A Bearded Mentor

I got a letter the other day and by letter I don't mean a Christmas card with disgustingly cute pictures of babies on it, I mean a letter that was typed out for me to read and process. The contents of the letter don't concern you, but the sender of the letter does. Let's rewind to 2001 when Dre made his first comeback and bleached tips and pooka shells were still in style.

I was a wee lad in the summer of my Sophomore year of High School and I had just gotten back from an event with my Youth Group. On the trip was an older man whose car I got stuck in because the older students got the "cool" drivers who sped and raised the roof if Delerious or DC Talk came on. It didn't take much longer than a few minutes to realize that the man driving us was well read and wanted to pour into our lives, also he had a sweet beard. When we had returned from our trip the next day this bearded man pulled me aside and told me of my worth and my value, he told me that he loved me an that God loved me and had amazing things in store for me. It was one of the greatest encouragements I have ever received even to this day.

John and I have never sat and had coffee on a regular basis, I was never in his bible study, and we have never even lived in the same city but regardless of that I consider him to be one of my best mentors. Not because he calls me everyday or bakes prayer cookies for me but because every chance he gets he encourages me and challenges me simply by the way he lives his life.

At the end of every year I get a letter from John challenging me to look back and move forward in the name of God so that His kingdom may be glorified. I want to be that to others someday, an encouragement simply by the way I live my life.

How about you? Who is someone who encourages you and how do they do it?

2011 Goals

I told you all yesterday that I don't like resolution but measurable goals, it's true and here are mine.  Please help keep me accountable in 2011, it is one of the reasons I am posting these here.  I hope your New Years was safe, fun, and celebratory.  Cheers!

Goals for 2011

1.  Read scripture everyday

2.  Run 4 days a week or 108 times

3.  Get up at 6:30 on workdays

4.  Blog 5 times a week

5.  Finish my wife's honey-do list by March (Wait, is there an end to that list?)

6.  Maintain rather than change.

What are some of your goals for 2011?  Leave them in the comments section below.

Clay Pigeons and Resolutions

I hate New Year's resolutions, not because I don't believe they are a great thing, but because I don't want to do something the rest of the world is doing at the exact same time, unless of course that is being involved in the rapture or watching the Giants win their second consecutive World Series.

I know I have things I want to change about myself, lots of them.  Do I want to lose the 10 extra pounds I carry around but no one can see? Yup.

Do I want to follow God more closely? Always.

Do I want to become a better writer? Sure.

Can my husbandry duties and fatherly requirements get a tune up? Of course.

That being said, I don't want to make any resolutions because resolutions are destined to fail harder than Chris Gaines Rock and Roll career, don't know who Chris Gaines is, check wikipedia, it's worth it.

I am not saying if you make a resolution you are going to fail, I know people who are phenomenal at keeping their resolutions people who have lost they weight they have carried around, people who have learned a new instrument or read an incredible book, I am saying making a resolution is like shooting a shotgun with on eye closed.

The other day I went to my buddy's ranch to shoot some clay pigeons and talk before his wife had their baby.  I knew it was going to be th elast time seeing him before the birth of their beautiful baby girl (Caroline May).  As we were shooting he told me to stop closing one of my eyes while shooting the shotgun.  At first I mocked him because everyone who has every watched a western knows if you are shooting a gun you either: a) wear an eye patch (I can't wait to fall in love with you 'True Grit') or b) close your left eye.

He then reminded me that I shoot a gun twice a year and he knows what he is talking about and to listen to him.  So I did, and after I opened both eyes my shooting percentage went way up.  It wasn't that I couldn't see what I was shooting, I just couldn't see it as well and that is the flaw with a resolution, you can see it, just not as well as you should.

This year instead of resolutions I am going to make measurable goals.  Things that I can check my progress on with both eyes, things I can check off a list to keep myself accountable.  I want to have a clay pigeon in my cross-hairs and turn it into dust not miss it completely.

What are you goals for 2011? Don't like goals, thats cool, what about your resolution(s)?

Game Nights

I love to play any type of game, that is just the way my brain works, I think I may have missed my calling as being FAO Schwartz, except I hate the giant piano in the movie "Big" you think it is cool until you try to play it and you sound like every other person who isn't musically inclined or just has short legs.



I love situational games like baseball, I love thinking about what should be done because rarely is a situation the same.  The challenge that being in a new situation after every move is exciting to me.  My love of strategic games started innocently when my Youth Pastor introduced me to Risk.  3 hours later I was wiped off the face of the earth and hooked.  That following summer my dad was worried about me and my friends because we were staying up too late playing Risk.  In hindsight, I don't think he had too much to worry about, I actually just think my friends Jordan, Caleb, Brandon and Schroeder were all incredibly loud even after their people groups had died off.  At one point we recorded an entire game of risk from beginning to end, it may be the single most boring thing that has ever been recorded.

