Rain Blows

I'm tired of rain....Does anyone know any good "sun dances" that would get some rays sent our way??? The rain is killing some of my favorite activities.... Like riding my motorcycle and working in the yard. Vange says she has plenty for me to do inside... but I can't - I have to spray the baked beans and cole slaw out of my mowing trailer...... Let's just say the trailer is a better multi-tasker than I am! Later Gators.

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Pork Steak?

We spent the day at a fundraiser BBQ today for our girls' soccer team. We had brats and pork steaks. What I found out about a year ago is that pork steaks are a Midwest thing...... It was cool to have so many parents out there helping out. The girls (meaning a few of the soccer moms) were hungry tonight when we got everything put away... and they did NOT want BBQ..... Go figure...... So, we headed to the local Mexican joint and enjoyed! Since I have to be back at the BBQ at daybreak, it's time for lights out. Sleep well all.

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and friends with every word and every action.

Brain Fun

Check out these teasers - answers are below:

Apples - A basket contains 5 apples. Do you know how to divide them to 5 kids so that each one has an apple and one apple stays in the basket?

Twins - Two girls are born to the same mother, on the same day, at the same time (Edit: of course, not both at once - one right after the other - you know what I mean ), in the same month and year and yet they're not twins. How can this be?

Just in Time - What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years?

Photograph - I am looking at somebody's photo. Who is it I am looking at, if I don't have any brothers or sisters and the father of that man on the photo is the son of my father?




SOLUTIONS BELOW










Apples - solution 4 kids get an apple (one apple for each one of them) and the fifth kid gets an apple with the basket still containing the apple.

Twins - solution The two babies are two of a set of triplets.

Just in Time - solution The letter m.

Photograph - solution I am looking at my son.

Guitar Hero

I have a few guitar heroes that I think are incredible players. Two of them I know personally; David (LifePoint's Axe Man) and Todd (who has also played at LifePoint a few times.) The other two are not personal friends of mine, but they are great players that I love to listen to... James Hollihan Jr (studio cat and played with Russ Taff) and Steve Lukather (studio cat and was the guitar player for Toto.) There are many other smokin players, but these are some of my favorites.... Check out this little clip of Steve Lukather:





Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Behind The Scenes

This past weekend at LifePoint was SWEET! There was an interactive Journey To The Cross set up in our facility. Then, for Sunday morning, we met in a middle school gym, and brought the big guns..... so to speak. It took an incredible amount of dedication and effort to make the weekend happen. So, a HUGE thanks goes out to the creative team who spent hours imagining, building, testing , and tearing down the journey. A HUGE thanks also goes out to the people who gave so many hours to loading in equipment (that trailer fills up quick) , nursery stuff, and Kidmo stuff. Then when all was said and done, they took it back out. We had people working all week building light kites and lighted stage props, wearing out their arms on last minute cuts with dull saws, (power saws are awesome), a killer video team that came and did what they do very well, people who recently had foot surgery carrying everything they could in and out of the school, people wrapping cables and transporting 1000 stuffed animals (well, almost 1000)..... It goes on and on. My friend, Dan, spoke one time about the guy in the Bible who was crippled, and his friends lowered him through a hole they cut in the roof so he could be healed by Jesus. The twist on the story was the question "Who stayed to patch the hole in that roof?" We had some wonderful people who gave of themselves to make sure others could be "touched" by Jesus.... and some who are still "patching the roof." To top it all off, Bob put the smack down and challenged us all to be very proactive with allowing Jesus to use us to rebuild the world into something beautiful again. Do good stuff this week

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Journey

This weekend at LifePoint, we are having an interactive experience called "Journey To The Cross."

jour·ney
–noun
1.
a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time; trip: a six-day journey across the desert.
2.
a distance, course, or area traveled or suitable for traveling: a desert journey.
3.
a period of travel: a week's journey.
4.
passage or progress from one stage to another: the journey to success.
–verb (used without object)
5.
to make a journey; travel.

What was it like that last week of Jesus' life? How did He feel? What smell was in the air? What was He thinking?

Jesus' life on Earth, His burial, and His resurrection are only a small glimpse of the journey that He is on so that we may have life to the fullest.... but it is an immensely important part!

A journey is a long, ongoing process. What does YOUR journey look like? Are you ignoring Him? Are you pursuing Him? Are you wrapped up in your little world; starring in your own story? Are you experiencing a love revolution that only Jesus can evoke..... life is short (on Earth at least) play hard (on the right team...)

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action!

Daisy Update

We brought Daisy home Saturday. She is getting acclimated to us and our routine. She is only 11 weeks old, but she is sleeping through the night in her crate.... next to the kids' beds. She was adopted in celebration of Haley's 12th birthday... so she is really Haley's puppy. But we all claim her. Sunday morning, after I took her out for a potty break, she came back in and fell asleep next to Haley (on the floor)... There is a really cute pic of that moment. Puppies love to chew on EVERYTHING - ponytails included. Daisy thinks it's fun to pin the girls to the ground by dragging them around by their ponytail. Last night provided a couple of great picture moments. My boys were taking a bath and splashing around... well, Golden Retrievers LOVE water. Daisy was trying her best to get in the tub with them.... I put a stop to that. Kyle and Emily came over last night to watch American Idol. Kyle was chewing on a straw and got down on the floor to play with Daisy. This resulted in a straw tug-o-war... Kyle won.





















Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

(Lawn) Food For Thought

Have you ever been looking at fertilizer and wondered what the NPK numbers mean? No? Well it used to really bug me, so I got educated on the subject so I could feed my lawn properly. Here it is:

N = Nitrogen Good for Growth, Color, and Density
P = Phosphorus Good for new roots, Seedling root growth, Seedling plant vigor
K = Potassium Good for overall plant health, stress and disease resistance, cold hardiness

Your lawn needs a BALANCE of nutrients to prosper and be healthy. (That sounds like a good life principle in general...)

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / family / and friends with every word and every action.

Illusion

This is very cool... it takes about 90 seconds. Nothing scary jumps out at you or anything like that.... Try it




Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Daisy

We found a beautiful Golden Retriever puppy named Daisy. The ugly part is she is 4 hours away, in Kansas City. Haley, Ashli, and I are taking off Saturday morning to go get her (man, I really must love my kids...) We are thinking about changing her name. Here are some options:

• Peanut
• Caramel
• Honey
• Twinkie
• Sundae (like ice cream... it looks like she has ice cream on her bottom lip...) What do you think? It's going to be nice having a dog again.... I'm pretty excited...

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / family / and friends with every word and every action.

Shout Your Fame

At LifePoint church, I've heard the lead pastor, Bob Robbins, use a phrase multiple times.... The phrase is some variation of "LifePoint exists to make the name of Jesus great." That is why we do what we do.... so people will connect with Jesus. It's an interesting concept to put FAITH in someone we cannot physically see or hear or touch. When I pray at night with my boys (4 and 5 years old) that is one of the things we say.... "Jesus, I'm crazy about You, even though I can't see you, I believe You're real because I believe the stories about You in the Bible."

If you only get one thing from this blog, let this be it..... I can't see the wind, but I see the EVIDENCE that the wind is real in the blowing trees, the dust tornadoes, long hair being blown.... I see the EVIDENCE of Jesus in changing hearts, broken bodies repaired, strained relationships made beautiful again, and people giving of themselves at an level that is beyond the norm.....

This weekend, we are launching a new worship song at LifePoint called "Shout Your Fame." One of the lines is very appropriate as we approach Easter: "Some say You are in the grave, but I say You're alive!" Another part is a proclamation of how we try to live "...as I live a life that shouts Your fame..." I'm PUMPED!

Live loud, live intentionally and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Puppy Time

Vange and I are considering getting a new family pet in celebration of Haley's 12th birthday. Haley is a dog lover Big Time! I've been doing some searching and have found some cuties.





Elana









Popcorn









Lucy






Starr






Lacey





Sally



What do you think?

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / Friends with every word and every action.

Taxes

YUK! Last night, Vange and I were gathering info and calculating data for our side businesses and all kinds of tax considerations. Not fun. After making an appointment with a CPA and briefly discussing my lawn business, I got bad news. First, I am a likely audit candidate because of my business and personal stuff all meshed together (Great....), second, I am going to have to be much more diligent at record-keeping. It's not going to be hard, I just have to pay more attention.... which goes against my nature. Oh well, when I win (nice homonym) the lottery, I'm paying someone to do my record-keeping.... Wait a minute, when I win, I'm quitting the lawn business..... and every other business!! Go Me! (Dream BIG friends.....)

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

DOGS

I can not remember a time in my life that I did not have a dog.... until now. We lost our Golden Retriever, Sally, about a year ago.

Dogs provide some fantastic companionship, a good reason to go for walks, and opportunities for many smiles. They also need to be cared for, and cost a few dollars. We had a friend over last night who was telling us a hilarious story about their female dog in heat. You can put diapers on a dog?? Really? I guess you actually can learn something every day. Every dog we've ever had was spayed or nuetered very early.

We are considering getting another dog, if the kids convince us that THEY will take care of her. We'll see how that works out.

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

PLOWED!

Holy Shnikees!! We got some snow yesterday in the St Louis area..... enough snow that I had clients that needed their lots snow plowed. I started plowing about 6pm last night, and finished about 3am this morning. I finally got to bed about 3:30am... and got up at 6:30 am for work. Man, I am CRABBY today! The only break in the plowing was the time I took to deliver the music to the band..... of course when I say "I" it is really "we"..... Kyle went along. Of course we had to stop in AppleBees..... Lauren, our regular server, left early before we got there..... She is in trouble!

I'm blogging from the DRIVEN youth service tonight. There are 16 in attendance, and for the first time, the guys outnumber the girls.


They are divided into 2 teams and playing Guesstures.... Kyle said this is their first opportunity to be part of the "Drama Team." This is one of the LOUDEST events I've ever attended....... I like it! Can you spell INTERACTION!?

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.

Giving Blood

Friday night, Vange and I gave blood in honor of of 1st grade girl who has leukemia. It is a planned event.... we signed up for this activity.

It was a very small, and basically painless "sacrifice" to be a real help to someone else. As I was sitting there thinking about losing blood, it made me wonder why Jesus would "sign up" to sacrifice for me. There is a phrase that says "Jesus shed His blood for us." What that really means is he was beaten, stabbed, whipped, and had spikes hammered through His hands and feet onto a wooden cross for us. He literally bled for us. Not only was there a physical element to His sacrifice, but more importantly, through a supernatural, God thing, Jesus "paid the price" for everything I will ever do that offends God. There is a scripture (Isaiah 53:5) that says "But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him - our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed." There is healing for the brokeness in our lives; physical, emotional, relational, financial, vocational..... WOW! That is some potent, special blood.

Live loud, live intentionally, and love God / Family / and Friends with every word and every action.