12 Days of Christmas Blog

Between now and Christmas I am writing 12 blogs. Some will be holiday themed and some will be random musings. (and yes, I will include my 30 day phtotography challenge) I have needed some inspiration and my great friend Bex suggested we do this. We did a 30 days of blogging together last year, so here we go.

Last night we did an annual family activity. We made our gingerbread house. This is always a fun experience. My roll is to get the walls and roof up and "glue" them together with the frosting. This frosting did not do a great job, but it worked. Kynzi and Karston typically take care of the decorations. Each year I have had less and less to do with that part, unless they want it more detailed. Then I come in with my surgeon-precise hands and do my work.

As the kids get older, they want to do more of that. They took some serious creative liberties this year with that role. I walked away from the table for just a moment and suddenly spontaneous laughter erupted. I turned to see my children plastering the roof with "snow" and nerds, sweetarts, etc. Serious fun! We also made snowflakes using coffee filters. They had a great time getting creative with that.

What holiday traditions do you have with your family? What are some of your best memories from growing up?

Guest Post: Extreme Makeover: Minnesota Style

Todays post comes from my good friend Kylie McCoy. Perfect for the Thanksgiving season.

Most people have seen  Extreme Makeover: House Edition on ABC. If you haven't seen it, chances are you are you have heard about it at some point. It's known for it's week long renovation of a family's home as it usually completed demolished, redesigned, rebuilt and lives are completely transformed. It's an incredible and moving show to watch as you see fathers and mothers of child crumble to the ground in tears after seeing their own brand new house for the first time. It's moving to see disabled children and war veterans be given the opportunity to live a normal life with the necessary equipment provided for them. Equipment they would never have been able to purchase on their own. However, rarely do people - as in you and me- actually get to see something as magnificent as the simple outpouring of love and generosity to a family in need right in their own backyard. Rarely do we get the opportunity to participate, whether through monetary giving or giving up some time to help raise the walls or nail shingles on a house.

This fall, that all changed for our little community in Maple Plain, Minnesota.

Meet Rick and Karen Sampson. An incredible couple who give hours upon hours of their time at Maple Plain Community Church as they work in the kitchen, often starting 5am to prepare meals for various events. From Awana dinners to the Mens' breakfasts, the Sampsons are probably behind the scenes. They are also actively involved in the community helping at the local food shelf, driving those around who either do not have a car or cannot drive any longer, or  .  Despite serious health concerns, the Sampsons are an incredible couple that is always seeking to give. Despite prostate cancer, heart problems, surgeries, respiratory issues and other concerns, the couple continues to give and serve the community.

Meet the house. For 21 years, the Sampsons have lived in their home. The original house was a 24x22 cabin built in the 1920. Since then a two story addition was put on in the early 2000's. For 12 of those 21 years, the roof has been leaking, allowing a partition of the house to begin to rot. The leaking roof allowed in water, which in turn created the perfect atmosphere for black mold. Last but not least, the original part of the house never had a foundation to sit on and hold it firmly in place. All in all, these conditions were not favorable for the Sampsons and their health conditions.

Meet Operation KARE. Once Maple Plain Community Church members learned about the house conditions along with the mounting health concerns, action had to be taken. A group of seven people began planning and organizing what would be Operation KARE. Meeting once a week over coffee, the meeting of minds has driven the project and enabled the Maple Plain community to give back to a family who has given so much despite health concerns. One of the driving forces behind the project, Justin McCoy shared some of his thoughts in a recent interview..."Everything so far has fallen into place," said McCoy. "We have faith that will continue." They plan to have everything completed for the Sampsons to move back into their home by December 1.

Meet Your Part. While the deadline is closing in, there are still opportunities to help out, especially financially. If you are interested and would love to help out this serving couple so intricately connected to the Maple Plain community: 

Send financial contributions to

Operation KARE

6250 Highway 12

Maple Plain, Minn., 55359

If you live in the area and want to volunteer opportunities,

e-mail Justin McCoy at mccjus@gmail.com

Check out another article about Operation KARE:  
Lending a Helping Hand
By Gail Lipe

A crazy Few Weeks

THIS POST WAS MEANT FOR THE MIDDLE OF OCTOBER.

To say that the last few weeks have been a little crazy is to say it lightly. You may have kept up one or another, and I wanted to say thank you to so many of you who have prayed for us. It has been a trying few weeks.

We were putting lotion on the babies when Jeanne-Ann noticed a lump on Nyah's chest. We called the doctor and got in the next morning. He sent us to Portland to Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

They did surgery on her to remove the benign tumor. It had some technical term that basically meant she was OK. We were told there would be some swelling, but the swelling grew and grew and got to be the size of her previous tumor. We brought her back in and she had another surgery to remove that.

