Laid Back Saturday

We got a lot of snow today. 10 inches, maybe?

Wasn't really too productive of a day. Emily and I went out and shoveled the driveway and then the kids and I went sledding.

I came back and fixed a couple of things around the house (new dimmer switch, light fixture and shimmed my sweet new milk-carton/duct-tape/plywood laundry shelf) and then Em got a hankering to play games.

She wanted to play every game in the world. We played 5 games of speed, a game of war, a game of go fish, 8 games of sequence and a game of My Pretty Pony Memory game. This is Em's love language and it's a fun bonding thing between us. She's great at games of logic and memory and beats me frequently.


We hung out tonight, made a big thing of popcorn and watched the movie Ratatouille, via NetFlix movies on demand with the new Xbox 360 Netflix interface.

Microwave This!

Thanks to Marko for this cool site with video of just about anything you can imagine being microwaved: deoderant, gummy worms, eclairs, glue, cake foam... You name it.

As Odd As They Get

This is my brother Jon on New Years Eve. It's a small taste of the fun we have. My brother-in-law Kevin put together this nice little Montage that truly captures my brother Jon.

I'm a Nerd?

Emily: "A boy at school called me a nerd."
Cathie: "That wasn't very nice. Why did he call you that?"
Emily: "He said that people who have glasses and are smart are nerds. Plus they will get a pimple."
Cathie: "A pimple?"
Emily: "Yep, a pimple. I don't want to get a pimple!"

Being Sick Sucks

Wow. I'm in the process of getting over being really, really, really sick. It was a day from hell. It began about 1am on Wednesday morning waking up feeling nauseous and things went down hill from there. I didn't know which end to have in the toilet for the next 12 hours or so. After a few false starts, mid-day on tuesday I was able to keep food down. What made it worse was that my body ached so bad I couldn't sleep. I didn't touch e-mail and pretty much sat in bed and watched movies online with Facebook (I watched most of season 1 and 2 of the show weeds). I would have been downstairs watching TV, but I am still being shunned by my wife due to my illness.

My wife has locked me in my room and followed me around with a can of lysol to make sure I don't infect anyone else. With her luck, everyone would get it right after I leave for New York next week.

Everytime I get sick like this, I think of my Mom, who went through multiple rounds of Chemo without whining. I'm pretty sure this is the sickest I've been in five years. My wife claims I say that every time I'm sick, which isn't very often.

Anne Mulcahy is More Influential than Bill Gates

I know I'm going to get lambasted for this, but Anne Mulcahy is more influential than Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt or Steve Jobs. She comes in at #4 on Tech Republic's top 10 most influential leaders of 2008.

Anne has turned around the fortunes of the company that was once synonymous with the photocopier. Mulcahy instituted strict financial discipline including major cost costs, while also ramping up Xerox’s services business, pushing innovation with expanded research and development efforts, and growing its footprint in emerging markets. Ironically, Xerox consultants now show companies how to save paper and reduce the number of printers - often by replacing a bunch of HP printers with one big machine from Xerox.

You can read more about the Less Paper Office here.

I know I'm getting old when I start to use one of these

The Washing Machine Debacle

We bought a new washing machine. For the record, it was not a Christmas gift for Cathie. I've had to learn the hard way the fact that appliances do not count as Christmas gifts. To my wife, the Washing Machine is the equivalent of my cell phone. She cares about the features, the capacity and the style because she uses it virtually every day. After a ton of research, we bought a top of the line GE front loading washer with the four year extended service plan.

What I didn't buy was the $250 drawer that this sits on top of. it's about $10 in parts and provides you with an ergonomically correct height so you're not bending over as much. INSTEAD, I took four plastic milk crates, duct taped them together and placed a piece of plywood on top of them. This has been the source of great mockery.

The real fun started when I went to hook up the water to the washing machine. The original hoses for my old machine would not reach so I had to disconnect them and hook up the new hoses. The cold water hose came off pretty easily, but i needed to get my pipe wrenches out for the hot water hose. Bad idea, in hindsight. I gave it one semi-gentle turn and the entire pipe broke off. Hot water was spraying all over the laundry room as I ran to try and shut off the hot water. It turns out, I have no hot water shut-off valve. I'm not sure if this was a conscious decision when Kevin and I replaced the hot water heater, or not. I was able to turn off the inbound spigot to the hot water tank, which slowed things down a bit. I then had to turn off and drain my hot water tank in order to not have it all trickle out my laundry room floor.

