after that last post, i suppose i should take a short amount of time to post something a bit more meaningful. Well Christmas is over. It was a good one, no complaints. Even the trip to New Jersey wasn't as long as I thought it would be.

We had a nice brunch with some of my favorite people Christmas morning, and then we left for NJ around 12:30

Ashley (my neice who graduated 2004) had gotten DDR (dance dance revolution) for Christmas, so she was mad excited to show that off, and the kids played it most of the night (in reasonable intervals) At one point they got all the adults to come up and play too... It was quite funny to watch my mom, and my older sisters (late 40's) try to dance and hit the right pads at the right time. great fun and lots of laughter.

I had my first conversation with Valya (my new adopted niece from russia) she is very hesitant to practice her english, but we had a very short conversation... at least its a starting place.

As a Christmas gift, i put together a dvd for my family. It was a bunch of work, mostly because I have never done anything complicated in adobe encore dvd (authoring software,) and I wanted this dvd to be nice. It has film footage of my mom and dads wedding (1969) and their honeymoon which is great to watch. and then home films from 1970-74. I have more footage than that, but this sort of filled up the dvd (along with the extras I put on there) and I will probably do another one in the future and do 1974-??


working with dvd's is time consuming, because you are pushing around lots of gigs of information. I think the one file was like 15 gigs of video... and thats just one file, so it took a while to do it all. Now I think my hard drive is tired - it goes really really slow.

today i purchased two numark cdx cd players. I got a bargain at $1250 (for both) they are serious pieces of equipment - and the first of some major purchases I will be investing into club worship exciting days are ahead. but tons of work to get there.

The Onion | Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People

holy cow... this is amazing and true! :)

merry christmas everyone. I'm going to the service tonight at church, and then the plan is to spend Christmas with the fam in NJ at dianes house.
ill write more after it all happens... right now I am running off of a couple hours of sleep... it took more time to finish my christmas presents for my family (to be revealed tomorrow) than I anticipated. so I was up most of the night waiting on my computer to crunch all the numbers.

what fun... kairsie and Laura surprized us tonight and took us (myself, candace and maria) to Christmas Village



Candi and I had been there 16 years ago... the biggest thing I remembered was that it was the first time i got up the guts to hold her hand (we had been dating a couple months or something) Anyway, that was a very long time ago.
We all had fun... it was especially fun with maria. Kids make stuff more fun... thats why i want to have many more. They add so much to life.
Laura was looking to get into trouble every chance she could get. The one time, she was just standing there, frozen in a pose, and these people totally were looking at her like she was part of the display... till they realized she was a live person, and then they sort of freaked out a bit... anyway it was hysterical.
Another thing we joked about all night was unscrewing the light bulbs. Jon when he was just a youngnn' he was there causing trouble all night, unscrewing the lightbulbs and such... im sure raising a ruckus etc. anyway, the next week his mom found out about it and made him call and apologize :) hehehe I think that is terrifically funny (probably so did the office secretary at the village)

its been a while... so where do I begin?

first of all, enjoy the pics i posted.

OK... we are having a baby! yeah! im excited again, although it doesn't feel quite realistic yet. The ultrasound made it feel more real, and I can't wait, but I wonder how much I will have forgotten about how to care for a new born.

Maria is great. lots of fun! a bit shy around others, but we have a lot of fun together.
Tonight, she was swinging back and forth on the gate that is attached to the railing... it looked like fun. we were playing back in her room, and she was just laughing and laughing. Man it would be fun to be a kid again - and not have to worry about responsibilities or anything... just get up, play, eat, play, eat, sleep, repeat.

Club Worship is retooling and really kicking things up. God is already putting it all together. Lots of stuff to do and organize and network etc.

ACTV is going ok. Jon is great... Josie (our new administrative assistant) is great, her family is great, but production is a bit slow... and Josh our intern is a pretty decent graphics guy... and a fun guy to hang out with... so we just need to keep up with the development stuff (the stuff without deadlines)

ZMYG is cool... we had a great weekend with our student leaders and adult leaders. It was really valuble to learn about ourselves and about how to work together.


I watched a documentary on Bonhoeffer last night... it was creepy... sort of chilling to watch all the footage of nazi germany... people really liked that Hitler guy. really. The footage was telling, because masses of people can be rallied together in political patriotism and be going totally the wrong way without knowing it. Another creepy part of it was how the church was enmeshed with naziism. And Bonhoeffer a pacifist - but involved with a plot to assasinate Hitler, interesting how he came to that conclusion. I' m not sure I agree with his view (and im not sure that God agreed either since all the assasination attempts failed for one reason or another.) Anyway it is facinating to think about it.

I read something interesting today:
great minds discuss ideas.
average minds discuss events.
small minds discuss people.

I didn't write it - but I think there is something true in there to a degree.