Happy Thanksgiving

This is what our succulent turkey looked like before we hacked it to pieces and devoured it. I had to post of picture of what I consider to be my best roasted turkey yet! I've produced many a dry, chewy or just plain tasting turkey in the past. I even tried brining the turkey last year, which I found to be an enormous waste of salt and not much difference in juiciness or flavor. This year I bought a fresh, free range, 12 lb. turkey and rubbed it with olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, and onion powder, then stuffed it with fresh thyme & rosemary sprigs, orange & apple slices, and onions. I cooked it upside-down for the first 2 hours and then flipped it for the last 30 minutes or so. Yummmmm.....


This is where Hannah hung out while I cooked the turkey, peeled sweet potatoes and whatnot. John took Christopher and Sarah with him to the gym where he worked out for nearly an hour before feasting time.


After all was cooked, we packed up the car and hauled everything over to Nana and Pop's house, where Nana provided the cornbread dressing, pumpkin pies, cool whip, and best of all: a clean house with a table that was already set!
Side note: John, his parents and I have had an ongoing debate as to which is superior - cornbread dressing or bread stuffing. I've given up on making bread stuffing because everyone down here (south of the Mason-Dixon) prefers cornbread dressing to what we are used to in the North. I still prefer bread stuffing (comfort food, I guess), but I've grown to like cornbread dressing and even had 2nd and 3rd helpings of it today.


Would you believe that it only took 2 shots to get all of us looking and smiling at the same time?! This would make a great Christmas card photo if only we didn't have a much cuter one of the kids in their matching pjs.

Sarah's birthday

Sarah turns 3 this Tuesday, November 20th, so we celebrated today with a few of her girlfriends. She had been looking forward to her party all week long and had a great time. I've learned that with 3 year olds, all you need are balloons, pizza, cupcakes and juice boxes...and a place in which they can run wild and trash with toys. Instant party.


The only group photo where all of the kids who attended actually sat in the same place for the picture.


As soon as the pizza was served, the house got suddenly quiet.


There really are 3 candles on that cupcake. One of them just got eclipsed by the other. Although, whenever I ask Sarah, "How old are you?" and tell her to say, "I'm 3" she says, "No, my number 2."
Sarah actually sang "Happy Birthday to Sarah..." along with everyone else. It was pretty cute.

Christopher's choirs

By looking at the picture above, you'd think that Christopher is sounding out letter sounds or attempting to spell words. But if you have spent any amount of time in our house where Christopher makes repeated, lengthy visits to the magnets on the fridge while singing songs, you'd realize that he is organizing his 'choir.' What's funny about this is that this is just the most current in a long line of his obsessions. When he was crawling, he was obsessed with spring-bound door stoppers and drawer handles. Every time we would enter a new house, he would make a b-line to find the door stoppers and drawer handles and flick them. You could see his satisfaction in getting several of these going at the same time. It really was pretty impressive (and noisy) considering he wasn't even 1 yet, but he could crawl from one door stopper to the next with breakneck speed. On the flip-side, you can imagine his confusion and disappointment at finding certain door stoppers that were not spring-bound or handles that wouldn't flip. After he started walking, he left door stoppers behind for bowl-spinning. Don't ask me how this started, but I guess he noticed over time that throwing my plastic lids and bowls (I kept a stash for him) a certain way would cause them to spin, so he eventually figured out how to do this intentionally. I think the most he could get spinning at once was about 7 or 8 bowls. This was a long-lived obsession (and I mean obsession) because he would be content to spin bowls, lids, rings, or anything remotely round for hours in a day. He was actually kind of 'famous' for this particular skill as kids at church (and sometimes adults) would ask to see Christopher spin the bowls. Whenever we would visit someone's home, he had no qualms about asking to play with the hostess's kitchen bowls and friends were rated according to the size and quantity of their bowls. The louder the better, so spinning the big, stainless steel bowls on the tile entry hall or the cement patio in the backyard (no tellin' what the neighbors were thinking...) was most satisfying.
Thankfully, we went digital before he kicked the bowl-habit, so here's a picture of him in the act taken in March 2006 (he was 1 month away from turning 3).

