things haven't been exactly smooth, but we're learning as we go.

This year we changed things up a bit to accommodate everyone involved. In the past, we've had a big Christmas dinner at my parents, headed to church together and then spent the night and opened presents on Christmas morning, with lots of games, food and drinks in between. This year was a bit different.

This year Dan started a new tradition of having a booger (or a feather) in his hair. Susan, Madeline and Dan decided that a new tradition should involve leg warmers or trucking your pants into your socks.

Jon tried to change the tradition from Prime Rib to ham. He resorted to multiple lies and deceptions, to the point that tears formed on a baby jesus statue at the vatican one of us actually received an angelic visitation from my Mom telling us that Jon was full of crap (this happens more often than you know). In the end, my Dad made some ham. You can see from the picture just how much Jon ate.

We had a delicious dinner that involved some amazing food and very fun pictures. At one point as we were taking the pictures, Ben reached over and honked Susan's boob.

We have a number of odd parts of our family tradition, most are only funny to the family. One involves joking about Dan and Kris not staying over for Christmas Eve, which they haven't done in 13 years. Every year, we pretend like this i the first year it's ever happened. Every year, I do the dishes after dinner and Jon and Dan make the comment, "Look, Dave's doing the dishes for the first time ever." This time, as Judy was helping me, my Dad tried to jump in the picture and take the credit for it. It was sad. You can tell he's very out of his element.

We had some fun games as well, including our traditional Festivus feats of strength. Matthew got this Karate practice board, which simluates breaking 2 wooden boards. We all took turns practicing on the board, seeing which parts of our bodies we could use to break the board. I found that by punching it, you could really damage your fist.

Libby got this cool lock practice set, which the adults created a blind-folded version of the game. I had an embarrassing 1 min 10 seconds while Dan got it in 40 seconds.

One interesting learning experience was around our traditions and how they translate to the kids. It seems that the kids are learning about the traditions, some good, some bad. One of our family traditions is to always take family pictures. We also tend to like to try and jump into other people's pictures. This is okay when it's four of us. It doesn't translate well into 14 nieces and nephews. While we took our family pictures, every one of the kids tried to jump into the pictures. Most of our family pictures from this Christmas have someone else's kid in them. It was funny for the first 20 pictures.

One thing that was evident in our tradition is how much everyone loves to spend time together. The kids just love spending time together. I love spending time with my nieces and nephews, my brothers and sisters and the feeling is mutual. The joy radiates from the room as the kids spend time together. Whether it's Matthew being led around by his cousin Ben and loving every minute of it, or Dan and Kevin receiving hair make-overs from Maddie and Steve-O. We just love being together as a family.

Our Christmas Eve time is so important together that we decided to change it up. After hanging at my Dad's for a bit, we headed over to our house to change and head to church at Crossroads.
This was an experience it itself. Having always been in a high school until this year, this was the first year we could have a christmas eve service with candles.

Christmas Eve service is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. I have so many great memories of going to my Mom's church. I love the traditional Christmas Eve service with Carols and my family. I remember loving getting dressed up and sitting next to my Uncle Bill and singing my heart out. We make the same jokes every year ("Are the Barclay boys going to sing this year?") and blow out each other's candles during the candle light service. My Mom was always so proud of us and everyone of her grandchildren.



The Kurt family took up the first 2 1/2 rows of the service with a standing room only crowd. Maddie and Emma did the Christmas reading and were wonderful. Because of the packed house, the kids all set up front on the ground and loved it. Joe did a great job of gearing his message towards the kids and adults. My family was very well behaved, except during the candle-light service. The kids have caught on to our tradition of blowing each others candles out, and at one point as Joe walked by, Gabe tried to blow his candle out, which cracked me up.

The evening was different, but still great in a lot ways. You can see more of the pictures here.

Christmas Eve Service

The Kurt family took up two rows at our church's first ever Christmas
Eve service.

OMG we're not BFFs anymore!

