Consumed by the Call

I'm part of a Beta test for a new on video on demand web service. I just caught up on the "Kitchen Nightmares" series and I noticed they had some of my favorite shows from the 80's. Right now I'm watching Airwolf.

Billy Buchanan is the worship leader at Good News Church in St. Augustine, Florida. After nearly a decade of touring the world and recording with his band Fusebox, Billy has just released his first solo album, “Transparent.” Check out this album at http://www.myspace.com/billybuchanan

I saw this on TV and was intrigued. I think it would be awesome to do something like this with the kids. I'd love to harvest fresh produce that we grew together. It'd great for the colder weather when you can't grow outside. At $150 plus different seed "pods" it isn't inexpensive by any means, but it is very cool. More Info

Kirsten and I went to Walmart looking for LED Christmas Lights. We were hoping to get them on discount. Well they didn't have any. We finally found some at Menards. I know these lights are pricey but at 50% off it is totally worth it. We got a bunch of cool lights for next year. These LED lights use 1/8 the power that the mini bulbs use. We also picked up some solar power lights. They charge all day and burn for 7 hours at night. I'm looking forward to covering the tree out front with these. I wont have to run an extension cord from the house and they will go one automatically at dusk. Sweet!

The kids were very satisfied with all the gifts. Kalel received a motorcycle and they are all playing with Kalels hotwheels track right now. I received the Nerf Longshot. I like it! It's quite a large blaster. I hope to begin modifications this week. I need to go purchase some supplies before I get started. Can't wait.

I just finished updating my blog photo using Photoshop. HO HO HO Merry Christmas!

From what I have read allot of people are upset that K.I.T.T. isn't a high end Sports car. I must remind them the the car used in the original series wasn't either. The Pontiac Trans Am was available on the market and anyone could purchase one. I think the Ford Mustang is a great American car choice. I think it looks awesome. I can't wait to see what it can do.

So my mom and dad sent Kirsten and I some cash for Christmas. I ran out and purchased a curved shower rod and a new massage shower head. Kya and Kirsten said it is awesome. I'm looking forward to testing it out.

I know some of you may think I'm a Scrooge and yes I know my thoughts here may take away from my Dad of the year efforts. I'm just sharing my confusion. So I go to Keona's Christmas program and they sing of Santa and Jesus. It was "lovely". Now this program takes place at a church where my daughter goes to preschool. At the end guess who arrives? Yes it was Santa. Not the baby Jesus. We as Christians get so wrapped up in Santa sometime our focus of this Holiday gets skewed. How would you feel if it was your birthday and Santa showed up and stole the show. Needless to say I think Jesus is a little disappointed with some of us this Holiday. I'm thankful he forgives.

Santa made a stop at the Kya's Christmas program and Kalel went nuts. He wanted to sit on Santa's lap again. They have seen Santa several times this holiday season and he has beared gifts with each visit. Here are some pics.

Many of you already know that I've created and maintain the St. John website. Today I re designed some of the calendars page. I have included the youth calendars aswell. So if you need to know,now you know where to look. New Calendars Page

So my son Kalel (yes,that is Superman's name)really loves Motorcycles and he was pretending to ride one around the house. He was straddling a cushion for the couch. I looked at him and asked him where his helmet was. He said I don't have one. So what is a dad to do. I jumped up and got an empty milk jug and created one. My wife Kirsten added the duck tape. Now Kalel can ride his imaginary motorcycle and be safe at the same time. Yes, I am running for Dad of the year.

I wanted to shoot some video of this mod but I didn't have a video camera with me today. Here are a few pictures. Notice the barrel that now accepts nerf darts. This barrel is made out of a marker nested inside of a green highlighter casing. This blaster isn't quick on the reload but it certainly packs a punch. It sounds like a potatoe gun when it goes off. I picked up some sonic darts and I'm excited to see how loud the whistle is from these darts when they are fired out of this blaster. Fun stuff!

I just modified a broken Super Soaker. I'm glad I didn't throw it out. I repaired the valve and added a Nerf barrel to the front of the blaster. It will definitely reach 100 ft. Look for my video tomorrow.

It is official. The remake of Knight Rider will be airing on February 17 2008. How sweet is that! One of my favorite shows of all time is being remade and premeiring on my birthday. I get a gift no matter what. Awesome. The new car will inspire the imaginations of another generation. Very Cool.

So the other night I was up trying to figure out how to hang my assortment of teas from my cabinet door. I thought it would be cool to just open the door and all my tea were visable. I used to stack the boxes of tea and I couldn't get to what I wanted unless I took everything out of the cabinet. I used some sticky hooks and cut little holes in the back of a few of the boxes and hung them. Check it out.

