At first we were sucked into the beautiful drawings of Brian Selznick, but when we started reading the story line about a boy living behind the walls in a Paris train station we were just as drawn into the storyline.

We read the book over the course of three evenings, and it took about an hour and a half. The book was as thick as War and Peace, but most of the pages are full-page drawings:

Interview with the author

conclusion

It is hard to tell which one of us enjoyed the book the most. We we were all racing each night to see what would happen next. We look forward to rereading it and studying the awesome illustrations. It is easy to see why it won a Caldecott Medal two years ago.

Our little fireman really thought so. I pulled him around in his little red wagon from driveway to crazy-steep driveway (in the drizzling rain) while he sat back ate candy. At first he didn’t even bother to open the candy wrapper, he just tried to chew through it like a little beaver.

Andrew also tried to run into people’s houses as they opened the door to distribute the candy. I’d grab him by the back of this fireman coat and pull him back out. And he wanted to eat every piece of candy immediately upon receiving it. Evidently he’s still learning the rules of trick-or-treating.

Caleb, however, stole the show as a mad scientist. The “professor” smoothly went from door-to-door amassing huge amounts of candy. He stuck to my advice to always reach for candy with the orange wrapper, which would inevitably lead to more Reeses.

The scientist fit Caleb’s personality well because he’s a huge fan of anything related to science. His costume included…

• A white lab coat we found online
• An iron-on bio-hazard patch, also found online.
• An id-tag that I made using Photoshop.
• A cheap bow-tie that Tiffany found after looking in about 100 different stores
• A pair of safety goggles
• Some plastic test tubes
• Some crazy spiked hair with lots of gel and hairspray

One funny thing, I met a neighbor directly across the street for the first time. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for over 3 years, and I’ve never seen him outside mowing the lawn, blowing leaves, getting the mail, driving in his car, or nothing. Very weird. Very creepy. I guess it’s appropriate for it being on Halloween.

We have more photos of Halloween on Flickr.

What was your trick-or-treat experience like?

Cooking
She seems to instinctively know how to plan, shop, prepare, and pull-off fantastic meals many times a week.I don’t know how she gets all these courses done at the same time. I have to do one thing at a time in the kitchen. Sometimes I open the refrigerator and just stare. Not because it’s cool, but because I can’t remember what I was looking for. She cooks amazing meals for us, and she is awesome.

Grocery shopping
When I am sent on an errand to the market, on average I cover the entire distance of the store the same number of times as the number of items on my list. And if I am going after more than one thing, I need a list. I don’t care that I only have to remember milk and olives. I want a list. Otherwise I’d have to call her. And that’s embarrassing. (Uhhh…babe, what was that second thing on the list?) I can’t imagine how I would have made it before we had cell phones. I’d still be wandering aimlessly around the store. Reading the label on every single item until it rings a bell. And not only do I need the item on the list, I need the brand and the size, even if we’ve been using that product for 10 years. There’s a lot of unexplained activity going on in my head. If something’s on my list like sweetened condensed powdered milk, I just give up and walk out. She has a list of 77 things. Her entire list is based on the layout of the store, and she never goes down the same aisle twice. And to top it off, she usually has at least one kid in tow.

Fixing other people’s hair
After 33 years, I’m still not sure I know how to fix my own hair very well (evidenced by my most recent hair cut which I still haven’t posted picture of), much less someone else’s. Now that Tiffany works in the mornings, I have to make Caleb’s hair. I even have to—eek—use a hair dryer. I have no hair dryer experience. If I were to use a hair dryer on my hair, it would look like a big frizzy fro. Sometimes Caleb’s hair is sticking up one side like a rooster. The good thing is, he could care less about his hair. I could spike it (or shave off his hair like I did mine), and he probably wouldn’t even notice. He looks in the mirror about once a day when he’s spitting water all over it at teeth-brushing time. It’s too bad that se’s not going to have any friends one day in school, unless I can get better at this or Tiffany quits her morning job. Caleb looks like a kid model when she does his hair.

There are several other things that belong on this list too like banking, housework, gift giving, remembering where things are, keeping up with medications, and oh yeah…getting lost. Sorry babe, that’s why you’ve got me to give you directions.

She comes home today, and we’re all happy.

Mostly, the subject of the interview was for me to talk about my involvement with Lifetime Guarantee Ministries. But, I also got to talk about my web design work with LifeChurch.tv and my involvement with the YouVersion Bible project.

