Memorial Day Weekend!

We came, we played, we laughed, and we ATE good!

Memorial Day was a blast! Mark, Lora, Parker, Summer, Josiah and Mickey Batterson were here. Joel, Nina, and Ella Schmidgall, Grandma Schmidgall, and Cousin Jon Schmidgall (aka "Jersey Jon") all made it out, too!

We played hours and hours of corn hole, the hottest game in America! The kids put together their money making massage and car wash business. And most importantly, we ate like KINGS and QUEENS! BBQ'd ribs, HUGE steak (thx to Grandma), grilled corn on the cob (thx to Joel & Nina), homemade salsa, a bunch of other homemade dips and beans, and than topped it all off with some homemade ice cream w/ homemade chocolate sauce (thx to Battersons)! Can't get any better!

Lots of fun being together with family! Here's 3 pics and a video at the bottom:

Rule #6

Great post by my cousin, Dave. I definitely have moments where I need to be reminded of Rule #6:

I read a lot these days, but I think my retention is quite poor. That's why I love catch phrases. In a recent book I picked up, a title of a chapter was "Rule #6" and began with a story:

"Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, shouting and stamping his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: 'Peter,' he says, 'kindly remember Rule #6,' whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes and withdraws. The politicians go back to their conversation, only to be interrupted again several minutes later by another person in an outburst. Again, the prime minister kindly says, "Rule #6 Marie." She withdraws with an apology. After the third time, the visiting prime minister is astonished and asks if he would be willing to share Rule #6.

'Very simple, don't take yourself so damn seriously.'"

We live inside our heads more than any other time in history. That causes a tremendous amount of myopia (aka - nearsightedness).

Create The Future, Don't Re-create the Past

The way kids think it so amazing! Their ability to dream, to imagine, to create - - it's just amazing. Sometimes I catch myself laughing or brushing it off as silly, but it really is amazing. And somewhere along the way, we all do that. We try to NOT stick out, and NOT imagine, and NOT create. We want to fit in, and in the process, we lose our imagination. What's bad about this is that our ability to imagine and dream is what brings color to life! It's what brings meaning to every-day moments that otherwise go by unnoticed.

Too often we stop living our lives out of imagination and start living our lives out of memory! We become robotic! We go through the motions. And instead of creating a FUTURE for our kids, we just end up re-creating the PAST.

I want to give my kids a future! I want them to chase dreams! I want them to live out of imagination! But I am realizing that I have to do it myself first!

Switchfoot

Found some footage from the concert on youtube!

This is the song where Jon (lead singer) came out into the crowd and sang. It's almost at the end of the song where he gives me a high five! You can't see me at all, but you can see him giving some dude (that's me) a high five. I have no proof, but I promise it's me! :-)

It's at about the 5:25 mark of the song(just skip ahead), and Jon raises both his hands in the air, looks over at me, and gives me a high five! Check it out!

Happy 14th Anniversary!

Went to NYC with my lady for a special 14th Anniversary Celebration. We shopped Chinatown, ate some yummy chinese food for lunch, went to Central Park, hung out in Greenwich Village, had dinner in Little Italy, tried to find a cool club in Soho (unsuccessfully), and stayed in Time Square! So much fun!!! Here is a picture or two, and a video of us at dinner.

Smith Mt Lake Pics

Smith Mountain Lake

I'm on a roll ... another great family event, and I forgot the camera! DUH!!!

Drove down to Smith Mountain Lake with some friends and stayed at their Lake House! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! Just can't beat the lake-life! So relaxing and refreshing.

A couple firsts:

• Sammy fished for the first time, and ended up catching 15 fish total! He was not only catching them, but taking them off the hook by the end of the weekend!
  
• I had my first wipe-out on a wave-runner ... and it just happened to be at 60 mph! OUCH! It's true that the water really does feel like concrete when you hit it at a high speed! Worst part is I lost my money $3.99 sunglasses!
  

Than we also did some swimming, the kids did some cliff jumping, tubing off the back of the boat, ate lunch at a marina, rode dirt-bikes, stayed up late, woke up later, and just had a GREAT weekend! I could definitely get used to this!!!

Thanks to Cliff and Heidi for hookin' us up, yo!