She is soooo cute, I just want to eat her up!

Instead of sewing her up they decided to let it heal from the inside out. Warning: the next part is nasty, so feel free to skip to the next paragraph. They put gauze inside of her wound and sent us home for a few days. Turns out that when we returned she was not ready and they told us we would need to change out the gauze in 2 days. That meant we would have to take off the bandage, pull out the gauze from inside her, take a Qtip and jam more gauze inside her gaping wound! Neither Jeanne-Ann nor I could handle even the thought of that. I inadvertently saw her wide open wound and almost lost my dinner. Just writing about it now is making me sick. Thankfully our neighbor is a paramedic and he came over and did it for us. (thanx Ben!)

In the middle of these procedures I went and saw my doctor about my shoulder. You may recall That I tore my rotator cuff and went through 4+ months of physical therapy and got a cortisone shot before I left for Ethiopia this summer. I only progressed to about 65% or so. I knew Jeanne-Ann's insurance was running out at the end of September and if I was going to have surgery it would be wonderful to be double covered.

So my doctor looked at me and said we needed to do surgery. This was a Thursday. I told him about the insurance, which was a week and a day away. I also told him that I was leading a youth pastor retreat that next Thursday. He laughed and said, "You don't have to be at that retreat do you?" haha. Yes! I was leading it. So we set up surgery for the Wednesday before.

My dear friend Michelle took me to the surgery center and picked me up too, as Jeanne-Ann had 4 children to take care of. She was there when they pulled out the clippers. I said, "I don't really have any hair on my shoulder. What do you need that for?" They shaved half my chest (not a massive difference...haha) and then they lifted up my arm and shaved my armpit. As soon as they lifted my arm I began to giggle. I couldn't stop laughing. Then when they shaved I laughed even harder. The whole time Michelle is laughing along with me. She may have some video evidence of that, I am not 100% sure.

What I do have video evidence of is right after surgery in the recovery room. Meesh thought it would be fun to video that experience. I don't remember any of this, except for having watched it several times.


Next thing I know, I am sort of awake and being walked to the car.

There is so much that happened after that I honestly don't want to bore you with a super long post, so I will just hit a few highlights (or lowlights).
* On the way home I semi-recall asking Michelle to hold my hand because it was so cold and her hand was so warm. (she is a good friend...haha)
* I had a nerve block on my arm so I could have cut my finger off and wouldn't have felt it. In the middle of the night I threw up from the drugs and my arm fell out of the sling and scared me. I screamed because I didn't know whose arm it was.
* On the way to the retreat I had to puke. Brian pulled over and I said, "I don't remember having pineapple."
* I fell asleep leading worship (standing up)
* I fell asleep at dinner and Byron took a picture of me with my phone and set it as my background

* My friend Brian bailed me out at the retreat by playing guitar (I thought I would be able to) and sooooo much more!

I couldn't pull my socks or shoes on myself.

* I puked many times on the last day when my nausea pills ran out (sorry, no pics for that...haha)
* On the way home I could not lift my head up with out feeling like I was going to puke
* I got home and slept for a few hours and my friend Steve came and picked me up to take me to Fox Island where I would preach 2 times the next morning. (more on that in another post, perhaps)

Me sitting in Josh's future office

* I spoke at an event the following weekend
* We prepared for saying good-bye to some of our dearest friends in the world, Josh, Bex and Mercy, as they made their move to Fox Island. (this was very difficult)

The moving truck

Kynzi & Karston left a message inside their house.

Our last "we live here" meal together.

There is so much more, but this may be one of my longest posts and I just need to post it. Thanx for bearing with me. I am a blogger, and I love to blog. This being said, I will continue to strive to post more.

Again, thank you for praying for us during this time. How can I pray for you?

Pinterest made me a Hero

Have you checked out Pinterest? Basically it is a "Wow, I saw this online and thought it was cool." And you can follow your friends and see what they thought was cool. You can follow certain categories too. I have taken a few pictures of things I have seen around and posted them, but many people post things they find online. You can also "repin" things others have pinned. You can do this online AND you can do it with an app on your phone. It is sort of like your Facebook news feed. Or instagram.

This brings me to today.A few weeks ago I saw a couple of things on pinterest I really wanted to do. They were food items. Over the years I have discovered something about myself. I am an entrepreneurial type of person who is great at dreaming dreams and thinking of ideas. I am NOT great at following through on many of those dreams. I need someone who can come alongside me and help me see that dream through. I have some people like that at work and in my personal life and that is so important for me to have, otherwise I would hardly accomplish a thing. haha. I even have a "life coach" (more on that in another post) who helps me with this from time to time.