I just read this article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal entitled, OMG, We're not BFFs anymore? Getting un-friended online stings.

Unfriending online "friends" is emerging as the latest offense in the world of social networking. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow people to build personal profiles with photos, videos and up-to-the-minute updates about their lives, then to share them with select users, or "friends." The process has even turned the word "friend" into a verb, as in, "so-and-so just friended me on Facebook." Users agonize over whom to friend (your mom? your ex-boyfriend? your boss?), and worry about whether their friend requests will be accepted or ignored, lingering in cyberspace in what some dub "friend purgatory."

I found it funny that this was front page WSJ material. The article was nothing new or amazing, but I could relate to not having someone accept my friend request or finding that I was no longer friends with someone online and racking my brain to figure out why. My brother Jon has this happen on a regular basis.

Christmas Eve-Eve - Our Family Christmas

We celebrate our family Christmas on Christmas Eve-Eve morning. It gives the us a chance to have our own small Christmas as a family and hang out during the day and enjoy the presents. We normally do a nice dinner in the afternoon.

Amongst other things, Emily got a a giant jar of pickles and a Nintendo DS.

Maddie got a Karaoke machine and a ton of clothes (note that leg warmers and tight jeans are back in).

Nate got a real electric guitar and amp along with Rock Band 2 with drums and microphone. This is a blast. I'd played it briefly at the Rays and watched as their whole family would rock out on this game. It was fun watching all three kids play and I can imagine that tomorrow night, my siblings and I will show the rhythm, voice and coordination that some consider special.

We've got a nice dinner planned, followed by a visit to my Dad's house tomorrow.

Greatest White Elephant Gift Ever?

I was very excited about my white elephant gift this year. Last year, we started a tradition to do a white elephant gift drawing amongst my siblings. Everyone but Kevin was very creative last year (he gave a gift card) and this year we tweaked it a bit further. My gift was to make a candy necklace. I bought 25 different $1 boxes of candy at Wal-Mart and planned to thread a string through the corners of the boxes, making a huge necklace. Genius, right?

As I talked to my siblings this weekend, it turns out that at some point they canceled this whole deal and never told anyone (well, anyone but Cathie and I, because we seemed to be the only ones out of the loop). If you see me randomly giving people consisting of boxes of candy, you'll understand why.

Christmas Eve-Eve-Eve?

The kids got to open one of their presents last night: their Christmas Pajamas! It's a fun part of our tradition that they expect. The girls then proceeded to do each others hair.






Nate even tried to get in on the action:

I've had some recent conversations via e-mail with Cathie's Uncle David, who has spent multiple tours in Iraq and has a view into the war and the people that I don't have. It's been a good conversation and made me think. I believe at the core that President Bush is a great man. I know a lot of people will laugh at me for saying this. I believe that he is a President who is not swayed by what is popular but sticks to his convictions, even though I don't always agree with them or see the consistency. I read this great article in the WSJ today entitled The President Comforts a Marine Mom. I think it's a great view in to the heart of President Bush. William McGurn starts with this:

In my years in the West Wing, I read many horrible things about this president. Some were by former military officers who ought to know better, especially the one who accused him in print of not caring about our war dead. More frequently, legitimate differences over the war led some to indulge in hateful accusations about the man who led it. Few came from people like Julie, who spoke directly with the president about a subject painful for both: the brave young lieutenant who was born to one and laid down his life under the command of the other.

The article talks about Bush's extended conversation with the soldier's Mom and the burden of being the one who sends others sons and daughters to die. I can't imagine carrying that around. As I think of Christmas and the redemption that Christ brings to me and to the world, I continued to read this:

These days our public discourse finds it difficult to handle such talk, and any presidential mention of God is cheapened into a caricature of a man who launches wars on direct orders of the Almighty. In a particularly moving moment, the president spoke of what he did pray for, including the hope that through this "opaque piece of glass," as he put it, people might catch a glimpse of what Christ wants us to be.

