Life is CRAZY!

Seriously, if it wasn’t for the kids… I’d go nuts! Man, I have not had time to blog. I’ve been sick for weeks, (still recovering!) I’ve been to California to do some speaking at Christian schools about Order of the Ancient, organized and pulled off a 4-6th grade winter retreat with over 450 kids/leaders, church family event (tonight!), had family visit, all the regular church stuff plus special Sunday evening programs (Lego Nites! during the adult small groups 40 day adventure), got a new computer (MacBook Pro) and been working on a total rebuilding of our church’s website (launching soon) and am behind on a zillion other things and leaving for Kansas City CPC on Monday morning… but to prove I am alive to all those e-mailing me and thinking I must be dead if I don’t blog…. here are a few pictures from the past few weeks… I hope to do some longer posts soon. LOTS of fun and exciting stuff happening… just no time to reflect or write about them right now. But if you are going to CPC/KC be sure to drop by the eZone and say hello! Fun to have nephew and neice along on the…

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What a RUSH! (AFL = Alternate Football League)

Well, I’m sure most people are bloggin’ abou the Super Bowl this evening – we watched and enjoyed a good game and food with friends over – but since I was a fan of neither team, nothing much to say about it, (other than that one guy on the Steelers needs a haircut really bad, maybe now he can afford one.) While the Bears let us down this season (but made it to playoffs at least) – they are not the only football team in town! That’s right, there is always the AFL (Arena Football League) which I’m more a fan of now than the NFL – since I’ve been to twice as many games as NFL. (AFL-2, NFL-0) The Chicago Rush are our team. (though at the time of this posting, their site is down!) Their opening is a lot of fun – flames! fireworks! cheerleaders! (ok, forget the cheerleaders, sharp elbow from Sara) but they do a great job at setting the tone for the game… I mean, how can they possibly lose after that intro! Shhhhh! Don’t tell the fire marshall the flames nearly reach the roof! If you aren’t familiar with Arean Football – it is…

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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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