The Nintendo Wii

I love this thing!!! It's the gift that keeps on giving! My personal favorite: bowling. Here is Noah and Mommy playing bowling (notice the split that Mommy picks up - - nice!). You'll also notice someone in the background who wants some attention too:

Christmas Day

Christmas Day started off with our own family tradition: the fella's cook breakfast! We had some bacon, sausage, ham egg & cheese cassarole, scrambled eggs, OJ, and some killer cinnamon toast, a tradition all started by my Dad! It was an awesome breakfast, if I do say so myself!

Than, it's gifts! Parker, Noah, Summer, Sammy, and Josiah all LOVED their gifts!!! Grandma scored with some great gifts, as did the Moms and Dads!

Each year we always have at least 1 gift that the kids have to hunt for. This year, they ended up in the guest room closet, trying to open an old suitcase to get to their BIG GIFT (a Wii):

Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve, which started off with an amazing dinner, than a Christmas Eve service at Old Dominion Baptist Church, and than coming home to open stocking gifts, eat dessert, and watch The Nativity Story on TV.

Here's a little video of what dinner is like (the kids LOVE the sparkling cider, as you'll see):

My Life For TWO Weeks

Spent some serious home improvement time working on my biggest project ever ... doing our kitchen in ceramic tile!!! WOWSERS!!! It was way harder than I expected (physically). I was hurting big time by the end.

Laid most of the sub-floor in the first weekend. Followed by the most insane weekend work project schedule ever:

Friday night: 6pm - midnight (shout out to my main main Kevin, who also put in 3 hours on Saturday, and helped me get my chalk lines down!)

Saturday: 9 am - midnight (break from 12 - 2 to coach Noah's bball practice)

Sunday: 9 am - 2:30 am (that's nearly an 18 hour work day! and, I had a buddy helping me from 9 am - 11 pm -- shout out to my main man DINO!)

Monday: 9 am - 6 pm

And the finished product (not showing is the laundry room):

The Greatest Game On Earth!

If you've never played Corn Hole, this explains it all:

I Wouldn't Change a Thing

If God came to me and said I could change anything I wanted to about Noah, and anything I wanted to about Sammy, I would say that I wouldn't want to change one thing about either one of them!

Why?

Because if God changed something about them, than they wouldn't be exactly who they are! And that is who I love - - who they are! I love their perfections and their imperfections b/c together, they make them who they are.

I love being the dad of Noah and Sam!

Focus On The Next Victory!

Read a GREAT post today that I needed. When life gets tough, or people in life cause problems, or things aren't going your way, it's soooo easy to get focussed on the problem and lose sight of the goal. The goal: focus on the next victory!!!

The set up for this post is to simply know that Notre Dame has lost more football games this season than they have in a long time (they are 3-9). Anyway, here's the post (by Tony Morgan):

Just Win More Football Games

Honestly, I've followed Notre Dame football since I was a kid, but I'm not a Charlie Weis fan. Weis, though, shared this very insightful thought in a recent Associated Press article on ESPN.com: "If you sit there and try to be a vengeful person and be worried about every negative thing that people said, that really doesn't get you anywhere. You don't do something about it by going to a public forum and going tit for tat with somebody. What you have to do is go win more football games. Really, it's the only way of answering it."

The amazing thing is that in football or in church (or in anything else for that matter) you will always face negative talk. And, it's not unusual for even the most successful organizations to experience vocal attacks and criticism. (Think Microsoft, Wal-Mart, New York Yankees, Willow Creek, etc.) Frankly, it's when the negative talk stops that you should be worried. At that point, you're probably not doing anything worthy of a critic's time and attention. You've probably entered into the "zone of mediocrity."

Coach Weis gave us a good reminder that it's better to focus on the next victory on the field than the negative people in our lives.

B - B - B - Bears Game!

That's me stuttering from the cold!

Took the boys to their first Bears game ever on Thursday night, Dec. 6, 2007. They were in town to play the Skins. And man, can you say COLD!!! It reminded me of the games I used to go to growing up! It was so stinkin cold that it took us 2 days to thaw out. If I even smelled cold air for the 48 hours following, I instantly ran the other direction!

Just to prove, look at this picture of us at the beginning of the game:

And than look at us by the end of the game (note: Sammy is asleep under the blanket, and Noah is fading fast):

Despite the cold, we had an absolute blast. Got there around 5 pm (game time was 8), and tailgated. I brought my fire pit, so we actually made a fire to keep warm in the parking lot. We had people coming over to warm up!

Than we fired up the grill, cooked some brats, polishes, hot dogs, hamburgers, and steak! Eat was a meat-fest extroadinaire! YUM!

After 3 hours of eating, playing corn hole, and huddling around the fire, we headed in to our seats (note: if you watched the game, you might remember a fan running on the field. That is him being carried off by security on the 20 yard line!):

Unfortunately, the Bears let us down and lost 24-16. But, it was a great night with my boys cheering for our team!