house update

so we went into an intense bidding war with the bank. here's how it went:
we offer 15K under asking
they rebut with 2K under asking
we offer 13K under asking
they rebut with 3K under asking
we offer 11K under asking as final offer
the bank has not accepted of refused it as of right now. it has been two days since we made our bid. that is where we are at right now.

end of blog drought

so there are a ton of christmas pictures here, keep going till you reach the end. isaac is so cute in all these pictures.

merry christmas

our family shot for christmas. this was taken at church in front of our tree there. we got all dressed up for it too.

christmas tree in the morning

a picture of our tree in the mornng before we attacked it.

my buddy

isaac calls his uncle derek his buddy. he was very excited to see him at christmastime.

isaac banging on a bongo

he got a bongo that lights up the letters of the alphabet when he hits it, he just found out that it did this here.

what did mommy get for christmas?

it couldn't be!

could it be?

yes it is!!

man im sneaky

yes it is a laptop. thanks to all who helped get this gift for kara and set it up, she loves it.

isaac and his keys

isaac has a keyboard to go with his rockstar hair

the family

isaac loves his spiderman bath boat, it really propels through the water too. he is also sporting his spiderman snowboarding pajamas. isaac loves spiderman...okay his daddy loves spiderman and isaac thought his boat was cool.

rock star

rock star hair. he looks so grown up. maybe it is because kara is looking at baby pictures of isaac on her laptop right now.

a new dvd

usually i am not annoyed by any of isaac's movies, but this one is so irritating. i think i'll hide it. he kinda liked it, but we have so many non-irritating ones to watch.

christmas morning

this is us on christmas morning at our house. isaac had really awesome hair!

opening presents

he is still opening presents, and loving it.

hey i wanted an xbox!

i love the look on his face in this picture. he is so cute. it looks like he is protesting his gift, but the camera just caught this look. i think its cute.

christmas with gramma and grampa

isaac loved opening presents this year. he had so much fun with his gramma and grampa. we stayed there over night the friday before christmas and had our party on saturday.

he loves charlie brown christmas

isaac is watching charlie brown christmas and learning what christmas is "allabauoot" its real cute.

isaac having fun

here is our pastor, kendal, taking isaac for a ride on the chair dolly. he had fun.

staff christmas party

at our staff christmas party, isaac helped put chairs away. we had prime rib!!!! it was great. i guess it was on sale at sams. i love sams.

my wife's blog

my wonderful wife has her own blog site now. i'm so proud of her. go check it out www.kararundel.blogspot.com

wow

I just ran into this verse, and it describes exactly what i am drowning in right now. it is colossians 2:6-10. (Message version)

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

Wow. I am looking at the sunset right now and it is a brilliant yellow and gold that highlights the trees in its colors. God is amazing, and I don't need a telescope to see how awesome he is. thisngs like beauty, art, love, and nature are all screaming out,"there is a God!" also pain, suffering, sadness, and depression scream it as well.

I read this C.S. Lewis quote the other day and it is great: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." C. S. Lewis

my head hurts

so i am doing a series on creation and evolution in January. my head hurts. i have studied everything from philosopher Descartes to scientist Richard Dawkins, to creationist Dr. Grady McMurtry, to social comentaries like south park and penn and teller's Bullsh!# show. My head hurts and I am drowning in information.

Evolution is causing severe doubt in many teenagers in the belief of God and the veracity of the Bible. So I know that I need to address this subject, but I am not sure how to put all the info together into into a coherent series so that the audience is not drowning in this info as i am.

I'll keep you updated on my "progress" if any.

house hunting update

so we are making an offer on this house today. it is listed at 89 and we are offering 75. ouch. but it needs alot of inside work. i like this one. it backs up to the woods, hardwoods, patio, garage, 3 br, 1 bth. its real nice. i'll keep you all updated.

tums please

so i have been having heartburn after every freakin meal. it is getting irritating. i eat tums like candy. i was talking to kara about it and she said that it might be all the spicy food we've been eating, hot sauce, chilli peppers, cajun seasoning and such. so i did a bit o research on the subject of spicy foods. i found the cause of my heart burn. chocolate. what the heck? we bought a bag of chocolate for our christmas candy dish and i eat at it a bit here and there. the article i read said that chocolate can relax the lower esophageal sphincter, the muscle between the esophagus and stomach, and cause heartburn. geez. who would've thought that a hershey's kiss could burn more than a jalepeno pepper.