BUT...

Today I finally followed through on this "dream" I had. There were 2 things I wanted to do. 1) Make apple mouths and 2) make home made butterfingers. Yes, you heard that right! Yum! So I purchased my ingredients (several on post Halloween 50% off prices) and got right to it. Now for the blow by blow.

Apple Mouths

For this little project I needed apples, peanut butter and mini marshmallows.

This is what I got. It turned out I needed toothpicks to hold them together because I sliced the apples to large. Then Kynzi had the brilliant idea of adding in raisins for eyes. Genius!

Karston really enjoyed them!

Now to the second project.

Home Made Butterfingers

For this project there are only 3 ingredients! Candy corn, peanut butter and chocolate. That's it! The first thing I did was put a bag of candy corn into a bowl and microwaved it for 2 minutes. I think the original thing I read said 1 minute, but that wasn't even close.

Then I added 15 seconds more until it was runny and I could mix it really well. Once that was ready I mixed in 16 ounces of creamy peanut butter. When it was a nice consistency I put it all out on a pan with parchment paper.

I think it is probably best to put it in a shaped pan (8x8 or something like that) but I used a flat one and mashed it down with a fork to get it to a nice thickness (1/2 an inch or so). I let it cool till it was hard and then used a pizza slicer to make small pieces for consumption!

After that was all cooled off I melted chocolate in the microwave. I think it was in for a total of 1 minute, but you need to just check every 20-30 seconds. I happened to have gotten Dove (best chocolate) promises at the post Halloween deal.

Once it was melted I took the pieces and dipped them in. I putted the finished product in the freezer so the chocolate would harden and came back a while later and we enjoyed what tastes unbelievably like the real Butterfinger!

I seriously can't tell you how amazingly yummy these things were! You should totally try it! Those candy corn bags are still in most grocery stores and Wal-Marts! Hurry in now!

How about you? Are you good with these kinds of things? Are you creative? Have you made anything recently? Are you on Pinterest? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear more!

30 Day Photo Challenge

I love a good challenge. I love photography. I love being pushed in both areas. So I found this challenge and decided to take it. I saw it on a website called pinterest. If you haven't heard of pinterest, you will now. It is a website that is filled with GREAT ideas. Basically people "pin" things that are of interest to them. There are categories you can choose to check out and you can also follow others who are on pinterest.

All that to say I am about to venture on a 30 day photo challenge. Below you will see the daily photos I will be taking. Want to join me? I think what I will be doing is posting a weekly update instead of posting a blog everyday with a pic. So...are you in?

Father/Son BBQ

Today Karston and I went to our first Father/Son BBQ together. Our church put it on out on a farm owned by the Schillings. It's a perfect setting for outdoor events. I love getting time away with one of my children to do something special. Whether it's a "kid date" or a group thing with other families like today, it is so good for the soul to have that kind of time together. Many of my best memories are with my children out with some one-on-one time.

When I heard about the father/son BBQ the men's ministry was putting on I immediately texted a few friends and told them we all needed to go.

The weather forecast called for rain, but the sun was beaming and it was pretty warm. The Schilling's farm was the perfect spot for this event. They have an amphitheater with a fire pit for s'mores, a patio outside of the barn for making and eating food and a great grassy area to play all sorts of games in. The whole place is framed by corn fields and they are in "full bloom" currently, so it was a beautiful backdrop!

We played some horse shoes, bocce ball, volley ball, blong ball and another fun "sport." I think perhaps it's best just to let you see the final 2 activities we did.

Book Review

I've been reading a lot lately. I love to read, but I am so good at filling my time with other things that reading can get lost. That is not a good thing. I read once that leaders are readers. If memory serves correctly, Bill Hybels reads a book a day. That may be someone else, as my memory tends to get a bit foggy after 72 hours and sometimes sooner. Honestly, sometimes I struggle to remember if I actually did something or I saw it in a movie or I dreamed it. It is so real in my mind that I am convinced that I did it.

Jeanne-Ann often jokes that I told "that other person" about something. I tell her, "We talked about this. I know it for certain! We were sitting on the couch and..." She has a really good memory and sometimes I am in the car and thinking about telling her something and I forget to tell her. Because I have such a vivid imagination I think perhaps sometimes I mix my thinking about telling her and actually telling her. Don't tell her I said that. She usually doesn't read my blog and I don't want to admit that she is likely right. Bottom line: I am sure I told her, she knows I didn't tell her, so I must've told "that other person."

