Syracuse is terrible...but my wife is amazing

As most of you are probably aware, I am a big Syracuse basketball fan, so I was of course very excited about the team advancing to the Sweet 16 and their game against Oklahoma this past Friday. Becky and I had talked previously that we should own Syracuse shirts so we can feel like we are better supporting the team so she decided to surprise me by picking some up for us before the big game. After calling every sporting goods store in Colorado, she realized the only way to get a hold of any Syracuse gear was to purchase it online. The shirts were to be delivered to her work address on Thursday, which coincided with the biggest snow storm we have had here in over two years. Without explaining why, Becky said she absolutely had to go into work at least until the mail came. So we ventured into Boulder to work just until the mail was delivered to her work. After surprising me with our new shirts we headed home. The drive home, which usually takes 15 minutes, took us over 2 hours.

In the end, Syracuse played terribly and got smoked by Oklahoma but my wife is amazing.


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The Last Night

Since my grandma's passing in December, my mom, dad, and aunt have been very busy sorting through everything at her beautiful home on a lake in central Florida. This has meant several drives from New York to Florida for my dad over the past three months. This past weekend was my dad's final night in the house which holds so many great memories for all of our family.

It just so happened that his last night in the house was the same date as the most recent shuttle launch. Of all the many trips to visit my grandparents I only witnessed one shuttle launch and it was amazing.

From the back yard of my grandparent's house on his last night there, my dad saw this incredible sight.


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Retro Ski Day

This past Saturday we took seventeen 8th graders (along with some very helpful parents) up to Eldora Ski Resort for a great day of skiing and snowboarding. It just so happened that our 8th-grade ski day coincided with the Eldora Retro Day which we were of course happy to participate in.

Becky and her good friend Nicole posing with their retro outfits.

Becky with some of her girls.

Me and the dudes. Please note Josh's amazing hippie outfit: he tie-dyed his jeans and shirt with food coloring so every time he sat down he left behind a very colorful pattern in the snow.

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Skiing, A Frozen Dead Guy, and Matt Wertz

This past Saturday we had a quite an eventful day. It began with a morning of skiing at Eldora.


Immediately after skiing, we met up with our friend who lives in Nederland (the town Eldora is in) and went to a local festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days. The following excerpt from Wikipedia summarizes the story which was the inspiration for the festival:

In 1989, a Norwegian citizen named Trygve Bauge brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, to the United States. The body was preserved on dry ice for the trip, and stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility from 1990 to 1993.

In 1993, Bredo was returned to dry ice and transported to the town of Nederland, where Trygve and his mother Aud planned to create a cryonics facility of their own. When Trygve was deported from the United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud, continued keeping her father's body cryogenically frozen in a shack behind her unfinished house.

Aud was eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with no electricity or plumbing, in violation of local ordinances. At that time, she told a local reporter about her father's body, and the reporter went to the local city hall in order to let them know about Aud's fears that her eviction would cause her father's body to thaw out.

To this day, Grandpa is still frozen inside a Tuff Shed in Nederland and the Frozen Dead Guy Days apparently celebrates this bizarre situation. Neither of us had ever been to the festival but had heard that the coffin races was the most entertaining part of the weekend. The races were actually quite similar to "The Push" - the shopping cart race which started during my time at Hope College, where the point of the event is the hilarious costumes and not who wins.

This is the NASA team. Unfortunately the coffin crash-landed in the first round and they were eliminated.

My personal favorite was the Double-Dare team, which celebrated one of my favorite childhood TV shows.

The most hilariously dressed team was the Octumom team called "Eight Isn't Enough." Inside the coffin was a woman and eight baby dolls and the people carrying the coffins were all wearing diapers.

Saturday night we then went to see Matt Wertz at the Fox Theatre in Boulder with Laurel, our friend from Hope, and her boyfriend Dominic. This was the third time we had seen Matt Wertz at the Fox as he is Becky's favorite musician and he always puts on a very good live show. He also has to be one of the nicest guys in music as he uses the stage as a platform to share about the mission work in Africa he is involved with, and allows fans to take a CD from his merch table if they sign up to give to the mission. You can kind of see him between Laurel and Becky's heads.


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80's Party

This past weekend our friend Nicole celebrated her birthday by throwing a "Children of the 80's" party. The 80's party theme is one I don't think will ever get old. Here's a few pictures that shows why.


Becky and Nicole.


Becky and I with our good friends Kristen, Joseph, and Nicole. They have all done student ministries with us at our church for the last 4 years.


It's worth mentioning that Becky and I were each awarded a Pez dispenser for having the best costumes at the party.

Please stay tuned for another appearance of my neon green jacket at the Eldora Retro ski day in a few weekends.

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One more thing regarding winter retreat and mustaches

One of my students was so inspired by my amazing mustache and sweet aviator glasses that he drew this sketch on our way to winter retreat a couple of weekends ago. I just got around to scanning it and thought you might enjoy. Please note that in addition to signing his work, he also wrote, "You wish you were this manly" underneath the drawing.

Winter Retreat 2009!

To view a slide show of winter retreat

pictures click here.

(I stole a bunch of pictures from Joy and
Crista's facebook pages since most of
my pictures were of dudes with
mustaches. Hope that's okay.

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This past weekend Becky and I went on our annual winter retreat with the middle school students from our church. This year's retreat was at the Snow Mountain Ranch near Sol Vista ski resort. As always when hanging out with our students, we had a great time.

I grew a very dirty mustache, or whatever you would call that thing on my face, for winter retreat this year. (More on that shortly)


Most of my students spent the day skiing/boarding at Sol Vista. It was a perfect day...fresh snow and sunny. There were some absolutely amazing wipe outs/yard sales by a few of the dudes which was of course very hilarious and only one sprained wrist out of the entire group...and Dylan, who injured his wrist, usually sustains some sort of a head injury when we go to camp so this was actually a step in the right direction.

Below is most of our crew on the mountain in our famous "Justice" pose. (Since this past summer's "Gladiator Games" the 8th grade dudes have been known as team Justice. The pose all of us are doing...except for Cam on the right, is the Justice pose. It's alright Cam you'll get it).


While some of us were skiing, all of the 8th grade girls and some of the dudes were back at the camp having a great time tubing, playing games, and other shenanigans.


Saturday night was a celebration of the mustache, and was the reason I grew facial hair for about five weeks. I actually attended a career fair last week with my full beard so as to not miss out on the festive occasion. This picture shows the 8th grade dudes rocking a wide assortment of fake mustaches. You will also notice we are all wearing the same shirt, which I found at Walmart. At the top of the shirt is a guy doing the "Justice" pose standing on top of a trophy which is labeled "Trophy Husband." Amazing. Yes I also have one.

All weekend long the 8th grade girls had been blowing up balloons and storing them in their rooms in order to pull off a prank early Sunday morning. The picture doesn't really show how awesome this was...the entire 6th and 7th grade girl's hallway was filled with over 500 balloons.


Becky and some of her girls.


I was not the only 8th grade leader who grew a sweet 'stache for winter retreat. My extremely attractive friends Paul and Anthony are on my left and right.


The 'staches caused all sorts of excitement and hilarity. For one thing, we temporarily changed our team name from Justice to Mustiche (pronounced must-ish). And our usual chant which goes: "Just what?...Justice!" became "Must what?...Mustiche!"

Joy (pink sweatshirt in above pictures), had perhaps the funniest line of the weekend when she said something to the effect of, "If Jesus asked me 'Joy would you go out with me?' I would say 'No, Jesus you have a mustache.' "

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