going all out

he is really loving the sprinkles. he had to have both of them at the same time, he kept saying shake, shake, shake! we made a big mess and had a great time and these are really good cookies!

going all out

he is really loving the sprinkles. he had to have both of them at the same time, he kept saying shake, shake, shake! we made a big mess and had a great time and these are really good cookies!

add the sprinkles

isaac is going to put us on a sugar high with all the sprinkles he is using on the cookies. i was the same way.

more dough

another cute picture of isaac rolling dough.

patty cake song

isaac learned how to roll the dough from his mama. he was having so much fun. he kept singing the patty cake song about rolling it and patting it and mark it with an i, and throw it in the oven... it was really cute.

rollin out the dough

isaac got to use the rolling pin and roll out the dough. it was a big mess, and he kept saying, "gross" when he touched the dough and flour.

mazzy helps with clean up

isaac's dog was helping with the clean up part of the cookie making by licking all the dough off of his hands. he kept giggling while she was doing it.

big bite

isaac is taking a really big bite here. i used to lick the spoon too.

yummy dough

isaac has a big smile after he tasted the dough. he kept saying, "eat it!"

isaac makin christmas cookies

so we spent all day saturday making christmas cookies. it was the messiest thing we have ever done. it was so much fun, and isaac had a blast here are some pictures of us mixing the dough

winter is here

this expresses my feelings of winter quite nicely.

isaac got mail

we were going through pictures of last years christmas and found this one of isaac and his gg. isaac got TWO Christmas cards in the mail from his gg this year. he loves to get mail so it was a special treat to get two cards.

man isaac has grown so much in a year. he went from 18 month clothes to 4T in one year! he is flourishing so much here, we love it!

mark driscoll interview

i really think that all bloggers should read this article and take in the wisdom of mark driscoll. i have read some blogs recently where staff criticise their own churches on their blog. the internet makes our "platform" bigger, and we need to be careful of our words. click on the title for the article.

click here for cool song

some students from our youth ministry started a band "as lovers go" and made this song. it is really cool, i'm really impressed. click on the "click here for cool song" to hear it on myspace.

finished product

here is our tree all finished. looks good.

isaac and mama decorating

isaac is putting on his first ornament of the year, a pooh bear.

our village

we put up our christmas village. its not as cool and fancy as shelly ratiz's, but i like it alot, and we keep adding to it every year. this is some of our village, but the rest stretches about 20 feet on this shelf with a total of 17 houses (4 of them are churches so we fit in to west side michigan). various trees and shrubs, a snowman, a bridge, and a wreath seller, and a santa.

our "new" armoire

so, during our move last year, our amoire broke in half. so we have been using the bottom half for the past year to put our tv on. isaac kept getting into the stereo and tv and stuff. so my dad (hero) fixed the top of the armoire, and kara's dad brought it out here, and kara and myself re-assembled it (with gorilla glue! THE STRONGEST GLUE ON THE PLANET!!), sanded it, painted it, and put on new hardware. it was just like hgtv. now it looks awesome!

icicles

these are icicles hanging off the back of our house. they nearly touch the ground!

isaac and daddy decorating

me and isaac and mama are decorating the tree. it is a bit smaller than our usual giant "national lampoon" style tree. but it fits great in our little house.

the tree

i am hauling in our freshly thawed Christmas tree from the garage (sportin my new goatee).

gigglin with aunt jessie and grampa

Isaac was getting tickled and loving it in this shot, as you can see by the look on his face.

Grampa n Isaac

Isaac had a blast with his grampa (pronounced: grayhm Pa') with his shape sorter. they played wiht legos too and built a big castle. he had fun for a long time in his room with his grampa

isaac says...nice beard!

this is the end. i shaved 5 minutes after this picture was taken, but my beard got ginormous! My first goal was to make it to May, yeah didn't happen. My next goal was to make it to Christmas, yeah didn't happen. I made it to Thanksgiving. But I did go from September to November with the full beard without trimming it. I decided to trim after I looked at myself and was reminded of Tom Hanks from Castaway

its snowing...again

over here on the west side it snows every day. i forgot about that. last year we had snow every day too. so i guess it will snow non stop till april. yeah. dirty lake effect snow. i have a weather radar widget on my desktop, and there is blue from lake michigan to our house, and it just keeps coming, and coming.

great article

this is a great article about "balancing" ministry and family.

http://rev.org/article.asp?ID=1409

very well written

Christmas tree

we got our christmas tree today. $15.00 is a good deal if you ask me. we'll post pictures as soon as it is up and decorated. we got an intense ice/snow storm the other day, so our tree needs to thaw out in the garage before we can do anything with it. it was like 20 degrees out so isaac got all bundled up in snow pants and two coats hat and gloves to go out. he had fun. someone told us he reminded them of the kid brother in "A Christmas Story" randy.

tagged

One Word Challenge

You can only use one word...
Not as easy as you may think.