Well, Today I picked up a Nerf N-strik Firefly Rev-8. I wanted to remove all the air flow restricters to increase this blasters range. Here is what it looked like inside. This blaster has a ton of screws of various sizes and a lot of extra plastic air restrictors. I yanked them all out and reassembled. It took a few hours. I looked outside and noticed that we were getting quite a bit of snow so I had to cancel Helix tonight.

I spent most of my day in the church computer lab getting things ready for this Sunday. I installed a few software programs and some memory upgrades. Tonight the kids are off to Grandma's house. Kirsten and I will be getting some shopping done. I'm looking forward to it.

I have Leadership class today. We will be meeting at the Freeport Library. I was hoping for a cancelation due to weather but we didn't get any snow last night. So today I will be in class from 7:30AM till 3:45PM. I wonder how many students won't come because the roads are "bad".LOL Now this is bad weather. This is a pic from the web. Imagine trying to walk around in this.

All our travel and accomodation plans are secured and our leaders are ready for the Winter Retreat on January 19th-21st. I still have some finger Labyrinths to make and Kirsten is working on scripts for our big Labyrinth experience.

I'm looking forward to the Jr. High Helix Cake Contest tomorrow night. I'm hoping the weather doesn't keep us from having it. It should be a great fun and Good Eats.

I'd love to show this at worship on Christmas Eve.

I picked up a new piece of software for the computer Lab at church. In this game Titus and Timothy work there way through cities sharing Christ with their opponents and help people along the way. I played the game for a little while and I have to say this is a desent Christian video game. The graphics old school but not bad.

I've been working on my first modified Nerf gun. I found a little LED flashlight that I worked into one of the Nerf dart holders. As you can see I also mounted a red laser pointer into the other dart holder. I also added a rubber band to the plunger to increase the release velocity of the dart. All air flow restricters have been removed from the gun and I hope to replace the barrel in the near future. I've increased the stock performance of this gun by 30%. With the new barrel and an extra o-ring on the plunger I hope to launch darts more than 40ft with this gun.

Check this out! Get your own time machine up and running with this high-tech replica from the 1985 classic Back to the Future! Reproduced with full light effects and adjustable power settings, the Flux Capacitor replica recreates the 1.21 jigowatt-controlling heart of the De Lorean time machine. Measuring over sixteen inches tall and twelve inches wide, each replica features hand-numbering with a matching box, Certificate of Authenticity and Care Instructions!"

I put red food coloring in a spray bottle with some water and sprayed the igloo pink. The girls loved it.

Well, Keona and I were talking the other day and I mentioned that if we got some snow that we could build an igloo. She got all excited so I told Kya and before you know it we had a bunch of snow to work with. I shoveled the snow from the driveway into one of the kids wagons. Kya pulled it to the back yard while Kirsten and our neighbor Jessica formed the blocks and shaped the structure. Tonight if it drops below freezing I'm going to color some water and spray the igloo so it will be pink ice in the morning. Should be fun. Check back for more pictures.

My annual cough has returned and I'm getting tired of it. I'm enjoying a cup of TAZO Joy holiday tea. That seems to sooth my throat a bit.

This thing looks sweet. My Jr. High boys played with our lazer tag guns for hours and now we will be having a NERF tag night and Target Practice session. I'm looking to get some Nerf equiptment so if your kids had some and no longer use them please send them on over to the church. Were bringing tag to a whole new level. Check out this clip.

Russell Hobbs RHTT8W - Tea Tray So Kirsten is the coffee drinker and with our pot out of commission we have a loner until we purchase a new one. Well, I'm aware of a saying that goes something like this, "Happy Wife, Happy Life" so I was looking around for a cool coffee pot. As I was doing this I ran across the coolest Tea Tray. It boils the water steeps the tea and keeps everything warm. Awesome!! A definite must have for me. There is nothing like a great cup of tea.

So our coffee pot died and I saw this one on the Internet while I was looking around. It is beautiful. A little pricey for us though.

I've got some great media ready for my next Core lesson series. I'll be tying in winter retreat stuff. My goal is to get the kids amped about the transformation that can happen at Kalahari. Nice accommodations and swimming for hours on end is great fun but how does God fit in. We will have discussion about how we can connect with God on this retreat and leave with some wonderful tools for spiritual growth.

I just finished putting the February calendar together. Here it is: February 2008

I love free games and this website is fantastic. Check it out.

This has been on the back burner for awhile now. About three years ago I was asked the question "What does your ministry need?" I immediately answered a 15 passenger van. I remember volunteering at a church in Rockford that had a van. It was sweet. We planned a trip. Everyone gathered at the church and we went. It was awesome to all be together. Having a van for our youth ministry would give us the opportunity to pick up several kids who can't get transportation to Helix, Core or Higher grounds. If it was painted it would be a rolling advertisement for our church. Having a church van would definitely give us the opportunity to minister to those who simply can't afford to get to us.