Sorry, I got off track. Now, to the books I have read recently. The three I want to share with you are as different from each other as you can get. One is about blogging, one is about domestic human trafficking and the other is about real life adventures from the perspective of a navy seal.


31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo (blogger must)

If you are a blogger then this book is a must. Bryan Allain takes you on a one month journey on how to become a better blogger. You can read the book much faster than that actually, but if you want to take it slow and just do one exercise a day then you can do it in 31 days.

Each day has a different challenge to help you with your blogging "mojo." He forces you to really look at your blog and why you blog. He doesn't discourage you, he just pushes you. Allain has been blogging for over 10 years and knows his stuff.

It's as if you have a professional blogger be your personal blogging coach. He asks great questions and what you do with it is really up to you. Even if you are not a blogger but you are interested in blogging this is worth your time.

As a bonus, the guy is hilarious! Between each day he has random observations on life and you will smile widely at least, even if you don't laugh out loud. Man, those last three words took a lot of effort to type. If only there were some way to shorten it. Hmmmm...

Double bonus? This book is ONLY $4.99!!! GET IT!


Renting Lacy (hardest book I have read)

This is easily the most difficult book I have ever read. Not because it has really big words that I need Google for, but because the subject matter is so heavy. Linda Smith is a former State Representative of Washington State. After a lot of research overseas and then in the States she has become a HUGE advocate for America's prostituted children. I was in Thailand with my wife a few years ago and saw the reality of prostituted children and I was angry. Yet, I felt like there was nothing I could do. This was something that happens in foreign countries, far, far away from where I live. 

As it turns out, it is happening right here! Right where we live. Renting Lacy is a book that balances the story of young girls and how they are drawn in and lied to and treated with tons of data that is well researched. This is not a book you read and then get angry for a while and soon forget about. It sticks with you. You are changed. You look around at the world differently. When I walk through the food court of a mall I am compelled to look for girls who are being preyed upon. I am changed. So much so that I have become the Regional Advocate for the Justice and Mercy Foundation for Oregon. To give you a little insight to this foundation, this is what it says on their main page.

Helping the world discover a better way to live.

1. Mobilizing and equipping the Church to pursue biblical justice and mercy.
2. Networking organizations and coalitions to pursue biblical justice and mercy.
3. Fostering the creative and innovative pursuit of biblical justice and mercy.

I wish this book didn't have to be written. It did. There is a warning on the cover of the book that this is for mature audiences. It is VERY true. Thankfully Smith does not get too graphic, but the heart of what is happening is not lost. I found myself going through an emotional roller coaster. Anger to sadness with tears flowing to fear to joy at the justice moments. I have 4 children. I know I can't live in fear and worry so much that I am way too over protective, but I also know that I can't be dumb either. This has opened my eyes and I am aware. I need to be proactive.

Read it. Do something. Be part of changing laws that give deeper punishments for men who pay to have sex with little girls. It sickens me how easy it is for a "John" to get away with this. There is one point where a guy gets busted with a girl and the police tell the guy to get lost because he cried and said his wife would leave him if she found out. Then they arrested the girl! Granted the one police officer knew that she would be better off having some time away from her pimp and getting fed better in prison.

Thank you Linda Smith and the many advocates out there making a difference!


Seal Team Six (fun ride)

Seal Team Six. What's that? They are the elite of the elite in the Navy Seals. These are the guys who took out Osama Bin Laden. What an amazing insight into the world of what it means to be the most specialized group of Navy Seals there is. This book reads more like a novel than a non-fiction book. Howard Wasdin takes you on a crazy ride through his process of joining the military all the way to his Seal Team Six days. I had no idea. Every time I hear about them on the news I feel like "I know those guys."

Wasdin messes with your head as he shares about the rough upbringing he had and then you see how that has a pretty major role in why he is a great seal. I was mad when I would read about his step-dad and then I was mad that was the reason why he could handle so much of the difficulty that comes along with all the training.

As I read this book I kept going, “Oh yeah. I remember seeing that on TV or reading that online!” It was like having your own personal insider into history. Do you remember the Battle of Mogadishu? It’s what the movie Black Hawk Down was based on. Wasdin was a key player in that whole event!

I remember a time when I thought, “It would be cool to be a Navy Seal!” I no longer think that.Actually, I still think that, but I have no desire to go through what you have to in order to become one.

This is a PG-13 book. At times it may even dip into R rating, so be forewarned. This is not a book for young readers. That being said, it would make for a great movie, one that I would hope they kept at a PG-13 rating.