Benchmarks

Brandon brought a cake to our most recent Edge small group get-together and it made all of us laugh.

Now it's time for listing some benchmarks for the purposes of future reflection.

Lincoln has been very interested in his songs in the car. These include hits from Superchick's Karaoke Superstars album such as "Big Star Machine," "Karaoke Superstars," "Super Trouper," "TV Land," "One Girl Revolution," & "Alright." Also, Superchik's "Rock What You Got," and "Hey Hey." Also, Fee's "Glory To God." Also, tobyMac's "Gone," "Made To Love," "Lose My Soul," & "Get Back Up." Also, Newboys' "Born Again." And a few other songs that aren't coming to me at the moment. What makes this all so fun and neat, is that he knows the words to these songs, and he sings along with all of them in the car.

Lincoln has been showing interest in a book about the planets that Auntie Em & Uncle Jeremy got for him a while back. He talks about the big storm on Jupiter, the rings on Saturn, and how small Mercury is.

Last evening we were reading the story of Noah, and when I got to the part about the rainbow, Lincoln said, "Dad, you probably don't remember this because I was a little boy, but once I saw a rainbow in the sky."

One of Lydia's new interests is climbing the step stool and playing with the light switches.

Lydia's also been brushing her teeth lately, and I do mean that she's brushing her teeth. She pitches a fit if we start the process without giving her a turn. This photo is from this morning. I was getting Lincoln ready, and Jenn was finishing getting dressed, and she turned around to find that Lydia had climbed up on the step stool herself.

Lydia has started feeding herself with a spoon. In fact, there are some things that she won't eat unless they're on a fork or a spoon and she gets to hold the spoon.

Lincoln has had the Dizzy Bat Bug in his mind since the Edge Games.

Lydia has also been adding some words to her vocabulary. "Betty" is pretty reliable. And she'll say, "Please," although it sounds more like, "Meeeese." We know what she's saying, though!

Flashback: 2/9/2010 & 2/24/12

Lincoln to the Edge Games

Last night marked the final evening of Edge Games VIII, and I decided to take Lincoln with me. He enjoys Edge events, such as spending some time with my small group guys or going to a Wednesday evening Edge "church service." But the Edge Games are no ordinary event, and I had a suspicion that he'd like what he saw. Boy, did he ever!The first game for our team, Togo, was Chocolate Covered Pickle. It's a relay where each kid gets to choose between answering a trivia question or eating a chocolate covered pickle. If they get the correct answer, they can run back and tag the next person. If they get it wrong, they have to eat a chocolate covered pickle. Some of the kids liked the pickles, others didn't, and Lincoln enjoyed watching the whole thing.

The next game was a number of variations on Steal The Bacon. There's not much like watching 60 middleschoolers converge on center court to gather as many balls, frisbees, ropes and pucks as they can and then throw/run/kick them back to their corner. Again, Lincoln enjoyed the show.The evening wrapped up with the annual Edge's Got Talent show, and once again, these kids brought it. Winning the whole event was Brandon, one of my small group guys. He played a song that he'd written himself. If you're on facebook, you can watch a less loud version here (he played a rockin' electric version for the talent show). While there were other very good acts, Brandon was clearly the best act, and the most talented kid in the show, and I'm not just saying that because he's in my small group. In my opinion, he needs to be encouraged to keep writing, and the worship team at CCC in the Cafe needs to use his music during the worship time. Great job, Brandon!
Today, after Lincoln catches up on his sleep, will be a day of painting. With the rearranging of furniture that we're doing to prepare Henry's room, he and I will be painting our old double bed and setting it up in the basement. Our downstairs guest room is turning into a dorm room!Lydia continues to crack us up. I've mentioned her talking before, but I forgot to mention that her first reliable word has been, "sna," for, "snack." She waddles into the pantry, picks up the bag of Goldfish, and waddles out to Jenn and says, "Sna." Sure, she's starting to say "dada" and "mama" with some degree of regularity, but not like "sna." Today she fell asleep on the way home from Patrick & Marrissa's house (they were watching the kids this morning). She just recently got over (another) cold, and our home is so much more pleasant when she doesn't have snot coming out of her nose. When she's not upset because she's sick, she's 100% on the move.Lincoln finished up his final Pike class and in two weeks will be an Eel. He's making very good progress in the pool.

Logged In!

For starters, our dossier was logged in today in China! This is great news, and evidence that things are moving along on the Chinese end.

