Today I became the technology teacher for my bride.

• new macbook arrived last week for shannon.
• added all the programs she needed.
• merged all our contacts, calendars, music, and pictures onto her computer.
• taught her how to put music, pictures, and custom apps on her iphone.
• helped her get a facebook profile rolling. 
• put an app to update her twitter via her iphone.
• helped her figure out how to update twitter and facebook simultaneously.
• taught her how to put pics on facebook via iphoto
• taught her how to upload pics onto her computer via her phone and digital camera.

that’s a full day of teaching 🙂

Last week my wife did her own teaching.  She’s teaching Becky and Billy to read, count, and sort stuff at home.  Today we met with the principal and officially withdrew them from the docs of the public school for this year.  Homeschool it is until August 24th when they will join the ranks of 1st grade with the rest of our community at Rancho.  Until then, Shannon’s been hard at work:  

• turned kitchen table into kindergarten school room
• converted cupboards into school bulletin board
• sang songs every morning to two kindergarten kids
• taught them the sounds associated with letters a thru g.
• taught them how to paint.
• earned the status of mommy/teacher/superwoman

that’s a fuller day of teaching.  she wins.   my kids are lucky.

Go figure.

I’m in church yesterday and we’re playing this random fact game of sorts about apathy and someone says something about how we should send a text to “cha cha” to find out if this one fact is true. Evidently you can send a text msg to “242242” asking any question you want and you’ll get an answer.

I was in disbelief. But I’m the only one. Like 75% of my students have it preloaded into their phone’s memory already.

Then a student blurted out, “yeah, I used it to cheat on a test once”.

Great. Just great. Now students can text a question and google gives them the answer via text.

Out of curiosity, I said, what happens if the question is really lame? Do you still get an honest answer. So I had a kid text this: “how do I dial 911?”

Cha Cha replied: “press 9. then press 1. The press 1 again on your phone keypad.”

Classic.

For our Ugandan Adoption process, we need to turn in family updates with pictures a few times a year for the forseeable future.

So I was asked to have my first one done tonight. With a ton to do, I jumped on my mac and decided to try a product that comes with iwork.  I just got it recently because I needed keynote for the ys one day presentations and it came bundled with it.  But I have never used it before, so I was wondering how it’d go.  It’s called “pages” and yeah… Oh my…  Talk about simple!!!!

I just opened a new doc and picked a template (turned out to be the same one they have on their web page ad. )  I opened the page, skipped the tutorial, dropped in 5 pics directly from iphoto, changed the text in the blocks and whalla…. instant family newsletter. Took me 15 minutes and looks like I spent 15 hours. 

Oh I love my mac, and pages is the best!  Here’s a jpeg of my 15 minute project. 

First of all. The word “rhythm” must be spelled wrong. If you stare at it long enough, you’ll go crazy thinking it is not right.

Second of all… I’ve been thinking a lot about rhythms. I’ve been thinking that I need rhythms. And ever since we left for Uganda, it seems like I’ve been jacking with my rhythms in life.

Here’s a few it’s been good to restart and a few I’m still trying to get back in order:

RHYTHMS THAT ARE BACK ON TRACK:

• DAD BONDING: Meeting with TJ every wednesday for some breakfast and bonding has been good again. Tomorrow is my re-entry into the world of field trip Dad. Tyler and I are going to Mission Trails.
• SCHOOLING: Becky and Billy finally have a school rhythm. We ended up pulling them from the public school scenario and home schooling them so that they can finish Kindergarten this year and begin 1st grade next year. Hopefully next week they’ll start to go to the kitchen table in the morning with Shannon and spend the afternoons at our local elementary school getting acclimated to new peers and group learning structures

• 
  • BILLS: I hate bills. But I finally got back on track with them after being wacky from being gone for a month and prepaying them and yatta yatta.
  • READING: I’ve gotten back on track with a reading plan. Still a little sketchy, but it’s way better than the non-existent one I had going there for a while.
  • BASIC HOME LIFE: I make breakfasts and lunches. I drive the kids to school. I come home for dinners as often as I can and do baths and stories and watch episodes of Planet Earth and yatta yatta. It’s enough of a rhythm that Becky and Billy can even start to tell you what is next and how it works with some measure of predictablity.

  RHYTHMS THAT ARE STILL OUT OF WACK:

  • EXCERCISE: I’ve been able to catch a run or play some indoor here and there, but I’ve still yet to figure out how to get back into a consistent excercise rhythm.
  • DATING MY WIFE: Our date day was Monday mornings. Yeah, well now we have 2 kids at home again on Mondays. We need a new date day. Maybe Monday afternoons will work if the kids go to school in the afternoons. If not, we need to figure this one out. The whole childcare thing is just plain too expensive. Our dates become paying a sitter so we can sit somewhere without kids. It’s refreshing at times, but not all it could be.
  • SCHEDULE: I’ve come home to a wacky work schedule of weekends and conferences and such. Part of that is wacky and part of that is normal if I’m honest with myself. Saying yes to the right things and no to the wrong things is even more critical these days. It still feels like some stuff is out of rhythm here.
  • WRITING: I had a writing rhythm going for a while. It’s about time to kick that one into gear again too.
  • BUDGET: 5 kids and Shannon not working this Spring means we need to rethink this a little.

For what seems like forever, I’ve been going to the leadership summit via satelite in various churches. In nor cal we literally went all over the bay area to see it at my last church and now for the past 4 years, I’ve been able to join journey at it in our own backyard as we host it.

It always rocks my world and challenges my thinking and makes me step it up a notch.

Today in the office I let a webcast of this years “speaking faculty” play in the background. Dang. I got fired up already. If there was a year I’d like to go see it live in Chicago, this is the year.

They still haven’t put Barry C. Black on it yet, but perhaps someday they will.

In the mean time. I’m stoked to hear from this line up. I love hearing from Hybels, but I literally can’t wait to hear from the others I put in bold italics below. Gonna be SWEET!!!!

• Bill Hybels, Founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL.
• Dr. Henry Cloud, Clinical psychologist, author, and business consultant
• Carly Fiorina, Former chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, business commentator, and strategic advisor
• Dr. David Ireland, Founder and senior pastor of Christ Church, Montclair, NJ
• Patrick Lencioni, Business consultant, author, and president of The Table Group, Inc.
• Gary Hamel, Renowned business thinker and visiting professor at London School of Business
• Dr. Tim Keller, Author, Founder and senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, NY
• Jessica Jackley, Co-founder of Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer online micro-lending website
• Harvey Carey, Founder and senior pastor of Citadel of Faith Covenant Church, Detroit, MI
• Dave Gibbons, Author, Founder and lead pastor of Newsong Church, Irvine, CA
• David Gergen, Political analyst for CNN and PBS and former White House adviser to four presidents
• Dan Heath, Author, consultant, and co-founder of Thinkwell
• Chip Heath, Author, consultant, and professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business
• Andrew Rugasira, Founder of Good African Coffee and African trade advocate
• Bono, Lead singer of U2 and activist in the fight against AIDS and poverty in Africa
• Wess Stafford, President and CEO of Compassion International

You can check out some of their bios and see some videos here. But if you’re leadership of any kind, man…. I can’t imagine why you’d miss the chance on August 6th and 7th to be challenged by this team of world changing men and women from around the globe. There is nothing quite like it.