Chinese Tea House Take-Out

There were some sniffles following Lydia around, and combined with getting another tooth, she was sleep deprived, until Sunday afternoon when she crashed and took a long nap. That she let me get the camera set up and didn't stir through a couple of takes ought to say something about her depth of sleep.Last evening was our Community Group's Murder Mystery Dinner. You may recall that a year and a half ago we had Murder in Margaritaland. We went with a Chinese theme this year, and the setting was Madame Wong's Tea House in Hong Kong, circa 1906. Decorating the house got to be a fun thing for me and Jenn, from suspending Chinese lanterns by fishing line over our family room to lighting the rooms with lots of candles (how much electricity was there in early-20th-Century China?). Everyone came in character, though I've got to say that finding a costume was quite the challenge for the men. Jenn found a great dress and even a wig. She was one hot wannabe Asian!

Each couple brought a Chinese dessert and Jenn and I went shopping at the Asian Market for dumplings (that were a major hit!) and we got takeout from Sunrise Kitchen, a local Chinese restaurant. For a long time I've wanted to have a party with Chinese take-out so everyone could sample a varity of things. So we had Pepper Steak, Kung Po Chicken, Lo Mein, Sweet & Sour Chicken, fried & white rice, and did I mention the dumplings?

Dong Wong, son of Madame Wong, is shocked, having just been accused of murdering his mother. Ah Si Now, purveyor of wisdom, has a laugh at Dong's expense. Madame Hu Woo was hard of hearing... or was she? Though she embarassed him, Chin Lo loved Madame Wong.

Sai Chee & Madame Sung-Lo	Inspector Shun Sin & Soo Yu
Boo Kim & Madame Hu Woo	Madame Wong & Doo Wong (both deceased)

Chou Chyou & Wan Ting Lie-Low & Chin Lo

Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and more!

To begin with, I need to correct an error from my last blog post. Jenn and I went to the Rosewood Grill for our anniversary. I was confused because it is located in the same building that the old Inn At Turner's Mill was found in, but that restaurant is no longer. Our meal was pretty good. I can't say it was the best we've ever had, but the feel of the place was fun, my ribs were fantastic and the service was very good. The only drawback was Jenn's grouper: it was fried, which isn't the way we enjoy grouper, we came to learn. For the cost, though, we'd go back without hesitation, and just order something other than the grouper.

Secondly, this is my blog post #320. Holy cow! And to think I didn't want to get into blogging!

Moving on...

Some from our Community Group went to Blossom last Sunday evening, and we had a great time. Jenn and I were concerned about how Lincoln would do with a live event, later in the evening, outside, with a several-minute walk to the restrooms. He was an all-star! So now we know we can go to Blossom for concerts with him!

Today was a bit of a curveball. Jenn had the opportunity to get an extra day of work in at her clinic, so I took a day off at mine to spend with Lincoln! We went to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and we had a very pleasant time.

Lincoln was happy to know that the Stegosaurus didn't bite, and the man behind him in the second photo is Carl Linneaus, the father of modern taxonomy.
Lincoln didn't exactly understand the concept of Foucault's Pendulum, but he liked to see the dominos get knocked over.

The museum is set up with a number of computer-based interactive exhibits. Here, in the rock and gems portion of the displays, the descriptions of igneous and sedimentary rocks were less interesting than the mouse-ball on the modules.
They have a nice "mini zoo" display with some animals that Lincoln hadn't seen in a zoo setting before, such as the Grey Fox and the Great Horned Owl (neither pictured here).

And then there were the Dinosaurs and the Mastadons!
So after all of that, plus lunch at McDonald's, plus dropping off a birthday present at the Post Office for one of Lincoln's two favorite Aunts, Lincoln got a late start on his nap. But how often to Friday Daddy Days roll around?

This is going to be a big weekend. For starters, Lincoln's other of his two favorite Aunts is coming for a visit, and we'll probably get to do some fishing down at Leesville Lake.

On another subject, I wanted to publicly thank Laura, Dave and Haley for the birthday present that they gave me this year. I've been wanting to have a DVD copy of Gary Smalley's Hidden Keys To Loving Relationships series, and they gave me a copy! I'll be putting them to use very quickly, not only by applying his lessons in our own home, but Jenn and I are also sharing them with our small group over the next several months. Planning a series of lessons for our small group has always been a stressful thing for me, but not now... I'm very excited to use the Smalley videos! Thank you, Laura, Dave & Haley!

Another thing we'd like to tell you all about is a tradition that Jenn started two weeks ago. Friday will now be known as Pancake Day at the Gates Home. Jenn has found a number of really good pancake recipes and we will enjoy them for dinner on Friday evenings. Two weeks ago we had Oatmeal Pancakes, and last Friday we had Carrot Cake Pancakes (yum!). Tonight we'll be having Banana & Pineapple Pancakes. Lincoln gets very excited about these dinners! And so do we!

