New York City Family Spring Break - Day 3

We woke up early on Tuesday, our last day, to follow my big plan for the day... Turns out it wasn't everyone's plan. Surprisingly, I had to twist arms to get the girls to go down to Good Morning America to see Miley Cyrus. We headed over there and watched the show from the outside and then headed over to the Today Show. The Today Show does their outdoor gigs, at which point you can watch the guests, see the hosts, etc.

The guests outside when we were there was Joan Rivers and Melissa, talking about their Celebrity Apprentice show with Donald Trump. With all of the plastic surgery she's had, Joan Rivers looked craaaazy. She looked plastic, kind of like a celebrity impersonator.

Maddie, Nate and I stood behind them as they filmed, waving to get on camera. Afterward we walked around to the side where Ann Curry came over to talk to some of the people visiting. We stood off to the side and I nudged Maddie to get up and shake her hand. She saw Maddie and said, "Wow, what beautiful red hair. Can I have a hug?" After which, she saw Nate and asked Maddie if this was her brother and Nate came over and went for the hug. Smart man.

She was really nice and genuine and the kids thought this was very cool.

From there we headed back to the hotel to grab some warmer clothes and then headed back on the town. We headed down to Battery Park, intending on taking the Staten Island Ferry over to see the Statue of Liberty. It was freezing on the water, so instead we jumped on the subway to head up and see Grand Central Station. Again, I explained to Nate that this was where part of the Matrix had taken place along and the girls about Madagascar (well, not really, because it's a cartoon).

We headed over to Ripley's museum and spent a while there. It wasn't cheap ($105 for 5 of us, even with the AAA discount) but the kids loved it (probably more than the museum).

They had tons of fun photo ops and explanations of everything, including these creepy head jars.

Cathie was inspired by this painting done completely with colored dryer lint. Emily loved the magical box that made you look like Torso-Boy.

The last part was the coolest. It was a tunnel that had rotating walls with funk designs on it. The moment you walked on the platform you felt like you were spinning. If you close your eyes, you're fine. You felt drunk walking across the platform. It was really very cool.

We grabbed lunch and hit just about every suvonier shop in NYC before heading over to Central Park as our last hurrah. The kids hung out and played on the rocks before we jumped on the subway back to our hotel and headed to the airport.

We took a cab back to the airport and the ride was brutal. Our driver zipped, zagged and stopped so much we were all car sick. As we approached the airport, Nate leaned his head out and ralphed. Nice was to end things! I watched everyone go through security and then headed out to New Jersey for customer meetings yesterday.

It was a great trip, but a busy one. I think we had a good mix of downtime and doing stuff. The kids loved it. Maddie wants to move there.

You can see the rest of the pictures from our trip here.

New York City Family Spring Break - Day 2

We woke up on Monday morning to a cold, rainy, nasty morning. We got up early intending to head over to the Today Show, but weren't quite up to it with the rain. Cathie and I grabbed breakfast at the hotel restaurant and had the most expensive (but included in my honors diamond privileges) breakfast buffet in the world ($35/person). Nate and I braved the weather and treked over to Jamba Juice for breakfast.

We piled in a cab and headed to the Museum of American Natural History, made popular in the movie "Night at the Museum". It ran about $140 for the family and took us about 3 1/2 hours to get through everything - or at least as much as they wanted to get through. We figured out early on that we should split off, so Em and I trekked around spending a lot of time at every single animal exhibit. It was so much fun just doing this with her and I. We came up with silly poses at the different exhibits, like this one below of a 70x scale mosquito.

She also got into taking pictures, and took hundreds, looking at each and examining how the flash was reflecting off the glass, how the pictures were framed and wanting me to pose in all sorts of photos, like the one below of me with wood.

We took the subway and it was a little scary for the kids, not to mention the fact that I just barely knew how to navigate the NYC subway system not instilling a lot of confidence. We headed over to Rockafeller center (which the kids could care less about) and then hoofed it in the rain back to the hotel to chill for a bit.

We decompressed for a bit at the hotel and then headed out again in the rain. We took the subway down near Central Park, but no one was in much of a mood to check it out as the downpour ensued. Nate and I headed over to the Apple Store while the girls went into FAO Schwartz next door.

