Robot prototype.

We finished the first robot prototype. The kids want to build a robot that picks up a bowling ball and steps up racket balls.

We were able to get the simple software up and running. Very cool and fun. The kids love it.

C2 - bowling.

I went bowling with my work group. Here is a pic.

Robots begin

We started our ftc robotics club on Monday. Here is my favorite pic from the night.

C2 - night time walk

We went for a walk down our road tonight. Beautiful weather. Here is a pic.

C2 - church and cool weather

Today was a simple quiet day. The sermon at king of kings was about Paul and the one at Cono was on redemption. Everyone was glad to see don in church. I have attached a pic of daisy, our dog.

C2 farmers market.

We went to the farmers market this morning. I am attaching a picture of two amazing jungles.

C2 new challenge - pics

This month I will post a picture a day on my blog post. Ok, I know that it is already the 3rd of the month. I will do the best I can.

Don is home from the hospital and at our house for the next couple of weeks. We had a wonderful visit last night.

Here is my first attempt at uploading a pic.

C1 D22 - Dons surgery

Genesis 28

I brought don down for his open heart surgery this morning. He had a quadruple bypass heart surgery. He is doing great. We went to are him in the ICU at a bit before 9 tonight. He just got his breathing tube out.

C1 D20 - Amy at college

I finished through genesis 26. We brought Amy to college today. She is staying in a very nice apartment with madilen.

C1 D17 - food coop

Today is our first time to try out the food coop. We signed up about a month ago, ordered some food at the beginning of august, and are set to pick it up.

I finished reading through genesis 22. I missed some days if reading when I was in the boundary waters camping last week. I am back at it again.

C1 D9 - life beyond death.

Genius 18-19. Sodom and Gomorah were depraved and wicked. The angel of the lord destroyed the cities because of this. By the request of Abraham, god spared Lot and his family. My heart is wicked from birth, but Christ pleaded my case just like Abraham pleaded for the righteous people left in Sodom and Gomorah.

My body will be destroyed at death, but my soul will live on just like the rescue of Lot. I scream and claw my way back to live on the earth I know best. Some day I will die. What happens then? There has to be a reason we are here beyond us crawling up out of the evolutionary primordial soup.

Some people look at this story and can't see past the judgement of God or the visual idea of help. When I read this i see the power of love and the hope we have I Jesus Christ. Abraham did not have to pray for the righteous in the city. The Lord did not have to spare the lives of Lot. He also does not have to spare our live, and yet he has made a promised that he will. Read john 3:16 or Romans 6:23.

C1 D 8 - travel day

I traveled up to Minnesota to see my ma and pa. On the way up, I stopped to see a papillion puppy. The puppies are 4 weeks old. Here is. A picture of one of the pictures.

More tomorrow.

C1 D7 - Trust

What does it mean to trust God? How can we trust something we can not talk with on a daily basis or walk beside? I have trouble trusting people and I see them every day. Perhaps this is because people let me down. They say one thing and do another. What is it really like to find someone you can really trust?. God promised Abraham a son. Abraham trusted god, but thought he had to help God along. He had a son through another woman, Haggai. God was patient and reassured Abraham that the son would be through Sarah, his wife. She was almost 100 years old at this time.

God keep his word and Sarah did have a son a year latter. Praise the Lord. Trust is such a strange thing. Trust God at his word.

Genius 16-17

C1 D6 Righteousness

Genius 13-15. When Abraham believed what the lord hold him, it was credited as righteousness. Righteousness is right with God. God tells us what he will do on the Bible. Do we believe this? Just like Abraham, if we believe, we to will have righteousness with God. Very cool.

C1 D5 - towers

As a man I look at all of the great things I have accomplished. In my company we brag about how much our shares have him up or how many new contracts we have won. These things are the towers of pride that we assemble to puff our show and to demonstrate how great we qt to this around us. We forget one thing that the tower of babel story reminds us of. God is great. He deserves the glory and not us. Praise be to God.

I finished genius 10-12.

C1 d3 - rainbow

Rainbows often come at the end of a storm. We justhad storm at our.house with 90 mph winds. Many of our trees were knocked down over our driveway. This is a small thing compared to he flood that covered the whole earth in the time of Noah. God sent the rainbow to as part of a promised that he would not flood the earth again because of man's wickedness. Why does God care about sinful selfish little old me, ... Or us in general. Praise be to God. I finished genius 8 and 9.

C1 D2 - apple a day

Laurie started her challenge of eating an apple a day. I finished genisus 3-7. I am amazed at how long the people in genisus lived. 900 years or so.

Dan Laurie and I watched gost town tonight. Great movie. I tales with my ma and pa for an hour or so. My dad started therapy for his arm. They are both looking forward to our visit next week or so.

C1 D1 - Amy in Okaboji

Today is the first day of my 30 day challenge. I ready Gen 1-3 and I prayed for 5 minutes.

Amy left work in Okaboji at the Touche store for a week. Daniel got his job at the Marriott in Iowa City. He starts on Saturday.

Day 14 - challenge 1 decision

Tomorrow is day 1 of my first challenge. I have decided to start with a challenge I call the foundation. For the next month I will read from the Bible and pray every day. It has been a while since I have read through Genesis so I thought I would start there. For quantity, I will read 2 chapters and pray for at least 5 minutes.

I am striving for consistency in month 1. I love the Lord, I read the Bible and I pray today, I just am not as consistent as I should be. I am reply looking forward to this challenge.

