Archives for December 2008

Tyler turned 9 today at 3 something pm. He knows exactly when. He will tell you if you ask him. This morning someone asked, “Well, do you feel older yet?” He said, “Nope, I’m not 9 until 3…. “

Today, he was given several choices of what to do and what to eat and what to get on his birthday.

He chose the following:

• Wii games, orange muffins, and little smokies in the morning.
• Shooting 22’s in the desert in the day.
• He picked a new blue street bike with 4 pegs and 2 brakes for tricks.
• Dinner of steak, brocoli, salad, corn on the cob, and grilled mushrooms.
• A cookies and cream ice cream cake.

Here’s the shooting pics. We found a new spot that a friend recommended that meant we didn’t have to drive off road really far or drive as deep into the desert as we have done before. It was off a well groomed and border patrolled dirt/sand road on BLM land. They actually moved us twice because they were patrolling the area. But in the end, even the moving wasn’t so bad and we had a great day.

Here’s the shots of tyler getting his presents and then blowing out his cake with grandma. Since grandma has a birthday in early January, they shared the cake. I offer you these pics to show you my son Tyler’s crazy faces (click on the pics and they get bigger). He is a funny kid. He loves to cuddle and lately, he is a clown too.

Oh… and last but not least, here’s the new dresser that I built with the grandpas for Tyler. TJ and Tyler and are now sharing a room and we needed a dresser and the only place to put it was under the window so we made it a window seat dresser. My mom built the cushion and pillows. A full, but very helpful day’s work for all of us.

I have been a full time youth pastor for almost 15 years.  Yesterday I had a first though.  There are surely lots of things that I have done, and lots more that I have not in that time frame.  This past Sunday was a first I have wondered about how to handle for years.  It is a first that in some ways I feared because if navigated poorly, I’ve seen horrible results. 

It can be done well.  I’ve got several examples of it in my life.  But I have several examples that prove it can be really bad too.

So, yesterday, I spoke in our middle school ministry.  Nothing new there, except that it also was the first time ever that I have spoken to a group of students in which my son was part of the intended audience as TJ is now in 6th grade.  Sure my kids have heard me teach in big church and sat through tons of high school services here or there, but never have I been talking up front and in part, was talking to my son too. 

I survived. We survived.

I think it was actually a good thing for both of us, but it still scares me.  I want him to still like me.  I want God to be honored.  I don’t want to use my talks to talk to my kids.  I really want to walk with my kids as a Dad through this stage of their life, but I really want more for them to have the space and safety to wrestle with their faith during this stage and come away loving Jesus by their choice and not my calling.  Navigating that road will be the next big hurdle of my parenting and represents a huge shift in my experiences as a youth pastor. 

Pray for me and my kids.  We’ll all need it. 

Well, it’s been about a week of the new blog look and so far, all has been positive.

A few constructive critiques from my family:

• My brother-in-law informed me that lots of people find them through me, so I added a link to them to their blog on the left to keep the link love in the family. 

• My mother told me she didn’t notice any changes.  She does not use a blog reader, so I’m guessing my mom must be reading some other families blog.  I’ll send her the correct link. 

• My mother-in-law however informed me that the text color was too light for the posts.  She had to use her glasses and flew all the way to San Diego to tell me.  So, because I want to bless her, I fixed it. For all you who found the grey text hard to enjoy, I offer you the distinct advantage of black text.   Black is better. 

See, I am a full service blog provider.  Your comments are appreciated and influential- especially when not anonymous :). 

I am not a video game guy and we are not a gaming family.    The last gaming system our family had was when I was a kid- an atari old school system.  It’s been gone for decades and we haven’t had one since.  The closest thing we have come to is some old school atari sets I bought for youth grop and even one of those cool gaming cubes with all the old games pre-loaded you can now get just for nostalgia’s sake.

Part of this was just no desire from Shannon or I to get one.  But as parents of young kids, this has been intentional on our part as well.  We wanted our kids riding bikes, building forts, making stuff with blocks, playing with legos, and working their imaginations.  We felt that video games and tv and computer games and stuff would not help that.  So, we limit the amount of time that electronic stuff is allowed in our kids lives.

But, that doesn’t mean our kids have not found ways around it- especially in the gaming world.  They have them at our church.  They have a few games for the computer.  Sometimes they might be gone for hours at a time, we think off playing at the neighbors house…. only for us to discover it was playing hours of video games.  As a result, it was clear to us, we were going to have to make some decisions.

So this year, we decided that it’d be better to regulate it in our home than have them find new ways around it in other places.  So, we bought the most active gaming system we could find, the wii.   In fact, it was all we got for Christmas as a family.  We used some money we got from family towards a pretty sweet- nearly new flat screen TV.  We then asked the grand parents if they would only give them stuff for the wii too this year.  So, as a result, there were all kinds of kid rated games and controllers, Shannon got the wii fit, and I got chargers for the controllers and well..  it was a wii kinda Christmas.

We’re still working on what will be the post vacation rules for wii, since they are overly lax right now with rain outside and the “newness factor” on full throttle. 

I will say, I had tons of fun playing with my kids on Christmas day.  Before we bought it, I asked a bunch of my students what we absolutely must get, and they all said, “Mario Kart”.  So now we have 4 controllers and 4 wheels and we have been racing like crazy.  I confess that I laughed and crashed and heckled my children size opponents like I was a little kid myself.

At least one thing is for sure though:  the constant parental push back on the flood of pressure from our kids to get a gaming system over the last 5 years resulted in sheer elation with they discovered we had finally let them have their dreams come true.  To say they were elated is an understatement.  I’ll let the jig from Jake and the brother dogpile/hug pics below speak for themselves.  It was surely fun to give them something they so desperately wanted and did not need.  At some level, I think that’s when a gift, truly is a gift.

Here is the plate our family made during the Campbell Christmas.  We picked up the finished product today.  Don’t be jealous. You know we have mad art skilz.