I mopped up the water and then looked at pipe that needed fixing. Could I have fixed the pipe? Probably, but most likely very badly. I was set to call a plumber when Jeff volunteered to come over, claiming it was a ten minute job. Jeff came over yesterday and amazingly fixed it in ten minutes. (Thanks a bunch Jeff. I owe you.)

Em and I Watching a show about Sitka Deer

New Years Eve Celebration

In a season of changing traditions, we held New Years at Jon and Beth's this year. It was a lot of fun, with the typical "each person brings a drink to pass" deal. Dan had a second failure with his grasshopper martinis. They were the color of used engine oil and tasted only slightly better.

New additions this year included Stulie (Stu and Julie, Kevin's sister) and their 12 kids. You can see how much they both love Jon, as Julie is telling him he's number 1 in this picture.

As always, our musical talents reigned. We had Guitar Hero world tour for the Wii, where Jon is pretty sure he sounded even better after a few drinky-poos. Dan sounded much better on the drums once we took the sticks away.



I love this picture of the four original Kurt kids (not including the interlopers, as my Mom would call our spouses). Jon has made great strides, and they became even greater after a few drinks, to bring Kevin into the fold.

One of the highlights was the "Dog's Pile on the Uncle Jon" game that I initiated. He had no chance with 15 kids piling on.

"Crazy Cat Lady" Anne Veltema (who the Cat Lady character from the Simpsons is based on) was there as well. We made her sit with all three dogs on her lap to see if we could convert her from her cat like ways. (She owns 12 cats).

We headed to bed around 1:30. The kids faded sooner, actually asking to go to bed throughout the night.

At some point, my Dad decided that it would be a good idea to show up at 7:45am on New Years Day. I'm not sure what made him think this was a good idea, but he was pretty confident that it was the way to go. I suggested that we setup an 800 number for future situations where he comes up with ideas like this and needs some quick feedback. He quickly informed me that he'd been told by multiple family members that it was a bad idea, yet he showed up at 7:45am. I love my Dad, but I'm pretty sure this is either a sign of senility or being cantankerous. Maybe both. I love my Dad, but question his common sense at times.

Originally, I was not going to post any pictures until Sarah Labella started using Picasa to share pictures from the event. I am posting, but just not making any reference to Sarah in my post. For the record, Mike Koch was there and as always, I was touched by him.

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Jon is a Big Deal

Along with having the "opportunity" to watch Beth in her play as Peter Pan, Beth gave us the "opportunity" (she made us watch this 3 times) to watch a video that had pictures of Jon as an armenian deaf-mute, Libby as a cute patient and Beth as a children's proctologist.

Reggie's Cool Tuque

My niece Reggie has quite the contrast going between her favorite hat and her tutu. She puts the hat on by herself and walks around with it. The DS in one hand and the juice cup make it even better.

Beth and Dan are Cool

When Dr. Beth is on call for her job, she wants to look cool. She does that by having two pagers. When Dan walks around he wants to look cool. He doesn't look quite as cool. At least he wasn't sticking his tounge out like Beth.

2008 E-Mail Count

My work related e-mail numbers for 2008:

• Sent 9,344 E-Mails
• Received 24,000 E-Mails

Ouch.

My ninja cold weather running mask

Random Stuff I've done over Christmas Break

I was off part of last week and most of this upcoming week. Here's some of the random stuff I've been doing:

• We watched Speed Racer. Great movie visually, but it was kind of tough to follow. The monkey that Emily and I met at the Novi Pet Expo was there.
  
• The family watched Space Chimps, a pretty funny movie with Andy Sandberg. Any movie with monkeys is good with me. Decent flick with good animation. It was easier to follow than Speed Racer.
  
• Cathie and I had an overnight getaway. Cathie was whooped after everything she did for Christmas, including accommodating my family staying over at the last minute. She needed some relaxation so I scheduled a massage for her and then took her on an overnight getaway. Tiffany as nice enough to stay overnight with the kids, which they loved. Her boyfriend Reagan got a chance to play the high school pink version of the game of Life.
  
• I caught up on five episodes of Heroes that I was behind on.
  
• Playing lots of monopoly. We got the kids the electronic version of Monopoly for Christmas and we've been playing that. No such thing as a quick game of Monopoly.
  
• We shopped for a washing machine. This is the equivalent for Cathie of me shopping for a TV or new computer. This is the item Cathie uses more in this house than any other.
  
• I went running quite a bit. I went when it was warm and wet and when it was cold and dry. I got a cold weather running ninja mask from Cathie's parents and it works great, but I look like a freak. Maddie appreciates the fact that others can't tell that it's me.
  
