Carol of the Bells.....as it should be.

For This One Night...

Some friends of ours posted a funny video on their blog a couple days ago. I've watched it a couple times now. It starts and I chuckle....then as I watch the silliness unfold, something inside of me changes. I am on the verge of tears each time.

Basically they've taken an almost inappropriate song and have the Nativity dancing to it. But there's just one line that keeps playing over and over...."Seems like I've waited my whole life, for this one night."

Generations waited. Some of the early prophecies go back 700+ years. There is mention in Psalms of Jesus being hated by his brothers and also hated without cause....those would date back around 1000 years before Christ's birth. Abraham and Isaac are told that God's favor would remain in their family....that's nearly 2000 years before Christ. God's people had waited for Messiah to come. A Savior. One who would save them.....from themselves.

Mary and Joseph both knew fully the prophecy. Messiah would come. He would be called Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God. Mary seems so calm about it.
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.

And the Messiah is in her womb. The Savior of the world. Her Savior too.

And then the time came for the baby to be born......

SEEMS LIKE I'VE WAITED MY WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS ONE NIGHT. FOR THIS ONE NIGHT

Hockey Fights

On the left of my blog is a list of blogs I regularly read. I haven't updated that list in a long time. There are blogs on there I don't read regularly anymore and there are other blogs I do regularly read but aren't on there. Among the ones I DO actually read is a hockey blog on Yahoo! Sports.

They've been doing a series over the last couple weeks on "the best of......" the decade. It's been pretty cool. Most non-hockey fans either hate or love the fighting that goes along with hockey. For those that love it.....I give you their 10 Best Hockey Fights of the Decade.

I'll also point you to a YouTube channel called Hockey Fights. They have every fight that goes on in the NHL....and several from some minor leagues.


I'll just drop one YouTube video here to wet your appetite....and that's just #10

Sweet Sweet Sounds

If you're reading my blog you know that Tobiah has had a variety of medical problems. He's also had a lot of delays as well. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that he had done physical therapy for about a year. He made amazing project physically catching up, but verbally is WAY behind. We started speech therapy this September to try to see what's going on. He picked up Ma Ma pretty quick. But just recently he started DaDa. There is no sweeter sound to my ears than walking into the house, or into his room in the morning to hear him exclaim "DA DA!"

Oh Snap

I um.....I have no clue what's going on here.

Back Outdoors

Once again this year the NHL will play a game on New Years Day outdoors. This year they have chosen Fenway Park in Boston. The Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers will be the two teams playing. You will recall that two years ago I was able to go to the first Winter Classic game in Buffalo. My understanding is that tickets are scarce and expensive to this years Classic.

Because this outdoor idea has gone over so well some other leagues and groups have decided to adopt it as their own. The AHL (one step down from the NHL) will be holding an outdoor game this year in Syracuse NY. Their game will be in late February between Syracuse and Binghamton. This is a touch closer to me, but still a good solid drive for an outdoor game played by two teams I don't care about.

And since the NHL will be at Fenway, the NCAA has taken the steps to secure the ice for a couple days longer. There will be a double-header on Jan. 8. The first game will be (what is believed to be) the first women's outdoor hockey game between Northwestern and New Hampshire. The second game later that night will be men's hockey between arch-rivals Boston University and Boston College. That should be an amazing game. Those two teams are the winners of the last two years NCAA championships.

Late Night Thought on Music

It's 11:07 and I should know better than write this now. I was just playing a game and letting my mind wander and this kind of took this shape.

It's Advent. To be honest, I don't really like being a worship leader in a blended music church during Advent. I feel like my hands are tied by the traditional Christmas music a little more than I'd like. There are only 4 weeks and there's no way to sing them all.

I also have been singing these songs my entire life. So have you probably. And if I"m honest with myself I don't regularly think about what it is that I'm singing when I sing Christmas Carols. They're more seasonal music than they are preparing my heart to engage God.

One of the my struggles with traditional church is our repetitive nature. We do things over and over again. We read call to worships without passion. We sing songs because we are suppose to sing, not because we are laying our hearts out before God.

