CPC Orlando – Day #1 – Introducing the "Pastor Karl Awards"

As DAY #1 of CPC Orlando comes to a close, I’d like to give out a few impromptu awards here on PastorKarl.com BEST CHILDREN’S PASTOR T-SHIRT: WINNER: Scott Philips Kidology member and contributor to the site. BEST PARENTS @ CPC! (?) WINNER: Rob and Kathleen Biagi ( www.robbiagi.com ) Notice the baby sleeping next to the doll in the suitcase! I hope they poked some holes in it for the flight to Orlando! MOST LIKELY TO GET ARRESTED: WINNERS: These Kidology fans showed up with a marshmellow gun and proudly showed the ticket Epcot security gave them…. for ‘having too much fun.’ COOLEST BOOTH GAME: WINNER: Nitro Kids Show! ( www.nkshow.com ) This is a great concept, basketball on the head. I have an inflatable version, but this is cool – helmet and goggles! It is easy to see who is ‘a head’ in this game! But heads are gonna roll if it goes bad! Talk about losing your head in a situation! Ok, enough puns, time to move ahead… BEST DRESSED: WINNER: Lisa Welchelor…. MOST LIKELY TO WEAR THE SAME OUTFIT AS THE LAST CPC: WINNER: Lisa Welchel AND Karl Bastian. Yes, this picture is from my meeting Lisa…

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A Lazy Day before the Madness begins…

After a very full day at two WDW parks, today I was in the mood to chill out a bit. Sara was off to visit family, the Tanners were back to conquer another park (Magic Kingdom today, Steve’s third consecutive Magic Kingdom/Disneyland visit with rain!) while I slept in and then strolled the grounds. It’s a really nice place. Except for the Opryland in TN (2001?), this is probably the nicest place a CPC conference has been hosted. (and maybe nicer since it is outdoors and is in WDW) The grounds are absolutely beautiful. All the buildings are around a huge lagoon that you can even rent boats to go out on. I almost rented a bike, but it was sprinkling a bit and I didn’t know if it was going to get worse, so I stayed on foot. One of the things I have always appreciated about INCM and the CPCs, is that they enable Children’s pastors and workers the opportunity to go to places they might otherwise not get to go. Why should only secular businesses get to take their employees to nice locations for training? After all, we are in the most important field and occupation: REACHING…

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Pastor Karl gets to meet WALT at Disney World!

Well, once again we left a day early for CPC so that we could take a bit of the local culture. Since the conference is at the Walt Disney World, we grabbed a park hopper and took in Animal Kingdom and Epcot, neither of which I’d ever been to. For the most part, everyone got along just great. This is Steve and Amy Tanner. For those who don’t know, Steve is the Director of Web Operations for Kidology.org. If you want a great write up of what Kidology is doing at CPC, his blog has a great description, I couldn’t do better, so read his. First stop was the Animal Safari… and I was pretty impressed. There were a lot of animals and ride was a lot longer than I expected. We saw a bunch of animals you normally wouldn’t see in your own neighborhood, and the jeep ride made it a lot more fun than a trip to the zoo. (Where the animals are always indoors sleeping anyway.) I won’t bog the blog with too many animal pictures, (I know its always better in person), but it was pretty cool so see so many animals up so close. Here…

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SNOW DAY in CHICAGO!

I love Chicago. I moved here in the middle of high school and fell in love with the city, the culture, the pace, the architecture, the food, and the WEATHER! YES! I LOVE cold weather, and I especially love snow. In high school my dad had a huge snow blower that was the width of the sidewalk and had a gear shift with five speeds! Not only would I happily plow the driveway, but the neighbors and their neighbors and the side walk all the way around the culdesac. (we were at the end where the snow was dumped with the city plow turned around and blocked our driveway with a mountain of snow… which is why we got the huge snowblower) but I digress. I’ve been very disappointed for several years. It’s hardly snowed. We’ve had these lame boring snowless winters for several years now. So when this past December was the ‘coldest Chicago December in recorded history’ I was so excited. My snow blower has been dying for years, but it wasn’t a big deal. I’ve shoveled and borrowed by sister’s wimpy electric one to get by since they live four houses down. Anyway – the wonderful weather…

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The Apple in my eye

It’s here. The MacBook Pro. The latest amazing development from Apple. For those who think that Apple or Mac users are still primarily an anti-Bill Gates fan club who are blindly loyal to Macs because of their hatred of PCs, they are way behind the times. Those crazy devoted Macites are just lucky they chose Macs, even if for silly or rebellious reasons originally, they chose a winner. By the way, without going into detail, Bill Gates makes money whether you buy a PC or Mac. So if you hate Bill Gates, get a yellow memo pad and a Bic pen, but my guess he owns stock in those companies to. So get over it. Apple computers are not a fad. They are simply better, and in every possible way. Let’s be clear. I am not a PC Man, or a Mac Man. I have gone back and forth between PC and Mac over the years – Atari 2600 (first computer!), Laser 128 (Mac), Toshiba T-1000 (PC), Apple IIc, Compaq (PC), PowerBook 180 (Mac with 16 shades of grey!), many WinBooks (PC), PowerBook G4 (Mac). (left several noname PCs out of the list) I am loyal to none of these.…

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