www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVZijG4WSOw

For those who visit my blog regularly, you may notice it looks completely different.

Well as I was playing with some features today, I got a critical error which let me to uninstall WordPress and reinstall it.  Well that whole process completely wiped out my blog and everything that went with it.

I hope to find some backup of my blog post but something is telling me that might not be possible.

This really stinks…….

Our family just ended a week’s vacation.  My wife and I saw it as a vacation  not only from work and from home but from our kids as well.  This was the first time in our six years of marriage that we did not have at least one kid with us for more than one overnight.  My parents took our two kids and two of my brother’s three kids (my youngest brother is there as well) to Camp Calumet for the week.

So my wife and I enjoyed some down time in Vermont.

Monday we celebrated our six year anniversary with dinner at Table 24 and we saw the movie Inception (which was awesome by the way).  Tuesday we went to Burlington, Vermont and had lunch at Al’s French Frys and took a walk up and down Church Street.  Wednesday we took a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s Factory, and Cabot Cheese Farm.  Thursday we hung around the house and started to prepare ourselves for our trip home, we took a tour of the Wilson Castle and awaited our kids arrival home.  Friday (today) we are headed back to our home.

It is great when you can go out with your wife and see sites like this:

It has been wonderful to reconnect with my wife — kidless.  We have talked about a lot of things that we usually don’t get to talk about because usually we are dealing with one thing or another with our kids.  Another reason we don’t have “adult” conversations is because we are so consumed with day to day life that we don’t have time to talk with one another, or we forget what we have to say to one another because something comes up.

These conversations have been great.  They also are going to lead to some major changes in our lives over the next six to eight months.  I won’t go into detail about them now but I will blog about them soon.

Even though we have enjoyed our time together we missed our kids.  We missed cuddling with them, we missed talking with them we missed how we experience what they are experiencing.  We missed so much about them and we are glad that they are home with us again.

But it warms my heart to have parents who care about their grandchildren so much that they take them out into the woods to camp for a week.  I was never really lucky enough to get to know my grandparents or my cousins that well because of I lived in Vermont and they lived in Pennsylvania.  I am glad that my kids get to know their grandparents and cousins on trips like this.  Thank you mom and dad.

Even though being a parent of two active kids can be tough at times–  how could you not love faces like these:

If you would like to read about other dads out there, and the experiences they have with their kids check outwww.dad-blogs.com

Most people want to succeed, but whose version of “success” are you trying to achieve?

How do you measure your success?

How do you know when you’ve really accomplished something in your life?

Success on other people’s terms may only mean frustration for you.  If we measure our success by goals that others think worthwhile or if we try and measure success by own personal standards, we will wind up in trouble.

For many people, success is related to money and possessions. When you have money and become rich, you are a success. When you build a big home, you are a success. When you have a nice car, you are a success. When you have many possessions, and you can sit back, take it easy, and enjoy life, you are a success…….. in the eyes of the world.

What if you do not have all of those fancy things?

What if life is more than “whoever has the most toys when they die wins?”

Life in the church is more than coming in with the most amount of money, with the best looking car, with having your life all together.  When looked at from a communal perspective, we are more interested in the needs of our sisters and  brothers, in the heart and lives of our sisters and brothers rather than whats in someone’s bank account.  Many people with eyes pointed to the cross, have a little extra, instead of going out buying someone extravagant, tend to give it away to perhaps improve someone else’s life.

Fulfillment starts within our own heart and our own soul and spreads to other people.  It is only when we start with our own hearts that we can define clear personal values to start to measure our success in life, or dare I say fulfillment in life.  If we do not start with our heart and our connection with God and a larger community of faith, then we are measuring our success by “the world’s” values which may prevent us from recognizing our own significant, personal accomplishments.

God did not create us each as individuals only to have us measure ourselves by someone else’s expectation.  God did not build us up only so we tear ourselves (or others) down but not achieving what other think we “should” be achieving.
We are created to develop to our full potential – in the direction and degree that God leads us too. It is our responsibility, though, to equip ourselves to make wise choices, choices that will help us develop into the individuals that God created us to be, and to live in the community which supports one another.

When we arm ourselves with the power of prayer, with scripture in our hands and God on our hearts and minds, we will know the true meaning of success in our lives.  When we surround ourselves with others, in the body of Christ we will have that support and love to find true success in life.

If it wasn’t for the Blog-off that I participated in earlier this summer, there is a high possiblity that I would not of touched my blog all summer.  I really got out of the routine of blogging and twittering over the summer (except at the national youth gathering).  I must say that I have missed posting and I do have a number of posts started but not complete.

I can’t believe it is September already, not only is it September but we are half-way through September!!

Anyway, I am back and I have lots to share over the next several days so keep posted.

Today is day three of our trip to New Orleans.  It has been exciting to say the least!!

We got up bright an early to see Tangled Blue at worship this morning.  It was great!!  They remembered us from Vanderkamp just a few weeks ago.  To our surprise another Lutheran Church from our conference (King of Kings) was at worship with Tangled Blue.