Anything can be that way. Not just worship. Driving to the supermarket. It's all autopilot. You just do it while you're listening to the radio. You don't think "Ok next street I make a right. Then I go to the second stop sign and hang a left." You just go. Mechanically.

"Make a joyful noise to the Lord." I've heard lots of people talk about how God doesn't require your noise to sound perfect. I've heard people talk about how important it is to come to God honestly. That's all true. But can we focus ourselves on the second half of that sentence. Who is it we are making the noise for? What's the point of making any noise at all if it's not heart felt passionate noise before a Creator God.

Ok....I need to go pick music for next week.

Posession

I posted this a good long time ago. I can't find it in the search function. Pastor Mike used this to illustrate his sermon this morning.

An Amazing Lunch

A long time ago I wrote about how Caucasian Warren is. We knew that before we began adopting We knew we needed to be very intentional about how we connect our kids with the world.

A couple months ago a lady in our church talked to us about a friend of hers who's kids were adopting. We instantly felt that even though we've been pretty good at connectivity...we needed to do better.

As soon as we got home from church I instantly started doing some random Google searches. The first thing I came up with was a family from Erie who had adopted from Ethiopia. We e-mailed and are still planning to meet up at some point. The very next week they were on Good Morning America. Their son was named the cutest kid in American. I'm biased I know, but no way is he cuter than my two.

The next thing I found was an Ethiopian Restaurant in Pittsburgh! We're down that way often because of family and friends. Then we found out that on the last Saturday of every month they have an Ethiopian adoption lunch. SUPER COOL. So we've been planning for a couple months to get down there for it.

Well Thanksgiving falls at the end of November. We planned on being at my parents....so we thought maybe we'd be able to go!

The lunch is at a restaurant called Tana Ethiopian Cuisine. I've got to be honest....I was nervous. We were eating food that we've tried before, but haven't eaten a lot of. We were meeting people we'd never met. We were in a weird restaurant.

It was amazing. We went out on a limb and tried some new things as well as some things that we knew were safe. AWESOME. The picture above was taken after most of the food was gone....I was so busy eating I forgot to take more pictures. Ethiopian food is very intimate in that you eat with your hands. You rip up some Injera Bread off and use it to scoop stuff up. So good.

The kids had a blast. Someone brought big bag of toys. The kids just played like they had known each other forever. Both C and T are pretty social little guys, so once they got warmed up to the environment, they had a blast.

This is going to sound weird.....but for an afternoon.....we were normal. Our church, our friends, etc love our kids. Even strangers have been relatively accepting of our kids. But for this one afternoon we were surrounded by families that were exactly the same as us. We didn't stand out. I just talked with another dad for quite awhile about just life.

As the afternoon was winding down (2 hours later) the owner (who's Ethiopian) put on some videos of some Ethiopian dance music and some of the older kids started dancing. Well Tobiah is a dancer. He loves music and unlike his two left footed parents, he likes to shake his bum. So Tobiah and the owner danced for awhile.













We're planning on going back in January!

Flossing that Bling Bling

It seems that all my blog posts aren't very real lately. Sorry about that.

What's the big deal lately? Kobe Bryant this past weekend hits an amazing over the back board shot. It's a good shot, I'm not saying it isn't. It's just that they counted it. Larry Bird made the same shot back in 86 and they waved it off because he was behind the board. If the ball hits the side of the board it's rulled out of bounds....so going over the top would be out of play. Have the rules changed?

RALLY HELMETS!

Everyone who follows baseball has seen rally caps before. Even if you've just gone to some Little League games you've probably seen a team that's down turn their hat inside out or backwards. It's a silly superstition. The outcome of a game is put in the hands of goofy hats?

I had to post this though.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are horrible this year. So last night they finish regulation tied. Overtime...Tied. So they go to the shootout. They knew they needed a win. They knew they needed to switch it up. So what do they do? You guessed it. Rally helmets. Every player on the bench turned their helmet around. Maybe I've been missing something but I've not seen this before and it looks ridiculous.

