part of my costume required me to be clean-shaven and have a mustache. unfortunately, i hadn’t let mine grow long enough yet. (but i tried it out first anyway.)



(Stacy hates that.)

tonight was the Anthony’s Costume Party. the costumes were pretty amazing. let me take you through them.

first, we have Camille and her husband, John as Pam and Jim from The Office.



next, we have our lovely host, Michelle Anthony, as Cleopatra.



Gabe came as a nerd who got beat up. (might not have been a costume.)



Tom Swogger came as some video game character. (i don’t know who he was supposed to be, but supposedly, he was dead on.)



Sharron’s husband, Jimmy, came as Tiger Woods.



Ang and Alex were Velma and Shaggy from Scooby Do.



Tyler and Allison were, of course, Dwight and Angela. (amazing.)



Kit and Gina were Bleeker and Juno from the movie Juno.



Tommy came as.... um... some sort of cheese... thing. and Keri came as Ugly Betty.



Cristi came as a black-jack dealing cat. (“come on, cat!”)



and Ashley and Tori came as the season of Fall and a butterfly (respectively).



there were some others as well (who you’ll see in the group shots), but i didn’t get individual shots of them. however, the winners of the costume contest were, of course, Stacy and i as Michael and Michelle Anthony.



it was pretty awesome. people literally kept thinking we were them all night. (yes... Stacy cut a Styrofoam ball in half to create giant boobs.) here are the pictures from the rest of the night.

amazing sunrise this morning...



not sure why i was up to see it.

later, Stacy tried on her costume for Michael and Michelle’s costume party. i tried part of it on too.

okay... but the weird thing is, i took the picture after i’d put my regular jeans back on. why wouldn’t i have taken the picture of the NEW jeans???

i’m a moron.

tonight, we celebrated Ella Cork’s birthday. it made me feel a little bit old.

title pretty much sums it up.

we’ve been meaning to have a wrap party for the VBS skit crew for a few months. however, every time we try to do it, someone can’t make it.

tonight... we finally made it happen!

we took the kids up to my parent’s house today. so cute.

now that i work for both ROCKHARBOR and David C. Cook, i have more crap on my desk. i have my laptop which i use for RH stuff and personal stuff and i have my iMac which Cook gave me for Cook stuff. it’s cluttered but it’s kinda fun too.

today was Tori’s birthday so we took her to breakfast at The Gypsy Den. right when we walked up, her boyfriend, Kevin came walking out. she thought we planned it. we didn’t. total coincidence. worked out though!


(Cristi is laughing and Tori’s not sure why.)

today we had a pretty heated conversation in our lead team meeting. it ended up being very helpful and productive, but it was heated nonetheless.

at one point, Michelle asked a question (“who does a good job of shepherding parents?”) that nobody was sure they knew the answer to. (she obviously had a particular “right” answer in mind, but nobody knew what she wanted us to say.)

she said “come on you guys! you know who!” (which was a reference to the movie “What Happens in Vegas.”)

we sorta laughed about that but still didn’t know the answer. what happened next is captured below.



fortunately, this broke the tension and everybody laughed. (even though Michelle doesn’t look like it in the picture.)

grrrrr.

okay... so there are these two kids named Jordan in our fourth grade class at RH. but they look a lot alike. for a long time, i thought it was one person... and then i saw them together. sure... there are differences, but come on! they look a lot alike AND they have the same name AND they’re in the same class. not related at all.

that’s weird.

today was the last day of NAPCE. Michelle was the keynote and knocked it out of the park!

she usually talks to practitioners and does well. but to get academics to embrace the families philosophy that we’re talking about is a serious feat and she did it. (they were literally lined up to talk to her afterward!) it was pretty cool.



before she spoke though, i needed a caffeine boost. unfortunately, no Mountain Dew in the hotel. so, i had to walk to the gas station on the corner.



there must be an airbase or something near by because the entire time we were in Atlanta, there were fighter jets flying overhead. i don’t know what that was about.



oh... and i saw this really weird ad in the airport. (those are hands.)



when we got home, church was happening so Stacy couldn’t pick me up. i walked home from the airport which was actually kinda nice. (it’s only like a mile.)