That too can be ridiculed, but in fact and in context it was a statement of humility -- a completely orthodox acknowledgment of the responsibility each Christian has to live a life that bears witness to the redemptive love we trace back to that Bethlehem manger.

Merry Christmas!

Oh the times they are a changing...

I read two papers front to back ever day: The Wall Street Journal and the Detroit News. I love waking up in the morning, especially on the weekend when I have time to savor it, and sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy the paper in peace and quiet. At the bare minimum, I read the first section of the WSJ, especially the editorial page, the Detroit News first section and sports section.

Because of tough times, The Detroit News is limiting home delivery during the week. I'm not sure exactly when this will start, but they're going to only deliver it at home a couple of days a week. They're trying to shift people to an online medium, which will be interesting. As much as I love my Google News Reader, I still can't tear myself away from having the physical paper to sit down with.

Christmas Preparation

On Sunday night we went to our church's Christmas play. It's something we've traditionally done as a Christmas eve-eve service since we didn't have a building in the past. With a building, we're now able to do multiple showings of the play and then have an actual Christmas Eve service, complete with real, live fire (candles).

After church, Tiff, Kasey and Katie came over to help Cathie wrap Christmas presents. Fez and I sat and watched as the girls did a great job of wrapping way more presents than we thought we had. Fez and I agreed that we would both have switched into "sloppy wrapping mode" after about the second gift. The girls kept it up until about 1:30am and headed home.

Afterward, Cathie and I talked about how lucky we are that our daughters have girls like these three in their lives. As a Dad, it's nice to know that my girls have role models aside from just their Mom and Aunts that exemplify what it looks like to be a woman who follows Jesus passionately. Their love of the poor and hurting, their examples around chastity and purity and showing how to walk the fine line to understand and enjoy the world we live in while pursuing the kingdom of God. People like Jess, Kasey and Tiff have really been like big sisters to the girls and and even though they've just recently gotten to know Katie, she's a fantastic role model for my daughters as well.

This is part of why I love being a part of the same church family for almost 15 years. Kasey and Tiff were girls who grew up in my youth group and babysitting my kids and have now become extended members of my family. Katie is currently in our high school youth group, one of my junior high leaders and a babysitter. This is the kind of church I think of as I read the book of Acts. A church where families were larger than just familial boundaries and extended beyond. One of my favorite parts of having these girls babysit is being able to hang out and talk to them afterward. They have a pretty honest view into how we parent and live as a family, for better or for worse. As they've become an extended part of our family and rubbed off in a great way on my kids, my hope is that we can do the same for them and their future families.


Even Lola got in on the wrapping fun. Tiff tried to hold our giant half puma/half cat. The thing is ginormous and has earned the nickname (amongst others, like giant mean cat) "Fatso" or "Fat Cat". It pales in comparison to Dana's cats, most of whom are no less than 40 lbs and have bum legs.

Long time, No see

I met up with a friend of mine who was in town for the week to grab a cup of coffee. I'll call him Paco. I hadn't seen him in probably a year, but he's one of those friends that when you sit down with, you immediately connect with again. Paco has seen some pretty tough times in his life and had pretty everything taken away from him. He's a guy who is wired to encourage others and some times needs to be encouraged, and I've been had the privilege of being one of those people for him.

We met at the Panera, the sight of some pretty painful meetings in the past as we'd navigated some tough times together over cups of coffee. Even though life keeps throwing my friend some pretty crazy curve-balls, I've seen Paco go through huge growth through it all. He's more grounded in his identity and his relationship with God than I've ever seen him. He's at peace with who he is called to be and how he is wired up. As he shared with me some tough times that he and his family are experiencing, I laughed and told him that if I were him and had read my blog posts about my struggles to get my Northwest Elite status, the first words out of my mouth would be "F@## Dave Kurt and his Northwest status".

