Life is CRAZY!

Seriously, if it wasn't for the kids... I'd go nuts!

Man, I have not had time to blog. I've been sick for weeks, (still recovering!) I've been to California to do some speaking at Christian schools about Order of the Ancient, organized and pulled off a 4-6th grade winter retreat with over 450 kids/leaders, church family event (tonight!), had family visit, all the regular church stuff plus special Sunday evening programs (Lego Nites! during the adult small groups 40 day adventure), got a new computer (MacBook Pro) and been working on a total rebuilding of our church's website (launching soon) and am behind on a zillion other things and leaving for Kansas City CPC on Monday morning... but to prove I am alive to all those e-mailing me and thinking I must be dead if I don't blog.... here are a few pictures from the past few weeks... I hope to do some longer posts soon. LOTS of fun and exciting stuff happening... just no time to reflect or write about them right now. But if you are going to CPC/KC be sure to drop by the eZone and say hello!

Fun to have nephew and neice along on the retreat!
(Perk for parent sponsors, kids otherwise too young get to come!)

Got to hang with my dad a bit - he was in town on ministry business from OCI. You can see the MacBook Pro box in the pic!

My new Mac arrived and I dropped by church to get it!

It is a beautiful thing - slim and light. (though the new power supply is a tad huge!)

Can you believe my wife accused me of loving my Mac too much? I will post about its charms later... now I have to get to all those e-mails I am behind on!

WHOA! Check out these trucks!

Just a quick blog post - been too sick to do much other than the essentials, and I've got more 'essentials' than I need! (probably why I haven't gotten better in over a week!) but to keep the blog alive, and to cut back on all the 'when you gonna blog' emails, here are some amazing photos of some very creative semi-truck paint jobs... I'm impressed!







My only suspicion, is that in each picture the street stripes and wall and trees are exactly the same. I thought, well, maybe it is the location where the guy paints them, I mean some people have an interstate in their back yard, don't they? But in the next one, the background was made to be a blurr as though taken while moving, but the tree and stripes are still exactly the same.

HMMMMMM......
So, are these for real or what? I sure hope so, or I will be very disappointed!

UPDATE: OK, one of my faithful blog readers just e-mailed me their grandkids on the same truck, with this quote: "Karl...couldn't resist sending this along to you...that truck sure gets around...this one has our youngest grandson on the back panel and he is in the middle of his class picnic tug of war!"

What a RUSH! (AFL = Alternate Football League)

Well, I'm sure most people are bloggin' abou the Super Bowl this evening - we watched and enjoyed a good game and food with friends over - but since I was a fan of neither team, nothing much to say about it, (other than that one guy on the Steelers needs a haircut really bad, maybe now he can afford one.)

While the Bears let us down this season (but made it to playoffs at least) - they are not the only football team in town! That's right, there is always the AFL (Arena Football League) which I'm more a fan of now than the NFL - since I've been to twice as many games as NFL. (AFL-2, NFL-0)

The Chicago Rush are our team. (though at the time of this posting, their site is down!) Their opening is a lot of fun - flames! fireworks! cheerleaders! (ok, forget the cheerleaders, sharp elbow from Sara) but they do a great job at setting the tone for the game... I mean, how can they possibly lose after that intro!

Shhhhh! Don't tell the fire marshall the flames nearly reach the roof!

If you aren't familiar with Arean Football - it is played a little differently - kinda all the best of the NFL, just more action on a small field, and hey! You can actually afford tickets! The field goal is higher and narrower, and if you miss the ball might just bounce off the side nets and still be good to grab and go! The walls along the side are 'in' if a player just touches (or pushes off them) but out if you are clobbered into one. The game is enough the same that it is still easy to follow, but just enough different to make it a little more interesting. Plus, did I mention, tickets are affordable?

The Chicago Rush! Part of the AFL = Affordable Football League

Kidology's director of web operations, Steve Tanner (and his wife Amy) are big Chicago Rush fans... though you might not know that attending with them since Steve spends half the game yelling at them ('holding them accountable' is what he calls it) This was part of an anniversary celebration for Steve and Amy and he even got their "Happy Anniversary Steve and Amy" up on the scoreboard. (I'm sure that will be on his blog soon)

Here is a stressed out Steve frustrated by the way the Rush managed to remain 10-11 points behind nearly the entire game.

Here's Sara and Steve's wife Amy... usually she gets to elbow Steve when he gets too obnoxious yelling at his beloved team, so she just elbowed Sara, who passed it on to me, and I got to do the honors. It actually was a pretty exciting game! While Steve had declared we would lose after the very first play, I maintained hope and optimism throughout the game. And in the end, er, in the near end, I was right! They came back, pulled ahead, and then after an amazing down to the wire play with only seconds left they pulled off a winning touchdown to WIN THE GAME! It was pretty cool to hear the stadium go nuts in celebration... until the ref finally got everyone attention and shocked even the losing team that actually there was a penalty and the game went to the visiting team. The stadium got so quiet you could hear a pin drop as the whole place fell silent. You could actually hear the winning players on the field cheering the stadium got so depressingly quiet... like a grave yard. I caught the whole final play and celebration and the beginning of the horrid realization on video.

I used my wife's camera which records a format of AVI that I can't view on my Mac, though I can hear it, and even the audio is fun. If anyone knows how to convert it is QT or WMV I'd love to see it. DOWNLOAD IT HERE: CHICAGO RUSH WINS almost (AVI 12.81MB)

Even though it was our second time to a losing Chicago Rush game, it was still a lot of fun. But the highlight was in the bathroom. Did you know that the Alstate Arena has advertising hand washers! WOW! This is soooo neat-o!

While you dry your hands, you can read advertisement about different products. There is even an ad inviting you to place your own ad on the hand dryer. I got the number, but I'm trying to decide whether to advertise Kidology.org or my blog on the hand washers. But I just had to blog the hand dryers, it's got to be one of the coolest things ever!

Maybe the Hand Dryer company will find my blog post and give me some FREE TICKETS to another Chicago Rush game! Hey, it worked for Steve, it's worth a try!

FREE TICKETS PLEASE!!!