Back to the choir: As you will see in picture number 3 (below), he will even organize his cars into a choir. I remember finding him in my bathtub one time (no water, mind you) where he had gathered everything within reach (soap, shampoo bottles, candles, etc.) and organized them on the floor of the tub, singing choral songs. When I walked in and looked at him, he simply looked up at me and explained that this was his sea choir as he waved his hand over the objects. John and I both enjoy listening to choral music, so we were happy to foster his interest. For a long time now, Christopher has been able to identify the basses, tenors, altos, sopranos, and various orchestral instruments when listening to classical or choral music. We just had no idea that he would incorporate this into his playtime. One time I pointed at one of the lines in his 'choir' and asked if they were the altos, and he said, "no, those are the mezzo-sopranos." Duh. Sarah will provoke him by stealing one of his magnets and then run through the house. I am alerted to this by the sound of, "NO, Sarah! That's a soprano! She just needs to praise God!" It would sound so spiritual if he weren't yelling...

His very favorite choir to listen to is the St. Olaf college choir. We recorded their annual Christmas program last year and I cannot tell you how many times we have watched it. Nana bought him another St. Olaf choir video for Christmas, where all of the various choirs at St. Olaf college sing in a combined concert with the full orchestra. Shortly before I am discovered taking the video below, you'll notice the color groupings of the magnets which represent the different choirs and you will hear him singing, in a raspy voice, one of their songs - "Gloria in Excelsis Deo." 

The one thing that all of his various obsessions have in common is that they're all noisy.

Ok, forget Halloween...Horray for Reformation Day!!

As is usual when John is out of town, I am having a hard time motivating myself to shut it all down and go to sleep. So what highly productive thing am I doing? Blog-surfing. Don't ask me how I got there, but I found this post regarding October 31st and creative ways to celebrate Reformation Day. It's short and enjoyable to read, so I recommend it. Now I'm all inspired to implement this fun and much more worthy practice in our own family. Besides, John would make a great Martin Luther, don't you think?

Halloween...what to do?

I'm not a fan of Halloween, mostly because of its pagan roots and also because it seems to stir up a grotesque fascination with death and evil. I don't mind seeing houses decorated with harvest themes (i.e. pumpkins, scarecrows, Autumn leaves, etc.) or even a few cutesy-looking ghosts or jack-o-lanterns, but I have gotten to where I won't take my kids for walks down certain streets because we have encountered too many 'dead bodies' emerging from their mock graves in people's front yards or severed, bloody limbs hanging from people's trees (by 'limbs', I mean arms and legs, not tree branches). I find myself getting angry about it and just wanting to disregard this wretched holiday and its festivities altogether. However, I'm also conflicted about how my actions appear to my neighbors. Does withdrawing from such a community activity really enhance my witness for Christ, or am I further distancing myself from the world and my neighbors, thus hiding any witness I may have 'under a bushel'? Yeah, I celebrated it as a kid, blissfully ignorant of all the history behind it. Now that I'm a parent, I've got to make informed decisions about all sorts of things that I did in the name of "fun" as a child.

Tim Challies wrote an article titled, "Trick or Retreat?" which I found to be very helpful in sorting out my thinking on this subject and therefore, my practices.

So, with John in Chicago this week and Hannah in bed for the night, the kids and I sat out on our driveway to greet our neighbors with smiles and free candy. Many of our other nearby neighbors did the same, which added to the visiting time - even if it was having a conversation by yelling at one another across the street.


Waiting for trick-or-treaters...(notice the very cool, carved pumpkin in the background).


Here they come!

Sunday's Sermon and Charles Finney

In my Reformation Day sermon this past Sunday, I stated that Charles Finney was a highly negative influence in the history of the modern church in America. Two people after worship expressed their appreciation for what I said and asked me if I had been listening to Mike Horton's White Horse Inn radio show recently since he had been speaking about Finney. I have not, but I know that Horton wrote an article on Finney a while back. For those interested in learning more about the beliefs and (mal)practices of Finney, I recommend Horton's article "The Legacy of Charles Finney". There is also an audio by Horton on "Finney and American Revivalism" that I haven't listened to yet but will. Of course, the book that best describes this problem is Iain Murray's Revival and Revivalism: the Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism (Amazon or WTS Books). Chapter 9 would probably be the best place to start in that book to understand the effects of Finney on the church. A book review of Iain Murray's book can be found here at a Reformed Baptist website.