We then proceeded to have a sit down breakfast.  Now for those who know me well – if I could have just one meal a day it would be breakfast.  I LOVE breakfast!!  This place had a buffet and I was SUPER excited when they had my favorite – Biscuits and Sausage Gravy!!!  Needless to say this was a start to an awesome day!!

We proceeded to the Interaction Center after breakfast.  At the Interaction Center there was a setup of satations that the kids could go too.  There was stuff to get them to think about Justice in their lives and then there were things they could do as “hands on” projects.  It was HUGE and included a zip line.

We stayed there for a few hours and then we came back to the hotel.  Everyone was saying that they needed a break so we chilled for a bit and then went to the Super Dome.

We had another amazing experience at the Super Dome (again I will reflect more on these after I return home).

We finally came back to the hotel and had devotions and going to bed.  We are getting up at 5am to be at the Super Dome by 6:30am to leave for our Servant Project.  We really have no idea what we are doing at this point, but whatever it is I hope it will be fun and I know that it will have a major impact on a community and the lives of many, many people.  Thanks be to God.

Yesterday July 23rd was our second day at the National Youth Gathering.  It was another great day.  If you are following me on Twitter then you would of seen lots of pictures and updates.  But I will try and give you a recap here.  Before I go too much further I wanted to let you know that there is a live feed on the web for our gathering time every night.  Click here to access it

I got up early on Thursday to go to the adult meeting.  There were about 50 of us at the meeting and the leader said that this was his 25th adult leader orientation.  It gave us the overview of our time here, things to do and not to do and where to go if we needed help.  We then picked up our bags for the week which included a new Lutheran Bible – Jesus, Justice and Jazz style.  We also picked up our t-shirts for the service day.

After distribution of the materials we went to our learning time.  This was a section of the gathering where the kids had an opportunity to learn.  There were workshops, self guided centers, and integrators.  The workshops were great, the kids got alot out of them.  The learning centers were fun.   It was basically a self guided workshop that the kids could participate in, there was one called “Making space for strangers” that I heard alot about.  The Integrators were an opportunity to tie everything together.  I thought that was very helpful for the kids.  Overall it was a good time and some of the kids shared about their learning experiences at our evening devotional time.

After the learning center time we took a trolly to the French Quarter area for lunch and shopping.  We had a great lunch and spent the afternoon at the French Market.  It was great and everyone was able to pick something up to take home with them.

After that we walked 1.5 miles to the Superdome for the closing time. The closing time was great and I will share more details about the speakers in a later post.

After the Super dome closing time we went to the Hilton where about 5,000 kids were running around going to different activities, eating snacks, going to a dance and just hanging out.

We finished our night with a devotional time and had some pizza and went to bed.  It was a perfect end to a great day.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we head out to our service day.  There are lots of people doing service projects around here.   S0 many in fact we are a part of the largest convention in the city of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

The Associated Press is calling this youth gathering the “largest service ministry event ever attempted in three days”.  Now that is amazing.

I will share more about our day today (Friday) tonight (I hope)  But I do hope you can get on the live cast tonight and watch what we are experiencing in person.

As I mentioned earlier I have had some Internet problems so I was not able to post a “wrap-up” after each day.  But I hope I have straighten that out so I am able to bring you up to date information about our trip.  I was going to post pictures in the blog posts (and I might add them in later) but the connection that I do have at the hotel is very spotty at best.

Day One

Things actually started out pretty well.  Everyone made it to the airport and we went through security with no hassle what-so-ever.  We were actually on the same flight with King of Kings Lutheran Church in Liverpool.  I did feel somewhat sorry for all of the “non youth gathering” people flying with us, but the kids did really well.

We flew from Syracuse to JFK and had a VERY short layover.  We joined up with even more Lutheran Churches at JFK and made it to New Orleans with no problems (thank you Jesus).

We got on buses and we were driven by our bus guide L. Jordan.  It was nice to get a local perspective on what we saw as we were driven into the city of New Orleans.

We did not have very much time to spare once we got to the hotel.  We rushed up to our rooms and then made the 1 mile walk to the Superdome.  We were late getting there but it was a good taste as to what we were to expect later on.  What we did see we really enjoyed.

For me it was amazing to see 36,000 youth and adults all there for the same reason.  It is crazy for me to imagine the service work that we are doing and the excitement that is in the air.  (more and more reflections as we go along)

After the events in the Superdome we walked back towards the hotel looking for something to eat.  There were 36,000 other people looking for the same thing.  We ended up at the Crazy Lobster for dinner.  They were planning on closing at 10:00 and we arrived close to that time.  However, about 150 others showed up so they stayed open to serve us food.  It seems like they were not expecting us but they did welcomed the business.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel exhausted, so we basically went to bed.

Day one was great!  I can see why groups do leave a day early – I did not like the rushing around but we made it with no troubles and that is the best thing that I could ask for.

Tomorrow I will write up day two (today) and share that with you!  Stay Tuned.