Lincoln's new favorite music to listent to in the car is the Ohio State Marching Band, specifically Buckeye Battle Cry, Les Regiment, Carmen Ohio, Hang On Sloopy & Fight The Team. We've even heard him late at night and early in the morning talking to himself in his bead saying, "O! H! I! O! Go Buckeyes!" And he says it over and over and over again. He's doing pretty good, I'd say! Today at the Post Office, he looked at an Ohio State logo and said, "O, h, i, o," and a lady in front of me asked how old he was. I said, "A little more than 2 years old." She said, "He's pretty good at letter recognition." (Good thing we're not from New Hampshire... it may take a while to make it to the end of that name!)

A few sports thoughts to share:

• Terrell Pryor looked downright awesome last night. Who cares what the competition was, he looked ready to play and his fundamentals looked good. This is going to be a good season!
• The Browns may actually have a decent thing going this year. One can't judge a bunch from the preseason, but they've got a couple of decent quarterbacks, a couple of promising running backs, an O-line that seems good, and some up-and-coming receivers. There D is suspect, but they've got good coaching. Maybe they'll give me something to cheer about on Sundays. The past 10 years' worth of fall-sports weekends have been happy Saturdays and disappointing Sundays. Might that change?
• I've been coming around on my thoughts about the Indians. For a while I was in a funk, refusing to attend a game because I was so opposed to the ownership. (Judging by the seats, I'm not the only one who feels this way.) But I've come to the opinion that I need to provide good summer sports memories for Lincoln, and so I've decided to be a fan again going into next season. They've got some young talent that, if they come around, may actually be competitive next year, too. This is just a short summary of the philosophizing I've been doing about my sports fan-ship. Perhaps if I have the time and the inclination, I could write a book. I have a feeling it would speak for most Cleveland sports fans.

[break for nap time]

Lincoln was actually a very good assistant in the kitchen this evening. He was careful stirring and pouring and he helped me make the pancakes for Pancake Day! Then we wrapped up the meal with a Banana/Raspberry/Pineapple Smoothie for dessert.
The boy likes his Smooties!

And to top off the evening, Jenn put the finishing touches on mini-cheesecakes for a shower that is being thrown by one of her associates. Yes, that's homemade lemon curd......and Chocolate Cheesecake with a Mint Crust.

Murder in Margaritaland

Last night was our highly anticipated Murder in Margaritaland! We'd never been part of a murdery mystery party before, but Jenn and Mary chose a theme, made a menu and put together a very fun evening for our Community Group.

Jenn was "Coconut Jane" and I was "Coconut Joe." We owned the resort of Margaritaland. The rest of our friends were various characters visiting the resort from the local tatoo artist to a lottery winner to the casanova bartender to the pool boy to the famous state-side actress looking to get away. It was funny to see how some of the folks were perfect matches for their characters. We had a blast. Neither Jenn nor I even came close to finding the murderer. The food was fantastic! And we were able to polish off the evening with hanging out with friends and talking life and kids.

Our hosts for the evening, Mary & Sgt. Lord.

Jack Daniels & Izzie Islander	Bindy Barkeep & Sandy Beachbum	Lifesavin' Sam & Kylie Cocktail
Thurston Howard III & Candy Cotton	Starr Bright & Lucky Numbers	Tatum Tatt & Cabana Bob

Movie Night

Our Community Group got together last night for Movie Night. It was "Drive-In" style without the double-feature. We're a single-feature crowd, and The Italian Job was a great flick for the occasion. We put the image up on a sheet, and Michael alerted the neighbors about the volume... everyone provided awesome snacks, and we had a great time hanging out and catching up.

Even Grace was up for a late show... or part of one.

And this is just playing around with both the shutter speed and the aperture... it would have helped to have my tripod.

On another front, if you've known Jenn and me for very long, you know that we like to plan vacations... almost as much as taking a vacation. Well, because of our baby situation, there's nothing on the near horizon, so we've been planning for late 2011, 2012 or 2013.

To our readers without kids:
THIS IS PART OF WHAT "THEY" MEAN WHEN "THEY" SAY KIDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!

So we're mulling some ideas that will be kid-compatible... you can probably guess what this entails...

Anyway, here's a Lincoln photo to tide you over. He's loving the big boy underpants!

A New Year

What follows is a bit of a change of pace from the usual posts. But this blog is about what's going on the in the Gates' home, and the thoughts below fit in our pre-defined category.