I just added a new link to the Collide Magazine blog. The magazine is interesting so the blog should be too. Let's hope so.

I'm feeling sick today. I've been coughing all day. I need to take a nap. Right now I'm playing a few game demo's. I tried Need for Speed: Pro Street. It is really lame. I'm downloading Flight Sim X. I'll let you know if it's worth the trouble.

I picked up a small turkey on Wednesday and decided to try to cook it. I've never done this myself. I watched a few food network shows and I decided to brine my bird before it went into the oven. I have to tell you, that turkey was the best turkey I have ever eaten. It was so juicy and moist. I'm used to the turkey requiring gravy just to get it down the pipe. Not this one. It was out of this world good.

I think the Marcy's Thanksgiving Day parade should be called "The Giant Commercial" I digitally record all my favorite TV shows and rarely watch them live. I usually watch them an hour later so I can fast forward through all the commercials. Well, for some reason I thought it would be fun to watch the parade. It's just a big commercial for TV and Broadway shows. The first 45 minutes haven't been entertaining at all. Maybe the Santa part will be cool. Maybe.

I have both the December and January calendars available online. Click the month to view the calendar. DECEMBER JANUARY

I finished my christmas wish list. If you want to look at it click the link under my friends catagory on the right hand side of this page. It's good for a few laughs. I played some ping pong this morning and I worked alittle on the finger labyrinths for winter retreat. Now I'm goofing around with Kalel. I enjoy my day off from work.

I figured out how to create my finger labyrinths on the cheap. I'm using plaster of paris. The real idea I'm proud of is how I manages to create the form. As you can see in the video I used a little pot pie tin and etched the bottom. I reformed the image of the labyrinth on the bottom of the tin. I fill it with plaster and after it sets I pop it out. I now have a finger labyrinth ready for paint and decoration.

The Sr. high are having a movie night tonight.

Today was a long day. I spent the entire day preparing media for worship this Sunday. I managed to carve out a few minutes to get the Ugly Mug coffee ready to sell tomorrow. I still have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow including lesson prep for CORE. Tomorrow will probably be a busy one too.

I have a prayer request. One of my Sr. High students was involved in a house fire last night. The family and the pets are ok but my student is recovering from smoke inhalation. Please keep them all in your prayers.

I downloaded the Crysis game demo last night and it rocks. If you like Halo and other shooter style games Crysis wont disappoint you. It's a bit pricey right now though.

As many of you know already, I enjoy a good ping pong game. Tonight the Jr. High will be having a Ping Pong tournament. It should be a great time.

I found out today that two of my students compeated and placed in a speech competition. How cool is that. Way to go Graham and Krista.

Kirsten and I have been brain storming ideas to create the finger Labyrinths. It looks like we will need someone with a CNC machine to help us. The other option is to try and create them using clay. I'll post my proto type of the clay version soon. I'm still hoping for someone to step up with CNC access. That would be the quickest and easest method.

Graham and I finished the service project we were working on. Now the chickens will be nice and toasty this winter. Here are a few pics of me and Graham at work.

I'm in the process of planning the spiritual content of our Winter Retreat. I know a big part of the trip will focus on Labyrinths and how they can be powerful tools in our spiritual lives. As an introduction to the Labyrinth we will be giving each student a handmade finger labyrinth. It will look something like this.

With the upcoming release of the next Narnia film, Prince Caspian, I'm already in the process of planning a Jr. High Lock-in that will use the first film aswell at the second. I'm planning for this Lock-in to be an all day event with a not so locked in trip to the Movie Theater to see Prince Caspian. I can't wait.

Today is Veterans Day so my kids decided to call Grandpa David (my dad) in New Jersey. Kya wanted to thank him for his years of service to our country. All the kids thanked him in their own special way. Kalel sang him happy birthday. It was very cute. My father served in the US Air Force. I have memories of him telling me about his job as a maintence machanic on jet air craft. My dad took us to many air shows as a kid. We went to one a few years back. Here are a few pics.

I finished building four "Storm Windows" for Mrs. Cramers chicken coop. Graham and I will hang them tomorrow if the weather cooperates with us. I'm glad we can help her out and keep those chickens toasty this winter.

A few of my youth group kids went to Chicago and helped us donate food to a UCC food Pantry. Here are a few pics. Then we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a great day. We all had a blast. Kalel loved the big John Deer tracter and the race cars. I also got to see the outside of a Sub. That was awesome. Thank you Kirsten, Wendy, and Brad. We made some life long memories today and we also had a great time forming relationships with the students of St. John. I cherish days like today because most events don't go so smoothly. What a blessing.