1. Yourself: Tom
2. Your girlfriend/boyfriend: hott
3. Your hair?: flat
4. Your mother?: giving
5. Your Father?: sacrificing
6. Your Favorite Item: dell
7. Your dream last night: weird
8. Your Favorite drink: mike’s
9. Your Dream Car: 69 camaro
10. The Room You Are In: bedroom
12. Your fear: mankind
13. What you want to be in 10 years: 38
14. Who you hung out with last night?: hehe
15. What You're Not?: short
16. Muffins: fluffy
17: One of Your Wish List Items: house
18: Time: 12:41am
19. The Last Thing You Did: cooked
20. What You Are Wearing: shorts
21. Your Favorite Weather: stormin
22. Your Favorite Book: ender’s game
23. The Last Thing You Ate: pizza
24. Your Life: nice
25. Your Mood: nice
26. Your body: tall
27. Who are you thinking about right now? raitz
29. What are you doing at the moment?: typing
30. Your summer: missed
31. Best part of your life: family

i was tagged by raitz, i will tag...wait everyone i know is tagged already.

cool week

this was a pretty cool week in ministry, i had two students ask me to mentor them for ministry. awesome.

simplify is my motto

my new motto for life is simplify. i love it. i have been reading alot of andy stanley, and he has a less is more outlook on life. it is really good stuff. our family, for instance, is only setting up 1/3 of our Christmas decorations, but our house looks great! we are focusing on quality instead of production and quantity.

so to go right along with this new outlook on life, in staff meeting today Rob, our teaching pastor, said that he heard of an andy stanley technique that he adopted called the top three, or something of that nature. what it is, is you write down the three things that you are going to accomplish tomorrow, and do those three things well. i love this!

i have lists upon lists of stuff to do that i just get lost in so often. the top three is a focusing technique that i am adopting for my life. but i am adding to it. i have the top three in proffesional and the top three in personal life for the day. when i do those things, and have done them well, i have accomplished my goals for the day.

so here we go. simplify. is that a bumper sticker? if so i want it, that and giterdun.

Christmas starts

so tonight our youth ministry is going over the Christmas story. it should be fun. there is a cool trivia about Christmas around the world, stupid facts that i always seem to stumble on, and a message on business. we are looking at lessons learned from the innkeeper and the shepherds. God chose to speak to the only ones who had the time to listen. everyone else was busy with their own lives. God comes and speaks to those who have time to hear.

I was thinking about the multitude of angels that the shepherds saw. it was probably the most amazing thing mankind has ever witnessed, millions of angels all singing in perfect harmony lighting up the sky. a few lowly shepherds got to see it. all because they had time.

sometimes in ministry you are made to feel guilty if you are not busy busy. If you are not busy then you are lazy, is most pastors mottos. sad. we should most definently NOT be lazy, but we are also not to be so full of ourselves that we miss opportunity to hear from God. I met a youth pstor in our area a while back, and he could not stop talking about himself, all he does for God. He didn't ever once try to connect with me, he was living life in a hurry, like a stone skipping across a pond.

maybe if we slow down a bit to hear from God, we won't miss out on what he is doing and saying.

an sad sad fact i recently learned

i just learned today that the average age of a homeless person in america is 9. that is no typo. nine years old. this is truely a sad statistic.

dream home news

hey we met the investor who bought our dream home, and he's not dirty at all. he was real nice, and may be able to work with us to buy the house. please pray that we can make this house work. every time we go into a house we compare it to this one. its sad. it is THE ONE! it is going to need a lot of work, but it will all be worth it. it will be a good home to raise our family in.

family shot two

here is isaac and his nana and papa, mama and daddy.

family shot

this is our thanksgiving family photo. kara is beautiful, isaac is cute, and my beard is outta control! i have not trimmed it in two months now. the plan is to go to christmas without trimming. we'll see.

the good one

this is the good picture of derek april and samantha. samantha is a little doll. she has a laugh just like the babies on tv in those commercials

you best be takin a picture soon or...

this came out funny. derek was trying to get samantha to look at the camera, but it looks like he is chewin me out.