We sat there talking for 2 1/2 hours about our lives, our jobs, our careers and our families. At one point Pedro spoke some words to me that caught me completely off guard, made my lip quiver, shut me up and brought me to tears. I don't want to share it here, but it was one of those things that I will lock away in my heart forever. I left my meeting with Paco with this feeling in my chest that I can't describe, but his words were this huge gift, maybe one of the best I'll receive all Christmas (except for the hand-painted piece of wood from my kids). I wanted to write this all down because it was such a huge deal for me, I wanted to share it in part and also capture it so that in five years I can go back and revisit. Writing it down, I'm not sure that it was something that could really be shared without being in my head.

Musicals

Cathie, Maddie, Em and I went to see the musical Wicked last night at the Detroit Opera House. It was Cathie's second time seeing it and my first time. Cathie had gotten the tickets from a friend and they were a bit high up in the balcony (fifth row from the back).

I really liked the Wicked. If you've never seen Wicked, it's the back story around the Witches and a bunch of other characters in the Wizard of Oz. I liked the music, but even more than that the story and how they linked it with The Wizard of Oz. The story and the mood of the whole thing was fun. Cathie and I were ranking the different musicals we'd seen and here's my list:

1. Les Miserables - My all time favorite. I don't think anything will ever take this off the top of the list. I love the music and the story in this more than all the others combined.
2. Rent
3. Wicked
4. Lion King
5. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
6. Cats
   
7. Phantom of the Opera
8. Moving Out
9. Miss Saigon
10. Chorus Line
    

Chore Chart

When I was growing up, we used to have our family cleaning day after school on Friday. We'd all kick in, take a few chores and clean the house with my Mom. In addition to that, we had different jobs like emptying the dishwasher, clearing and setting the table. Occasionally, I'd open my yapper one to many times and get an extra batch of chores, like cleaning the kitchen for a month after dinner. In hindsight, I learned to clean and do it right. It doesn't mean I liked it, or that I love cleaning now, but at least I know how.

I had a roommate in college who had no clue. I remember one time I came into the kitchen to find three feet of suds coming out of the dishwasher like something out of bad Brady Bunch episode. It turns out he had filled it with dish soap instead of dish-WASHER soap. Another time I walked into the bathroom in my socks and slipped on my butt. It turns out he had cleaned the bathroom floor with lemon pledge, turning the tile into slippery glass.

A few months ago we instituted a formal chore system. We'd been pretty inconsistent with jobs and how we had the kids doing their chores so we wanted to institute a little more structure in the whole process. After talking to a bunch of friends and family members, we had a family meeting and came up with our chores and agreed to the rules, putting together this Chore Chart that hangs on our fridge.

The first few weeks were a honeymoon period where they loved it. After that, it was a little bit tougher. We're still trying to tweak things, like changing the date and incorporating spot bonuses. We had a follow up meeting where the kid could change up their chores and it seemed to go pretty well.

Our hope is that we can get our kids to learn how to do the work, do it well and do it consistently as part of their participation in the family. I'd love to say that our kids are perfect and that we've been consistent, but I'd be lying. We're hoping that by going through the pain of this now, our kids develop the right work ethic in part due to this. Hopefully this is one of those things they look back on and thank us.

I am not the biggest loser. They are.

This is kind of cool. Our neighbors are on the upcoming season, starting January 6th, of The Biggest Losers. Ron and his son Mike will be on the show. The crew is here at 9am tomorrow to film some local footage. I'll likely walk around without a shirt and my torso painted green so that I'll be easy to spot in the show. More info in this article in the Grand Rapids Press.

The Dirty Mustache Dancers

My sister-in-law Kris put together this amazing video of The Dirty Mustache Dancers.

Let it Snow

We got a boatload of snow last night. Thankfully, I got a snow-blower, which was a tough decision. My Dad grew up on a farm with a farmer's worth ethic. His motto was, "Why would I need snow blower when I have three boys and a daughter who doesn't help much around the house?" Until now, I've lived the same motto, shoveling my driveway, even though I only have one son.