But games are incredible and I have found more and more that there is a type of game that I put higher on a pedestal than any other, they are games of strategy.  Now one would instinctively think that my favorite game has to be Stratego because it's very name is arrived from the word strategy, however, that person would be wrong, Stratego requires as much strategy as Candy Land in comparison to the my favorite game of all time, THE SETTLERS OF CATAN (That is my booming movie preview announcer voice).

You may think that sounds lame, or what is a Catan?  But to you I say stop pondering such silly things and start pondering where you are going to find a Catan board and who you are going to play with.

Games bring a sense challenge, you get the opportunity to be a commander in charge of huge armies or a developer in charge of developing cities.  You get to go head to head with other people to see where you stack up or in the case of Quelf you just get to have fun and don't worry about who wins.

Christmas season and New Years is the time for staying up late and playing board games with friends, whether it be old school like Trivial Pursuit or Pictionary or too new and quirky like Quelf, open the closet, grab a board game and some friends and enjoy a game without the distraction of TV hindering you.

Whats your favorite board game?  Leave a comment and let me know.

TRUE Grit

Before you read this post watch this trailer for True Grit, I haven't seen it yet but if you haven't heard of the movie, you'll understand this post better if you see the preview.



Sarah and I used to go to the movies all the time, it was kind of our default date before we were married or had kids.  It was fun and it was easy, it gave us a chance to put our brains on pause for a bit and just be entertained which I am a huge fan of.  Needless to say if Sarah and I get a night free from the boys we don't sit next to each other and not talk for 2 hours while Freddie Prinze Jr. kicks a hacky sack around on a stage while making an obvious metaphor about his life.  We go grab coffee and talk about life, it is strange having a full conversation with my wife without being interrupted by a young child talking, pooping, crying or climbing onto something he shouldn't be climbing.

Last night I had the opportunity to go to the movies with my brothers-in-law and another friend and I was psyched up and ready to go.  Sarah said yes but as i was getting ready to go things were not going as smoothly as had hoped, actually it was as smooth as ice-skating on gravel.  Babies were melting down, messes were being made, wives were getting sick, overall it wasn't the scene I wanted to leave behind as I left to watch James Brolin, Jeff Bridges, and Matt Damon be super cool by wearing tattered leather coats and shooting stuff.

So as I was walking out the door I prayed and said, "God, if I should stay at home tonight make Micah meltdown before I get into the car." 5 seconds later Micah went into one of his screaming rampages and rather than get in the car to watch Gritty Gritty Bang Bang (street name) I grabbed my tools and came back inside to get some honey-dos done.

Needless to say this small act of love went a long way with Sarah.  Now don't get me wrong, I am not some incredible husband who does things right all the time, that's not even close to the truth, this was more of a testament to God taking care of me and all I did was be obedient to Him.  I am not a good prayer, I am a reader and a thinker and because of that my ability to try and pray like a champ gets hindered.  But last night I truly felt God say hey pray about this for a second, so I did, and God delivered.

Do I want to see True Grit? Uhh am I a dude that has a pulse? The answer to both of those questions is yes.  Did I pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity to watch Jeff Bridges drunkenly stumble around while riding a horse with Matt Damon?  Probably not, the Academy Awards are coming up.  Did I decide to stay with my bride rather than go to an EPIC western?  Yup, and I won't regret it, ever, because that's how we show love, we put others concerns over our own, others desires over our own.

True Grit, I love you, but I love my wife more.

26thmas

The day after Christmas was always a lot of fun for us when we were kids.  The excitement had worn off from the day before and we had settled back in and slept of the sugar rush that the food in our stockings had produced.  We were back at home and free to roam around the neighborhood with the 7 other boys our age that lived there.

I call it 26thmas (which is the Christmas Hobbit equivalent of Second Breakfast or Elevensies) because on December 26th we went to all of our neighbors houses and saw what they got for Christmas and played with their toys since we were already bored of ours.  The best 26thmas was when our neighbors got a backyard trampoline and we jumped for hours, it was magical.

The biggest thing that the 26thmas Holiday brought to us was the confirmation that (Santa Spoiler ahead) Santa did not in fact exist and our Moms were in fact the fat bearded man who delivered presents on the night before.  We figured it out by simply getting the cards that Santa had left for us and comparing hand-writing.

