Caleb has been crying A LOT lately.

Macy:  “Hush little baby don’t say a word, momma’s gonna buy you a monkey bird.”

The other day I took the kids to McDonald’s.  The one near my house has the most amazing jungle gym so it’s a great place to study now and again while the kids go nuts.  As I walked to the counter, I noticed that there were approximately 50 employees from other McDonald’s restaurants in the area who were being trained on the new Mc Cafe which has since arrived.  They were breaking down what was in each drink and how the employees could prepare them.  Throughout the presentation, the “evil” Starbucks was mentioned as their greatest competition.  It was interesting how the management and owners went out of their way to “sell” McCafe to their own employees.  Here are a few things I picked up:

1.  Coffee is a mult-billion dollar industry that is pretty much untapped by the fast food chains.

2.  McDonald’s has the advantage over Starbucks because they have more restaurants nationwide and every one of those restaurants has a drive up window.

3.  Though McDonald’s cannot make the variety of drinks that Starbucks can, they have “copied” Starbucks biggest selling drinks and made them now available at a better price.

4.  An independent taste panel said that McDonald’s drinks actually tasted better than Starbucks.  McDonald’s attributes this to better coffee.

5.  McDonald’s was to release a huge advertising blitz at the same time around the world to lure customers away from Starbucks.  They figured as times got tougher, people would look to get their “same” drinks at around a dollar cheaper.

I’m not much of a coffee drinker so you all will have to weigh in and tell me if McDonald’s really is as good as Starbucks.  Will people make the switch?  Is there something about holding a Starbucks cup rather than a McDonald’s?  Is Starbucks a naturally better meeting place than McDonald’s?  Will the “advantage” of having more restaurants and drive up windows actually help McDonald’s?

I was most impressed with the managements ability to sell itself to its own employees.  As a leader, it was a good reminder that your people must be bought into whatever you are doing as much as you are.  Just because they are paid does not mean they will necessarily “buy into” your ideas.  The leaders started from scratch and walked their own people through every step to catch them up to the point of why they were there:  To learn how to make drinks.

Which reminds me:  People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves; even if it is a rivalry with a new competitor.

The other day I was wondering when things changed.  Luke & I went on an errand to Wal-Mart and it happened to be pouring rain (unusual for Reno).  The puddles were forming quickly in the parking lot and no sooner was Luke out of the car as he was into a huge puddle.  I was just about to yell at him and then I paused:

“At what point did I make the switch from jumping into puddles to avoiding them?  Was it an age?  A grade?  A status?  Did it just become uncomfortable?  When did jumping into puddles lose it’s joy?”

So I jumped in with him.

I was soaked and I didn’t have much fun personally but he seemed to think that his Daddy was full of good times for years to come.

…Peter Parker

aka

Spider Man

Take that mockers.

For Christmas, Miriam totally surprised me with a Flip video camcorder.  I had actually never heard of it but she thought it would be a great blogging tool (which it will be and I’ve got all kinds of ideas coming soon).  So, I’ve taken a bunch of video and put music behind this one (just cheesy Flip video music but I’m working on that).  It’s nothing special to look at because I’m new to digital video, but it’s one of the most meaningful days I have had with Caleb yet; his first bite:

*I love this video because it is so Caleb.  His little looks, shifty eyes, and surprised look at the end that 3 crackers have ended up in his little paw.  You crack me up my baby boy and I love you so much it hurts.

Here’s how play typically goes between Noah & Luke:

I love my little bear cubs!

The boys asked me to play freeze tag with them the other day so I set down my tools and ran around the jungle gym a bit.  We had a blast.  At one point I finally tagged Luke and was unknowingly standing a little too close to him when the yelling began:

Noah & Luke Together:  “You can’t puppy guard!  That’s cheating!!!!!!”

I had forgotten the #1 rule in freeze tag and committed the unpardonable sin.  What made me laugh was that they were both so quick to point it out.  There were rules to the game and I had broken them.  It reminded me of simpler times as a kid when most everything is black and white.  There are rules, they shouldn’t be broken, and that’s how you play.

I was then thinking about the Christian life.  It seems to me that the big problem with the Pharisees is that they are playing childhood games that have rules and boundaries.  When the rules are broken, foul is called.  Then along comes Christ who doesn’t seem to play by the rules.  There is another level to what He does (Bonhoeffer discusses this in “Ethics” and says that Christ is always about doing the will of God while the Pharisees are stuck in disunion with God).  Christ always has a bigger purpose that involves love for God and others.

As we grow, we cannot take the simplicity of childhood games into our daily lives.  There are rarely black and while rules and even when there are, love can choose to overlook transgression.  Love can choose to keep quit.  Love can choose to persevere.

Tonight I asked the kids where Santa lives.

Noah:  Refused to answer and called me out because Santa doesn’t exist.

Macy:  “He lives at Wal-Mart.”

Luke:  “Doesn’t he live at the Muffin Man’s place?”

I’ve been a little busy lately helping to put in our new patio (16×40 in the back, walkway around house, and 16×8 added to the driveway).  A friend and I formed it up, I did the dirt work and other prep, and we had it poured a couple weeks ago.  It’s not much to look at now because it’s simple but it keeps the mud from coming inside and it’s just step one of the vision I have for the backyard.  Next will be my barn, hot tub, and in the spring we will cover the entire patio.

I’ve always wanted to put in a great big jungle gym for the kids.  We have the room in the backyard and I like to build things so I got started.  I built it this last summer, but figured I would start recounting my projects around the house.

1.  I did a lot of research on different jungle gyms.  They can get pretty expensive and we didn’t have much of a budget.  I didn’t really like many of the “piece-together’s” at Costco, etc.  Many didn’t have monkey bars (a necessity for the boys), and the one’s that did were really expensive.  So, I went by Home Depot and saw that they had some “kits” that were bigger, sturdier, and had monkey bars.  The challenge with their “kits” was that the hardware comes in a few boxes which are shipped from somewhere in the midwest but you pull the lumber yourself from your local Home Depot.

2.  I went with the Home Depot option and ordered up the hardware which took way, way too long.  They called me up to tell me that everything had arrived.  When I went down there they handed me a slide and 2 swings.  I let them know that I needed a LOT more hardware.  So, they called around and to make a long story short, it would be another 2 weeks.  In the meantime, I pulled all the lumber and brought it home.  What I like about this gym is everything is built from 4×4’s, 2×4’s, and 2×6’s.  It makes it nice if anything needs to be replaced.

3.  The hardware finally came and I went to work.  And by I, I mean my Dad and I.  The gym is far too big for one guy to put it together himself.  At certain points we even needed extra hands (Mom, Miriam, Noah, and Luke) to put it together.  Every board needed to be measured and cut before being placed which meant it would take us a while.

4.  About 80 man hours later, we had ourselves a jungle gym and wow, it’s solid.  Lots of kids and adults could play on it at the same time and it doesn’t move anywhere.  It’s really heavy duty and exactly the finished product that I wanted though it took a little longer to get then I wanted.  I even poured the monkey bars in concrete which firmed it all up even further.