I'm glad I'm not a Leafs fan. What more can you want from your pro-sports team? They get paid millions of dollars and they believe that looking silly and turning their helmets around will help them win. Humiliating.

However...........they won.

Staff

Just a thought that passed through my mind. Don't read anything into it about my job....though I'm sure I'm more aware of this because of my job and my father's job as well.

Does the way a church treats or takes care of their staff speak to the Spiritual Health of the church?

If a church treats their staff merely as employees, does that speak to what the church believes about who God is and his provision? Does it speak to how they treat others? Does that reflect their view on Matthew 22:36-40?

Maybe. Maybe not. Let's look at it from an outsiders perspective. If the staff of a church are just widgets...do non-Christians see that? Does that speak to them about what church is all about?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Perfect Graph

Goalie Dance

After a Finnish Elite League game the goalie got his groove on. A little Thriller. A little moonwalk. Tough stuff.

Happy Halloween

OUR HOUSE!

Surprise, we're buying a house. We've been looking for quite awhile....and we found the most amazing house....and now it's ours......well almost. (cue "Our House" by Crosby, Stills and Nash)

We have been feeling for awhile that God has been calling us to be more hospitable. We have family and friends from all over who really can't come to visit us because we just don't have room for them. Also, we have felt really cramped when we've had people over for dinner or movies or games etc. We have really felt a call to do that better but in our current home we just didn't feel we could. We have LOVED our duplex apartment. But also with the boys getting bigger we're quickly outgrowing it.

We looked at some nice houses. Nothing seemed right. Then a couple weeks ago we looked at this house. We both knew within minutes that this was it. This was perfect. More than perfect. Basically it's bigger and more amazing than what we were really looking for! Hardwood floors. Window seats in the stairwell and the dining room. Lots of bedrooms. Giant pantry with storage space galore. HOT TUB. One of the joys of living in Warren is that we can actually afford this place!

They accepted our bid, and we're just doing paperwork stuff right now. We're closing before Thanksgiving and will probably move in the first weekend of December!!!!!! (come help)

So I'm finally getting around to pictures because basically I've ignored my blog for awhile. Here is our new house. I’m going to leave out pictures of the basement and attic….do you really need to see them right now? (Please ignore all the furniture and boxes since they belong to the current owners)









































































































































So the biggest question now is: When are you coming to visit?

Making something good for you more fun

Watch this of the Day

Newsweek did a great little bit on some of the Munchkins from Wizard of Oz. There are 5 still alive. VERY COOL. Watch this.

MUST WATCH of the day...

That being said.....as soon as I posted that I read my friend Matt's blog. Matt has one of the coolest blogs I know. He always finds the coolest stuff. Great ideas. New inventions. Quality stuff. And besides that he's a really nice guy. So I found this video on his blog. It hits me because this is a conversation the youth pastors in my area have been having for a couple years now.

Good enough

Facebook has made my more cynical than I already was. Everyone thinks they have something to say.

So I come here and I start to write and I begin to doubt. I have always recognized that my voice won't change the way the world turns. I begin to question why I bother.

So it's not that I"m slacking. It's not that I don't want to post. It's just that nothing is "good enough".

STOP THIEF!!!

This is pretty self explanatory. The only thing that might not be clear is the thing I'm putting in my pocket is what I use as a wallet. It's really just cards and money together with an elastic hair tie. Tobiah likes playing with the money. We were sitting outside while Corban was riding up and down the street on his bike. Tobiah kept taking my wallet out of my pocket over and over and over again.

READ THIS of the day.

I was cleaning out some old links I had bookmarked and found an article Bono had written for the New York Times. It's from way back in April. It's a little dated, but I think the point of what he's trying to say is not. What are we doing?

READ THIS NOW.