What an amazing toy store. They had the giant walking piano from the movie Big there, which you could buy for a mere $250k.

They had a part of the store where you could build your own custom muppet. Very cool.

Em was kind enough to let me carry her all the way back from 59th and 5th ave. The only deal was that she had to watch the street signs and tell me when to turn. I figured you're never too young to learn to navigate NYC.

We headed into St. Patrick's Cathedral, which never ceases to amaze me. The kids were not impressed no matter how interesting we tried to make it. The only time Nate was slightly impressed was when I told him that part of Highlander was filmed there.

For dinner, we made the mistake of going to a restaurant right off of Times Square. We went to Mars 2112 based on a recommendation - a bad one. In the beginning they sit you down and take you into a space-ship ride that takes you to Mars. This would have been cool had they updated it since it opened in 2003. It was so cheesy and hokeyand poorly kept up (not to mention outrageously expensive) that we got up and left. We went across the street to the Stardust diner, where the waitstaff sing. Sounds fun in theory - unless they charge $20/burger. Much to Maddie's humiliation, we got up and left there as well. My family was rebelling and Cath was doing her best to prevent a mutiny. We headed over to the east side and found a hole-in-the wall Brazillian resturant that was pretty reasonable priced. This was one of the places where they bring the skewers of meat and feed you until you explode. We ate until we were pretty darn full.

We grabbed some snacks and went back to our hotel to watch MSU get destroyed in the NCAA tournament. Nate, Cathie and I kept watching, in spite of the beating.

You can see the rest of the pictures from our trip here.

New York City Family Spring Break - Day 1

With the Kohne's and Dan/Kris heading to Washington DC, Kevin and Susan going to Chicago, we thought it would be fun to do something over Spring Break with the kids. At the last minute, I was able to get together a flight and hotel in NYC using my miles and points for the whole family. My friend Lori Skjeveland was great at helping me figure out a full kid friendly agenda. I'm there fairly often and I had taken Cathie there last year, but Maddie was the one whose wanted to visit NYC for the past few years more than any place in the world.

The trip was a blast. We left Sunday morning early (Thank you Katie Green for watching our house and dogs!!) and spent three full days in NYC.

We stayed right in Times Square, right in the middle of the action, and tried to fit in just about every touristy thing possible, while doing it on a budget (comon, you knew that was coming. I'm a Kurt afterall).

When we arrived on Sunday it was beautiful, with nasty weather forcast for the next couple of days so we decided to take advantage of it while we could. We took the NYC bus tour around lower manhattan, hitting all the big stops, including China Town, Wall Street, 9/11, Fulton Street and a bunch of other places.

China Town was an interesting experience. They've cracked down on the selling of knock-off purses, watches, sunglasses and movies, so they try and be kind of sneaky about it all. Maddie got a purse and I bought a couple fake Rolexes. Nate was standing next to me watching the transaction go down with the watch dealer (which was conducted much like a drug deal). Nate's response was, "Um, Dad, what just went on there?"

You'd see the vendors open and close suitcases and alert each other that the police were coming like a bunch of merekats signaling each other of a nearby hyena.

We headed over to the 9/11 memorial and really couldn't see much. The more interesting part was the church nearby, and the display that had talking about they'd used the building and their resources to serve the rescue teams and victims. Great example of how the Church in general should behave to the world around them.

We found this crazy balloon animal statue nearby and hung out there to take a breather.

Emily was so darn funny throughout the whole thing. She was amazed at all of the "Doves" everywhere, and tried to make any that would come near into a pet. We hoofed it over to Ful Street and headed up near the UN Building. We did a lot of walking, and I did a lot of hauling Emily around on my shoulders.

At the hotel room (Doubletree, Times Square), Emily saw Maddie hanging her clothes up in the closet - actually taking over the entire closet. Emily followed suit, hanging her socks on hangers, her underwear and anything else she could find, just to be like her big sis.

That evening we had a great dinner of New York style Pizza @ Johnny's Pizzaria (the one in mid-town, not the original one in Greenwich Village). It was pretty reasonably priced and good food, if you like NY Pizza. As we waited, Emily spent lots of time petting this horse.. Over and over. And over. She loved it. A lot. 'Cause she loves animals. A lot.