• Had dinner with Bob and Anne Rays. Bob and I get together and we've been to lots of parties at their house and out to red wings games with the the Rays, but never out to dinner as the four of us. We hung out for about three hours talking. Bob and Anne have been married for 21 years and have five boys and we can learn a lot from them. Not to mention that they're fun to hang out with. Anne is the youngest of 12 and she helped me understand all sorts of things about my baby sister Susan.
  
• We had a middle child swap. My nephew Andrew came and visited and Maddie went to their house.
• Cathie and I watched three episodes of the show Mama's Boys. We are dumber for having seen the show, but it's a great guilty pleasure. It's basically the dating show Bachelor but with the guy's Moms on the show. The Mom's get copies of the girls background files and pictures of the girls that might be on the internet. Hilarious show.
  

Guys Night Out

My nephew and fellow middle childe Andrew is staying over tonight and
we've got big plans, starting with BW3s followed by a night of movies
and video games.

Marley and Me

I took Emily to see Marley and Me. Great movie, but exactly a kid's flick in a lot of ways. Emily counted 30 separate kisses. There was some innuendo and a bit of language, but it really went over Em's head. I had to explain to her at one point that the Mom jumped into the pool without any pants on, but it didn't seem to be ab ig deal to Em.

There were a couple very sad parts in the movie. *spoiler alert* The one that really choked me up was when the wife goes into the doctor for an ultrasound ten weeks into her pregnancy. The nurse couldn't find the heart beat and brings the doctor in to check, only to tell them they'd lost the baby. This exact scenario happened to Cathie and I 13 years ago when we had our first miscarriage and it brought badck a lot of memories.

The movie also reminded me of how great my dog Riley is and how dumb my dog Lola is.

Penn Gillette would tackle you if a bus were coming

I've always been a big fan of the magic/comedy of Penn and Teller. I saw that at MSU a while back and I've always loved their show Bull#$#t on TV. I found this video from Penn Gillette's blog interesting. He tells the story of a guy from the audience who talked to him for a bit and then handed him a bible. Penn is a pretty outspoken Atheist but there's a lot I can learn from him about sharing my faith. These are some excerpts that struck me. It's worth watching:

How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? If I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that if there is a truck coming at you and you didn't believe it, there's a certain point that I tackle you. And this is more important than that. This guy was polite, and honest and sane and he cared enough about me to give me a bible. I know that there is no God and one polite person living his life right doesn't change that. I'll tell you, he was a very, very, very good man and that's important. With that kind of goodness, it's ok to have that deep of a disagreement.

Lessons in Manliness from It's a Wonderful Life

Great set of qualities from The Art of Manliness Blog on Lessons in Manliness from It's a Wonderful Life:

• Be a hero where you stand - This is the thread that weaves through George Bailey’s life. Saving his brother in the icy water. Keeping Mr. Gower from poisoning a child. Saving the Building & Loan multiple times. But it is the small things that make the hero; Bailey’s dedication to help others who are down on their luck is the true mark of his manliness.
• Treat women well - At a key moment of their relationship, George visits Mary (Donna Reed) at her home and acts like a boor. Luckily, this leads to a final acknowledgment of their love, and for the most part, George is an example of how to treat women well (despite some cultural changes). Despite human, stressful outbursts, he loves his wife, and remains true to her in temptation. He takes care of his mother and even treats Violet (a woman with a dulled reputation) like gold, as a real man should - without taking advantage.
• Love your family/family fidelity - In spite of his frustration and dreams, George honors his father’s work and keeps the Savings & Loan running. With a drafty house, sick kids, low wages, work stresses, and a normal man’s frustrations, he loves and supports his family. Is it easy? Heck no. But he comes through.
• Facilitate others’ success - Helping people move out of the slums. Investing in the little people. Sacrificing for his brother Harry’s success. George’s dedication to his brother’s success is truly touching. The richness of George’s legacy lies in how he touched others’ lives and made them better for it, quietly sacrificing to improve the lot of those around him.
• Stand up for what is right - Bailey’s morals may be simple common sense, but he lives them and fights for them. This is perhaps seen best when George strongly turns down Mr. Potter’s lucrative offer for everything he ever wanted: success, travel, luxury and security for his family, just to maintain the honor of his name. “I don’t need 24 hours!” he tells the man.
• Know your faults and correct them - Of course our protagonist is not perfect. When facing personal failure, he is particularly prone to outbursts towards those with whom he is closest. And it takes a strong woman to keep him straight. He also has a knowable weakness for luxury and a misplaced view of himself and life. But George tries to lift himself above it, and in the end - with a little help from a different point of view and an angel named Clarence - he finds in himself what is beautiful in life.
• Live your life with gratitude - Life is not measured in salaries, homes, trips, cars or Facebook friends. But it is truly measured in those moments when we love and touch others’ lives. Family and friends. Time and love. It may be sappy, but on your deathbed you won’t be looking to hold the hand of your Porsche.

