I’m dreaming of a white . . .

[thumb:142:l]Thanksgiving?*(*&^)(*

That’s not how the song goes, but that’s what we had today. It snowed off and on all day and it made for a beautiful scene in the city and around our house.

We had 20 people at our house for Thanksgiving and it truly felt like it was supposed to. We had Turkey with all the trimmings (thanks to a boat load of imported goods, including Yams that arrived on the plane today!) and a great time with friends. It made for a wonderful day.

The other thing missing was football, but I’m sitting here listening to the Cowboys on the Internet as I type. Not too bad.

The 11 kids that were here stopped playing only a short time to eat and then it was back to mass snowball fights in the backyard. They will all sleep soundly tonight.

One of our guests was our Hungarian language teacher, ZsuZsa, and I told her that she couldn’t have experienced a more American Thanksgiving. If we can’t be with family in the US, then this was a pretty good alternative!

Focus on Hungary

[thumb:134:l] Yesterday was a big step forward on the major project that I’m working on. I’m working on a team that is trying to build an Information System for the Campus Ministry in Eastern Europe & Russia. We want to provide a web-based tool that will allow staff to keep track of the things relevant to their ministry as well as to help them make decisions about which ministry activities to engage in. It will also provide data to leadership at the national, area, and global levels to understand what is going on in these ministries.

Needless to say, this is a huge undertaking. Our first step is to talk to our field staff and better understand what they do, how they think about it, and how they make decisions. To do this, we are conducting focus groups in Hungary, Ukraine, & Romania to help us.

Yesterday, was the first one, and it went very well. We didn’t cover as much as we would have liked, but that is part of the learning process in the first one. We had about 7-8 people from our Hungarian team participate. The time was moderated by our new team member, Scott Friderich, who is a researcher and missionary here in Budapest. He has been a great addition to our team.

I go out of the picture in a few weeks because of my surgery, but I know Scott, Jerry & Scott Neel will carry on in my absence!!

First Snow of the Year

[thumb:133:l] – Today, we woke up to the first snow of the year. It was considerably earlier than last year when it didn’t snow until late January. It is always magical the first time. By March it is nothing but dread. I enjoyed shoveling the driveway this morning knowing that I won’t be doing it after December 5th. I’m in the process of training the kids to take over. Valerie & I bought 4 shovels so everyone can pitch in.

It is pretty much melted by now, but we are expecting more over the next few days.

Countdown to Surgery

The Surgery is taking over my life! I’ve found that most of my activites focus around it. We leave for Germany 2 weeks from today and the surgery is 15 days away (You can follow the countdown over in the sidebar with the nifty countdown tool that I found).

Here’s where I’m at on it.

* I’ve been reading that if you are in good shape then the recovery is better. So, I’ve been on a crash diet and I’ve been going back to the pool for some exercise. I’m not sure if 3 weeks of diet and exercise will help, but I’m giving it a shot. I hit the pool for the 4th time this week in a little while.

* My job is focused on getting stuff done before I have to leave.

* I’m totally freaked about the surgery and recovery. I’m realizing more and more that this is MAJOR surgery and that the recovery will be as such. Everyone says that recovery times vary and my history is that my body typically takes longer for things like this. I’m not looking forward to being an invalid.

* I think all of the details for the kids are worked out (at least they are close).

* I’m praying like crazy, but I’m still stressed like crazy.

15 days to go . . . .

Darkness has taken over

Each day this week, I’m sitting at work at 4:30pm, but it feels like 10:30pm, because it is pitch dark outside!!! Not just sunset or getting dark, pitch dark!!!! I start feeling like I’ve worked late. We’ve all worked late and there are certain feelings associated with it (pressure, trying to crank something out, tiredness, adventure, etc . . .) I start feeling like this every afternoon before I go home. By the time I get home and we have dinner, Valerie & I figure it must be time for the kids to go to bed, but it is only 6pm. How can that be? It’s been dark for 2 hours.

It will get worse into December.

There are plenty of people that live farther north than me (St. Petersburg, Russia gets dark at 2 or 3pm), but it is one of the major things to get used to here.

Another thing is coming soon. Maybe snow this weekend!!

Trent’s Last Soccer Match of the Year

[thumb:130:l]Trent finished up his season on the middle school team yesterday. They played the British International School of Budapest in an indoor match (it’s getting dark here at 4:30 so it is difficult to get in an outside game without lights). We played at their beautiful new facility.