We went to the giant Toys R Us in Times Square, complete with a Ferris Wheel. Emily looked around and picked out a stuffed animal duck that you could feed. She spent hours pouring over her options, while Nate and I hung outside, people watched and talked to the homeless people.

You can see the rest of the pictures from our trip here.

Em Loves Walking?

Em did a good job of doing a lot of walking without doing too much complaining. Occasionally I'd throw her on my shoulders and we'd walk for a while. I laughed hard when Cathie and Em had this conversation at the end of the trip:

Cathie: "So Em, Do you like New York?"
Emily: "I like all the walking, because that's healthy."
Cathie: "You like the walking?
Em: "Yep. I don't think I'll be able to get used to riding in cars after doing all this walking"

Em's choice from FAO Schwartz

"I think I'm going to name him big ears"

Which Barbie is this????

Found in the Barbie section at the Times Square Toys r Us.

Why Em loves NY

Police horses everywhere for her to pet.

Spring Break NYC

We left the house at 6:45am to head to the airport. It's a obviously
a little different making the trek with five instead of just me flying
solo. The kids made it through security without a problem, way better
than Dana and Eli, but that didn't take much. We've got three full
days to planned to see the city. Should be a blast!

Quotable Emily

"Dad - here's a coincidence: Mom is good at cooking bagels and you're good at spreading the cream cheese on the bagels. Mom is good at doing my hair and you're good at back scratching."

Why I'm watching the game at BW3

High Def TVs 6 inches from my face. I could it stand here all day.

Fareed Zakaria @ Xerox-Park Global Lecture Series

I was down in Kansas City on Tuesday in support of a long-time customer's event that my company had sponsored as part of the Xerox Global Lecture Series. I've been working with the customer, Park University for the past seven years and I've known their staff for a long time (including Sarah Freeman, their CIO, who left, but still worships the ground I walk on and reads my blog faithfully).

The speaker for the event was Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and host of the show GPS on CNN. He only did three gig's in the US, so it's rather cool that Park was able to get him for the event. He was promoting his book The Post American World as part of the whole shin-dig. I'd read part of the book and didn't have high expectations for the meeting. The portion of the book I read had Fareed come across as somewhat French - the kind of guy who really kind of despises America and what it does everywhere in the world.

Since we sponsored the event, myself and the Senior VP of my organization, Doug Helmink had the chance to have dinner with Fareed (Rich - believe it or not, your name actually came up in the conversation as we talked about your classmate Gary - go figure). Fareed ended up being a great guy - very interesting and engaging. He had some pretty amazing stories about Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and others. Over dinner, the conversation of Twitter and Facebook came up. Fareed asked me what the deal was with it and how it would benefit him. I talked to him about how he could use it, and how companies were making money off it. I gave him examples of how John McCain, Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly (my brother Jon's man-crush) use it on their shows, along with woot.com and amazon using it to make money. He asked me later how to get it setup and if you check here, you'll see that he's now setup with all of them in his following list. Maddie told me to tell him that he was "super", which I did. He was impressed, since his 10 year old demographic is slightly lower than the Jonas Brothers. He explained that his own daughters Maddie's age aren't nearly that impressed with him.

The presentation was at the Folley theatre in Kansas City, to a sold out crowd of 1,100. His talk was about 90 minutes - about 60 minutes of his presentation followed by some great Q&A. His talk started in 1979 with the end of the cold war and looked at the global impact from an economic and war-time perspective. What I liked is that he talked from the view of someone who doesn't have someone in the game. I know we all have our own biases, but it seems that lately the left are so busy trying to justify every move Obama makes, and the right is so busy trying to discredit Obama, that you dont' get much of a middle of the road view. Even more impressive was the fact that he referenced our Twitter conversation at dinner.

It was a very cool event, and very intersting to me. I'm now a huge fan, and following him on Twitter. He shared that he had run into my corporate-crush-Anne Mulcahy earlier in the day as she was at Newsweek for an interview and that he was going to have her on his show later on. Small world. Cool day.

