And another one…

And another…

Down with YouTube. Up with Vimeo.

That hair that helps you to be the princess of the land.

That hair that droops down into your food.

That hair that gets knots and tangled.

That hair that makes you yell at the wind.

That hair that’s not even three years old.

That hair that melts your mommy and daddy.

Blurry photos are okay too.

My long-time friend Vickie’s son, Landon.

Cousin Laura with my sister-in-law’s baby, Lincoln.

Our friends Nathan and Erin’s boy, Levi. Good Lord this little kid is cute.

My father-in-law, Ted…smoking a schtogie.

Ted and Tracy’s daughter, my lovely bride…my baby mama, Allison.

The camera club dweebs.

Josh.

Andrea, my sister-in-law, got a new camera for her birthday. Cool beans.

Kelly —-> Check out her photos on Capture Cincinnati too.

And some long exposures…

Here’s an unedited video test using my Nikon D90 with a Lensbaby lens a friend gave to me. Interesting.

The above photo depicts the new storage organizer thingies that Allison and I picked up from IKEA yesterday. We are looking to keep Ava’s new “big girl room” a little bit way more organized than we have in the past. I’ve been feeling so out of sorts lately…as if I’m getting stressed by disorganization.

I’m pretty sure that I’m nesting. Our new baby will be here in about 4 weeks. Holy. Crap.

It’s already sunk in just how ridiculously easy it is to take care of one offspring. Two is another story. Two carseats. Two types of food/drink. Two naps needed. Two sets of clothes and two extra sets for when they poop or barf on them.

Thank the Lord God in Heaven that Ava is now fully potty trained. She’s going to need to grow up really fast. She’ll probably need to get a part-time job too. I hope she’s ready.

Oddly, my new heightened sense and desire to clean and organize hasn’t yielded much success. It’s as if I’d rather be frustrated. Hmm…

PLAN FOR TODAY:

* Clean and Organize.
* List items we can live without on Craigslist.
* Prep our bedroom for painting.

We’ll see what happens.

Just remember this: God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

If this messes with your theology, crumples your chi, un-centers your energy, or ruffles your karma…you might just need to examine who it is you’re truly following. God loves you, and He’s pulling for you.

LOVE WINS [period]

Caveat #2: It is challenging us to be more adventurous, spontaneous, and ridiculous.

So here’s today’s stupid snippet of my life:

* Walk into gas station to pay for my things.
* Cashier grabs a can of Grizzly fine cut, Wintergreen chewing tobacco and puts it in front me.
* I look at the cashier completely confused
* She says, “Isn’t this your normal can?”
* I look at the cashier completely confused
* She says, “Oh sorry, I must be thinking of someone else…I guess you wouldn’t want this, huh?”
* I say to her, “Ah, what the heck…I’ll take it.”

Now you have to realize…as I typed out that last sentence, even I can’t figure out what the heck I was thinking. In all seriousness, I don’t know why I said that. All I can think is…Wild At Heart.

* I pay for my gas, car air-freshener, and a can of Grizzly.
* I walk outside staring at what’s in my hand and I can’t figure out why I just bought chewing tobacco.
* I pump my gas and examine the can thinking this stuff is nasty, why did I buy this?
* I open the can and grab a big ole’ fat pinch of this black, mint-smelling dirt and stick it in my mouth.
* I realize I have no idea how to chew tobacco. All I know is that I better not swallow any.
* My gas stops pumping as I continue to fiddle with this wad of crud in my lip.
* It burns and for some reason this is completely unexpected to me.
* I replace the gas pump, and I hop in the car. That’s when I realized how dizzy I was.
* I suddenly notice that I can’t even drive. I pull the car forward and pull into an empty space.
* I break out into a sweat and I spit out the wad of tobacco…it’s approximately 3 or 4 minutes since I popped it into my mouth in the first place.
* I can feel a nicotine rush going through my face and neck, down into my arms. My hands are shaking.
* I open the car door and I begin throwing up my breakfast.
* After puking, I get back into the car and I sit in the drivers seat for 15 minutes trying to regain composure. My cold sweat turns into a hot flash and I start to fear that I am an incredible wuss.
* Finally, after feeling okay to drive, I throw the can of tobacco out the window of my car and yell…

THANKS A LOT JOHN ELDREDGE!!

A verse comes to mind:

“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. - 1 Corinthians 10:23

And another one too:

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” - Proverbs 26:11

Well…this dog ain’t repeating that folly.

Public confession time…share yours.

Every Tuesday @ 7:30am I have a Leadership Team meeting with around 8-10 church staff members/crucial volunteers. This meeting is supremely important to me. It’s a time when all of us can come together and focus on the important issues going on in the church and challenge ourselves to be organized and working on the same page as a team. We play a lot of roles with this meeting, but one of the biggest roles it plays for me is a huge challenge to my personal growth as a leader, and my personal growth as a man.

This morning’s meeting was especially helpful to me as we took our team through an exercise where we agreed to write down one positive thing (something that we love), and one negative thing (something we’d like to see them working on) about each member of our team. We decided to do this as we have identified some of the areas we have some dysfunction going on within our group. After writing these for each person, we shared them with everyone.

It. Was. Phenomenal.

Being able to speak those things out to people in a constructive way was difficult, but necessary. On the opposite end, it was so helpful to hear the things that I bring to the team and the areas of improvement. Some of them were obvious and some of them caught us completely off guard.

Personally, it was confirmed that I:

* Take on too much
* Don’t know how to say no as well as I thought I did
* Don’t delegate enough
* Hold back on speaking my mind in certain situations
* Don’t trust myself fully enough, when I should

And lots of good things about myself.

How helpful this was! Things that I knew deep down, but came to a head as multiple people spoke them to me…face to face. Think of what this could do at your work! Imagine what this could do in your family!

Try it!

I took a bit of a risk this past weekend.
I made a fresh salsa during 3 weekend teachings at Vineyard Westside.

During the message I also mentioned my thoughts on Facebook being biblical and what it means to move past surface-level relationships. You’ll have to listen in to see what it was all about.

At the end of the message I threw out a few questions and some possible starting points.
I’ll share those with you here as well:

1. Am I okay with having surface-level relationships with everyone?
2. Outside of my family, who can I really trust?
3. Do I have people in my life that I can call at 3am when everything is falling apart?
4. Are there people around me who can strengthen me when I’m weak?
5. Am I using my God-given gifts, talents, or abilities to serve my friends?
6. Am I investing MORE or LESS into the relationship than the person I’m trying to build a relationship with?

Steps towards authentic community:

1. Choose wisely. You don’t need to be friends with everyone.
2. Get coffee, have someone over for dinner, go play golf, etc..
3. Be intentional. Ask a deeper question // reciprocate.
4. Work at it. Don’t assume a relationship is fine.
5. Be transparent and authentic yourself.

Feel free to take a look at my teaching notes if you’re interested // Fighting against FALSE community

Swan photographed in Infrared @ Spring Grove Cemetery. [1999]

Congrats Carrie Lee!! Shoot me an email to detzelpretzel[at]gmail.com with your shipping address and I’ll get those books out to you ASAP!!

A couple of books come to mind that have helped me grasp a decent understanding of how some things work in the kitchen:

Alton Brown’s I’m just here for the food

and

Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio

I’d love to give these two books away to a randomly drawn commenter. All you’ve got to do is leave a comment expressing that thing you would really like to learn how to cook. One comment per person please…and a random drawing will be held tomorrow.

So, what’s the ingredient, dish, type of food, etc.. that you’d like to learn how to cook?