Jenn and I have been enjoying our Adult Bible Fellowship at church, and it's been a neat experience working with some of the other couples that head up the ABF. If you're not familiar with ABF's, you may be familiar with "Sunday School," each of which are a way for a church to break down what is a very large community into smaller, more functional communities. In a church of more than 1,500 people, it can be hard to connect on Sunday mornings during the worship hour. So ABFs are set up to provide smaller community for meaningful connections and friendships to be made, and for sound and Biblical teaching and discussion to take place. Jenn and I have been involved with the leadership of our ABF from the beginning in 2006 with only a brief interruption in mid-2008. When we first began attending HCC in early 2006, we never thought we'd see the day when we'd walk down a hallway and recognize most of the folks we'd pass, but that's how it is now, and it's partially due to the connections we've been able to make by breaking down a large church into smaller groups with the ABF structure.

One of the roles I've taken on within the ABF is to provide e-mail updates and recaps of the previous lesson/discussion as well as previewing the upcoming lesson/discussion to all of the ABF members on a weekly basis. I've been sending these as an html (website-like) attachment complete with links and pictures. It's a way to keep those who couldn't make it one particular week up to speed, and to offer a bit of an oasis during the middle of the week by providing relevant resources, commentary, and insight... sometimes from myself, but most of the time from respected sources across the evangelical Christian spectrum, such as Rubel Shelly, Rich Nathan, Chuck Colson, etc. Writing and compiling the content also prompts me to study and to set aside devotional time that I probably wouldn't be consistent with on my own.

Recently, as we were wrapping up our series from Death By Suburb, by David Goetz, our discussion on Sunday morning touched on the Classical Spiritual Disciplines. (Our long-time blog readers may recognize this book from an earlier post. Jenn and I went through this book with our former Community Group.)

Let me make it clear right up front that I am not nearly as proficient in the Classical Spiritual Disciplines as I'd like to be or ought to be. Discipline is a challenge (or else it wouldn't be discipline), but I've found this subject and their practice very intriguing ever since I took Brandon Fredenberg's class at Lipscomb on the subject back in the late '90's. During that class, we used Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline as our text.

inexpensive @ Amazon

It was both enlightening and deeply spiritually challenging. The thought of the clothes that I buy and the car I drive and the neighborhood in which I live reflecting and revealing the nature of my relationship with Jesus was a tough concept to grab, and one that contributes to a constant mental struggle for me. Celebration is a tough book to internalize because it rubs against the grain of Western culture that all of us enjoy. It would be tough to argue that any Western Christian actually puts the entire book into practice. Enter Death By Suburb, or what I like to call it, Celebration of Discipline Light. Foster's book may scare a new or comfortable Christian away, but Goetz's book is easy to read, and hard to deny. He speaks pointedly and humorously to the American Christian. Though there are a few holes in the book, and a couple of areas that could have used some elaboration, I found myself saying, "Yep, that's me." Sometimes that was a good thing, other times, not so good. But where Foster is intimidating, Goetz is not. Once Goetz's book is accepted, though, Foster's book is the next logical step. Both are very worthwhile reads for all Christians.

Fast forward to today. You didn't think you were going to read some sort of book review when you came to our blog (much less two book reviews!), and I'm not much of a book reviewer. I also don't consider myself a deep, religious philsopher. (If you're looking for something like this, check out my friend Adam's blog.) Why I hike through this background with you is to illustrate what has been going on in my mind related to the e-mail updates I distribute. I was looking for ways to elaborate on the Classical Spiritual Disciplines and I came across some great websites and blogs that deal with these in meaningful, rubber-meets-the-road ways. I share them here for you to check out when (or if) it's convenient for you because I believe they're good for us. As an analogy, I don't have the food... I'm just a beggar pointing out to other beggars where to find food.
The Inward Disciplines
Meditation
Prayer
Fasting
Study
The Outward Disciplines
Simplicity
Solitude
Submission
Service
The Corporate Disciplines
Confession
Worship
Guidance
Celebration
It is easy when you start taking the Disciplines seriously to pursue them as the end, rather than the means to an end. It's easy to begin to either worship the Discipline(s) or to become very legalistic about the Discipline(s). This is no excuse for not pursuing them, though. It's true of my life, and most Christians will acknowledge as well, that the times when I've been closest to Jesus "oddly coincide" with the times that I've been making a number of the Disciplines a priority in my life. Additionally, the Disciplines don't make us good Christians. Rather, they help us form good and healthy habits, and they become symptoms of a healthy relationship with the LORD.

One thing I hate to do in either my personal life or my professional life is to set up unrealistic expectations. They only lead to disappointment. So I don't share all of this with you as some sort of New Year's resolution that you and I can let slide sometime in late January or early February and feel depressed in May when we remember the broken resolution. Phooey! But with the thought of a new year and new starts, why not consider pursuing the goal of forming and firming up good and healthy habits as they relate to our relationship with the LORD? I understand that my readers fall all across the spectrum when it comes to this subject. But we all have to have a starting point, and we all have room to improve. If you have any questions or thoughts about this, feel free to post here or to e-mail me separately.

