“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” -Robert Heinlein

Wow… I can’t imagine a more positive-sounding and frankly terrible definition of love. That would make for a pretty miserable life. I’m not saying that you can’t be happy that someone you love is happy, but you can love someone and not have their emotions entirely determine yours. By this definition, you can’t love someone that can’t be happy, because the goal of love is to make you feel happy. Love is so much bigger than that and so much more powerful.

Rachel has, in the last 2 weeks, gone from a bear crawler to a real walker. She is walking everywhere now. She is so adorable as she finds herself off balance and goes from standing up to sitting down *very* quickly. There is a reason for thick diapers.

Tim and Beth have been super sweet to her, helping her walk and being great older siblings. I’m so proud to be a father of such great kids.

A couple of weeks back, I bought some new three-in-one liquid soap (shampoo, conditioner, body-wash) as my new shampoo. One day, I saw my wife’s loofa hanging on the little make-a-bath-into-a-shower-knobby and had unholy thoughts. I looked around to make sure Andrea had not entered the bathroom and decided to give the blue scrubby thing a whirl. What could it hurt? Just one little spin wouldn’t hurt anyone.

That evening, my wife stopped me. “Mark, did you use my loofa this morning?”

Nervously, I looked around.

“Uh…”

Her eyes widened.

“Oh my goodness! You’re a loofa lover!”

Now, I’ll have you know that I’ve made fun of Andrea for using a loofa. It seems like something completely unneeded and not all that helpful. Well, I have to take it all back now. I thoroughly enjoyed using a loofa. I’m sure that makes me less of a man and some sort of metrosexual weirdo with no hope of raising proper children, but I’m not sure I care all that much. It’s about 100 times easier to wash your whole body with a loofa than with your hands or even a wash rag and ends up using very little soap. I think my shower times have been cut in half. On top of that, my wife likes the way I smell because, I believe, the loofa is actually more effective.

Ah… a weight lifted… a secret unhidden

I have no desire to convert the world, but I’m definitely converted. To those of you that can’t look at me the same way now–don’t knock it till you try it.

Next time you want to have a nice date with your wife, head up to Randalls, find a package of Ribeye for 2, get microwavable mashed potatoes, a bag salad and a frozen pie. Go home. Put the kids down. Fire up the grill, salt the steaks, throw ‘em on for 8 minutes on each side. Microwave the potatoes and toss the salad. Light some candles, pour some wine if you’ve got it, and sit down and enjoy your $20 date with no babysitting to speak of and hardly any cleanup.

That’s how we spent our 8th anniversary last night… and it was awesome. I highly recommend it.

Here’s to 80 more.

Ahhhh a three day weekend–and a pretty relaxing one at that! We relaxed, we laughed, we played a lot of Wii–oh, and we grilled… a lot. Yeah, that’s right.

My parents came in on Sunday and so we decided to make burgers for them on the new grill. Turned out great and we had a good time visiting. The kids love seeing their grandparents.

On Monday, we went to a friend’s house for a Memorial Day Backyard BBQ with 80 of their closest friends and neighbors. It was incredible. They had a bounce house for the kids, a big playset, a couple of grills with sausage and hot dogs as well as some AWESOME grilled corn. The pulled pork sandwiches were great too. We made home-made Cookies and Cream to take and that was certainly a hit. Timothy thought about getting a brownie instead, but ultimately opted for the ice cream. Smart kid.

Our whole small group was there, including Rich, who got off a plane about 3 hours early after being gone since March (!) — it was awesome to see.

All in all… lots of grilling and lots of good food, friends, and family. And now summer begins.

My little girl turned 1 yesterday. Can’t believe it went so fast. We went to the doctor today for a checkup and she had an ear infection! It was amazing because she hadn’t been very fussy or tugging at her ears–she’s a real trooper! Unless you take her baby doll away or stop feeding her… then it’s the end of the world.

It’s so great to be a dad of such a great little girl. Happy Birthday, sweetheart.

Over the last 12 weeks, I’ve lead a small group at my church where we studied the “four spokes” of Christianity and our growth in them.

Because of how our church changed things around this year, I was leading a new group that signed up and committed to a single 12 week semester. I found it to be intimidating, but also very motivational to have a clear beginning and end of a time together.

And there was so much growth! Several of the couples took significant spiritual steps and really stepped out in their faith. It was incredible to see. As a result of their example, I felt so encouraged to grow myself–and did! I looked forward to every single Tuesday night and feel like these people are certainly close friends now.

It’s interesting. As we go through these times in our lives, having people along side us just makes a difference. They prop us up when we don’t know the answer. They comfort us when we just need to let out some grief. They encourage us when we’re down. They celebrate with us when we’re excited. It makes me realize why the church is important at all–it’s not because the church is always “right”–but because Christian community is an incredible context in which to grow. When we step out of that context, we often flounder. Sometimes we get to the point that we get stable again, but without real Christian community, we wither. I’ve seen it in friends. I’ve seen it in myself. The awesome thing is that we don’t have to stay withered.

These last twelve weeks have been awesome and I am thoroughly looking forward to leading this group in the summer semester as well. Here’s to more spiritual growth.

To Pop and Nana’s house we go.

We had a great (but short) weekend trip to my parents on Friday and Saturday.   Besides getting to have home-made cinnamon rolls, home-made burgers, and home-made chicken-fried-steak (YUM), the kids had an awesome time running around the back yard and doing Pop and Nana-style things.

The best part was when we were driving up.   Timothy would ask how much further it was and we would always answer “10 more miles!”   A little while later, when we were only a few minutes away from my parents house, we said “2 more miles” and his face lit up.   He was SO excited to see his grandparents and SO sad to have to leave the next day.  I don’t remember having that experience when going to see my grandparents because they didn’t have big yards and they didn’t play with me much… it makes me so happy to know my kids get to experience that with all THREE sets of grandparents they have.

Now, if only the grandparents were a bit CLOSER