Category: family

It’s still several weeks away, but the whole family is now very excited about an upcoming trip to Florida. We’ve never been and we don’t know what to expect, but we know that it will be nice to leave the 20-30s degree range for a while and hang out in the 70-80s.

The day began at 6:00 AM and ended at about 10:00 PM. Tuesday’s are cool because I spend a lot of the day with students. Of course, interspersed with that is a lot of the "other stuff" that I do for the church. Tech stuff, pastoral stuff, yada yada yada. All in all, this made for a fast Tuesday.

Missions minded church or mission minded church? This is a thought I was left with after last nights mission committee meeting. I hope that it will strive to be a church that first owns the mission in Romeo and as an extention this mission goes to "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the utter most parts of the world." Still got some thinking to do on that thought.

I was up pretty late watching the USC/Texas game. (Still can’t believe USC lost, amazing.) But my point is that my family who went to be by 9:30 is still sound asleep. Even Stoney is still asleep in his dog bed. It’s just me and the cat and I have to leave for work in 10 minutes. Amazing.

Our house needs more light. If we lived any further north they would sleep all the time.

Today we got a card from Discover card. It said "We want to be your trusted credit card" and on the inside it read "again." You know, I am so excited to start 2006 free of consumer debt. I hope we finish 2006 in the same situation.

Inspired by a Flip that House marathon on the Discovery Channel, Kristen and I started messing our kitchen. There were some "country looks" that drive us insane and well, they had to go. I’d rather look at raw drywall than that old nasty country looking wallpaper. Here is what is on tap.

• Ditch the country wallpaper and paint.
• Knock down the "faux brick" that was trnedy back in the mid-80s. We’d prefer a simple painted wall.
• Redress the cabinets with some historic looking hardware.
• Swap out the country scallopped dressings with more flattering and historic looking trimmings.
• Centralize the lighting fixures. (There are 3 seperate lighting systems for the ceiling and 3-4 under-cabinet fixures.) We are aiming at recessed lighting but we haven’t seriously looked at it.
• Remove the trash compactor and replace it with some simple shelving.
• Replace the countertops and put in a new backsplash. (We may just tile the existing ones or completely tear out the old ones.
• Replace the flooring with either wood or tile.

What a crazy way to start the year!

Not only is vacation officially over (which I am happy to be rid of) but today is obviously the start of 2006. As we look backwards I see a fantastic 2005. Major accomplishments galore… perhaps the most important being that we are out of "consumer debt" and so many more that I couldn’t even list them. (OK, so I already have!)

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Well, I don’t do them. Let’s just say that my goal for 2006 is the same as 2005. I want to be a man who honors God with my life in all that I do. I know that isn’t profound, but it is what it is.

Kristen and I and Todd met up with my extended family for yesterday’s Motor City Bowl in downtown Detroit. The game was pretty interesting considering the only thing I cared about either team is that my brother-in-law went to Memphis. It was a fun finish as Akron really came back and almost recovered their second onside kick to get the ball back with :55 left and down by 7. (They later caused and recovered a fumble that was called encroachment… a bad call!)

Here are my impressions of Ford Field. Don’t bother. The seats were uncomfortable. The sound system was overwhelming and you couldn’t talk to people sitting around you. (Something I love about games… they are social events!) The concessions were terribly expensive, at least twice your local movie theater… and they were molasses slow. I missed most of the 2nd quarter to get a nachos, 2 pops, and a pizza. That shouldn’t take 30 minutes and is inexcusable. Parking is always a problem in downtown Detroit. It’s chaotic and cramped down there for no reason. It costs too much money and the prices rarely make sense. But at least we found parking! The interior of Ford Field is cool looking and seemingly impressive. But I can tell you what is going to happen… Detroit will be completely embarrassed when they host Super Bowl XL in a few weeks. That high end clientele will blast Detroit mercilessly for the terrible management of Ford Field and downtown Detroit. It’s not too late, move the Super Bowl! All in all I wouldn’t suggest going to Ford Field unless you are really interested in seeing your team destroy the Lions. Like a lot of things I’ve done lately, the best part about it was time spent with friends and family.

Would I go again? Sadly, I think I would. I really want to see Detroit succeed as a revitalized city. But they are ages away, and miles of good leadership, away from seeing a renaissance like Chicago. People from the suburbs will likely NEVER move back to the city, no matter what you put down there.

So, it was just a nightmare last night. But I really did dream that I opened up my January bill and it was $7329. I hope that dream doesn’t come true.

Megan is getting pretty old you know? She is pushing 4.5 these days and there is something about this ripe old age that makes a girl reflective on life’s good times.

Just now, she was telling me about the blue houses stairs. (We talk about the different places we’ve lived by the color of the house. In California we lived in "the green house" [More true than she knows!] and our first place in Romeo was "the blue house." Our current house is "the white on brown house.")
But the funny thing is that she lives in both the real world and her pretend world and I like to catch her when she is pretending. She told me, "Daddy, one day when I was littler I used to fall down the stairs but one day, when I was two, I learned to walk up and down the stairs at the blue house." I said, "well… that is a good story but you learned how to walk really good when we lived in the green house. Did we have stairs in the green house?" Then she promised me that we had stairs in the green house. Yeah, we lived in a ranch.

I think I have the same toddler memories because I swear I remember being able to jump up onto my garage roof as a kid!