From the Gates Family to you and your family, have a Happy New Year!

Poop on a Plane

The story that must kick off this blog is the Poop on a Plane story. I've referred in previous posts to Lincoln's ability to be inconvenient. For instance, when he should have been napping during the afternoon in Phoenix he was crying, so Jenn and I took him on a drive. Rather than going to sleep, he talked to himself for most of the drive, then fell asleep when we pulled into Grandfather Dave's neighborhood. How convenient. So on the plane from Phoenix to Chicago, Lincoln had his own seat. He didn't travel the greatest, but he wasn't too bad. Having his own seat gave us plenty of space to move him around.

But... on the plane from Chicago to Cleveland he didn't have his own seat. Further, we were sitting by a guy that wasn't the most friendly. So Jenn was holding Lincoln on her lap, and right in the middle of the ascent she looked at me and said, "I think he pooped." She extended her hand to me, asking me to smell her sleeve. He had pooped. We couldn't go to the bathroom because the seatbelt light was still lit. We had to wait it out.

It stunk. Bad.

Then she moved Lincoln and saw that there were large poop marks on her shirt. Holy cow. So we proceeded to change his diaper right there on Jenn's lap. The flight attendant had to bring us a Blackberry-Smelling-Spray to make the area smell better. Poop was everywhere (we had fed him acorn squash, bananas & rice cereal the previous week), and it was definitely taking on the form of a baby-eating-solids poop. That's a time we'll never forget. Now, moving on to more pleasant things...

I've mentioned Lincoln's Exersaucer in previous posts. He loves it. In fact, when we arrived back home from Phoenix, he was thrilled to be back in it. When he first stood in it his toes barely touched the bottom. Now, it won't be much longer until we have to raise the level on it so he's not too tall for it.

"I must put one in my mouth, which one should it be?"

"I'm not sure about the orange one."

"But the green one... hmmm."

"I can't decide!"

"I'll let you know when I've made up my mind."

But enough of that fun. Can you tell we like to take pictures of him? Lincoln's actually been enjoying watching us review the pictures on the MacBook. It's not as if he knows what he's looking at, but he'll figure it out.

Last evening Jenn and I drove down to The Pines Golf Club for the Kretow reception. Both the Crafts and the Kretows were wonderful hosts and they put on a great party. The biggest surprise of the evening was up on the big screen. Before 8:00pm there was a slide show playing of the wedding, then after 8:00 they showed the OSU/Penn St. game (what a downer). But in the middle of the first quarter, the game was turned off, and up on the screen came Eric Craft, Elise's brother who is stationed in Kandahar, Afgahanistan.

Michelle Wisecup & Elise Kretow with the bloggers

Friends of the Crafts arranged to hook up with him via satellite over the internet. And it was actually Eric's birthday, so everyone at the reception sang Happy Birthday to him. Wow. It was really neat.  (Please take a moment now and pray for Eric, that God will protect him, keep him safe at his job, and return him safely home.  Thank you.)

Also at the reception was the Wisecup family. Michelle was a classmate of ours at Ohio State (and the shortstop on our Championship Softball team). She and her husband, Chris, have a son named Grady who is 5 weeks older than Lincoln. What a cutie. It was amazing to see the types of things that Grady was doing and knowing that Lincoln will be at that stage in just a few weeks. Grady loves to walk with assistance. He doesn't like to crawl, just walk. Given Lincoln's anti-fondness to all things belly-side-down, he just may shun crawling in favor of walking, too.  And Chris and Michelle seem to be doing well, too!

Home life is going well, too. Lincoln is consistently going to bed by 7:30-7:45pm which gives Jenn and I good time to spend with each other. Jenn's been cooking some wonderful dishes for us lately and that's been fun, as well.

I've referred to our Community Group in the past that Jenn and I really have enjoyed. This is in a state of limbo right now, though. Hudson Chapel has been moving forward with expansion plans, and this includes planting a church south of Hudson in the Stow/Kent area. They've been recruiting members to be a part of that plant, and 6 of the 10 in our original Community Group have decided to move. That leaves us and our good friends, Shaun and Jessica Kiel, behind at Hudson. Plans are underway now to find other left-behind folks and new folks to start up a new CG. This has been both frustrating and somewhat exciting at the same time... tough to put into writing.

Things are definitely cooling off here and looking like a legitimate autumn. It's a time that the Gates family enjoys.  Thanks to all who have recently left comments on the blog. We love hearing from you. And thanks for visiting our blog. There are lots of ways for you to spend your time during the day, and we're appreciative that you're interested in how things are going with the Gateses.