Jim Burns kicked off the conference last night with sort of “state of the families” talk. he continued it this morning but did a great job of setting up Michelle who is the keynote speaker for tomorrow.

it’s an interesting crowd. i’m probably the youngest here by 10 years. it’s been fun though.



the last one is me in my hotel room. i was bored.

this morning, i had to go to the airport at a very early time to catch a plane to Atlanta. Michelle and i were meeting Michael and Janet out there for the NAPCE conference. (i think it’s National Association of Professors of Christian Education... but i could be wrong.)

the sunrise was beautiful before i left.



fortunately, Michelle and i were able to orchestrate some seating changes on the plane and sit next to each other. we talked the entire way. seemed like the shortest flight ever!

note to self: if you want long trips to seem short, bring Michelle.

today was the day... NEW MACBOOKS!!!

i went and got one. so pretty.



it was really windy today which provided for a beautiful view outside.



tonight was the second 3rd Wednesday at ROCKHARBOR. we’re taking the 3rd wednesday of every month to set aside for prayer. we don’t work but have prayer meetings in the morning, at noon and in the evening. (the morning ones are optional.) we’ve been having around 1,000 people show up for these and that’s pretty amazing!

we had a Families meeting today and Michelle had us take a rock and write on it something that we wanted to celebrate in our ministry

.

you’re going the wrong direction!

this morning, i didn’t have a clue how long it would take for three kids to get ready for church. so, i woke them up at 7 (Nolan was already playing Wii when i woke up at 6.30) and had them start getting ready. i needed to be at church by 8.45, so i figured that would give them an hour and a half to get up, eat breakfast, take showers, get dressed, etc...

they were ready to go by 7.30. now we had an hour to kill before we needed to leave. i really need to figure this kids thing out.



unfortunately for them, they had to sit through two services since i was teaching at the second service and had to be there for the first. of course, since i had The Conversation all week and then was trying to keep up with the Corks all weekend, my lesson in The Hub sucked. bad. what are you going to do?

after church was out, i took them back to my parent’s house, but not before we had a large disagreement in the car about where we might go for lunch. (Burger King ended up being the winner.)

one at a time is good. three is a bit much.

so, today i did something that might be considered monumentally stupid. the Cork’s (Matthew and Mardi) are in India and my parents and the Chandlers have been taking turns taking care of the kids. however, both of them were busy tonight and they asked me if i’d take them. i said yes. i’m not sure why.

i mean, to go from having zero kids to having three kids under the age of 9 in one day is a little overwhelming. especially after The Conversation being this week and with me teaching in The Hub (high school group) tomorrow.

first, i picked them up from my parent’s around 1. i decided to keep the entertained by taking them to Boomers for some mini golf. (good call!)



after Boomers we went and grabbed some pizza at Roundtable. i forgot how good Roundtable is!



after that, i had promised a friend of mine from church that i’d come and check out his art exhibit at the Costa Mesa City Art Show at Triangle Square. the kids actually seemed to like it. unfortunately, Ella fell on the escalator and cut herself. she was okay after a few minutes, but she wanted me to carry her, which i couldn’t do for very long. (she’s not two anymore!)



after that, we went home and played Guitar Hero. but i wasn’t sure what to do with them at this point, so i called Stacy (who was working the Saturday night service) and left a one word voicemail... “HELP!”

she came over around 8.30 and we all walked to Cherry On Top for some yogurt and then watched some of “Elf” before hitting the sack.



all-in-all... a good, but exhausting, day. but we’re not done yet!

so, these last two days were pretty much amazing. i mean, even though i was a van driver and a session leader for our little summit here, it was pretty great.

this conference was the culmination of everything we’ve been working for since i came onboard back in January. (for Michelle, it’s the culmination of over four years of work.) today, Michelle got to present our philosophy of family ministries and people were eating it up. this project could be HUGE. it’s the end of the beginning and the beginning of something big.

the picture below is of the president of Cook (Chris) opening the day for us this morning.



later today i was driving along and i saw this truck. i wonder if he’s a relative?

today was pretty awesome. “The Conversation” started and we had around 40 people from all over the country here to talk about Family Ministries. Michelle, Janet, Sharron and i all got a chance to lead sessions and the participants were totally into it.

on Thursday and Friday of this week, we’re hosting a conference here at ROCKHARBOR to get some feedback from practitioners and professionals on the Cook/RH project. today, we met to get everyone on the same page for it.

yeah... that’s Hiro.

today, we had a BBQ at Kit’s house for the families team. we played Bocci Ball and had some great food. for some reason, i was a little out of it and didn’t enjoy being there even though it was a great party. Stacy’s been out of town for the past few days and came back tonight after the party. it was good to have her back.

working on the October edition...

turns out that Traci Carpenter was in the background of an episode of Friends. so, tonight we checked it out.

that’s her sitting at the table in the background at Central Perk!

today, Traci got her new puppet for teaching our 2 year olds. we had some fun with this. (Kit made him a joint.)



oh... and these are my feet in the elevator.