My wife explained that it seemed that everytime I traveled in the winter, it would snow and she would be stuck shoveling the driveway. My wife also tends to have a bad memory. This fall, I broke down and bought a snow-blower. Used. From Jeff's neighbor for $75. With today's snowfall, I was pretty happy with my decision.

Northwest Status & Job Stuff

I'm at the end of my travel year and as I'd mentioned earlier I'm still short on my NWA elite status tier by about 6,000 miles and 7 segments. I wrote Northwest a letter (which you can read here) looking for an exception. We'll see how that goes.

At the end of my life, I'm pretty sure Jesus is going to ask me this question: "Dave - about all that effort you put into your frequent flyer status: Still happy with that decision?"

This ended up being one of my slowest travel years in a long time, which I enjoyed. I talked earlier about my job change and where I stood with it. My new job will get me back to traveling full force.

I had a good heart to heart with my company's senior management that made me feel pretty good about how I'm being valued and where I'm going with the organization. As I've gotten to know my boss, I'm starting to get more and more excited about this year. I was able to negotiate getting a friend of mine that I'd hired 3 or 4 years ago back working for me, which is nice as well. I'm trying to take time off over the next couple of weeks during the holidays because I know things will be nuts starting in January. We've got a kick-off in Vegas, which should be a great time. I haven't been there since Willapalooza.

Why I like Delta

Northwest has begun it's merger with Delta airlines. 99% of what I fly is on Northwest, and this gives me a lot more options. Maybe it's the culture of Detroit rubbing off on Northwest, but I've always thought that for the most part, Northwest Airlines has the grumpiest flight attendants and gate agents around (except for Marge). Delta people seem to be much friendlier and willing to go the extra mile.

Here are some other positives and negatives about flying Delta:

• Have a bottle of water waiting for you when you get to your seat in first class. They also offer you a bottle of water for the road at the end of your flight.
• They have TVs in the back of the seats that have TV and HBO on demand.
• They let you pay for drinks on the plane with your American Express card.
• They offer you a snack in coach
• They let you turn on your portable electronics at 10,000 feet instead of waiting 20 minutes into the flight.
• They show the first class upgrade standby list up on the big screen
  

The only real advantage that Northwest has over Delta is that Northwest's mixed nuts have cashews and Delta just gives bags of peanuts.

Nothing on her plate can touch

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Every year we've gone as a family on the Friday after Thanksgiving out to a tree farm to get a tree. For whatever reason, that didn't happen this year. I hung lights last week in the freezing cold and going out and hunting for a tree didn't sound too appealing. We'd even considered buying a fake tree for the first time ever just to avoid the hassle.

Yesterday we figured we had to get it done so we bit the bullet and went to a nearby tree lot. The trees were actually fairly nice and reasonably priced, but we didn't have the fun experience of tromping through the snow and mud to cut down the tree and bring it home.

The guy at the tree lot was a little old man who told us waaaaay more than we wanted to know about the trees, about watering them and securing them to your car. In between all of that, he was able to work in his view of the auto industry and how he had predicted this through his own personal research years ago. I refrained from telling him that he should have shorted the stock and made millions.

We got the the tree home and in the stand. We have this funky stand that I purchased years ago that has a single spike sticking out of it. The place we typically go to drills the tree for you and it all works beautifully. I tried to drill the hole myself and created way to big of a hole. The result was a tippy tree that had a tendency to topple. Today we'll hang the ornaments and start decorating the house.

Iraq: What I remember

Take 10 minutes and look through this set of memories on Iraq. Each picture has a caption describing the related memory. Cathie's Uncle posted these on Facebook recently and I was mesmerized going through them. The pictures are beautiful, but the combined with the description, they paint a really thoughtful view of what it's like over there.