9/14 Monday update

the weekend that was:
-Friday was a normal sort of day. Hanging with the boys.
-Friday night Mari and I went out. This was big since we had a new babysitter. The boys love Jolee, and she's around because she's going to a local community college. The best part (for me) of our date was that we went to a local hockey game. Jamestown has a junior team (16-19 year old really high end play). They were AWESOME! Marjorie doesn't really get into hockey. She likes going, but sits there and contemplates the universe and talks to me about stuff. I stand up and yell at nice goal and she says, "do you think we should go look at that house?"
-Saturday morning was just family time. Ran to the library. Nothing special.
-Saturday afternoon I left for Kane. The marching band had an exhibition there that evening. I geocached my way there. Good outing. The show was GREAT! They've come a long way. We still have things to work out, but really solid sound. I was proud of them. I got home to find two boxes full of paintball guns! Yeah it's like Christmas.
-Sunday was church. Because of our new addition the church is really messed up. So we didn't have Sunday School but church time changed anyway. So we had time to kill at home in the morning. Good naps after church.
-Sunday night was the start of our Connections Ministry at the YMCA. Youth group was really good. LOTS of younger kids. I think there were only 3 high school students. Good and weird at the same time.
-I left there to go get my goalie gear and head to the rink for a 10pm game. The team we played had asked me to play for them earlier this year. They were young and quick. They went up 3-0 early. We fought back slow but sure and won 6-5. Not a great outing for me. But we won.

where i am at the moment: Home. Mari's home too. We're running some errands this morning and then we're all headed off to Wexford to get another test run for Tobiah. We'll see how this one goes. This is the worst test they run on him. It's not a fun experience as a dad holding your son down who's crying and you can't do anything for him......and he's totally justified in crying because I would be to.

on my to-do list this week: I need to get music done early this week. Wed. is our anniversary and so I'm skipping out on worship team practice. I have some phone calls to make. I need to order Bibles. I have to finish the drum cadence for this year. I need to mail out some paintball guns to their original owners. I'm sure there's more

procrastinating about: I'm not sure I have tons of time to procrastinate. Probably the phone calls if anything.

book I'm in the midst of: Still reading Sex God and Round Ireland with a Fridge.

media that seemed to catch my attention this past week: I love finding music that I didn't know existed. This past week I found the "group" Owl City. Totally blown away. Basically it's just a guy who makes music LITERALLY in his basement. I can't get enough. You really need to check out his stuff. I'm going to put a video at the bottom of this post. WOW. So good. Kind of Postal Service ish.

grand revelations this past week: This literally just happened. Tobiah knocked Corban's cereal bowl over and milk went everywhere. I was mad because Tobiah was just looking for MORE food. So I sent the boys in the room so I could clean up. As I was doing that I thought to myself "whoever said no use crying over spilled milk.....was a moron".

how i’m feeling about this week: WAY too busy this week. I wish I had more time to just chill this week. I don't think it'll happen.

Big Boy

So last week was a new start for Corban. He had his first day of pre-school. We kind of felt that he needed a change from just day care. Next year he goes to kindergarten. So he started last week at St. Joseph's school. He goes 3 days a week for half days. So far he's loving it.

So for the first day of school I turned into my mom and took his picture. You just HAVE to take first day of school pictures right?

MUST READ of the day

Part of me wanted to hold this until Random Saturday, but the way I've been blogging, who knows if that'll actually happen.

A couple years ago...maybe before Corban came home...I decided to read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut to see what I was missing. I was hooked. I just liked the way Mr. Vonnegut wrote. I ended up reading every major novel he wrote and several of his shorter stories as well. I really liked his writing style a lot and found that so many of his books really strung little subtle things together.

ANYWAY....I came across this blog post about a speaking engagement Mr. Vonnegut did a number of years ago before he passed away.

YOU MUST READ THIS!!! It's is his explaination of drama. In the age we live in, this is so very spot on!