Lincoln really enjoyed his Cookie Trifle

I got to use the little tripod that Jenn gave me for Christmas at Edge this evening. I was monkeying around with exposure times ranging from 6 to 13 seconds. Here are some of the good ones...

Todd is a first-class youth minister, and a very easy leader under whom to serve.

Kickin' Off The New Year... a lot like last year...

This was our most uneventful New Year's Eve and that was just fine with us. We got the Christmas decorations torn down yesterday, and the only snowman to speak of is inside our house, not outside. This was the rainy-est, crummy-est December I can remember. Blah.
Brandon, one of my Edge small groupers, was baptized at church this morning. What a cool way to kick of 2012!

Christmas 2011, pt. 1

The time between my last blog post and this one make me think of the Mark Twain quote, "The report of my death was an exaggeration." We all are, in fact, here and doing quite well. December has been jam packed with events and activities, and the rest of the month is going to finish up like the first half.

Where to begin?

Jenn and I spent an evening with friends at our ABF Christmas Party. Jenn was one foxy lady. When I got home from work and saw her looking really good in a new, very nice dress, I knew I'd have to pull out my best suit pants and tie. I think we look pretty darn good together!The adoption paperwork is now in the hands of our agency, Chinese Children Adoption International, and it will soon be on its way to the Chinese government. This past couple of weeks has been quite the ordeal with finally getting our U.S. Immigration papers back and then getting things to New York and back, and I can't say I'm real thrilled with FedEx on this front. But it's out of our hands now. Jenn was on task from day one of compiling our paperwork, and it's hard to imagine anyone getting to this point in a more timely fashion. Now we're up against Christmas in this country and against Chinese New Year in China. We know it's all in God's timing, but since we don't know what his specific month-and-day plan is, we're praying that things moving along quickly with the agency and the government. All in all, Henry is getting closer and closer to coming home!

We got a late start on Christmas decorating at our house this year. You may recall that we got the ball rolling in November last year. With work schedules and nap schedules and getting her at this time and there at that time, we didn't get around to finding a Christmas tree until last weekend. All of the blue spruces had been cut down, so after some hiking around and not finding anything over 8 feet, we headed back to the barn to get a pre-cut tree. We ended up with an 11 foot blue spruce that turned out to be quite nice. Getting it to stand safely was another story. This took about a day, and we lost 2 ornaments in the process. I'm going to refrain from giving too many details here, and instead we'll leave this story to the lore and imagination of our immediate Gates family.Lincoln finished a third round of swimming lessons and he has made great progress. He can swim 5 feet toward the edge with ease, and he's close to being able to float on his back without assistance. He is absolutely unafraid to jump in the water. Funny story: Mr. Tyler, the swimming teacher, likes to pepper the kids with questions to keep them interested and on their toes. Yesterday, he asked Lincoln what his favorite Christmas carol was. Lincoln replied, "Angels We Have Heard On High." Mr. Tyler then turned to Autumn and asked her the same question. She replied, "What's a Christmas carol." That's right, folks. My kid's the one that rocks out to the old-school Christmas carols!

Lydia continues to grow. She's been battling a runny nose for some time now, and Jenn and I are ready for this to end. She was so congested last weekend that she woke us up every 1.5 to 2 hours on average. Not cool. She's walking with ease now and getting more comfortable with changing directions. She's also eating nearly everything in sight, though in the last 48 hours she seems to have been on a vegetable strike. I think we may have broken this, though, because when she inadvertently put a piece of broccoli in her mouth we all through a big party of clapping and cheering for her, which she thought was simply fabulous. She then ate the rest of her broccoli.Lincoln has been coming up with some lines lately that have us scratching our head in amazement. For instance, the other day Lydia was in the bathtub and she tipped over her toy boat. Lincoln said, "Oh, look. Lydia capsized her boat." Jenn and I looked at each other and exchanged, "Did he learn that from you?" Unbelievable.Oodles, the Elf On The Shelf, has been quite the hit this Christmas season. While we certainly have a disobedient boy on our hands from time to time, he knows that he needs to give Oodles a good reason to take a good report to Santa. Each morning he goes looking for Oodles, and when he saw him on the mantle sitting next to one of our Santas, he said, "Oh, now that's funny!"

The other day I put some Christmas lights around the railing of his top bunk, and when he found his room lit up he said, "Hey, Dad! I was really surprised when I walked in my room, and I made this face!" And he proceeded to show me his surprised face. It was really cute.