We new we were in trouble going into the game because we hadn’t practiced too much indoors. Also, as I watched them warm-up, I was reminded that they have been kicking a soccer ball since they were born. These two factors translated into a pretty large margin of victory overall. Both teams split into two and we played 4 separate short matches. They won all of them, but we kept it close in a couple of them.

The team had fun and Trent did a great job. His strength is dribbling and passing and that’s what you need when you are playing indoors. I’m just a little biased.

More next year . . .

Click on the picture to see the rest of the gallery.

My Princess Shines

[thumb:99:l]Here is Kendall as Princess Jasmine last night in their first performance of Aladdin. This was before the performance where she is ready to go. I can’t believe how old she looks with all that makeup on. I’m glad to have the younger version of Kendall back this morning. She did an incredible job and I was so proud of her. It is fun to watch her do something that she was created to do. She is totally in the “zone!”

There were around 300 people in attendance. It was a packed house. There is one more performance tonight and we are expected it to be a near sell-out again!

There are a bunch of pictures in my new Photo Gallery. It is a Coppermine gallery that allows you to view slideshows and send e-cards. Let me know if you have problems with it. I haven’t tested it much, but the musical seemed like a perfect time to give it a try.

Young Inventors in the family

[thumb:101:l]Trent & Reed participated in the Elementary Inventions Fair that ended this past Thursday. Reed’s biggest challenge was selecting between the hundreds of ideas that he had. I’m not kidding, he could come up with 5-10 every time we talked about it. Finally, we picked one that was fairly simple and that wouldn’t require an engineering degree. He created a belt clip that would carry things like a water bottle, glasses case, etc . . . He did a great job.

[thumb:105:l]Trent, on the other hand, struggled to think of an idea. He was stressed out for two weeks with no ideas. Finally, Valerie told him that she could use something to help us all get ready for school on time. Then, Trent came up with an idea to make a DVD that would play music and remind us of what we needed to be doing in the morning. It wakes us up with revellie and tells us how long we have to be ready for breakfast, clean-up, and other things. It has helped our family get out the door. We will continue to use it even after the fair.

Trent ended up winning the 5th grade competition!!!

Way to go boys!! I’m proud of both of you.

See more pictures here.

A princess in the family

Aladdin Jr.Tonight is the night that has been anticipated in our family since mid-August (maybe farther back than that). Kendall (my 12 year old daughter) has a love for performing. It has been fun to watch her over the past few years learn more about this gift that the Lord has given her. She was the orphan Molly in “Annie Jr” last year at this time and she also had a part in “Fiddler on the Roof” this past spring.

When school started this year, the thing she was most excited about was trying out for the middle school play. They are doing “Aladdin Jr.” She got the part of “Princess Jasmine” and she has been working very hard for the last 2 1/2 months. It all comes down to the performances over the next two nights and she is ready!!

Valerie has been the assistant director for the production and she is excited as well about the weekend.

I’ll post some pictures and maybe some video over the weekend. Check back to see my “princess” in action.

Dec 5th – “B-Day”

It is just about finalized. It looks like Monday, December 5th is the day that I will have back surgery (Back Day). I will have an Artificial Disc Replacement between my L5-S1 vertebrae. If you want all the details on the surgery, read more here. Also, there is a cool animation here (it’s even more cool when it is someone else’s back).

I’m going to have the surgery in Staubing, Germany which is about an hour east of Munich. It is about a 6 hour drive from Budapest. The surgeon’s name is Dr. Bertagnoli and he is one of the pioneers in this type of surgery so I feel like I’m in very good hands. Some of you might be surprised by Germany since I mentioned Vienna in earlier posts. The doctor in the US mentioned that this doctor does some surgery in Vienna. As I’ve looked into things, I realized he is much more setup to do things in Germany and has a staff that serves non-German clients. Since it is only 3 hours farther, it seemed like it would be best to be where they can help me through the process.

Valerie & I are still working out the details of how we are going to make this thing work. It looks like I’ll have to be in Germany for 8-10 days and we are trying to figure out how much of that time she will be with me. As you know, the first of December is a busy time and it isn’t easy to just take 10 days away.

I’ve also been sobered by the length of the recovery. They are telling me that I might not be able to return to work 100% for 6-8 weeks (although I’ll be working from home long before that). It is a bad time for me to be gone since we have launched a huge Campus Measurement Project. God is sovereign and he knows these things. He needs me to trust Him more than anything else.

I’ll keep you posted as more details come along.