Jon's Fall from Glory

There was a time where my brother Jon was considered a ninja in the comment world. He could leave comments that would make your jaw drop with the sheer brilliance and wit. I'm not sure if Facebook has thrown him for a loop or exactly what it is, but unfortunately, my brother has become the Brett Favre of his time. Jon is trying to hold onto glory that just isn't there, and it's a little awkward for all of us. My brother Dan has surpassed Jon in the whole race and Jon is not dealing with this well.

Recently, I left a post about a meeting with a friend of mine. It was something from the heart that I captured more for myself than anything. My brother Jon posed as a wife (he may have even dressed as her while doing this for all I know) and left a comment on the post. The comment was simple and made me grin:

"Is Pedro the mouse in Paco's pocket?"

The comment referred to the fact that I accidentally interchanged the two names in the blog post. My brother Jon proceeded to talk about this for about fifteen minutes yesterday. He explained why it was funny in hopes that we would agree, and then he could say it was actually him. We never gave him that moment.

Since that moment, Jon has started paying a professional comedian to leave comments on Facebook in hopes to bring his status up. This seems to be working. I left a Facebook status today after listening to a great John Ortberg message from Mars Hill. The message was about what it looks like to have your life poured out for others.

My Facebook status: Dave is wondering when I look back at the end, how will my life have been poured out: spilled or poured out for others?
Jon's professional comedian's comment: I bet Cathie's will be spilled. (making reference to the fact that Cathie spills at least once any time she is anywhere).

If you see one of Jon's comments, please let him know that he's funny. It will do his heart good.

Christmas Day at the Lebbons

On Christmas morning we headed over Cathie's parents for another awesome part of our Christmas tradition. After going non-stop with my family, heading over to Cathie's parents is a little more relaxing and low-key. Cathie's brother Ed, wife Stacy and dog/nephew Justice were there along with Cathie's parents, freshly back from Hawaii.

We opened presents when we got there and it was one kids shrieking, "AWWW!! Look what I got!!" after another and then running over to hug grandma and grandpa or their aunt and uncle to say thank you.

Maddie and Em were estatic about their American Girl Dolls and played with them the entire day. Second only to the dolls were these roller blades, which they took off only to eat.

I'm not sure I've ever seen Nate as excited as I did when he got this PSP from his grandparents. He ran back and forth between them twice, giving them hugs and yelling thanks.

Emily received a gift from Ed and Stacy that she loved, but we all were creeped out by. It was a robotic cat, every bit as moody and weird as a real cat. The cat would randomly meow and purr, and shriek if you stepped on his tail.

Cathie's Mom gave the girls a spa trip to Toronto. Remember what I said earlier about my kids jumping into the pictures? Following all the excitement, I enjoyed a nice long nap.



We had a fantastic dinner and then the kids resumed playing with their presents. It was fun watching the elaborate scenarios the girls created with their American Girl Dolls, and almost as amusing to watch Nate go into a video game coma with his PSP.

You can see more of the pictures here.

Christmas Eve, Part 2

After our Christmas Eve service, we came back to our house and opened presents from the Aunts and Uncles. The kids really dug their gifts and it's fun to see how well the Aunts and Uncles know each other. Jon got Nate his weight in Gummi Bears (the good Haribu kind) and an alarm clock that is illegal in 7 states. The picture above just doesn't capture the chaos and energy that was contained in the room. It was multiplied by the amount of love that every niece, nephew, Aunt and Uncle has for each other in there. It sounds cheesy, but you have to be there to really understand it.

The love comes out in a lot of different ways - whether it's Kevin and Dan letting Maddie and Steve-O color their hair or whether it's Maddie sitting with Reggie and letting her sing Karaoke (which Jon explained about ten times means "empty orchestra").

There was noise the whole night, either Karoke, kids laughing or Rock Band. We played the whole night with the drums and microphone showing the complete lack of rhythm and singing ability.

Everyone got into it and everyone was having a blast. This Christmas Eve went later than most, with the kids gradually heading up to bed as they tired out and the adults finally crashing around 12:30. Dan and Kris broke tradition this year by heading home on Christmas Eve.

We had a lot of change this year, but it ended up being great. We ended up having more fun than ever and in the end, embracing the change and coming together as a family. The fun that we have together leaked out of every moment we spent together. It'll interesting to see how things continue to change over the years.