the blog

Tonight was Date Night with the kids. Miles & Jen went to see Shrek 4 in 3D. Macy & I went to the Father/Daughter Dance at Rancho Christian School. The dance was a huge success, over 200 dads and girls attending. It was so cool to see so many girls just having fun in a safe place where they could just be girls, with their dads.

When I got there with Macy, she immediately headed out to the dance floor, cast and all. I texted Jen, that she’s just like her mom – dancing with all her friends (just like Jen always does). I got a text back from Jen saying that “Miles is just like you, he loves the previews”. I laughed out loud – I DO love the previews, almost as much as the movie!

It’s so important for us to spend times like tonight with our kids, letting them know how much we love them, how important they are to us. Kudos to RCS for hosting this dance – I’ll be looking forward to it for years to come with Macy. And I’m blessed to have a wife that loves being a mom – she’s such a good mom!

PS – Jen didn’t like Shrek and doesn’t recommend it.

I’m a sucker or space pictures. I just think it’s amazing, incredible that thousands and thousands of miles away this little spacecraft is out there, all by itself, sending us these pictures.

Check out this nice collection of Saturn & moons from the Cassino Equinox Mission.

Follow JPL on Twitter.

Follow Cassini on Twitter.

Follow some astronauts on Twitter tweeting pics from the ISS, here and here.

Read up on the Cassini Equinox Mision here.

Let’s see if this works. If you’re watching LOST tonight on the West Coast, let’s chat it up!

Some of you who might not know me might not know that I was a worship leader guy at one time. I had the priviledge of leading for a season at Life Church with some friends like Eric, Karl, supported by Chris and a bunch of other amazing musicians and tech people. I was just looking at old videos and came across this Worship Confessional – these videos were all the rage a few years back. I had a blast making them, and now I’m glad I did – pretty cool to go back and watch them years later. Check it out:

Last weekend I took Miles hiking for the second time with Don and Andrew up in Idyllwild. It was, as Don put it, the “perfect day” for a hike. Don is a pastor at Rancho Community, a mentor, and collaborator. I’ve learned a ton from him over the past year and relish the time that we can spend together. We’ve talked a lot about being fathers, raising sons, and being purposeful in that job. So this trip was more about spending time with them, loving them, watching them have fun, challenging them to make it all the way up and down – the adventure. It’s something hopefully they will remember, more importantly they will remember that they did this with their dads.

We’re not trying to program parenting or fatherhood – we’ve just decided to try and live life more together, to naturally allow our boys to experience these times together, with the hope that we can set them on a course for becoming men, and the hope that we can encourage each other to be great dads.

I’m sure there’s more articulate ways to say all that, but that’s all I got.

As we headed up, one of the “rules” we gave the boys was “don’t get wet”. This winter was crazy for southern California and there’s still snow at 7-8,000 feet. So we knew there would be water. Of course, at the first creek crossing, Miles slipped and fell in. He was fine – a good lesson for us all, that we are all capable of falling, but the true measure of a man is that he get’s up, dry’s himself off and forges ahead, which is exactly what Miles did.

When we got to the top, Don broke out his cooking gear, made the boys some hot chocolate, and made us some espresso. We spent what seemed like a couple hours talking about life & ministry as the boys ran all over Saddle Junction. It was amazing how they just ran all over, spying, exploring, throwing snowballs – they just got to be boys.

We’re looking forward to our next trip, maybe an over-nighter, who knows. What matters is that there’s still adventure and we’ll have it with our boys.