Day 13 - Dogs not allowed.

Daniel, our dog moacha and I decided to go for a nice canoe ride at pinicon ridge campground. We picked up the jeep and headed out around noon. The day was sunny and warm. We pulled in to the canoe rental. The three of us walked up to the rental counter and asked for a canoe. "I am sorry" the man said. "dogs are not allowed in the canoe". That was the strangest thing I have ever heard. How is my little 6 pond dog going to hurt a 70 pound metal canoe?. What a letdown. We Hung out for a while and then headed home. Two thumbs down for pinicon ridge canoe rental.

Day 12 - Key to the missing key.

Did you know that keys have little gremlins living inside them? Every know an then the gremlin decides that it is time to play a little trick. They slowly remove themselves from the place that you know they were left at and hide themselves under the car mat, in your coat pocket or under your bed. A most devious gremlin visited our house last night. We made the best of this unfortunate situation. Amy and I gwen a wonderful conversation on the way to work. I will go pick her up from work soon. Tonight the gremlins will pay. Wa wa wa ha ha ha.a

Day 11 - Rise of the prank

I started he morning by setting up a simple top the cans when the basement door opens prank. It must have worked. I unleashed a horror of retribution.

When I came home from work, Dan had a smirk on his face. Amy and Dan tormented me al night. When I went to bed I found lumpy hangers under the sheets. At 3:33 the alarm went off. After the alarm I turned on the fan and fo
und pent butter on the light switch. Wow, ruthless. I thought I was clear and free until I turned on the shower and found more peanut butter.

It's ok. I got them back this morning. He he.

Day 10 - Yard Cleanup

About 2 weeks ago we had a bad storm with 90 mile per hour winds. Quite a few trees fell in our yard and across our road. Last night Daniel and I cleaned up another pile of branches. We then went for a drive in the Jeep to look for fun roads.

Day 8 - Depart apart

Laurie just left (7:00 AM) to go spend a week with her ma. There is eating out, going to Fargo, and sorting through old stuff on the agenda. That just leaves the kids and I... at home ... for a whole week ... of adventures? ... of staring across the table? of spending time together. :)

I went to look at wood for my guitar in town yesterday. I found some wonderful cherry and walnut. Many books recommend using rosewood. I did not find any of this. I am torn between purchasing many pieces and building it all from scratch. I spent time watching a number of You Tube videos on people that have built guitars. My favorite videos are:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XfBRdxzshI
2. Frank Pope - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBIaJRbiC4I&playnext=1&list=PLAAF3F9B1901B02C9

At Church today we learned about Ruth. When we came home after church, the kids and I read the book of Ruth.

Day 6 - Osama

Today is characterized by two main events. The first one was the presentation I gave to our director of engineering. I put together an idea on how to make an improvement in the way we work. Unlike other presentations to upper management, this one did not get shot down right away. I even have an opportunity to present to the VP. If at first you do not get shot down, try try again.

The second event was the awsome move by Morgan Spurlock that we watch called Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden. The documentary was witty, interesting, and fun to watch. I love to see the different "real" people that Morgan talked with. Very cool.

Day 5 - Hot summer = squirt guns

Our family went from epic Nerf gun wars to a room to room squirt gun fight. It all began with my wife bringing home 3 squirt guns from the grocery store. It was not long before the war broke out. There were no survives. I did not even survive. I actually wrote this on day 4 and fudged the dates to make it look like it is today. ... Or tomorrow. ... Or. I am confused.

Day 4 - Company from the past

I spent some time preparing for the "build a guitar in 30 day challenge". It will be quite a stretch to do this in 30 days. This may need to be 2 back to back challenges. Perhaps I can push it back into a month with an easy challenge. I will have to think about this.

Our good friends David and Debbie arrived in their motor home last night. Hugged, reminisced, and had brats, hamburgers, and hot dogs for supper. It sure is fun to visit with people you love and care about.

After the meal, we had one small problem to take care of. A large tree was blown over our road, hung up in another tree across the road. Our cars could drive under the tree, but the motor home was to tall. I took out my chain saw and cut it up into small pieces. After this we shot BB guns, bow and arrow, and road the ATV. I will take part of the day 4 off to visit with them.

Day 2, Guitar book arrives

This is day 2 of my blogging adventure. At work I am developing a new set of training materials to teach SysML. The modeling tool I am using is having trouble moving my training material from my travel computer to my desktop. Grrr.

Laurie, my wife, and I went for a walk tonight. It is 95 and humid. We only made it a mile. We talked about our transition into a new church in our area.

I received a book in the mail on building a guitar. I thought this might be an interesting 30 day challenge. I will start to study this tonight. This looks like fun.

Day 1 - Why am I blogging?

I was inspired by the Ted Talk on 30 day challenges to try one of my own. If you want to know more about 30 day challenges, check out the following video: http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html. Here are some ideas I have for different 30 day challenges:

1 - take a picture a day
2 - draw a picture a day
3 - walk
4 - bike
5 - read
6 - eat vegetarian
7 - pray, read
8 - try one new thing a day.
9 - write a short story
10 - watch a documentary a day
11 - a video a day to you tube
12 - do one good deed a day
13 - read the newspaper every day

I plan to start my first challenge in August. I am not sure which one I will begin with. As I go through each challenge, I plan to comment on how the challenge is going at this site. Will the commentary be witty and insightful? Probably not, but then again, you will have to read on to see.