Our first thought was to protect Santa saying things like, "He must carry different pens and disguise his hand-writing," or, "He must have his elves prewrite all of the cards and deliver them with our awesome presents."  We may have said this mostly out of terror that if we stopped believing Santa would forever black ball us to the naughty list but the hammer came down when we compared our mom's hand-writing to Santa's and it was an exact match.  We could have continued to fight it, but alas we gave in and Santa was no longer something to believe in.

When did you stop believing in Santa Claus?  Was it devastating or did you already have a hunch?  or tell me about your 26thmas.

Merry Christmas Eve from Micah

Micah thought it was time for him to be happy just in time for Christmas. If this doesn't put you full of Christmas cheer you may be dead inside.

- Peter

It's a Two Christmas Tree Christmas

Around here we measure the success of a Christmas not in the amount of lights we can hang or in the amount of presents we can give away, we don't even give a Christmas industry standard of elves on a shelf.  No, in the Anderson home we rate Christmas with the number of trees we put up in a year.

I am a firm believer in being a man and come Christmas that means putting on your boots and your flannel shirt and driving to the nearest KMart parking lot to pick out a "fresh" tree.  This is the first year I didn't have a truck so instead of tying it to the roof, I  lowered the seat and threw it in the back of our HHR, it smelled like I opened 30 air fresheners that also had real pine needles that are definitely still taunting me in the back of our car.  Regardless, this was on November 27.

Do we get excited about Christmas?  Yes, we do.  Did we get so excited that we bought our real tree too early and we had to throw it out 3 days ago because it had a better chance of catching fire than it did at spreading holiday cheer? Yes, we did.

So there I stood, at the entry way of Target, many people pushing past me trying to get their shopping done, I was trying to come to terms with doing what I was about to do, buying a fake tree.

I am a purist, I hate fake trees, they are so fake, and fake.  But after wasting 40 dollars on a real tree that was nothing more than a giant piece of kindling, I decided it was time.  I made my way to the back of Target where all the fake trees stood proudly boasting their green needles, prelit amazingness, and 50 percent off signs.  I took the plunge.

So now in our house we are fake tree people.  I never thought it to be so but alas it is true, rather than fresh pine scent coming from our den, we have the Christmas tree equivalent of a Barbie doll standing proud and true, green and beautiful in our corner.

If the amount of Chrismas trees we have gone through this year is any indication of of what Santa is going o bring me, I think I am going to make out like a bandit.  (Or at least get 2 pars of socks.)

Cooper Comic Genius

- Peter

It's a Pooptastrophe

This blog post will have no pictures for reasons that you can figure out on your own, but I will say this, "I touched more poop this morning that doesn't belong to me than any civilized human being should touch... ever."

I uttered those words as I walked out of my house this morning and then realized that any poop whether yours our your children's shouldn't be touched on a regular basis.  I have heard some pretty bad poop stories since I became a parent, as a matter of fact Sarah and I have at least three conversations about poop every day.  It's like when you become a parent you substitute the normal things people talk about like politics and religion for poop and vomit.

The Coop was up around 8 this morning like normal but we give him a little bit of time in his crib before we go get him so he can wake up and get used to having a little bit of down time before the whirlwind of the days starts.  But this day wasn't like other days, when Sarah walked in to get Cooper out of bed she immediately knew something was wrong when she tried to lift him out of bed but he was dried to the sheets, he is actually still sitting there.

Not really, but there was poop everywhere, on his stuffed animals, on the sheets, his clothes, his body and pretty soon on everyone that came withing a 5 block radius of his crib, it was like someone was sniping people with a Coop Poop gun and not even Jack Bauer could escape it.  It was gnarly, and gross, and mom and dad got to clean it up.

Parenting is hard a lot of times, but you know what you do when things are hard?  You do them.  I didn't know how we were going to handle having a newborn and an 18 month old at the same time, but we just did it, we are continuing to do it.  Are there days that you want to put everyone to bed at seven o'clock make a fire and watch a chick flick, yeah, there are, and yes I am a dude.

But you get through those days, those hours, those minutes where you feel like the whole world is about to squish you like a ten year old version of myself with the mosquitoes I caught playing 3rd base in Atwater Little League (Shout out to Von Gooden DDS, 2 tome league champs 12 and under division).  And you move onto the minutes where your son says, "Hi Daddy" when he runs over to give you a hug even though you have been playing with him for the last hour.

Parenting is tough, but you do it, you get through it, and you see the blessings those little pooping children of yours bring.  Any good poop stories?  Let's hear 'em!