9/7 Monday update

the weekend that was:
-Friday I had the boys. It was good.
-Friday night was Warren's first football game. Since I'm the percussion instructor for the marching band, I go to the home games. Warren has had a bad football team for a few years now. Like really bad. We actually won 45-0. Wild.
-Saturday morning we were all up early and out of the house by 8am. We headed to Mission Meadows Camp. I spoke there for their teen camp this summer. The boys LOVE camp. As we're pulling into camp Tobiah starts pumping his arms in excitement! The reason we were going is that they have had a Labor Day "family camp" for a number of years. The director Karen asked me to come and lead music for the speaking sessions on Saturday. It was good to be at camp. I struggled a bit with the music. The attendees of family camp are more the grand parent and great-grandparent age bracket rather than "we have family now". It went well though. We got to swim. We got to play a lot. Good time on Saturday.
-Sunday morning all the Evangelical Covenant churches in the area have a joint service at MM. We're talking about 375 people. Very cool. Sunday afternoon was picnic and lots of play for everyone. Corban spent the entire day at the waterfront....boating and swimming with Mari.....Tobiah and I took naps.
-Today we came home, did groceries and chilled.

where i am at the moment: Home. I like going away. I REALLY like camp. It's good to be home too. I'm a home body. The boys are in the bath. Their bedtime is coming soon. They're both tired.

on my to-do list this week: Need to get music ready for this Sunday. Need to write a drum cadence (for real this time). Our Sunday night ministry starts this week, so I should probably plan something cool for that. I need to chat with Mike about our book we're reading together. I need to get some flyers to some teens. I need to update the youth blog (I've been even worse about keeping that up to date this summer than this one!)

procrastinating about: Take your pick from one of the above.

book I'm in the midst of: I've been casually reading "Sex God" by Rob Bell. I got back into it this weekend. I'm also re-reading "Round Ireland with a Fridge" by Tony Hawks. My friend Becky sent it to me a couple years ago. She had great taste in books for me to read. This one is awesome!

media that seemed to catch my attention this past week: During marching band season it's really hard to get our marching songs out of my head. This year we're doing a version of Buddy Rich's "Dancing Men". We're doing Kansas's "Carry on my Wayward Son". We're doing "MacArthur Park". I did however find a "band" who's sound I like. They're life view is a bit skewed though. They're called Kidnap Kids. The two main people are two females who play guitar and xylophone. I've always been a sucker for female lead bands.

grand revelations this past week: Not everything has to minister to me, to be valuable. Different things impact people differently. Because I don't like a song, doesn't mean that it won't make other people cry.

how i’m feeling about this week: I hate weeks that start on Tuesday.

The return of Random Saturday

-A picture paints 1000 words......or 6 maybe.

-If you've ever read this blog before or have met me you know I love coffee. Some artistic folks in Australia love coffee too. Why do all things like this have to be of the Mona Lisa though?

-So what if you wanted to be a ninja, but you have to work in an office to make ends meat? Voila.

-Or perhaps you're Rambo but care about your good looks? We've got that covered too.

-There are lots of blogs out there dedicated to very specific niches. I've been sitting on this one for awhile. I love it. It's called Advanced Style. It's mostly just pictures of older people that are dressed awesome. I love it. I don't check it often, so that it's fresh every time that I do check back in.

-If Jesus played sports what would that look like. Who cares? Apparently someone. I was a bit disappointed that Jesus wasn't a goalie.....because you know he saves. My favorite is the Jesus with kids doing Martial Arts. Nothing says turn the other cheek than Jesus doing Martial Arts.

-Need a Macbook Pro? Check e-bay or a pawn shop in NJ soon.....cause these guys cleaned house! 31 seconds and they made out.

-In related news if you pick up one of those hot Macbooks you might want a table to go with it.

-How is Bob Dylan not dead yet? Who cares. Better thought is that you could own a GPS for your car with his voice on it! I would like to know if he will also being singing "Positively 4th Street" for the GPS as well.....

-I just stumbled across this. There's a band/guy called Moldover who just put out a CD....with a built in theremin! What's a theremin? So this guy created a special CD jacket with a circuit board and it's a low-tech theremin. VERY cool. The CD and packaging costs 50 bucks.....which is the only reason I'm not buying this album I think.

Video time!!!