Jenn and I are looking forward to hosting the Mullen Family Christmas for the first time. It definitely a change in tradition, where Christmas was at Great Grandpa & Grandma Mullen's house for decades, but if anyone is up to the task of putting on a good Christmas and receiving the torch from a prior generation, it is Jenn.Last evening I took two of my small group middle schoolers to Urban Vision to do some small, odd jobs in preparation for their Christmas Store. This isn't the space to get into all of the details of Urban Vision or their Christmas Store, but suffice it to say that this is one very neat, special mission organization and event. They've got things figured out and are doing a good thing for the North Hill area of Akron. Brandon and Zac, the two that went with me, had been on the Chicago Mission Trip with Edge, so they know what serving others is all about, and it was a good evening to share with them. Afterward, we went to dinner together and had lots of fun.

Christmas is in 10 days. Yikes! We wish you a Merry Christmas...

Catching Up

I cannot believe September is tomorrow. Yikes!

Yesterday was our 8th Anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been eight years, and so much has happened in that time. I'm so thankful for Jenn and the wife and mother that she is in our home.

Lately, Lincoln and Lydia have been having a big time at Grandma & Grandpa's house. Lydia is officially all over the place now. She's a very busy girl, and sometimes she has a lot on her mind that she wants you to know. The stairs officially became a thing yesterday, and she's figuring it out pretty quickly.Lincoln, especially, has been enjoying the outside time. He's a riot in his sunglasses.Lydia has also said her first word.
It helps that her "B" sounds have been getting lots of practice lately, but she's consistently saying "bye" at the appropriate times. In fact, the first time she said "bye," Jenn and I were completely caught by surprise. We looked at each other and said, "Holy cow! Did she just say that?"

Grandma Gates fed Lydia for the first time this past week. Grandma was in charge of giving Lincoln his dinner for a long time, but since he does his own meals now, it's been a long time since Grandma's had a meal-job to do. She's re-enlisted.
Lincoln is a Leesville Lake with Grandpa Doug right now. Who knows how much sleep he'll get at nap-time, but he loves being Grandpa's Helper.

Jenn has been investigating some home-school preschool lessons to begin with Lincoln, and he had his first lesson today. He was so excited when I got home from work to tell me about his story, song, craft and memory verse. He's got the mind for these type of lessons and Jenn is really interested in keeping him busy with good, mind-building exercises.

I've been getting a little bit more involved at CVCA after many years away. Last January we took on a student at the clinic for their J-Term, and another student has contacted me about this upcoming J-Term. Not long after our J-Termer is through, we'll be taking on a Purdue veterinary student for a 6 week externship, much like Jenn did at CFVC during our fourth year.

Also, CVCA recently added to their Schools of Distinction model. In the past, the SOD has consisted of the School of Engineering, the School of Ministry, and the School of Business & Entrepreneurship. This year they've added the School of Medical Professions, and they've enrolled 20 Juniors in the program and arranged for 20 professionals from the community to serve as mentors, of which I am one. I met my student, Zach, at the parent meeting this past Monday, and he seems promising. He says he wants to be an orthopedic surgeon. Big goals! So I'll be his mentor over the next two years, and one of my roles is to impress upon him the importance of good study habits, perseverance, good peers, etc. And combining J-Term with the SOD, I'll be giving a presentation to the 20 Juniors at the clinic. Too bad volunteering in the veterinary realm doesn't count for CE!

Edge starts up again very soon. You'll recall that Edge is the middle school ministry at Christ Community Chapel (formerly Hudson Community Chapel). This will be my third year, and the sixth graders I took on in my small group are now eighth graders. Wow. They've grown up a bunch, and a number of them have taken on leadership roles within Edge, which is really neat to see. I'm also excited because my assistant last year, Tyler, who was a senior at Stow High School, is going to school locally and is going to stick with my small group! One of the questions I've been getting from folks at CCC is about what I plan to do after this year. Tha Porch (high school ministry) team would like for me to follow my small group after this year, and the Edge team would like for me to recycle and take on a new sixth grade group. But with all of the changes that will be coming in our home over the next year, the Gates team is pulling me to at least take a year off while things get settled at home.

Our home study was approved by Chinese Children Adoption International, and Jenn just had the last of our things notarized today. The next step involves the US Government and Immigration. Yes, it involves paying an outrageous amount of money and waiting for a long period of time. But I wouldn't want to say anything disparaging about the government.

So that was a bit of catch-up. Thanks for reading through to the end!