The Spirituality of the Cellphone

Last April, I listened to this message at Mars Hill from a guy named Shane Hips, entitled The Spirituality of the Cellphone. He used to be in advertising (working the Porshe account) and then went to seminary became a pastor (Mennoite, even, I think) and wrote a book around this stuff. The message goes through the spirituality around the mediums of spoken mediums (oral culture), written mediums (literate culture) and technological mediums (digital culture). Bear with me, this is good stuff. Here's a five minute synopsis video that I got from Tom R.

MSU/KC Game Bet

If you have a moment, please send my friend Ross a quick text message (317-506-6437) asking him to pay his $10 debt to Dave for the MSU/KC game. Thanks! Ross is a bitter Purdue fan who got his hopes up after a fluke win in the Big Ten Championship. He also has a good sense of humor, so feel free to mess with him.

Crossroads Paintball at Killer Paintball

We had our annual Crossroads youth group paintball game today. It was a cold, nasty rainy day that eventually turned into snow, so thankfully it was indoors. It's a blast having Nate old enough to play. This was his second year playing and he had a blast. We had a ton of kids, both high school and junior high, including a bunch of kid's friends that had never come to any of our stuff before.

We've been playing paintball for at least 10 years as a youth group, sometimes twice a year. In the beginning (when I was a little younger) I loved it. Now, I enjoy hearing the kid's stories, leading packs of junior high kids to victory (rarely happens) and putting the hurt on some of the kids who deserve it most (comon, I'm being honest. everyone who works with kids wants to do this).

Two of the kids in our youth group (Jake and Sarah) parents own Killer Paintball, and they took great care of us. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, with about 35 people in our group. Being indoors was great because we could move between games really quickly and the games went a little quicker since they weren't so spread out.

We played all sorts of versions, including paratroooper (people are dropped into the game every 10 seconds), protect the president (secret service try and keep the president alive and move him across the course) and a sniper round (one of the other Dad's and I sat in a perch and got to pick off kids left and right). This was Fez's first solo-planned paintball round and he did a great job (with a little help from his wife, of course).

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Tammy with my Twin from biggest loser

Bob from biggest loser was in town with the Morellis. This picture is of my neighbor Tammy with Bob at my gym.

Comment's from Nate's Wrestling Coach

I took this video at Nate's wrestling banquet tonight (on my iPhone and then edited it/cropped it via iMovie). I thought these were cool comments about Nate from his coach Steve Potter (who went to high school with Cathie) about Nate's abilities and toughness. Very proud moment for me as his Dad.

Old McDonald Remake

Crazy Love

I'm three chapters into the book Crazy Love and digging it so far. I have to order another copy because mine is gone. I came across this book one day when Phil Wing posted perhaps the cheesiest status ever on Facebook:

Don't read the book Crazy Love unless you really want to love Jesus more.

I was compelled to look the book up and see what would make Phil post such a goofy status.... Which leads to why I don't have the book any more.

Let me step back a second and do the Wayne's World "time warp" back to Sunday. Joe's message was on loving others and sharing the great news of Jesus with our friends. He had a handout where we made a list of friends to pray for so that the church as a whole could pray for the people and that we could pray for them regularly. So Wednesday morning I was praying for the people on my list, including the friend I had met up with who happened to be in a meeting down in Florida. This guy and I no longer work together, but we keep in touch and have a very close friendship. Over the past six years I've known him we've had lots of conversations about church, about the bible and about our faith.

We had dinner last night and we were talking about church and what he's doing with it. He was telling me about his wife's faith and he shared with me that he's in a different place than her. We talked about the fact that he believed that what comes around, goes around, but wasn't sure beyond that. He asked a lot about how I made the decision that Jesus was the way for me and how it affected my life. My friend shared that based on what he'd seen in my life and what Jesus was doing for me, he wanted to learn more and figure out how to do the same in his own life. It was a great conversation. He asked if I had a book or something else that would help him understand how Jesus fits in...which is where the book Crazy Love comes in.

I sat down this morning and felt like God was nudging me to give this book to my friend. I pushed back, figuring I hadn't finished it yet and maybe should read it first to see if it was the right book to share with him. I ran into him again later today at the airport and once again felt a nudge to give him the book. He said he'd start it right away and was pretty excited about it. We'll see if it was the right book. Maybe God really is smarter than me... Or maybe I was just feeling the after-affects of our night out last night. I'm always amazed at the way God uses a guy like me, in the world he's put me in with the friends I've got.