You can listen to the program here if you’d like:

Anyway, It was a lot of fun, the hosts were gracious, and said I looked like I was 12 years old, which is a bit odd considering I have so much gray hair already.

If the audio player doesn’t show up in the post (if you’re reading in Facebook), you can listen on Talkshoe.com. Look for episode 67.

The purpose of the newsletter is to highlight some of the key teachings of the ministry including understanding your true identity in Christ, and learning how to live the Christian life through the power of the Holy Spirit and not through our own strength. It’s a key biblical truth that is often neglected in Christian teaching.

Here are the before and after. Click the images to see the full-screen size.

Before

After

Currently, we have about 9,000 subscribers to the daily email. If you’re not receiving you can subscribe when you create an account on the Lifetime.org web site. If you’d rather get much shorter updates from Lifetime.org, you may also want to follow Lifetime_org on Twitter or become a fan of our Facebook page.

• Create an account on the Lifetime.org web site
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• Become a fan of our Facebook page

In July, I began working from home, and I wanted to share about how the working from home is going so far. When I took the position at LifeChurch.tv, Tiffany and I had some reservations about me working from home. But…so far so good.

The boys seem to understand, and they are respecting the boundaries between my work time and home time. It helps that my office is in the basement. The kids don’t walk by my door frequently. Except for the occasional temper-tantrum (from Andrew not Tiffany), most of what goes on upstairs never bothers me.

Instead of them being tempted to come downstairs, more often than not, I’m tempted to wander upstairs to see what I’m missing out on and smell whatever Tiffany has in the oven. Once I had to go upstairs to arbitrate a game of Battleship between Tiffany and Caleb. Also, there are the occasional emergency diaper changes and spiders in the house, you know, things that only a man can handle.

As I began contemplating working from home, I wondered if I would be able to enjoy working without the day-to-day, face-to-face interaction with co-workers. This hasn’t bothered me that much. In this situation, it helps when you lean more toward being an introvert. The digerati team stays in close contact throughout the day using the remote employee must-haves like IM, Skype video chats, and we’re recently experimenting with Google Wave. My productivity has actually increased by not having the distractions of chit-chat conversations, and a productive day goes a long way toward having a good day.

I do miss coffee breaks with co-workers, but the trade-off is getting to have more moments in the day with family. And you can’t beat that!

Now, if we can figure out a way to make my corner office in basement a little less…well…ugly. That’s okay though. I’ll take ugly over moldy any day of the week.

Getting into Trouble

I can assure you the terrible twos have already hit. He’s mastered the art of the tantrum, and he can pout like nothing you’ve ever seen. He is so full of mischief. Caleb never gave us any trouble, so Andy and I thought we were great parents. Now we realize that it wasn’t as much our parenting as it was their personality.

Andrew loves to climb. He uses a step stool to get anything he wants. I find him on all of the countertops. Here is a quick video of how I found him the other morning when he was supposed to be on the floor brushing his teeth. I don’t think he’s up there because he’s overly concerned about his personal hygiene.

Being Outdoors

Just like his brother, Andrew loves to be outdoors. He loves exploring, finding sticks and rocks, and playing in the mud. His favorite outdoor activity is feeding the ducks which we do at least once a week. Most days we are at the park.

Handheld Objects

Andrew has one quirk that was weird to us when it started a few months back. He is obsessive compulsive about holding an object in his palm at all times. It started with a little orange screwdriver. After three days of holding it non-stop we finally took it any from him. Whatever the object happens to be at the time, you’re in for a fight when you try to take it from him. Each of these items have spent significant periods of time in the palm of Andrew’s hand:

Always having an object in his hand must hold him back a little. I can’t imagine the kind of mischief he’d get into if he actually had access to both hands. I don’t want to think about that.

She’s anal about things being clean, and she’s proud of that. (In fact, when she reads this, she’ll take that last sentence as a compliment.) I love that about her. God really has a sense of humor to give her two boys that make humongous messes with greatest of ease. When Caleb was a baby, she wouldn’t have allowed him to make that kind of mess in the kitchen. But now with Andrew, she is more interested in documenting the mess on video. She has come a long way. So enjoy these two videos:

Before

After

All systems are go. Let the Kindergarten begin! Here’s a short little video of his first day:

(If you’re seeing this as a Facebook Note, you can watch the video on Flickr.)

Here’s the account in his own words:

This was Caleb’s fourth trip to the ER, here are the accounts/photos of his three previous trips:

1. Broken Arm
2. Bitten by a bat. Yes, the flying mammal kind (and the followup post)
3. Busted Lip