Another Week in St. Louis

Well, I left Mindy and the kids behind and traveled last Monday for another week in St. Louis with 9 other pastors. We stayed at a house-turned-retreat center near the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary. I spoke to the student body at the seminary on "The Joys and Pains of Ministry". I have felt a very strong bond with these fellow pastors. We have met together enough times to develop relationships of real trust and intimacy. It is by far one of the very best things I have ever been apart of. It was a great joy to see our good friends the Wichlans throughout the week. How they are thriving at Covenant seminary! I got home Thursday night to discover that my car had been vandalized, my dash board ripped up and the radio stolen. What a pain. I spent Friday having various catch up meetings, the first half of Saturday madly writing my sermon for Sunday, and then we had a wonderful fall festival at Trinity on Saturday afternoon. Lots of people showed up and it was really fun getting to know our neighbors and some of our newer folks better. There were various games with prizes, nachos, popcorn, cotton candy, face painting, and a fabulous creativity fair in which several members of our congregation had a table display of their various hobbies and talents. We were thankful for the bouncy houses where our kids could expend all of their sugar-filled energy.

I'm leaving again this Wednesday night for a meeting of various theologians in Chicago. It should be a fascinating discussion. I'll be gone until Saturday night. We'll post some pictures of the fall festival.

Also, I want to make a movie recommendation: "Freedom Writers" with Hillary Swank. It's a true story of a teacher who tries to turn around a class of 62 kids from opposing gangs. I watched it with the pastors on Wednesday night and then Mindy and I watched it together last night. Tonight after the kids went to bed we watched all the special features. It is a wonderful movie on a number of levels. Go see it!

Sitting up and bouncing for joy

Hannah will be 7 months old this Saturday and I've noticed that she has been able to sit up with minimal support for a couple of weeks now. So today I plopped her down on the floor without any support to see how long she would stay upright before tipping over. Wouldn't you know, she just sat there as content as she could be? I guess it's official now, though she probably would have done it sooner if I gave her the opportunity...
Of course, as soon as I got out the video camera, she tipped over a couple of times as you will see in the following video clip.



The next video is of Hannah bouncing in the hanging door bouncy swing, or whatever the official name for it is... She goes bananas every time I put her in there and it just cracks me up.

Results!!!

As many of you know, John has been on an uphill battle to lose weight and get healthier. When we first got married, I had NO idea what he was up against. I just figured all he needed to do was be more disciplined in his eating and exercising, and everything else would fall into place. Easy for me to say... Well, now that we've been married for 7 years and I've gotten to know John and his struggles much better, I have a much better appreciation for how hard it is to make such a drastic lifestyle change...for the long run. After the Zone diet, Atkin's, Weight Watchers, and countless books on health, fitness and weight loss, gym memberships, personal trainers, dietitians, food journaling, and many other methods, we have seen his weight go down, up, down, up, and basically hover around the same number. Every time he would go in for his yearly physical, his blood tests would reveal numbers that were either the same or a bit worse. For anyone who can relate to this struggle, these kind of results can be very discouraging.

However, John had his yearly physical last week and had very different results. For the past couple of months, John has been meeting with a nutritionist weekly who not only advises and keeps him accountable in the food/nutrition department, but also has him on a pretty rigorous exercise regimen. John has been relentless in journaling all of his food/calorie intake and more consistent than ever in his exercise. John told his doctor that he'd be curious to see if any of this might make a dent in his bloodwork numbers. His doctor said that so much of it is driven by genetics, so don't be surprised if the numbers come back the same.

Drum roll... Well, John's doctor called the next morning saying that whatever John has been doing is making a difference! So here are the numbers for you to see:
Total blood cholesterol should be under 200 mg/dl
last year = 203; this year = 183
HDL (good cholesterol) should be >40 mg/dl
last year = 37; this year = 44
LDL (bad cholesterol) should be <130 year =" 121;" style="font-weight: bold;">this year = 108
Triglycerides (fat in the blood) should be <150 year =" 225;" style="font-weight: bold;">this year = 154
Cholesterol ratio (total/HDL) should be <4.4 year =" 5.5;" style="font-weight: bold;">this year = 4.1!!!!

After years of not seeing his weight budge or any of his other numbers move (at least in the right direction), this was incredibly encouraging news! So for those of you who have been praying for John in this regard, we wanted to let you know that all of John's efforts and your prayers have not been in vain. We certainly covet your continued prayers as there is still a long road ahead, but do pause and give thanks for these first steps in the right direction!

David Brooks: Huckabee is Top Tier

David Brooks, one of the most influential conservative columnists in America, writes today in his NYT column that Mike Huckabee is top tier and and that he has the political skills that merit his place there.