Thanksgiving 2010. I love these freaking kids.

Thanksgiving at Papa's

Wine.

Tons of food.

Dallas Cowboys.

4 people on laptops.

Playing with the dogs.

Afternoon walk at the ranch.

Grandma entertaining us with her crazy parrots.

Surprisingly respectful conversations on economics, policy and farming.


I love my family.

Creighton's 40th!!

Hard to believe. My significantly older ;) husband turned 40 last weekend!

Thanks to Daniel Irving and Steve Hambrick for flying in for the occasion. Friday night, I planned a dudemanbro night. 5 guys (Daniel and Steve plus Nathan Webb and David blackwell) on the town in KC.
1. Happy hour at McCoys
2. Dude movie
3. Irish band at the Irish Pub downtown
4. Denny's for closing time munchies

Steve and Creighton took Daniel to the airport Saturday after lunch. Then they went shopping and to another movie. Meanwhile - I was setting up for the party at my house.

Shout out to Rob Webster for capturing the moments!!

Here are some of the photos from the night:

Connecting with my daughter

Whitby is nothing like me (except physically what with her being exactly like me).

She's precious and I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with her. However I often fear that since we are so different, I may be wounding her unwittingly.

I have figured out that her primary love language is "quality time" with "words of affirmation" as a close second.
This is interesting for me because my top two are "gifts" and "acts of service". I for sure know I need to have more one on one time with her. I have taken her on mommy/daughter dates and it blesses her so much. Not sure why I don't do it more often...

She's highly competitive. I'm somewhat competitive, but when I lose, I get over it. She hates to lose - even gets nasty so she won't have to.

She's emotional. She gets angry easily. These are things I don't understand - things that I don't have compassion toward.

She's driven, determined and calculating. All these things are good. But since I don't share such characteristics, I sometimes don't know the best way to shepherd her.

She's an INTJ (Myers Briggs personality type indicator), or at least that's my guess right now. I am an INFP. We are both introverts. We are both future oriented and meaning makers - intuitive. So in that there are a few similarities.

But she is a Thinker and I am a Feeler. She is a need-to-know-everything before she starts, closure person. I am a spontaneous, curious open-ended person.

This girl is amazing. I think the world of her and want nothing more than to know how to connect with her. I guess I just haven't really taken the time to work on it. I need to become a student of Whitby - so I can learn how to love her the way she needs to be loved.

I could really use some advice on this right now.

New ((professional)) blog....

So I decided to start a blog centered around church production - worship, technology, design, implementation, leadership.
Surprisingly all the blog names I searched were available. churchproduction, churchproducer, worshipproduction, worshipproducer...
This confirmed my suspicion that most of the people out there doing worship and event production in churches are islands. Whenever I talk to producers, they express the feeling that they are inventing their jobs as they go. And they are disconnected from others like them.
Note: This theory may only exist in the United Methodist church as we are about 10 years behind everyone else.

So check it out if you are interested in that kind of stuff. I am getting a couple of posts in the hopper now.

Trying to decide on my web banner. Thoughts?

WFX conference

I love conferences.

For real I do.
I'm curious, love to meet people, make connections, discuss what I'm learning with my team.

I'm at a Tech Production conference in Atlanta.

Started out a little Sketch. I went to my first workshop; left disappointed. Went to my second workshop; left wishing they would have had me teaching it.

The worship experience on the first day was nice.
The music was quality, albeit non-sing-along-able for your average white tekkie guy (80% of the room). The video, lighting and sound production was ok.
I look at these experiences with a critical eye (not in a judgmental manner, rather comparing/contrasting/understanding). I try to fully engage while taking mental interpretive notes.
We heard from Ed Stetzer, the director of LifeWay Research in Nashville. He talked about keeping the main thing the main thing. Why we do what we do - - Jesus. A message I have heard dozens of times, but it's ok because he was interesting and engaging and used scripture. His content was clear, his flow was structured and his presentation style was casual and clever.

I had high hopes that things would pick up for the second day. The last thing I want is for my church to spend money for me to go to a conference and to return from the conference empty handed.

Good news: things got better. The three workshops I attended the second day were helpful and added value. The worship experience had the same band singing non-sing-along-able unfamiliar gospel songs - but today I knew what to expect so I just rolled with it.
The keynote was great. Shawn King is a pastor in Atlanta. Talked about staying connected to your congregation through social media. Again, mostly stuff I know already. But he was engaging... shared stories, gave practical advice, and knew his audience.

My favorite take-aways came from the two workshops that Dennis Choy ( @dennischoy ) led. He had a lot of practical counsel on how to lead a production ministry.

Overall, glad I came.

Had a great time with my team.
Got away and got perspective on some things (I have been in a bit of a funk at work lately).
Had time to process ideas and goals for ministry.
Got to have sushi with one of my besties who lives in Atlanta.

Final thoughts:
I'm thinking about starting a blog for church producers. It is a niche but I know we are out there...