I'd posted this last year when he got back from Iraq in a situation where he almost died and his friends did:

David had some amazing stories, but the one depicted by this piece of glass below was wild. The piece of glass on his mantle was the same piece in the picture in the lower left hand corner. He'd been in this vehicle with two others when they were hit. Only he and one other guy survived. The glass in this picture is about 4 inches thick and saved him.

Which is it? Sharpton or Rangel?

I was at Laguardia airport on Monday standing in the Elite line waiting to go through security when I noticed someone a few people in front of me. At first, I was pretty sure it was The Rev. Al Sharpton. I was reading the paper later on and came across an article on Senator Charlie Rangel.


Charlie vs. Al

Any ideas? Which is it?

Be the Change

Last week, Cathie participated in our local high school's "Challenge Day" (see the related article). Cathie is in the picture, on the far left middle.

Anyways, it was an all day gig where they brought together a disparate group of students to interact, addresses common issues including cliques, teasing, harassment, stereotypes, racism, bullying, violence, homophobia and other pressures, and teach the students to "Be The Change" by breaking down those barriers.

I talked to Cathie afterward and she loved it. I heard something in her voice I hadn't heard in a long time. Cathie used to work for Big Brothers/Big Sisters pairing up kids with mentors and this reminded her of how much she enjoyed that.

One of my very own kids from church, Katie Green, who happened to be the person who invited Cathie and I (I was traveling) to participate was quoted:

Green, who attended the program in the past, said this year's was the most intense yet, and "everyone was united by the end."

But she also knows that a one-day program isn't a sure fire solution. The students may act like they have changed for a short time, but for some of them, the old stereotypes come back into play.

That is where the Be The Change group comes in. Green and Roberts are two of the members in the group that takes pride in being leaders in the school.

"Convincing people is hard, but we want to keep this feeling going all year," Green said.

Becoming Gold

As I'd mentioned earlier on the plight of my travel statues, I'm fretting a bit about hitting Gold on Northwest. We can all discuss the pettiness and self-centeredness of this all in the big scheme of things, but that's another conversation. I'm stuck at 43 segments and Northwest has chosen to hose me.

Even though Northwest and Delta are merged together, they haven't merged their frequent flyer programs completely. There are two ways I can get to Gold - one being by earning 60 segments (everytime I get on a plane is one segment) and the other is by hitting 50,000 flight miles. I'm at 43 segments and just found out that my segments flown on Delta do not count. This is very bad news.

I looked at my options, one being to purchase a ticket to fly to Honolulu and back to earn the 10,000 miles I need. Being on a plane for 22 hours straight, not to mention the lay-overs is not all that enticing for me, unless i'm in a coma. The second option was to get the segments I need, which is only slightly less painful. I've got some travel for next week, and what could have been done in 3 segments, was booked in 8 separate segments (and I managed to save my company money in the process). It will be very painful, especially if there's any bad weather or delayed flights, but it will get me close. My past experiences of having tried this tell me that it's absolutely not worth it and I will be kicking myself half-way through the trip.

I talked to customer service at Northwest and they told me I've got a shot. Business travelers are the last ones that Northwest was to tick off, especially one like me that books most of his travel days or the week before. If I can get Northwest to recognize the 10 segments I flew on Delta this year, I should be in good shape. Once this dilemma is solved, i can move on to worry about more important things like poverty, orphans and social justice.

On a side note, I am very pleased to see Obama already throwing out some of his dumber campaign promises. I'm all for this kind of 'change'.

Big Old Plate of Will's Birthday Sushi

I am the walrus

No Idea

Steve Jobs Thinks You Are a Loser

This clip from the Simpsons is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time on the show. It mocks the typical Apple users blind love for Steve Jobs and all that apple sells, which is funny to me. Although I own several apple computers and an iPhone, I don't qualify as I run Linux, XP and Vista.

Date Night with Maddie

I'm a bad Dad, traveling during the 'Donuts with Dad' (aka 'Shame
parents into buying books from the book fair') event at their school.
Maddie and u went to our favorite Chinese place having our favorite
dish: General Tzo's Chicken.